“For better cameras” like… I don’t see it. Back in the mid 2010s and late 2010s before the bump trend iPhone, Google and Samsung had the best phone cameras, and both were flat and with decent digital zoom and stability (for a phone). If you look at the photo samples for back then and compare it with now the difference is almost imperceptible.
That ugly bump makes big phones even harder to use and weight more now, plus if you’re one of those who never liked using a cover now I bet you’re forced to use one because of the added vulnerability of the bump.
Edit mid 2010s to late 2010s (until the camera bump appears around 2018)
Like others have pointed out, smartphone photography has improved leaps and bounds and continues to evolve. Bigger lenses enable this.
My main complaint is the off-center design, and lack of options (like a thick variant with a huge battery).
I agree with you and fully support your campaign to de-bump phone cameras.
I’m still on an iPhone 12 Mini because (in addition to there not being a reasonably sized phone anymore) the camera assembly on the 13 Mini is bigger and looks like shit IMO.
Also, I have gone case-less for all go my phones going back to the OG iPhone. So don’t come at me about not noticing a bump when you have a case. I effing hate that the camera makes the phone sit cocked on the table so much that I usually put it face down.I think it’s absolutely ridiculous what they’ve done and for barely any perceptible difference, in most cases. I could understand the ‘pro’ models having a substantially better camera(s). For normies taking snapshots of their food and their fam and scanning QR codes, there’s no need.
Frankly, any ‘pro’ wouldn’t be using their phone for professional purposes anyway. I often carry a small camera with me in addition to my phone just because even the best phone camera can’t compete with a decent camera - because physics.
Still, I respect and support anyone who wants to take pictures and make videos with their cell phone. I love that practically anyone on the planet has the ability to take their phone out of their pocket and produce a short film.For an actual answer, physics. There’s a mathematical formula to determine how far away the lens needs to be from the sensor based on the size of the lens and the image sensor. The wider the sensor and lens are, the better the image quality and the further they need to be from each other.
I bought my last phone mostly on it having (arguably) the best camera (without buying a camera phone).
Why would I want a worse phone? If it needs a bump it needs a bump.
I think apple does it so you can tell which model someone has and how much poorer they are than you.
imperceptible improvement since 2010? there’s even a decent improvement in just 2 years from my pixel 6 to the 8. mid 2010s was iPhone 6 days, and there’s been MASSIVE improvement since then
I’ve said mid 2010s. Huge difference
what? iPhone 6s was released September 2015, right in the middle of the 2010s. sonfromnehat you’re saying the difference between a pic from a 15pro is nearly imperceptubly better than one from a 6s?
And why you picked an iPhone that year? Majority would agree that it wasn’t their best camera. Also I’m talking about more about 2016 - 2018.
picked iPhone because I’ve used that one. didnt use android till my pixel 6
They’re for better lenses. A better lens is objectively better for photography. It’s not debatable.
I wish they would just make the whole phone thicker so there wouldn’t be a bump and use the extra space for more battery.
And what else? Right to repair? Phew
…and compare it with now the difference is almost imperceptible.
Imperceptible to you.
Your argument that phones without zoom lenses had, ‘decent digital zoom and stability (for a phone)’ only serves to highlight your inability to perceive the difference having actual optical zoom makes when zooming.
Crazy how one would even make this argument without actual image examples, unless that kind of research only led to realizing one’s argument is wrong.
I see a huge difference in picture quality especially at night in my latest phone. And I now kind of like the bump on my pixel 8, I used to use my pinky to prevent the phone from slipping down and it got to a point where it hurts due to the phone weight. But with the pixel 8 I often use the bump with all my fingers holding the weight preventing my pinky from being torn away.
There are physical reasons why cameras need some horizontal space to achieve good image quality. You need to fit lens elements in there to get sharp images. It’s really already a miracle that phone manufacturers have managed to fit such good cameras into that space by now.
Most people don’t have a good eye for good image quality. I take a lot of photos as a hobby (mostly with real cameras, but occasionally also phones) and I can definitely tell that my phone photos have been getting a lot better over the years as I got newer smartphones.
Everyone throws on a case anyway.
Because now it’s practically a necessity. Before that, you could easily not put a case on your phone, exercise some basic care with it and you would’ve been fine. None of my previous phones had a case on them. Not a one. Because I don’t drop them, I don’t throw them and I don’t use them for hammering in bolts or whatever. But the camera bump finally got me to put a case on my phone, because the damn thing not sitting flat on a flat surface annoyed me too much.
Phone manufacturers are too afraid of making their phone appear thick, instead of making the back flush with the camera and use the extra space for the battery.
Phone cameras still pretty much suck, but they don’t suck anywhere near as bad as they did a decade ago.
The biggest limiting factor by a huge margin is the physics of light with those little tiny sensors and optics.
I don’t know what kind of phones you are using. Flagship phones nowadays have phenomenal cameras, with sensors as good as in dedicated professional camera devices.
No, they aren’t.
The idea that you can get the same shot with a phone camera as even a decade old DSLR with mid-range glass is laughable. They’re “fine” for a social media post. They are objectively not remotely comparable to an actual camera.
disagree with you on the photo quality claims; the increase in photo quality across generations is obvious. whether or not most people need that quality is another problem entirely.
i would happily settle for mid-2010 phone levels of photo quality if it means getting rid of the bump. alternatively, i would prefer to have a thicker phone with no bump; extra room for extra battery capacity.
I’d argue that most of that perceived quality is due to image stabilization software and less about the camera sensors themselves. You do get more options now that phones have 4-5 different lenses, but the big problem with older phone camera quality is that they couldn’t compensate for shaky hands.
Phones have had optical image stabilization since like 2013. It helped a lot. But things have changed a lot since then.
Digital image stabilization will always be ass and is only really useful for video.
People need the better quality for the edge cases. I can take a picture of my dog in a darkened room and have her look well lighted. I can take a picture of my kid across the soccer field and you can recognize his face. I can take a quick casual shot on a family get together and it’ll be sharp despite everyone moving.
Some of it is image processsing but a lot of it is the camera. And don’t forget the lidar chip greatly speeding up autofocus
Marketing on phone thickness created the bump.
I don’t know anyone who actually cares about how thick their phone is as long as it fits in their hands.
Also nobody barebacks their phone, so the bump is even more crazy
Almost nobody. My $300 Moto g84 is cheap enough that if I break it I won’t be super upset. It’s lovely being thin and light without a case, and so far I’ve been able to keep it in my grasp.
The camera bump is annoying but clips nicely onto the cafe condiment bowl as a handy stand.
Most civilized people put a big chonky case to protect the phone anyway.
The bump also lifts the majority of the back of the phone off the table, reducing opportunities for scratches.
Also I do actually bareback all my phones since my Desire HD.
Transferring those unsightly scratches from the back of the phone, to each and every picture you take… good tradeoff… Not.
It moves them to the edges of the bump and phone.
Depends on the bump I guess
There isn’t a bump where the lens would come in contact with the table while it’s set down unless you have a case that makes it flush with the phone again.
Only on flat surfaces
I would rather have a thicker phone (which also means a bigger battery) than the ugly bump sticking out like a tumor
In a case there’s no tumor.
Modern phones are too expensive to not use a case.
If I won the lottery I wouldn’t tell anyone, but there’d be signs…
I’m going to start calling it the ‘camera tumor’. Thanks for that.
Wouldnt we all.
I want a thicker phone so maybe, possibly, we get slide-out keyboards again.
We can only dream of such.
I recently “upgraded” to a flip phone, and I’m loving it way more than I thought I would.
Took me a bit to get back into the swing of T9 / tapping text, but once the muscle memory kicked in, it’s been a breath of fresh air typing on physical keys again.
I was looking at these just the other day considering it as an option, I miss my Blackberry keytwo so damn much!
I ran a Unihertz Titan for quite a while after which was decent enough but now it is too out of date and it was always a bit unwieldly.
I’m now back to typing on a touch screen and hating every fucking minute of it :'(
The Unihertz Titan kept coming up in search results when I was trying to find something modern with a keyboard, and I was seriously considering it. Sucks to hear it’s too out of date. This one is out of date as well, but the expectations are lower since I’m treating it like a dumb phone (hopefully some custom ROMs will be more current 🤞).
I didn’t see any other comparable devices, and this one seems to be one-of-a-kind. In a way, I’m sad that I like it so much because there’s nothing remotely similar out there.
There is the titan slim which seems to be a clone of the BlackBerry keytwo in terms of shape and size which I did serious consider for quite a while to come after my titan. Ultimately I was put off by some of the quirks that unihertz has in terms of their implementation and software.
The keyboard on the titan was very good and it was close to the blackberry but it always just fell slightly short with some weird things like how certain buttons were handled.
I used to love the fact that I could hold the shift key and tap a letter to open whatever app I wanted. Little touches like that I missed, sometimes unihertz tried to replicate those sorts of touches but usually fell just a little short for me.
I hear plenty of people had slightly better experiences with custom ROMs on it but I tried and tried to get a custom ROM onto mine and I never had any luck with unlocking the boot loader and always therefore fell at the first hurdle.
There is a project on github that took the blackberry keyboard from one of their best models, placed it in a 3d printed case with an interface to link it to a USB C so you could plug it into different phones that I thought about trying to make and try. But I never got around to trying it.
I don’t know how well it would work / integrate though, cause what I really want is a blackberry keythree xD
