If you don't really understand why camera phones need to have 108MP or even 200MP sensors, when your old iPhone with a 12MP camera was just fine, then Samsung has a video you should watch. If you're a cat fan it might be worth a glance too.
Samsung has shared a video about its new 200MP camera sensor - this was announced in late 2021 but hasn't been used in a smartphone so far. Maybe Samsung is gearing up to use it in the Galaxy S23 line, judging by the existence of this new advert.
This video teaches us the usefulness of its new sensor in the best possible way: with cats. We see a team of engineers use the ISOCELL HP1, as it's called, to photograph some fluffy little cats, before one such shot is blown up to massive proportions for a billboard picture.
The message behind this is pretty clear: 200MP pictures are high-res enough to be turned into giant billboard images. Of course, not many people actually want to take pictures that are this big, but at least the messaging makes sense.
Analysis: cats
Lots of the time, when tech companies unveil new components like camera sensors, chipsets or neural processing units, the gadgets are way too techy to make sense to the average person.
That's why Samsung is using cats in its videos: it gives us something cute to look at, and shows in easy terms why some people might find a 200MP sensor useful.
Xiaomi did the same back in 2019 when it unveiled the Mi Note 10, the first smartphone with a 108MP camera - during the launch event it wheeled out a massive picture of a cat that was shot on the device.
Admittedly the shot that Samsung chose to blow up on the billboard is a bit of a weird one - the cat looks rather squished - but we're still happy because we like cats.
Rumors suggest Motorola is launching a 200MP camera phone in July 2022, and Samsung is expected to debut one before too long too, since it makes the sensors - given Xiaomi's precedent for using the highest-megapixel cameras possible, it likely won't be far behind either. So hopefully soon every street in every city will be lined with cat billboards.
