Written on June 1, 2008 – 3:00 am | by Bogdan Alex |
When I got my Sony-Ericsson K800i cellphone, I thought I wouldn’t have to buy a digital camera anymore. But boy, was I wrong! Although it has a built-in Xenon flash, the integrated camera is plain awful in darker or poor-light environments. Even with the latest 5 or 6 MPixels this still remains a problem. DSLRs, here I come! But wait, what’s this from Omnivision? An 8 MPixels CMOS for cellphones, which provides enhanced quality in the dark?

Omnivision is considered to be the largest manufacturer of CMOS image sensors in the world. Their latest OmniBSITM chip design promises the world's first consumer cellphone cameras sporting 8 MPixels capabilities. More importantly, the CMOS is very proficient at taking pictures in darker environments, integrating a technology called backside illumination, which allows more light to reach each pixel. Additionally, the chip uses a small 1.4-micron pixel that is able to form the 8 million pixels grid.

Unlike any other CMOS sensors which uses a "front side" illumination and where incoming light travels through many shallow layers of electronics before hitting the sensor pixels themselves, backside illuminated CMOS chips simply turn all that the other way up, so that incoming photons don't have to journey through interfering layers before they hit the pixels. The reversed procedure facilitates the light propagation , meaning the pixels are more sensitive to light, and can be made smaller for the same responsiveness.

The first products to include the latest 8 MPixel chips are expected to hit the market in June.