Kodak Tackles Poor Camera-Phone Quality

The company claims its latest sensor reworks the basic principles of CMOS design to improve quality under poor lighting conditions without increasing sensor size.

Camera phones may be a welcome convenience when compared to lugging around a full-size digital camera just to take snap shots, but in terms of image quality, most still make low-light shots look like they were taken at the bottom of the sea with remote-controlled submarines. Kodak has aimed to change that with the release of the KAC-05020 5-megapixel image sensor, which it claims will substantially improve low-light quality with fundamental changes to the way a sensor works.

According to Kodak, normal CMOS cameras pick up the electrons generated when light strikes the sensor surface, meaning more light gives more signal, and well-lit photos look substantially better than dim ones. Kodak’s KAC-05020, on the other hand, produces signal from an absence of light, meaning signal remains strong at low light levels and image quality remains stable. "Clear" light sensors are also added to the CMOS alongside red, green and blue ones, with the duty of detecting light levels across all spectrums, further improving sensitivity.The company has dubbed this new approach Kodak Truesense.

Despite this claimed improvement in image quality, the sensor remains just a quarter-inch across, making it possible to integrate into phones. It also enables speeds of up to ISO 3200 and supports shooting 720p video at 30fps.

No word yet on just when we’ll see these sensors cropping up in the next batch of mobile phones, but Kodak plans to show the sensor off at the GSMA Mobile World Congress later this February and ship samples to manufacturers by the second quarter of 2008.