Wow indeed. Thanks for the explanation. So what’s left of the “higher resolution” claim is essentially… nothing. Just a marketing ploy. Feel free to ridicule me for actually thinking that Fairphone was different and that such bullsh*t was beneath them.
There was never a shortage of detractors who’d tell me that Fairphone’s whole “sustainability” approach was just, well, a marketing ploy. I was always sure they were wrong. But now? Do I have any way of verifying their claims in this regard? And how does this approach square with selling upgrade modules using, let’s say, optimistic claims, that don’t seem to offer any real benefit? The line was that they give people a better camera module so they don’t buy a new phone just to take better pictures. Turns out the camera module isn’t better. So people still buy a new phone, but now there’s even more waste because of the unnecessary new camera modules. Great.
Or maybe I’m all wrong and there actually is a discernible improvement in photo quality. I’d still be happy to see somebody demonstrate this. But I’m very skeptical.
Don’t forget the zero shutter lag and improved image stabilization.
Then, although the explanation is very detailed and interesting, don’t forget it’s one article saying it’s more marketing than photo improvement. I found another one [1] that explains where the quality is really improved, and I think it will need advanced test to notice it. I think quad bayer improves the photos in bad conditions (low-light for example), and less in good conditions.
Apparently, there is also a 48MP mode available, so that you can have very high resolution photos, but it will only work well in good conditions. Could someone with the new module say if this option is available on FP3 (perhaps in developer options or something similar)?
Wayne said in the Facebook Q&A that zero shutter lag and intelligent scene detection would be available with the old modules as well.
For example, we talked about zero shutter lag. That will be available on existing FP3’s provided that you upgrade your FP3 to Android 10. […] And also for the intelligent scene detection, that is also something that will be available on your FP3.
I don’t remember any promises about the image stabilization being better, and my subjective impression is that it isn’t. I also expected better photos in bad conditions, but I don’t see an improvement (again, subjectively) with the new module in this regard either. Mind you, I’m not alone with this impression, and as more people get the new module I expect more will chime in.
Anyway. I hope somebody will make a more standardized comparison at some point and prove me wrong. I won’t do it, I don’t want to go through the trouble of swapping out the modules multiple times again.
Your article seems to have come to the same Conclusion, quoted from the first linked:
(highlighting by me)
when uodalcrius wrote “the module isn’t better” he overstated the critique from the article.
In my opinion both say its better than 12MP with a regular filter, but its not what you expect from a true 48MP sensor.
The comparison to a 50MP Hasselblad 40000$, 80000$ (no limit?) sensor where each pixel has 10x 20x? the area is tough for every camera.
Its a welcome improvement if the software works, but is not “4 times as good” and even more software dependent.
I didn’t and don’t feel misled, but the number is bigger then the improvement and marketing likes that,
I just don’t think the article has judged it overly bad, but its not 40.000$ 48MP which is closer to getting proportional better.
Just wanted to step in and say I don’t think the linked article is negative towards the 48MP modules (across all vendors) but uodalricus has exaggerated the conclusion drawn in it.
Sorry, but where did I exaggerate? Calling the 48MP claim a “marketing ploy” were pcm’s words, not mine. But I think it’s quite apt, you have to use a very strange definition of “pixel” to justify this claim. And FP used this claim up and down, the “12 MP output” was in the fine print.
But I don’t really care about the number of pixels, I care about photo quality. Maybe I overlooked it, but I haven’t seen a single post from somebody who has the new module and actually sees an improvement. Have you? I don’t see an improvement, decibyte doesn’t, mgkoeln doesn’t.
Of course I don’t expect a tiny smartphone camera to rival the image quality of a Hasselblad, that’s patently absurd. What I did expect was the new module produces discernibly better images as FP said it would, meaning that the obvious flaws of the old camera + stock app (mainly excessive noise in low light) are at least reduced. As far as I can tell, that’s not the case. That’s all.
Ok, I’m done now. I might post some photos I took today so you can take a look and judge for yourself whether the results justify selling a new module, but arguing is pointless unless somebody actually makes a proper comparison.
This is exaggerated, technical it is better and should produce a better Image with the same resolution. I think we all agree that its not as some think 4x better.
alex21 said it even that its marketing and not real:
But despite that it should be better once the software works nice with it.
That point was to illustrate that the 48MP are Marketing and real 48MP cameras are a different animal.
I don’t think fairphone is to blame for that though.
Its a common theme in many industries, a Manufacturer sells a new product with specs that are not wrong but calculated different.
The manufacturer sells it, vendors market it and even if its more like 12MP+HD you have to sell it as the 48MP because everyone does it.
Thats the same with phones, cars, power tools and vacuums.
Maybe, just for information, I do post in this thread as well the homepage for the Samsung sensor. That’s all marketing of course, but as well a bit of technical explanation on what to expect and what not.
And a page with an animated graphic on the tetracell feature:
My experience with Fairphone is that software isn’t their number one priority and therefore not their number one strength. Just take a look at Android 10: it was only rolled out a few days before Pixel owners got Android 11 and there still are bugs like the alignment of the home screen icons. If I were you I would stay optimistic and reach out to Fairphone kindly asking them to finally invest a bit in software and just wait and see. For now, as others suggested, grab a copy of the gCam, that is what I am using for my “old” 12MP sensor too, and it’s noticably better, especially in bad conditions and at reducing hand-shaking blurriness.
I posted two pictures taken with the new module yesterday here. The first one was taken with the stock app. It was reduced down to 50% by the forum software, but the problems are still glaringly obvious (though more pronounced in the original image). Look at the noise around the chapel’s tower at the top of the image, for example. That’s the kind of thing I mean when I say that the new camera isn’t better, at least with the horrible stock app (which failed to save 2 of the 7 images I took with it yesterday, btw). With a gCam port the result is much better, but still not better than what I know the old module to be capable of.
Hello,
in May 2020 i did some photos with the old camera module and today (September 2020) i did some photos from the same scene with the new camera module. I used OpenCamera from F-Droid.
Here is the rough comparison. I don’t know if the forum software did any changes.
(It is not the same time, not the same angle and the sun might be different.)
Thanks, chb. What do you think of the photo taken with the new camera? To me it looks like something the old camera would produce, like in my own photos. For example, there is lots of noise even in the brightly lit sky of you zoom in a bit, especially in the upper corners.
thank you for your comment. I think the photos look similar, but I am not very experienced in evaluating photo quality. But I noticed that the release speed is much faster with the new camera module.
When I got Android 10 I used the old module for a day before I put the new one in, and in the stock camera app I didn’t notice a shorter shutter lag after I put in the new module. I didn’t try the combination of Android 10 + old module + Open Camera though, so the improved release speed in Open Camera, that I see as well, might in fact be due to the new module and not just because of Android 10.
Well, the picture from the old module is just 2,000x1,500 pixels, while the one from the new module is 4,000x3,000 pixels; i.e. 4 times larger (while it’s only 3 times larger spacewise).
That makes a comparison a bit complicated.
Don’t do that!
If you want to judge the quality, take the full resolution to do so.
Zooming in a bit means, that the software doing the zoomin is calculating what you get to see. Possibly - I really have no idea - this is even more complicated or results in more noise with the tetracell technology.
That’s exactly what I meant, I should have been clearer, sorry. If you click the image the browser will show a scaled down version of the image, so you have to zoom in in order to get to full resolution. The problem is easily discernible at 100%, no need to zoom in beyond that.
You can thank the forum software for that. It shrinks photos above a certain file size (5MB?) down to, in my case, 50% size without warning. I’ll try losslessly cropping the upper half of the image and post this for a more direct comparison.
Edit: cropped version of the stock camera photo is here.
Edit 2: I just realized that you were of course talking about the images posted by chb. But the questionable comparison notwithstanding, don’t you think that the noise in the photo, clearly visible at 100%, is quite disappointing for the new module?
Although there is noise in both photos, there is remarkably less noise with the new camera module (also because with the old camera modules there was a lot of noise).
