The Evolution of Camera Phones, Visualized

The images presented are simulations. And they are based on <i>specs</i> of the cameras. Specs rarely contain actual sensor performance and definitely none of the processing done off sensor. These mockups are not representative in any meaningful way.

<p><pre><code> SimpleGhar [...] created mock-up images of [...] each camera phone </code></pre> I wouldn&#x27;t put much trust into it. If the effort to buy 20 old phones and make real photos was too high for this article, then those &quot;mock-up images&quot; are probably far from realistic.

Camera Phone history without Google Pixels and non-Samsung Android phones is a woeful joke.<p>This seems like the post author just grabbed whatever ended up on &quot;sold most&quot; that year, instead of putting together an actual look at innovation&#x2F;quality milestones.<p>(Also the lack of photo examples from those cameras is also puzzling.)

&quot;Visualized&quot; by using a good photo taken with modern camera and degrading it in theoretical ways without ANY experience with original technology and its limitations.<p>&quot;Methodology: To visualize evolution of tech we reviewed some data and compiled some list&quot;<p>That doesnt describe methodology, that describes them making a list of phones to fake :&#x2F;<p>The only aspects they cared to fake were resolution and light sensitivity, with some arbitrarily added ridiculous blur to selected models? This sort of stuff is imo harmful. Whats the point? To get good SEO in google by making article that is a list and comparison and seemingly contains original (albeit garbage) content?

Notice the faked tableau showing exactly the same scene supposedly photographed with all iPhone models. Weak ethics.

Given the dialog here I&#x27;m not gonna go read the article, but I <i>will</i> say this:<p>I&#x27;m a relatively enthusiastic hobby photographer. Our vacation in 2018 was the first time I realized that my phone&#x27;s camera (at the time, an iPhone 8) was &quot;good enough&quot; to participate meaningfully in vacation photography. By the time of our next vacation the following summer, I&#x27;d worked out a workflow to include phone pics into Lightroom with the images out of my &quot;real&quot; camera. There was still an appreciable gap in quality in some contexts, but in iPhone-friendly situations the shots were definitely competitive with the Olympus.<p>Since then I&#x27;ve upgraded both camera (to a full-frame Sony) and phone (to an 11 Pro). The gap still exists, but it&#x27;s not NEARLY what it was, and in many contexts I&#x27;ll CHOOSE to use the phone instead of the camera.<p>Given the potato-quality images out of the early camphones, and even the early iPhones, that&#x27;s a very very amazing and cool progression.

This seems overly focussed on the best selling phones rather than really the evolution of Camera Phones. The HTC One M8 was I think the first camera to use multiple lenses for depth and different zoom. The first Pixel might not have been all that popular, but was the first phone to take computational photography to the next level (night mode, background blurring that was adjustable after the fact). The Samsung S20 with 10x optical zoom and 100x total zoom might have been also not a complete success, but was really an eye opener.

&gt; Sporting a four-lens, 48-megapixel camera that allowed users to zoom up to 100x without sacrificing any image quality<p>Yeah right. This article reeks of SEO spam.

Two mirrors: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20220825104003&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simpleghar.com&#x2F;the-evolution-of-camera-phones-visualized&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20220825104003&#x2F;https:&#x2F;&#x2F;simplegha...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;UPKwc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;UPKwc</a>

I can&#x27;t see any appreciable difference in cameras in the last 5 years. Look at the images in the link - do you?