Mobile cameras won’t improve no matter how much the sensor size increases. There is a very clear responsible person

One-inch camera sensors are set to become the norm. But they will be of no use if the faulty key is not improved.

Camera sensors are one of the keys to why we’ve made some strides in mobile photography in recent years. I’m lucky that I can analyze the vast majority flagships that hit the market, and my conclusion is clear: no matter how much sensors improve, mobile cameras remain stagnant. A lot of.

Every year it becomes more and more difficult to determine what has changed without having the previous model in front of you and, apart from some obvious changes, everything goes through subtle changes in dynamic range, a little more detail when increasing the image output resolution (for example, Apple with its iPhone 15, shooting at 24 megapixels) and, possibly, changes in the interpretation of tones.

The current processing is terrible. No one can convince me otherwise

The processing of most modern cameras is terrible, I don’t take half measures. The Pixel 8 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and iPhone 15 Pro commit the same sins, and this is no coincidence: photos are highly processed.

The main responsibility for this lies with the users themselves: we need colorful photos with a lot of punch (which is why Google renders so aggressively and the colors are otherwise usually oversaturated) and we usually don’t care if the images are far from reality.

Regardless, I’m convinced that if users saw first-hand what our phone is actually capable of, compared to what it does in processing, we’d throw our hands up. This photo of Samsung is a great example of that. If they don’t show you what RAW can do, I’m convinced you’ll think the first photo is good.

When you see the results you can get from RAW, everything changes. This is not an easy task, since our phones prioritize shooting and processing in the gallery as quickly as possible before we even open the photo. However, there is still no middle ground: photos are still reprocessed in color, sharpness and contrast year after year.

This is not something that can be solved with large sensors, in fact there are very interesting cases. When I reviewed the Xiaomi 13 Pro, I was a little disappointed with the camera. It was an inch sensor, but the sharpness it added (artificial sharpness) was greatly exaggerated. In fact, it didn’t take any better photos than some of its competitors with smaller sensors.

However, this did not happen with the Xiaomi 13 Ultra. sharpening even in this indoor photo. I love this phone because they emphasized this at the presentation in China: they wanted the photos to be natural and, therefore, sharpness was not added artificially. So yeah, every time someone tells me that sharpening is inevitable, I mention this phone.

This speculation comes in the wake of new leaks regarding the sensor of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, which is rumored to have a 200-megapixel sensor and a one-inch size. I don’t care about numbers I wonder what the company will do with them..

The potential of our phone cameras is much greater than we think. When enlarging the image, the effect Wow The fact that the quality is very close to that of a professional camera is more impressive than we can imagine. This is possible if the manufacturers want it.

Image | Hataka

In Hatak | Mobile phones with the best cameras that we have analyzed in recent months (2024)