What are pixels? What is the special effect of Pixel binning technology on camera-phone?

Pixel pairing is one of the outstanding technologies on phone cameras today. So what’s so special about this technology? Read the article below to get the answer!

What are pixels? The importance of pixels

A pixel or pel is a pixel with a size of about 0.26×0.35mm , the pixel is the most basic unit for creating a digital image. This is the physical element on the camera sensor that can capture light when taking a photo.

Importance of Pixels?

The camera with larger pixels will capture more light, helping the camera to work better in low light conditions. But for today’s trends, camera sensors need to be small to fit in slim phones. Small camera sensor size means the pixels should be small too, unless there are fewer pixels (lower resolution sensor).

Manufacturers research to use more pixels (higher resolution sensors) but will have to choose between increasing the sensor size and finding a way to handle the huge camera on the phone or continuing to shrink the pixel size. . Shrinking the pixel size too much will affect the camera’s ability in low light. So manufacturers need a solution, and that is pixel binning.

Pixel binning – what is pixel binning technology? What effect?

Pixel binning is the process of using data from four pixels combined into one. Therefore, a camera sensor with a small pixel size of 0.9 µm will be able to produce an image equivalent to a pixel size of 1.8 µm when taking a pixelated image.

The biggest disadvantage of this technology is that the resolution of the image will be divided into four when taking a pixelated image. This means that when taking pixel binning on the 48MP camera, it will produce 12M images, on the 16MP camera, it will produce 4MP images.

With pixel binning technology, the camera will be able to take super high-resolution photos during the day and lower-resolution pixelated photos at night. Pixelated photos will have more brightness and less noise than full resolution photos.

Phones that use pixel binning technology

On the market today, phones equipped with 32MP, 40MP or 48MP resolution cameras will almost always use pixel binning technology such as: Redmi Note 7 , Xiaomi Mi 9, Huawei Nova 4, Vivo V15 Pro , … However, there are still some lower resolution cameras that use pixel binning technology such as LG G7 ThinQ, V30S ThinQ or Xiaomi Redmi S2 and Mi A2 .

Cameras coming soon

Qualcomm says phones with 64MP cameras and more than 100MP will be available later this year. This means that there will be 16MP and at least 25MP pixel composite images provided that the problem of the too large sensor size has been resolved (with the same pixel size as the 48MP sensor).

Above is an article explaining to you what Pixel is? What is the special effect of Pixel binning technology on camera-phone? What do you think about this exciting technology? Let’s leave a comment below!