The Galaxy S23 Ultra will be equipped with a new 200 MP photo sensor: Confirmed

Samsung is reportedly gearing up to increase the megapixel count on the primary sensor again in its upcoming 2023 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S23 Ultra. It would be equipped with a camera of 200 megapixels, thus leaving the 108 MP that has been used for 3 years now.

After using a 108MP ISOCELL HM1 sensor on the Galaxy S20 Ultra a 108MP ISOCELL HM3 sensor on the Galaxy S21 Ultra and Galaxy S22 Ultra, Samsung could finally be ready to take the plunge and equip its next high-end smartphone of 2023, the Galaxy S23 Ultra, with a 200-megapixel photo sensor.

We learned last year that Samsung’s 200MP cameras would be coming to Android smartphones as early as 2022, and it appears that the first to use one is the Motorola X30 Pro, which will be released in China. It is closely followed by the Xiaomi 12T Pro, arriving in France at the beginning of the school year, and then the Galaxy S23 Ultra at the beginning of 2023.

Samsung will equip Galaxy S23 Ultra with new 200 MP sensor

As the famous leaker Ice Universe reports on Twitter, Samsung plans to use a 200MP photo sensor on its Galaxy S23 Ultra. However, it would be a new HP2 sensor that the manufacturer has not yet revealed. As a reminder, Samsung lifted the veil last year with its first 200MP photo sensor for smartphones, the ISOCELL HP1.

With pixels of 0.64 µm (which is not new), for a size of 1/1.22 inch, this sensor can not only 200-megapixel recordings but also photos in 50 megapixels with 1.28 µm pixels thanks to Pixel Binning. The device can even take photos in 12.5 megapixels in low light. Samsung then introduced the ISOCELL HP3, a smaller sensor for mid-range smartphones. With its 1/1.4 inch size, the sensor only provides individual pixels of 0.56 µm.

So don’t expect miracles in low light, as the sensor probably won’t be able to harvest as much light as other larger sensors with fewer megapixels. So the Galaxy S23 Ultra should not use either sensor. It is expected that ISOCELL HP2 is an improved version of ISOCELL HP1. We don’t really know what Samsung has in store for its Galaxy S23 Ultra yet, other than that all smartphones this year will abandon Exynos SoCs for a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip from Qualcomm.