It is my believe that the next image quality jump on the sensor technology front will come with the arrival of Sony’s 3 layer technology. The Sigma similar foveon sensors already have proven that at LOW ISO the sensor…rocks! But from ISO 400 towards the sensor has plenty of issues, like weird color reproducibility and incredible bad noise handling. And the Sony patent itself says that the 3 layer tech “has been difficult to reproduce correct colors when the color temperature of incident light changes, for example.” And the patent describes in every single detail how Sony wants to solve the issue. You may read it for yourself at Freepatentsonline (Click here).
The earliest we can hope to see a Sony camera with that sensor is 2014. And damn would I love it to see it within my next Full Frame NEX-FF…don’t you? :)