This has to be the most unpopular opinion ever considering how much is invested into phone’s cameras, but holy shit do I hate phone’s cameras. To me it is such a monumental waste of resources; the average user cannot tell the difference, every phone ever now has a huge camera bump, and social media just compresses everything to shit anyway so there is no way to even tell how good a photo actually is. Before smart phones were a thing, no one except actual, dedicated photographers had anything better than maybe a shitty disposable camera on them. Now every phone ever, and especially the high end flagships, seem to make the camera the end all be all of features. I would pay extra to have a camera from four years ago and have my phone not have a bump… Because 99% of people couldn’t tell the difference anyway.
Thank you for coming to my Ted talk. There are cookies by the exit and please be sure to sign my change.org petition before you leave as well.
That’s why I’m always annoyed that pretty much all of the “big” YouTube phone reviewers spend so much time on the camera when reviewing phones. I’m much more interested in the UI/UX and software features.
The camera is either good or great anyway. That isn’t really a selling point for me.
I recently purchased a Pixel 7 and there was very little difference between the versions other than the camera
Couldn’t agree more. I have a fold 3, and it’s a great phone, but you can’t easily use it as a digital notepad (you know, one of the things it was designed to be) because of the camera bump. The first surface duo got it right but reviewers crucified it because of the camera (and then microsoft shat the bed over keeping development and updates going)
@Pfalkingham @Klystron you could use a case that elevates the fold’s thickness to match the camera bump.
Very true, but like the other guy I have a foldable. They’re pretty big phones already so I don’t use a case with mine since it’d make it even bigger and unwieldy.
Yeah, but the trouble is that adds thickness in every dimension (as a case needs to wrap round) and weight, which I’d rather not have on a phone already pushing limits of comfort. I have the flip case but never use it because of the above (and because the flipping flap is massively annoying)
Now reviews just talk about the camera and then 20% of other important features while saying that it’s worth the 200% of a reasonable price tag.
I’m actually with you on this.
I take a photo on my pixel and it looks good for about half a second, then google applied their AI smoothing and compresses the image and ruins it. I’d get better photos screenshotting the viewfinder than the algorithms Google and Apple force into your pictures (but hey, it smoothed skin so you don’t have to photoshop yourself!).
Make sure to turn off face retouching. Also as the other comment said, you can turn on raw photos from the Advanced settings, but it does save duplicate photos if you do.
Edit: and set ‘Camera photo resolution’ to Full resolution
I do have that off, I didn’t have raw turned on. I wish I could control the jpeg quality instead of keeping full raw data on photos I’m never going to retouch.
@cheery_coffee @Klystron You have the option to also export to raw, so that you’ll have the full sensor data, without lossy compression, processing or AI.
I had that on but it was turned off for some reason. The jpeg compression is aggressive.
Well said. Thanks for the cookie! Needed the sugar rush.
lol exactly you are on point with having awesome cameras and uploading them to Facebook or worse sending pictures through WhatsApp just to be heavily downgraded ☠️
Yeah, I’m on board with your take. Its really expensive and frankly doesn’t add a ton of value for me. I get the appeal in things like better HDR or night photography, since those make pictures actually match how things look to the eyes, but I really don’t care to pay extra for like 4k pictures and crazy software bokeh effects. I just wanna be able to take a picture of the occasional cool bug I see, or a nice memory with a friend
