Sony teases Lytia LYT-900 stacked CMOS sensor expected soon in Oppo Find X7 Pro, Xiaomi 14 Ultra

Earlier this year, Sony announced its upcoming Lytia series of image sensors for mobile devices. Now, the Sony Semiconductor account on Weibo has shared a post about the flagship LYT-900 sensor from that line, indicating its imminent appearance in a smartphone.

Apart from waxing lyrical about the significance of light and photography, the post does mention some key specifications of the LYT-900: 1 inch sensor size (16.384 mm diagonal), 50 effective megapixels and 1.6 μm pixel size. The first two were already known from the initial announcement, but the last of these is new information, and serves to highlight the sensor’s superior light-gathering capability.

Most important, however, is its stacked design, which separates the light-gathering element photodiodes and the transistors into two layers, thus increasing the area available for light capture and improving low-light performance. Sony also claims improved autofocus performance in the Lytia series thanks to its “all-pixel AF technology”.

The LYT-900 will be a natural choice for many flagship phones, and rumours have pointed towards the Oppo Find X7 Pro, with its elaborate 5-lens setup, being the first. Another likely candidate is said to be the Xiaomi 14 Ultra.

All that said, so far the LYT-900 does appear to share most of the specs of Sony's IMX989 sensor, which features in the Xiaomi 13 Ultra, the Oppo Find X6 Pro and the Vivo X90 Pro+, all available on Amazon. How it will differentiate itself from the IMX989 remains to be seen.