[kalleboo]

Most people don't zoom in on their photos. They look at them on their phones, full screen on their computers, or at best on a TV (1080p or maybe 4K, but sitting far away).

This is what manufacturers optimize for. Getting great pictures for the 95%.

Who cares if the hairs on the dog are blurry when you zoom in so much you can't see the rest of the picture? Well, Pros who might want to crop the photo later. And for them, DSLRs will still exist.

[beezle]

And that's why Apple and Samsung are still using 1/2.5 (5.8mm by 4.3mm) 12MP sensors, typical of generic point and shoot cameras. Compare to lower end 'prosumer' type fourthirds cams that use a 17mmx13mm sensor and 15-18MP. That's almost 9 times the area for 25-50% more pixels.

[TeMPOraL]

Except those few times when they e.g. want a new profile picture for their Facebook/Instagram, find that photo on which they look really good but are only part of the whole shot, try to crop it (e.g. with the cropping tool that's available on most social media platforms when uploading a profile picture) and then they discover the result is a blurry mess.

Or, they want to print the photos they made on their phones into a family album, and the result again comes back as blurry mess that looks nowhere near as nice as it did on the phone.

So I'd add: manufacturers optimize for great pictures for the 95% that look great when shot, not when later used.

[ioulian]

That's what I thought, and indeed, the full res is useful when you want to post crop and to print them out.