Oppo Find N5’s 8MP Ultrawide Sensor Looks… Bad..
I updated the post with a section showing sample photos from the same Ultrawide sensor on the Poco M6, via GSMArena
News that the Oppo Find N5 would be going from a 48MP ultrawide with the Open/Find N3 down to a measly 8MP sensor left a lot of people scratching their heads. Why would any OEM seemingly downgrade their phone’s camera year over year, even if it’s probably the least used sensor? One theory is that this was done in the name of saving space in the device as they attempted (and apparently succeeded) to make this the thinnest book-style folding phone on earth. While it’s unclear if that’s the case, what is now clear is exactly what sensor they’re switching to. From that we can draw some interesting conclusions.
The new 8MP sensor is allegedly the OmniVision OV08D. This sensor has been used in some other Oppo and Poco phones in the past, so the specs are easy to find. Let’s take a quick look at the specs and how they compare to last years Find N3/Open.
Specs
8MP - 48MP (binned to 12MP)
1/4” sensor - 1/2.0” sensor
1.12µm pixels - 0.8µm (binned to 1.6µm)
To add some detail, when a sensor is physically smaller like this, it can’t capture as much light. This leads to more noise, slower focus and worse lowlight performance. The same is true with smaller individual pixels. While I don’t think being 8MP is that big an issue, that’s still 4K after all, there’s really no way around the fact that this is an underwhelming sensor. This absolutely has to have happened to make the device thinner.
Whether or not that was worth it remains to be seen and will of course come down to preference.
Sample Photos
I mentioned that this sensor has been used before and one example is the Poco M6. These images are taken from the GSMArena review for that device. Obviously we cannot say exactly what this sensor will do on the Find N5 because processing and color science will be Oppo’s, but I can say that these shots look bad. Washed out, grainy and bad.