[Nexus 6  General] cb474:
Thanks, I didn't realize that there's a lot of tech industry out there.

As I've been saying in this thread and in another thread on the Nexus 6 camera, the software can make a difference within a range, but the real ultimate limit is the sensor size. So yes there are better and worse results from phones with 1/3 sensors, even sometimes the exact same 1/3 sensor. But analyzing this differences super closely is ultimately splitting hairs to a large degree. In the world of real cameras, where they are not limited in sensor size by a desire to make the device as thin as possible, you don't get all this hair splitting about the software.

So I think with phones way bigger of a deal is made out of post-processing than is justified. The relative medicority of camera phones, compared to even inexpensive compact cameras is because of the limits with the sensor size. Phones will never get beyond that through software.

A good example is the Nexus 4. A lot of people were appalled by the photos from the Nexus 4 and couldn't believe what a terrible job Google did, compared to other flagships at the time. The truth is, the Nexus 4 has a super tiny 1/4 sensor, at a time when everyone else was using 1/3 senors (which are small themselves, but not as tiny and crappy as a 1/4 sensor). Google was just being cheap (they had to get that low Nexus 4 price somehow). That's why the Nexus 4 stood out as being so much worse than it's competitors, because of the sensor size.

So people can fiddle around with special "isocell" sensors (like Samsung does) and software all they want, but you can't get blood from a stone. In the end, it's all an effort to compensate for the real issue, which is sensor size.

Why does sensor size matter so much more than anything else? Ultimately this is about capturing light. That's what a photo is. The bigger the sensor is physically (regardless of megapixels), the more light the sensor can capture. That will result in far more information to work with essentially, resulting in better colors, better detail, and less noise. It's physics. You can't change the physics of light with software.

---------- Post added at 04:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:55 PM ----------

I don't know. It seems like a good bet that its the same sensor, since Sony is the supplier of sensors to so many manufacturers. And it has the exact same 20.66 MP resolution as the Z3.

See:

http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model/602c2fff

http://www.devicespecifications.com/en/model/ce992e54

That site is the best I know of for phone specifications. But they don't list the sensor for the Turbo yet.

If it is the same sensor, it will be interesting to see if Motorola gets better results out of the sensor that Sony. Bizarrely, as I've said elsewhere, even though the 1/2.3 sensor should be at least as good, if not better than the 1/2.5 sensor in the Galaxy S5, Sony has not produced good results with the Z2 and Z3. They're photos have been reviewed more poorly than a lot of phones with 1/3 sensors.

(As an aside, in reference to my post above, yes you can totally screw up a large sensor with post-processing. But no 1/3 sensor is every going to touch the Galaxy S5 with it's 1/2.5 sensor, because Samsung is not screwing up the post-processing, to say nothing of something like the Nokia 1020 with its 1/1.5 sensor. So this is not an example of why software matters as much as sensor size. It's just an example of how you can screw up on the software side, but you can't use software to beat a larger sensor that's done right on the software side.)

Maybe there's something wanky with that sensor. I suppose it's possible. The 20 MP is really gratuitous. You don't need that high resolution. For an sensor of the same size, it will just add noise. You could have a 1/2.3 sensor with say 13 MP, have all the benefits of the larger sensor, but with larger pixels, have less noise and better color accuracy. So maybe Sony was just in too much of a rush with that sensor to win the megapixel race and did something really wrong in the sensor design? Seems unlikley though. I don't know. Or maybe they've just screwed up the post-processing and if the Droid has the same sensor hopefully will see the sensor used better.