100+ megapixel selfie cameras are coming

The practicality of such a solution is questionable at best. Modern selfie cameras top at around 40-48MP which is more than enough for almost any scenario. With manufacturers struggling to offer a true edge-to-edge display experience it’d be a step back to try and fit an even larger sensor on the front.

However, Samsung has shrunk the size of its 108MP sensors by opting for a slightly smaller pixel size - 0.7μm vs 0.8μm in the previous generation. By doing this, the Korean company was able to reduce the overall size of the sensors by 15%, and also make the new camera modules 10% shorter. Would these 108MP sensors be a good fit for a selfie camera? Probably not.

We’ve seen great selfie cameras with pixel count as small as 8-16MP (Pixel, iPhone), so increasing the pixel count while shrinking the size of the pixels themselves is a bit futile. You’ll end up with really crappy low-light performance selfie cameras, and besides - who would print a poster out of a selfie shot?

Yeah, there’s clever tech that combines multiple pixels into one in a process called pixel binning, but it’s really like going in circles - shrink the pixels and increase the count, then combine them into larger “virtual” pixels. These 100+ MP selfie cameras sound huge on paper and maybe that’s the purpose - a simple PR stunt. Of course, they may turn out to be awesome, who knows. What do you think?