Do the Megapixels really matter?

In our search for a smartphone, we may look for different features. But I think roughly all of us will agree that we should have a decent camera on the device. How would I know that? The old marketing says, 'The more, the bigger, the better.' , and we could apply it to Megapixels. It is alright to say that more megapixels is a good think, but is that all that's there to the story? Today, we bust the myth about smartphone cameras. Let's cut to the chase.

When we talk of the camera quality, we talk about megapixels. Megapixels or rather pixels are a grid of colours that capture detail of a photo for you, that is, it is like a net that captures a scene for you. To be specific, 1 megapixels is one million pixels. So when I say my camera has 13 Megapixels, what I mean is that the photos I take can store 13 million squares of information about colours per square inch. More pixels would mean more resolution.  

"So that means more pixels means more details so better camera of course!"

NOT ACTUALLY. Let us compare iPhone 6 and iPhone 6s which have an 8 MP and 12 MP camera respectively. 

"Everybody knows iPhone 6s has a better camera."

Of course, it does but can you make out the difference? NO, in most cases. Camera has a sensor which has a large number of grids which are your pixels. In the sensor, along with the number of pixels, what matters is the size of individual pixels. 

The camera of both the phones have nearly the same size but there is a considerable difference in the number of pixels. Since the individual pixel size is smaller, each pixel can capture less detail, so the increase in the number of pixels does not make much of a difference in the quality of  camera. It just compensates the size of individual pixels. Furthermore, the decrease in the size of individual pixels results in more noise and worse low light performance as less detail is captured.  



BOTTOM LINE

Next time, someone says that any 21 MP phone is better than the all 13 MP cameras, take it with a pinch of salt. The Megapixels matter but do not completely decide the quality of the camera. There are a lot of hardware and software capabilities that make a good camera phone ( More on this in the upcoming article). If you ask me, 8 or 13 MP is more than enough, cramming more pixels in an already decreasing space will not do your camera any good. This debate is more of a marketing ethos in the tech community from a long time.

If you want more mythbusters, do leave your feedback below. Tell us what you loved and definitely, what you did not. 

PS- THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN WRITTEN WITH REGARDS TO SMARTPHONES ONLY BUT APPLIES ROUGHLY TO ALL CAMERAS IN GENERAL.