I think fake bokeh is meh. It's right up there with the "Ken Burns effect".<p>Cell phone cameras aren't bad, given what they are, but the one lens I have for my DSLR is this one:<p><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Canon-28mm-Wide-Angle-Cameras/dp/B00009R6WU" rel="nofollow">https://www.amazon.com/Canon-28mm-Wide-Angle-Cameras/dp/B000...</a><p>precisely because it opens very wide which means you don't just get bokeh but you also capture a lot of light which helps with low light, high speeds, etc. There is a physical limit to what you can achieve with a little tiny lens.
> the main difference between a camera with a proper lens and the tiny flat ones that you would find in any smartphone is a feature of a photo called depth of field.<p>This is highly reductionist and thus, misleading. Optical design of photography lenses is a very complex field whose main purpose is not "giving photos a DoF effect", but to provide control on aperture and focal length and boost the received light while keeping chromatic and geometrical aberrations to a minimum. The Wikipedia article on lens evolution is very interesting: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_design" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_photographic_lens_d...</a>
Because the two cameras have different focal length (28mm and 56mm), the main advantage will be to provide a limited optical zoom, and maybe some kind of subject isolation if the subject is in the center of the field.<p>The phone cameras have already changed photography as we know it by displacing consumer cameras - as evidenced by the dramatic drop in sales for camera manufacturers in the last five years.<p>However, DSLRs and enthusiast mirrorless cameras are doing fine, and this new iphone is no more threat than the previous one.
The huge point missed is the depth-mapping capability. While perhaps primitive compared to what we'll see later, it brings to a major device (sorry, Amazon Fire Phone and your four cameras) ability to start processing photos as 3D data. Imagine "live photos" which not only move, but adjust perceived/rendered angles to match the viewer's eye positions. Subtle, minimal, but likely very effective.
<a href="http://i.imgur.com/X3uDWSZ.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/X3uDWSZ.jpg</a><p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/CnbNPWW.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/CnbNPWW.jpg</a><p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/Pj0cilp.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/Pj0cilp.jpg</a><p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/eifHQp5.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/eifHQp5.jpg</a><p>All from Galaxy Note 5. May Apple please grace us with its game changing Depth of Field. No other players in the game. Photography will never be the same.