Thanks to a new technology announced today by Kodak, you will soon be able to buy a cell phone with a 5 megapixel camera.

Practically, Kodak has redesigned the basic building blocks used to collect light and is incorporating that technology into a brand-new sensor.

KODAK KAC-05020 Image Sensor, the world’s first 1.4 micron, 5 megapixel device, was created by combining Color Filter Pattern technology with a new CMOS pixel.

Kodak’s new sensor enables a new level of resolution in small optical formats, using significantly smaller pixels. But unlike other small-pixel sensors which can produce poor images, especially under low light conditions, the 1.4 micron pixel used in the KAC-05020 Image Sensor changes this convention, providing image quality that can equal or surpass what is available from current devices using larger, 1.75 micron pixel CMOS design, the company said in a statement.

As you might know, the signal in a standard CMOS pixel, is measured by detecting electrons that are generated when light interacts with the surface of the sensor.

Therefore, as more light (signal) strikes the sensor, more electrons are generated, which leads

to a higher signal at each pixel. In the Kodak Truesense CMOS Pixel, the underlying “polarity” of the silicon is reversed, so that the absence of electrons is used to detect a signal. This change enabled a series of improvements to the design and structure of the pixel that ultimately results in CMOS imaging performance that rivals that available from CCD image sensors.

Kodak Truesense Color Filter Pattern, which adds panchromatic, or “clear,” pixels to the red, green and blue pixels already on the sensor, is used to enhance the light sensitivity in the new sensor. This provides a 2x to 4x increase in sensitivity to light (from one to two photographic stops) compared to current sensor designs, improving performance in low light and reducing motion blur in action shots.

Kodak will showcase its new product at the GSMA Mobile World Congress held Feb 11 – 14 in Barcelona, Spain.