OmniVision on Thursday brought out a new 720p camera sensor tailored just towards shrinking the size of camera-equipped mobile devices. Its OV9724 uses the compan’s most recent 1.4-micron, backside-illuminated pixels to make a dense sensor just slightly under 0.1 inches thick. A smallert option, the OVM9724, is available for tablets or ultralight notebooks where the thinness is the same but the overall footprint is more important again.
Either can shoot their full resolution at 30 frames per second or, if they need to drop to VGA (640×480), can capture at double the frame rate. The resolution caps their photography at one megapixel, although the backside illumination promises relatively high tolerance for low-light shots.
OmniVision hasn’t named any customers, although Apple continues to be one of its main partners and has used 720p-maximum cameras for the iPad and iPod touch. The regular OV9724 goes into mass production in the spring, while the OVM9724 will be available for test samples in the same schedule.
