We can't resist cracking open the massive 108 MP wide-angle camera after we pull it free—Samsung hasn't been shy about this sensor's capabilities.

The sensor covers over double the surface area of the iPhone 11 Pro's 12 MP primary sensor, shown here for comparison.

Bigger sensors and more pixels don't always mean better images, though! 108 million pixels crammed into a 9.5 mm x 7.3 mm rectangle makes for some very tiny pixels, and that tends to produce noisy images in low-light conditions.

Samsung claims that this new sensor is able to shoot clear photos even in low light conditions thanks to a new barrier built around each pixel, plus a 3x3 pixel binning method they're calling "nona-binning" (3x3=9, hence the nona).

Pixel binning is a fancy term for combining groups of pixels to gather more light. The result is a brighter—though lower-resolution—photo that hopefully has less noise.

Binning isn't your average, everyday downsampling. All of this pixel partying happens at the hardware level, eliminating conversion errors.