48 Mp Phone sensor is here from Sony

[eronald]

https://www.sony.net/SonyInfo/News/Press/201807/18-060E/index.html
https://www.engadget.com/2018/07/23/sony-48-megapixel-smartphone-sensor/

guess where all the research money goes these days ...
The cruise ship image in the article looks very convincing.
I know that pixels for the sake of pixels is not the aim of MF, but at some point one does wonder whether MF buyers are getting value for money. 

Edmund

[capital]

There was a recent article on a 1/1.7 sensor phone camera, capturing the milky way.

https://petapixel.com/2018/08/08/this-milky-way-photo-was-shot-with-a-huawei-p20-pro-smartphone/

Certainly the phone sized sensors are going to push the technology of image capture forward, whether they will replace a traditional camera is hard to say, as the notion of serious photography is somewhat intertwined with a larger "setup."

The MFD debate has usually mentioned a megapixel advantage so I think it is fair to consider that as part of any comparison to other formats.

[BJL]

And now Samsung also offers a phone sensor with 48 million tiny 0.8 micron photosites: 8000x6000, 6.4x4.8mm format which is 8mm diagonal, so-called 1/2":
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-introduces-two-new-0-8μm-isocell-image-sensors-to-the-smartphone-market

The other one, the 32MP ISOCELL Bright GD1, seems to be about 6.5mm diagonal, 1/2.7" — a more typical phone sensor size.

If this 2x2 binning to 12MP [resp. 8MP] for low light and cropping for zoom works well, this "swarm of tiny pixels" might be a reasonable approach for pocketable cameras.

P. S. Both Sony and Samsung use a 4x4 CFA:
RRGG
RRGG
GGBB
GGBB
(Sony call this "Quad Bayer"; Samsung calls it "Tetracell")
So the sensors are in a sense only "12MP color, 48MP luminosity". I wonder how well this works in practice; standard Bayer CFAs already have lower color resolution than luminosity, but so far that gap seems to mesh fairly well with how our eyes work.