[jsbisviewtiful]

> Even camera improvements are overblown.

I would love to take a photo using my smartphone that doesn't look pixelated, blurry and or over-processed. Maybe asking too much considering smartphone sensors can't compete with DSLRs in some situations, but I'm always baffled with how dark and desaturated some of my photos turn out on my smartphone, as well.

[changing1999]

Me too! If anything, iPhone photos became more over-processed over the last decade.

[jajko]

Few years ago there was usual 'Apple look' on Instagram where every photo was taken at golden hour, all skin blemishes and moles ironed out into oblivion. Everybody was doing it in some form, but Apple was (is?) going furthest, into territory of painting more than representing reality (I compared my Samsung ultra with wife's iphone and its consistently this... but generally all reviews I saw few years ago stated the same).

Now pendulum has swung so all go for 'realistic look', but I expect people actually want rather milder version of above.

Phone photos look OK on phones, but enlarged even the top contender from current dxomark show very much how hardware limits work. Its just not presentable, maybe apart from very bright scenes. Now I wouldn't go bashing phones per se, its marvel what they achieve from those tiny plastic lenses and some CPU time. And they are always there. But any low hanging fruit in phone photography was picked up long time ago by whole market, what lies ahead are slow computational improvements, coupled with very slow increase in size and thickness of camera section of phones to capture more light.

[shinycode]

I’m often surprised that my iPhone photo app show old photos in the widget that look stunning and were taken with the iPhone XS and 11 PM. Night photos are better now but day photos stalled a long time ago. I find joy taking some shots with halide or photon in trueRaw where all processing is removed and grain is present. It gives an authentic look … so all HDR stuff is often too much