[ugh]

Sure, there is some room to play but with JPG it’s possible that some photos are not recoverable. If you get the raw output auto white balance is basically completely irrelevant (beyond convenience). No matter how badly the white balance screwed up, it’s always possible to recover (since it’s all software and you are working with the original input data).

But I don’t think it’s necessary to go that far. Even a budget DSLR that is perfectly capable of shooting raw should have great auto white balance: Most people don’t want to endlessly tweak photos. Better auto white balance means better photos, even if theoretically everything could be fixed in post.

Oh, and just because smartphone cameras are nowhere near as good as DSLRs doesn’t mean it’s not meaningful to compare them with each other, doesn’t mean one can’t be much better than another one.

[glimcat]

"it’s always possible to recover"

Only if the initial exposure was good.

[ugh]

See, I wanted to mention that but completely forgot about it while writing. (Still, you might have been a little more charitable with me. I think the context made it pretty clear what I was talking about.)

I was only talking about color, not exposure. (Of course there is only so much white balance can do – but if you get the raw data you can do just as much with the color as the camera, heck, you can even throw more processing power at the problem than the camera ever could.)