Yes, you are absolutely right - QE is already high even in "boring" cameras. It is also true that the readout noise of the modern boring sensors used in cellphone cameras is also of the order of a single electron (each photoelectron counts), so you can not significantly increase low-light sensitivity for the same pixel size and same exposure time. You can make large pixel (or use "binning" of the smaller ones) - and it is well known part of the existent technology. Other parameter important for the low-light imaging is dark current - this is why many astronomical CCDs are cooled and exposed for hours - just to be able to increase exposure. Exposure is not "exponential", in is not less linear than QE, so if you increase exposure 1000 times you'll be able to detect 1000 dimmer light source, But for video that is irrelevant - boring sensors already have negligible dark current for video, so this (the only way to increase "sensitivity" for the same pixel size) is only applicable to long exposure scientific applications.
There are some sentences in the article that indicate that they mean exactly that - using longer exposure:
And of course, talking about "5 times less expensive" without having a viable technology of integrating graphene with CMOS - what the crap is it? You know why silicon-based CCD technology is dying now? Just because you can not combine CCD (light capturing array) and CMOS (phase drivers, ADC, memory, CPU if you font SoC) on the same silicon chip - I do not see how carbon graphene is more compatible with CMOS.
As Big money+robots combination is more efficient in more and more jobs, the communist-socialist outcome is not imminent. I see new emerging way of living - we'll all become pets of few rich ones, who'll be able to mine on asteroids without any need for us.
You know - Bill Gates is supporting Africans in Africa, financing their cure from AIDS and probably more. And it is not because they are just all lazy and do not want to work - but they are already not needed in the world economy. So when robots will take all our jobs - and I mean "all", we can not hide behind our high education, PhD - it is just a matter of time - when robots will get our creative jobs too. So, like a nice guy - Bill Gates, the owners of the New Virtual World will just feed us and give some money to live and buy their Internet-advertised goods.
But we will not have any rights, We will b e just pets.
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." - Voltaire