Sony's most advanced LOFIC smartphone sensor probably won't come to the iPhone anytime soon

Sony just announced the LYTIA L910, the company's first smartphone camera sensor to use LOFIC technology. The news broke out first on Weibo, and an official press release appeared shortly after on Sony's website dedicated to semiconductor technology.

The LYTIA L910 promises to take night photography to a different level

First, some specs. The L910 is a 50MP sensor, and it's quite big, although not a 1-incher like the IMX989. It's a 1/1.28" sensor with a 1.22 μm pixel size, but the new here is the LOFIC technology.

This hardware tech allows for reduced overexposure in highlights and underexposure in shadows, enhanced detail in low-light scenes, and more natural highlight transitions. The secret lies in a small hardware addition to the normal CMOS camera sensor.

What is LOFIC, and why is it the next big thing in smartphone photography?

LOFIC stands for Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor. Basically, it's like a bucket placed next to the pixel to catch excessive water, which in the case of the pixel is current.

See, when a pixel receives photons, it generates a charge in the photodiode, depending on the brightness. But when the brightness is too high, the photodiode can fill up and overflow, resulting in blown-up highlights and overexposed photos.

The solution is to place a capacitor next to the photodiode so any potential excess of electrons spill into this element. The ISP then reads the information from the photodiode as well as the overflow capacitor simultaneously and combines it into the final picture, resulting in a big jump in dynamic range.

According to Sony, the LYTIA L910 is able to achieve a dynamic range of up to 100 dB from a single exposure.

Sony baked another clever tech trick inside the LYTIA L910

The LOFIC tech is paired with another clever engineering called Triple Conversion Gain HDR. This basically means that the sensor reads info from three separate conversion gain points simultaneously in a single exposure.

Which in principle could minimize noise and highlight clipping and also reduce flicker and other artifacts when recording videos in low-light conditions. Sony cites 30% less noise compared to the LYTIA 828 sensor.

Last but not least, the sensor is quite efficient. It can record 4K HDR video at 60 FPS while having great HDR performance at the same time without frying your phone's battery.

First phones with LYTIA L910

Sadly, these won't be iPhones and Galaxy phones. According to the rumor mill, the first phones to feature this new Sony sensor will be the Vivo X500 series and the OPPO Find X10 series.

The sensor will eventually make its way to the iPhone, as Apple uses Sony silicon inside the camera of its flagships, but it's anyone's guess when exactly this will happen.

Until then, we'll probably get a pilot test run on Chinese camera phones and see if the tech offers the real-world advantages mentioned on paper.

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