Plenty of smartphones can record slow-motion video. For example, the Google Pixel phones can record 720p video at up to 240 frames per second and then play back the video at 30 frames per second, making everything appear to move 8 times more slowly.

But Sony’s new smartphone camera sensor is the first I’m aware of that’s designed to support 1080p slow-motion video at 1,000 frames per second.

That means a video running at 30 frames per second would appear to be 33 times slower than real-life. Play the video back at 15 frames per second, and it appears to be more than 60 times slower.

 

Sony says the camera system features a 3-layer stacked CMOS image sensor with DRAM making up one of those layers, allowing for data to be temporarily stored in high-speed memory.

In addition to allowing users to capture super slow-motion video on a phone, Sony says this allows the image sensor to render a 19.3 megapixel image in just 1/120th of a second, which could be used to capture multiple images in quick succession using “burst mode” camera settings… or just allow you to capture one image very quickly.

Sony’s image sensor also supports still images up to 21.2 megapixels and 4K video at up to 60 frames per second.

There’s no word on when we’ll start to see smartphones that feature Sony’s new image sensor, but Sony’s camera technology is pretty popular with phone makers, so it’s probably just a matter of time.

 

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