Why Smartphone Megapixels Don’t Matter

By Leonard Omolue

What exactly are Megapixels? Megapixels are small squares of information that combine to make up an image.

A Megapixel is simply One Thousand pixels

There is absolutely no doubt that you and I have come across certain smartphone advertisements showcasing phones with large number of Megapixels on their camera sensor. Typically this should indicate better video and photos quality right ? Well, this isn’t always the case. What I’m about to tell you would blow your mind.

Popular Nigerian smartphone brands are very well known for hyping their cameras and call out huge numbers of Megapixels. This often doesn’t represent how great the picture or video quality of the phone’s camera would be and is often used for marketing purposes.

The photo quality of a sensor is not entirely dependent on the the Megapixels and is more influenced by the software and processing power of the camera app.

This can be vividly seem on iPhones and Google pixel devices which compared to other smartphone brands use rather smaller Megapixels. The latest iphone 12 pro max spots a  12 Megapixels sensor meanwhile the Samsung A32 spots a 48 Megapixels sensor and the two are very much unmatched in terms of video and photos quality.

The controversy regarding Megapixels is non existent when it comes to professional grade DSLR cameras, as cameras with higher mega pixels tend to be more powerful than others.

This is simply because the kind of sensors used in professional grade DSLR cameras are much more developed and more detailed than the ones used on Smartphones.

Higher Megapixels either way still has an advantage, as it gives photo and video editors more digital information to work with as a Megapixel is simply a square of information, more Megapixels meaning more information. To the average user, smartphone Megapixels do not matter.