| There is nowhere to go, not with the available physical space. I expect noise to get lower and lower and low light performance to increase, leading to sharper (due to less noise reduction) and less noisier images in the coming years, though, due to the small available physical space and small sensor probably always a step behind larger sensors (like the ones one would find in larger cameras). Maybe it will be possible to close that gap? For many situations that gap is already quite small when, e.g. comparing many typical image viewing situations with images made under good lighting conditions. On close examination images from cameras with larger sensors would typically still be sharper, though, mostly due to them being able to have a higher resolution with lower noise (though, as I said, in many typical viewing applications those differences are, always depending on the photos and in which context it was made, sometimes imperceptible). What will not be possible are zoom lenses, interchangeable lenses or, really, any kind of freedom with the lenses at all. Probably also unrealistic is a variable aperture and a sensor size that would allow one to play with depth of field in the first place. That is a fundamental difference that cannot be overcome within the physical envelope of a smartphone that is still recognizable a smartphone and not something else, some weird smartphone camera hybrid. All that DSLR wankery is kind of pointless, though. The goal here is to make the very goddamn best camera that the physical envelope allows for and smartphones have done an astonishingly great job at that. Those are awesome cameras, no ifs and buts about it. Given what they have to work with they are unabashedly awesome. DSLRs and other large-sensor cameras are fundamentally different beasts. Comparing them or even holding them up as some sort of great goal for smartphone cameras seems kinda … dumb? … I don’t know, pointless? … short-sighted? to me. |
While true, also false.
Take something like the Sony Nex series; mirrorless digital system camera. Not much larger than a (big) smart phone. Sure, bigger than an iPhone. But it might not be that difficult to fit the "rest" of a smart phone into one of those. In fact, it probably have all the parts: battery, (touch?)screen, microphone, wireless radio (not cellular, but that could be changed), speaker (maybe needs to be added).
But a better way to go would probably be some kind of light-field technology. I think that holds more promise for better pictures in a similar form factor, and the possibility of ease of use.