[wongarsu]

Just having exchangeable lenses is a huge boon. The sensor is probably worse than what you can find in a modern smart phone, but phones simply don't have the space for deep lenses and thus have to emulate effects like zoom and depth-of-field. On this camera you can have the "real" thing without paying $1000+ for a DSLR and $300+ for a lens.

And of course there's the effect where for every sufficiently popular camera their technical deficiencies become a desirable vintage look, given enough time. Kind of like people preferring vinyl records for their sound

[Marsymars]

> The sensor is probably worse than what you can find in a modern smart phone, but phones simply don't have the space for deep lenses

Phones don't have space for big sensors either, other than some gimmicky big-sensor phones (808 PureView, Lumia 1020). The iPhone 15 Pro main camera sensor is 9.8x7.3mm, compared to say, the Ricoh GR III with a 23.5x15.6mm sensor, about 5x larger. The GR III is actually less tall/wide than an iPhone, but about 4x the thickness.