Galaxy S7 ISOCELL vs Sony IMX260 sensors comparison: low-light performance

The new 12 MP camera unit that can be found in the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge uses two sensor models - either Samsung's own S5K2L1 ISOCELL unit, or a piece by Sony, marked as IMX260. Sony, as the world's largest phone camera sensor maker, often does custom orders for huge clients like Apple or Samsung, and then the manufacturers tack on optics and image processing of their own, for a completely individualized experience. You can check the sensor maker in your particular phone with AIDA64 or another system info app from the Play Store.

This time around, Samsung uses a camera with 1/2.5" sensor size, largish 1.4-micron pixels, and wide f/1.7 aperture, allowing the company to boast that this setup can collect 95% more light than those in the Galaxy S6. Moreover, Samsung has embedded a Dual Pixel system in the sensors for incredibly fast focusing times, too, so those are definitely brand new custom-made unit.

Are there any differences in photo quality from a Galaxy S7 with the Sony or Samsung pieces, though? Well, we already posted one comparison in daylight, so you be the judge, but now someone has taken two S7 units that have the different camera sensors in them, and did a direct comparison in low light scenarios. There are indeed subtle deviations in detail, color saturation and contrast, and most of those are slightly in favor of the Samsung sensor, it seems, so you should stop complaining if you have that one in your phone, but overall the image quality is very, very similar, as it should be. On the other hand, the shots with Samsung's sensor seemingly use less compression, as they are typically with the large file size of the two samples.

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