On March 13th, Honor's CEO, Li Kun, announced that the Honor Magic6 Ultimate and the Honor Magic6 RSR Porsche Design will debut the single-lens super dynamic eagle-eye camera based on LOFIC technology.
LOFIC technology, short for Lateral OverFlow Integration Capacitor, employs a basic principle where a high-density capacitor is placed on each photodiode of the mobile image sensor to collect light electrons that might otherwise overflow due to saturation.
In this scenario, when the number of photoelectrons converted by the photodiode exceeds the maximum capacity it can carry, the surplus photoelectrons will flow into adjacent capacitors. This prevents them from being "overexposed" due to overflow. Consequently, highlights in the captured scene are better preserved by the sensor, resulting in output images that closely resemble the lighting conditions in reality.
Looking at the data, Honor's industry-leading image sensor, based on LOFIC technology, significantly boosts the traditional smartphone image sensor's single pixel full well capacity of 30,000 directly by about 9 times to reach 270,000. This greatly enhances the image sensor's tolerance to ultra-high dynamic range scenes.
At the same time, this image sensor achieves a DSLR-level 15EV ultra-high dynamic range, surpassing traditional smartphone image sensors by over 3 stops. The theoretical dynamic range even rivals that of the SONY flagship A7S3 mirrorless camera.
A higher dynamic range allows smartphones to better capture and retain details in both highlight and shadow areas, avoiding overexposure or underexposure issues. Bright areas can be properly exposed, and dark areas can be clearly visible, achieving a closer approximation to the actual human visual experience.
LOFIC technology was initially applied in the automotive industry's onboard camera systems for autonomous driving. This is because onboard camera systems often need to face extremely high dynamic range scenes, such as driving through tunnels, entering and exiting parking lots, and nighttime lighting, thus requiring a more comprehensive and prominent ability to capture high contrast scene images.
Recognizing this, Honor hopes to apply this technology to the imaging systems of mobile phones, breaking away from the inherent approach of simply increasing sensor size and instead opting for more advanced technology to address the limited dynamic range of smartphone image sensors.
However, bringing LOFIC technology to image sensors used in smartphones is not a simple task. For example, how to implant high-density capacitors into small pixels suitable for mobile phones, and how to process and utilize the ultra-high dynamic range information brought by LOFIC technology on the backend, are all new challenges we face.
Faced with these challenges, Honor has been fully demonstrating the technical feasibility since two years ago and has integrated the entire high dynamic range pathway from image reception, fusion, conversion to display in the system solution design. This fully unleashes the high tolerance advantages brought by LOFIC technology, ultimately allowing the new Honor Magic6 series products equipped with LOFIC technology to more easily cope with and present the excellent effects of ultra-high dynamic imaging.
