During an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Sir Howard Stringer (Sony’s CEO), mentioned that the tsunami would delay the shipment of Sony’s best camera sensors to Apple. The thing is, Sony isn’t known to supply sensors to Apple for current products, so it seems logical that Sony’s CEO was talking about the next-generation of Apple products, namely the iPhone 5. We’ve played with Sony’s latest and greatest Exmor R sensor (link, head to the photo capture section) and we can tell you that it is indeed quite amazing in low-light conditions. It’s way beyond today’s iPhone 4.
At the same time, there are rampant rumors about Apple not selecting OmniVision, the current camera sensor provider. Back in December 2010, Sony bought a CMOS chip plant from Toshiba, in the hopes to serve more handset customers. This investment might have come to fruition. The iPhone 5 is rumored to be delayed until October, because of a combination of iOS delay, and component shortages, following the tsunami in Japan.
If this is true, the next iPhone will have a great low-light shooting capability. Let’s hope that Apple will eventually upgrade the iPad 2 cameras too. Photo samples in the full post.
Low light photo taken with the iPhone4 - a bit better than the one above
Low light photo taken with the Sony Ericsson XPeria Arc Exmor R Sensor - good
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