Sony’s next flagship smartphone could land with optical image stabilisation, a new video seems to reveal.
A clip from a company called ON Semiconductor detailing OIS solutions at MWC 2015 appears to imply that an upcoming Xperia phone will carry the technology.
Arthur Gonsky, Solutions Development Manager at the company, seems to suggest this might be the case at the 1:15 mark in the video.
Gonsky says ON Semiconductor’s budget OIS solution can be “very successful in phones that are not just inexpensive, but also very expensive, like the Sony Xperia for example, or some of the expensive phones coming from Korean makers in this day and age.”
Sony has yet use OIS in any of its Xperia devices, instead opting for the less impressive digital image stabilisation alternative.
Considering the Xperia Z4 is purportedly very close to release, it could be that Gonsky accidentally revealed an enticing detail about the upcoming handset.
It’s worth noting that some other manufacturers that use Sony-built image sensors also offer OIS on their handsets. That’s the case with Samsung’s Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, both of which ship with the Sony Exmor IMX240 sensor.
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Optical image stabilisation is a much-coveted feature for smartphone photographers, as it helps reduce motion blur in both still photography and videography.
This is because the camera module is built with free moving parts than compensate for inadvertent motion on the part of the user.
This is in contrast to digital image stabilisation, whereby blurring is reduced through software processing, which tends to be less effective.
Adding OIS to the Xperia Z4 would be a big boon to Sony’s next flagship, particularly because Sony is often lambasted for lacklustre mobile camera software and features, despite it being one of the major smartphone CMOS image sensor providers globally.
Check out the full video of ON Semiconductor's apparent slip-up below: