Samsung has recently released its new flagship for 2018, the Samsung Galaxy S9. And with the demand for Samsung’s flagship phones always rising, Samsung has stuck with the dual-sourcing strategy it has taken in the past couple of years. The chipset of the Galaxy S9 will either be an Exynos chipset (for international variants), or a Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset for the US variants. It would seem that the main camera sensors are also dual-sourced, either from Samsung or from Sony.
TechInsight’s teardowns of the Samsung Galaxy S9 has revealed that any variant of this phone may either carry a Sony IMX345 sensor or a Samsung S5K2L3 sensor for its main camera. The Sony IMX345 is 3-layer stacked camera sensor – which is the main requirement – which follows the IMX400 model from the Sony Xperia XZs. For comparison, the Sony IMX345 is larger than the Samsung sensor, but apparently does what is required of it the same as the Samsung sensor.
The Samsung S5K2L3 is thinner by comparison, and it is Samsung’s first attempt at a 3-layer stacked camera sensor. Both 3-layer stacked sensors have a dedicated DRAM layer, but Sony and Samsung differ in the execution of the said DRAM. Samsung’s execution has given it a slimmer size than the Sony sensor.
In real world terms, we have yet to see the inevitable comparisons that will come out between the two sensors. We will wait for people to try out both sensor variants and see is a specific sensor can claim to be better than the other.
SOURCE: TechInsights
