Smartphone lovers will know the term “megapixel” when it comes to smartphone photography. However, does megapixel matter in taking photos? Let’s scroll down to know more!

Smartphone photography: What is megapixel?

Before we talk about the function of megapixel, let us introduce the term “pixel”. The most simple way to define “pixel” is to consider it as the tiny little square on your laptop display that you have to stay only an inch away from the screen to recognize. However, if your laptop screen comes with 2k resolution or above, there’s no way you can pick out the single pixel. The size of a pixel depends on the size of the screen and the resolution it supports. On the same screen, higher resolution results in smaller pixels.

Let us give you some more examples. A 2-megapixel image (one megapixel = one million pixels) measures the same size as a full HD movie you watch on your laptop! So if a smartphone camera comes with 2MP resolution, it can record full HD videos! Then how about cameras with 23MP resolution? They are able to shoot photos that measures as large as a billboard ad, which is quite too much for smartphone photography.

Smartphone photography: Does the number of megapixel matter?

As smartphone brands keep promoting their smartphone cameras by mentioning the number of megapixel, there is a misconception that phone camera with higher megapixel is more powerful. In fact, the quality is more important than the quatity. Nikhil Bhogal – an expert in smartphone photography, has shared that the quality of each pixel is more essential than the number of pixels.

To be more understandable, he has compared a pixel to a bucket of light: “The bigger the bucket, the more photons they can collect”. So instead of packing more pixels in the sensor, smartphone manufacturers should increase the size of each pixel. Samsung does this job very well in Samsung Galaxy S7/S7 Edge. That’s why these phones, with their 12MP camera, can defeat other phones with 16MP camera and above to be the best smartphone camera in 2016. Now have you got the answer for the question in the title?