They are better for taking photographs simply because they're smaller, but for every other aspect of photo viewing, management, and editing, they are worse. They have a tiny screen, insufficient local storage and compute, and no keyboard or mouse.
They're not better music players. Sound quality can be identical because phones support USB DACs, but again, everything else is worse. On a real computer I can easily search my library just by typing. There's no way to find specific tracks that fast on mobile.
They're better for some types of photos. For example, you'd never want to take a photo of something you'd want to measure quantitatively with a smart phone. They hallucinate all the detail.
Exactly! Consider how incredibly slow it is to take a photo on a phone. And how short the battery life is. And how few capabilities the phone photo editing has compared to desktop photo processing where CPU, RAM and battery life are not constraints.
Why would I ever want any of that in a DSLR?
A DSLR can go from sitting on the shelf to having taken a focused photo in less than a second. The battery life is measured in weeks (unless using built-in flash). No comparison how much better experience it is.
It's faster than turning your P+S on. Not for taking pictures once it's already on (assuming a reasonably up-to-date camera). For casual/consumer use, a phone is better. but if you're serious about photography, the convenience issues aren't the same.
It's like how there are all kinds of amazing music apps available on smartphone or tablet - it's beyond question that they are valuable creative tools. But if you can play guitar, you'll probably always prefer doing so to using your phone despite the inconveniences of owning and carrying a primitive wood and metal wire contraption.
They're not for everyone, but I think you're overlooking quite a bit. The larger sensor is crucial in low-light situations, and a smaller phone camera just won't handle that. The "horrible UX" is faster by a significant margin, partly by being a dedicated device, partly by having a lot of dedicated buttons, and partly because the response time on pressing the shutter release button is extremely short. If you want to carry a camera for capturing events or moments quickly, I'm not sure that a phone will do that for you.
And yes, the high-end full-frame DSLR costs are on par with high-end laptops, but IMO you get 90% of the benefit for a fraction of the cost with an entry- or mid-level crop sensor.
As for the UIs, I'll definitely acknowledge they could stand some updates, but the way you describe it sounds like an overstatement. What would you improve, exactly?
Phones are only better than the entry point and shoots, and have absolutely demolished that market.
Where they compete with more advanced point and shoots (I.e. the 1” sensor class) is in their ability to take the picture, edit it, and publish it seemlessly. They only match those cameras if you are consuming on a phone as well; as soon as anything higher quality comes into play their shortcomings become clear very quickly.
I’m a hobby photographer and haven’t bothered with a pocket camera for years due to this. I have a full frame Canon and my iPhone and that’s a good enough divide for me.
They aren't comparable, not really. In the same way that an 8x10" camera and a full-frame camera aren't.
But they are excellent.
Good phone cameras have a value proposition all of their own, and they are utterly changing what we expect from photography.
My mobile has taught me that a lot of what I relied on or worked with in a DSLR or mirrorless is a crutch.
Mobile phone cameras force you, for example, to really think about composition, because you can't simply blur out the bits you don't like (portrait mode still sucks). They force you to think of other ways to isolate subjects, other ways to make use of light and contrast.
I've owned a lot of kit over 20 years or so, though I still own a lot of it -- I'm using a 14-year-old full frame DSLR and a seven year old full-frame mirrorless.
In the last two years, when studio portrait photography has been complicated or impossible, I have used my phone a lot, when out walking by myself. What I thought was just a way to not-totally-give-up photography has turned into a work of its own.
It will anger a lot of photographers who like to whine about how mobile phone cameras can't do X, Y and Z, but here's the truth: if you don't understand what a mobile phone camera can teach you as a photographer, you're probably not really trying.
Please, define worse. Number of pixels? This doesn't mean better pictures (often worse). Performance? Clearly, no. iOS camera is much faster. ML processing? Clearly iOS is much much better to preprocess your photos. On latest generation they even get several pictures with different focal points and pick a best one.
Sure, their camera is just current generation without inflated specs, but works much better.
Where it has more power, but lacks info like how the OIS was moving as the pictures were taken, so isn’t necessarily as good.
And none of those products have nearly the sales of a smartphone to sustain R&D. Similar to how the headphone dongle of an iPhone is much cheaper and yet better quality than most audiophile equipment.
Your phone camera is not as good as a cheap DSLR paired with a cheap 35mm f/1.8 in absolute terms.
Your phone camera is way better at the job to be done, which is to quickly share pics of your cock, cats, or kids, depending on what age bracket you are in. Traditional cameras, in which I include mirrorless, are still terrrrible when it comes to quickly bouncing a photo to Instagram, and arguably even worse when it comes to quickly making a video for TikTok.
My point here is really only of interest to hackers-who-hack-with-images: mobiles suck; Get any, ANY DSLR for your imagery.
When you want to do anything with the photos other than look at them, a mobile phone camera is a complete joke. Today, people use photos for a lot more than pretty pictures to illustrate link-bait.
Imagery for 2D & 3D textures is one, and a growing use is 3d reconstruction. (Disclosure: I develop 3d reconstruction technology.)
Images taken with the lowest entry DSLR are an order of magnitude higher quality in almost every measure than the highest quality, most expensive mobile phone camera. The greater quality translates into higher precision information recovery from its photos. The difference is the size of the lens and the greater information it captures - information beneath our perceptions, but not beyond trained and plain-old human-written algorithms' perceptions.
Any phone camera would be worse than any decent point and shoot, even an older model. They say the iphone 4 cameras are the best but I doubt even those would be better than a decent point and shoot.
Phones just do not have enough space or money for a good optical system.
Definitely true. I did photography as a hobby, but phones match or exceed the performance in many cases now. For example, low-light mode on phones outperforms older entry-level canon DSLRs (T3/T6) by default without having to twiddle with the settings. Of course, you could get better pictures with these cameras, but it takes time and a really good lense! So in other words, it’s just not ideal for quick pictures around the house.
I think there are two areas where phone cameras have a lot of room for improvement: sharpness and landscape.
By sharpness, I mean that if you zoom into any phone picture, it falls apart very quickly. There is a lot of software optimization hiding how a small sensor can’t actually do that well in the details.
By landscape, I mean if you take a picture of a mountain or object in the far distance, you’ll barely be able to see it in the phone because the lenses are so wide. It really makes nature pictures underwhelming :)
Phone cameras still aren't as good as SLRs, and never will be due to sensor size and optics.
Apple could have made these as good as $500 Sennheiser/Grado/Sony cans. But they didn't.
Rants about "traveling with an orchestra" don't even make sense when one listens to music produced exclusively in-the-box. And even if I am listening to recorded material what is wrong with nuance and detail... after all that is what the mixing and mastering engineers heard when they made it. Do you think they choose their microphones and recording hardware willy-nilly?
Software is a terrible substitute for hardware! Hardware is easier to understand, latency-free, and produces a more harmonically interesting result
I don’t need my images so bad that I want to process them on my phone. I’ll get to them in my laptop when I have the time.
When my phone is involved, I don’t want to do any processing, except maaaaybe Instagram-like filters. Those photos are not for print or anything like that. When I want good photos not meant to be consumed just on 5” screens I want control.
I would much rather have a reliable rugged camera with manual only mode, weather sealing, huge battery, huge sensor, and cheap glass, than a smart camera.
They're not better music players. Sound quality can be identical because phones support USB DACs, but again, everything else is worse. On a real computer I can easily search my library just by typing. There's no way to find specific tracks that fast on mobile.
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