I wonder if this has something to do with "zooming" capabilities. Samsung's Galaxies already nail it and are a head and shoulder above the competition (e.g., iPhone). When there's not much room for innovation in an area, create a new need and compete there!

That was my thought too. It seems like it could provide all the benefits that we get with multiple individual lenses for telephoto, wide-angle, etc in a single lens and sensor. Probably reduces cost overall.

I doubt it. For a small sensor, crops are probably going to look like crap, unless they've got some computational photography magic to make those pixels actually count.

It doesn’t have to look great if you are after functional results - identify faces, read some text, etc

Good point on that, as a potential motivation for more pixels.

To give it some context a 4K UHD television has about 8 million pixels. Feels like the main purpose of having 200 million pixels is just to have a larger number than the competition.

Considering phones rely on computational photography I'd say 200mp downsized to 4k with some clever processing probably it's what Samsung is aiming for.

Sensor size matters more than pixels (or photosites is you count individual cells forming one pixel)

https://www.androidauthority.com/camera-sensor-size-1095299/

The marketing department has never heard of diffractions limits. Not a problem because most consumers haven't either. All they know is "bigger number better"

My naive assumption is that it can help with computational photography, without having to do things like sensor shift [1].

> https://digital-photography-school.com/understanding-sensor-...

I also assume that the improvement is nowhere near "linear".