Samsung is expected to announce its new flagship phone lineup in just a couple of weeks and now the company has taken the wraps off the camera sensor that is likely to power the Galaxy S23 Ultra.

That sensor is the latest ISOCELL offering from Samsung, dubbed the HP2, with Samsung saying that it has managed to fit into the same package as the previous 108-megapixel offering. The company goes on to claim that it means people will benefit from even better photos without having to make phones even thicker.

Samsung's press release gets nice and complicated pretty quickly, but the upshot is that it will be using its Tetra pixel technology to pixel-bin that 200-megapixel image depending on how much light is available. "When in low-lit environments, the sensor transforms either into a 1.2μm 50MP or 2.4μm 12.5MP image sensor by binding four to 16 neighboring pixels," the announcement says.

HDR performance has also been improved, with a new DSG feature added to the sensor's 50-megapixel mode to apply two different conversion values to analog signals received at the pixel level. The result should be even better HDR images to ensure brighter and more detailed results.

When filming video at 8K, Samsung says that its new sensor will run in 50-megapixel mode to minimize cropping and allow videographers to capture as much of the scene as possible.

Samsung rounds out its press release by saying that the ISOCELL HP2 has now entered mass production, as well it would need to if it's going to be part of the Galaxy S23 announcement. That's expected to take place on 1 February with availability likely to be a couple of weeks later.

Who knows how much we'll know about the entire Galaxy S23 lineup by then, though. The leaks continue to arrive thick and fast and there isn't an awful lot left to learn at this point.