Qualcomm's mid-range and high-end SoCs already supporting the 64 MP and 100 MP cameras scheduled for late 2019

Qualcomm recently revealed that its Snapdragon 660, 670, 675, 710, 845 and 855 SoCs have all been designed to support up to 192 MP single camera setups right from the very beginning, as the company was previously mentioning only the maximum MP count that supported features like multi-frame noise reduction (MFNR), zero shutter lag (ZSL) and 30/60 fps recording.

Judd Heape, Sr. Director of Product Management at Qualcomm made it clear that the Samsung ISOCELL GM1 and Sony IMX586 sensors, both sporting 48 MP resolutions, are indeed supported natively by all mid-range and high-end SoCs, but they cannot yet benefit from MFNR and ZSL for the maximum resolution, so the images are likely to have more noise and the smartphones integrating the chips would get a slower shutter response time. Additionally, Heape disclosed that, while 192 MP sensor might not come too soon, some OEMs are already planning to release smartphones that integrate 64 MP and 100 MP sensors later this year.

As OEMs are constantly racing to achieve higher pixel counts, the picture quality does not always keep up, and this aspect is criticized by Qualcomm, but, unfortunately, the company has to adapted to the market trends. Current 48 MP sensors combine 4 pixels in one to get a smaller 12 MP picture that can benefit from MFNR and ZSL, and the same is likely to happen for 64 MP sensors.

Heape also mentioned that Qualcomm is looking to add support for the HDR10+ standard and that the upcoming Snapdragon 865 SoC will handle high dynamic range video recording capabilities with frame-by-frame and scene-by-scene metadata.