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You would actually have more noise, or at least, not less noise. There is readout noise associated with reading the information out from each pixel. Using one bigger pixel would give you less noise than four smaller ones :)

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I'm no physics or optics expert but this paper seems to suggest you're wrong?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026322411...

"...show that an array of small independent sensors is always less noisy than a large sensor of the same size."

So it would seem! Thanks!

The summed value scales linearly with the pixel count but the combined readout noise only with the square root of the pixel count. Though, there are indeed other reasons to prefer a 16MP sensor in the first place (most notably, dynamic range, but also allowing slower readout).

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