The mobile phone market is filled with models with huge resolution cameras. There are even relatively inexpensive smartphones with sensors with a resolution of 16-20 megapixels. The unknowing customer is chasing the "cool" camera and prefers the phone with the higher camera resolution. He does not even realize that he falls for the bait of marketers and sellers.
What is permission?
Camera resolution is a parameter that indicates the final size of the image. It only determines how big the resulting image will be, i.e. its width and height in pixels. Important: the image quality does not change. Photo may be poor quality, but large due to resolution.
Resolution does not affect quality. It was impossible not to mention this in the context of smartphone camera interpolation. Now you can go straight to the point.
What is camera interpolation in a phone?
Camera interpolation is an artificial zoomimage resolution. It is the image, not the size of the matrix. That is, it is special software that interpolates an 8MP image to 13MP or more (or less).
In an analogy, camera interpolation is like a magnifying glass or binoculars. These devices enlarge the image, but do not make it better or more detailed. So if interpolation is indicated in the characteristics of the phone, then the actual resolution of the camera may be lower than the declared one. It's not bad or good, it's just there.
What is it for?
Interpolation was invented to increase the size of the image, nothing more. Now this is a ploy by marketers and manufacturers who are trying to sell the product. They use large numbers to indicate the resolution of the phone's camera on the advertising poster and position it as an advantage or something good. Not only does the resolution itself not affect the quality of the photos, but it can also be interpolated.
Literally 3-4 years ago, many manufacturers were chasing the number of megapixels and in various ways tried to cram them into their smartphones with as many sensors as possible. This is how smartphones with cameras with a resolution of 5, 8, 12, 15, 21 megapixels appeared. At the same time, they could take pictures like the cheapest soap dishes, but buyers, having seen the sticker "18 MP camera", immediately wanted to buy such a phone. With the advent of interpolation, it became easier to sell such smartphones due to the possibilityartificially add megapixels to the camera. Of course, the quality of the photo began to improve over time, but definitely not due to resolution or interpolation, but due to natural progress in terms of sensor and software development.
Technical side
What is camera interpolation in a phone technically, because all the text above described only the main idea?
With the help of special software, new pixels are "drawn" on the image. For example, to enlarge an image by 2 times, a new line is added after each line of image pixels. Each pixel in this new row is filled with a color. The fill color is calculated by a special algorithm. The very first way is to fill the new line with the colors that the nearest pixels have. The result of such processing will be terrible, but such a method requires a minimum of computational operations.
Most commonly used is another method. That is, new rows of pixels are added to the original image. Each pixel is filled with a color, which, in turn, is calculated as the average of neighboring pixels. This method gives better results but requires more computation.
Fortunately, modern mobile processors are fast, and in practice the user does not notice how the program edits the image, trying to artificially increase its size.
There are many advanced interpolation methods and algorithms that are constantly being improved: transition boundaries between colors improve, lines become moreaccurate and clear. It doesn't matter how all these algorithms are built. The very idea of camera interpolation is banal and is unlikely to take root in the near future. Using interpolation, it is not possible to make an image more detailed, add new details, or improve it in any other way. Only in films does a small blurry picture become clear after applying a couple of filters. In practice, this cannot be.
Do you need interpolation?
Many users unknowingly ask questions on different forums how to interpolate the camera, believing that this will improve the quality of images. In fact, interpolation not only does not improve the quality of the picture, but can even make it worse, because new pixels will be added to the photos, and due to the not always accurate calculation of colors for filling, there may be undetailed areas, graininess in the photo. As a result, the quality drops.
So phone interpolation is a marketing gimmick that is completely unnecessary. It can increase not only the resolution of the photo, but also the cost of the smartphone itself. Do not fall for the tricks of sellers and manufacturers.
