If you like recording slow motion videos with your smartphone, you’re going to love what’s coming in the future.
While smartphones today can record impressive slow motion videos at 120 or 240 frames per second (fps), Sony has developed a new CMOS image sensor for phones that can record slow motion at 960 fps.

With 960 fps capture, motion will be slowed even more so you can really see every drop of water burst from a balloon or every chunk of watermelon explode when you wrap too many rubber bands around it.
According to Nikkei Technology, Sony was able to create such high frame-rate capture by sandwiching a DRAM layer between “the image sensing part and the logic circuit part” to create a system that can temporarily store more images at once before compiling them into a slow motion video.
This is the same kind of technology solution that enables 960 fps slow-mo in Sony’s RX100 V point-and-shoot and its RX10 II.
You can see an example of what 960 fps slow motion looks like in the video below, taken with the RX100 V:

Though Sony says the new image sensor is built for smartphone cameras, no phone makers have announced any devices with it (yet). But given how well-regarded Sony’s mobile image sensors are (they’re in everything from iPhones to Androids), it should only be a matter of time before we see new phones support 960 fps slow motion.
The timing of the announcement is also interesting since Mobile World Congress is just a few days away. Perhaps there will be at least one phone maker who’ll be brave enough to be first to the ultra slow-mo party.