If previous sensors required 300 photons and new ones require 10, that would be an absolutely incredible achievement. (Scale that to whatever current state of the art is for camera sensors, of course)
That's what I think of when I hear "30x improvement", at least.
Yeh that's the plain meaning. They will be referring to a particular sensor type. Amazement is no cause to say the claim is "unreal"
Sensing 30 times as much stuff is not the same as sensing 1/30 as much stuff.