Smartphone Technology - Why Are Camera Companies So Slow To Innovate?

Many smartphones offer almost everything you used to get from a compact camera, in fact, most offer more, such as easy editing and sharing, higher continuous shooting speeds, high-speed video and 4K video recording. You'll even find a second monochrome camera on some smartphones, such as the Huawei P20 Pro. In fact, the only thing missing from a smartphone is the longer telephoto zooms of pocket zoom cameras.

With innovative features like this, it's easy to see how smartphones have replaced compact cameras

However, it's not going to be long until smartphones start taking away sales from better compact cameras and some entry-level ILC cameras. Through AI (Artificial Intelligence) and image processing, smartphones have started offering "bokeh" effects, giving portrait shots the look of a DSLR.

Smartphones also offer combined multi-shot modes reducing noise, and improving dynamic range recorded in photos, with Hauwei offering this in the Huawei Mate P20 Pro, for lower noise, improved dynamic range, as well as a hand-held night mode. Google also offers this for improved noise performance, with the Google Pixel 2, and Apple has introduced "Smart HDR" recently with the iPhone XS.

Huawei Mate 20 Launch, October 2018 - Super HDR combines a number of shots for improved dynamic range and image quality.

Smartphones have the latest technology, both in sensor and software, with updates and apps letting you improve and customise the camera for your own personal needs. Your camera will also improve over time, thanks to updates to software, and new apps being released. 

How long till smartphones actually start offering better IQ than a DSLR?

OK, it might not be soon, due to the laws of physics, a small sensor is still a small sensor no matter how much software you throw at it. But, you'll have noticed smartphones have long offered a prime lens with a large aperture (such as f/1.8, f/1.7, f/1.6 and even f/1.5) whilst compact cameras with zoom often start at f/2.8 or worse.

Huawei's P20 Pro (and some other Huawei phones) offer a handheld night mode where you can handhold and take a photo up to 6-7 seconds, without needing a tripod. Huawei's P20 Pro may have three cameras on the back, but due to the compact size of the camera units used in smartphones, it won't be long till we're seeing 4 or more camera units on the back of the smartphone. Samsung just announced the Samsung Galaxy A9, with 4 cameras on the back - a super-wide angle lens, a wide-angle (standard) lens, a telephoto lens, and another lens for blur/depth effect.

Google, with the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL are using one camera lens, but thanks to image processing, are offering telephoto zoom, called "Super Res Zoom" much like image stacking in Photoshop. 

Imagine all the tricks, and techniques you use in Photoshop, built-in to a smartphone camera.

You can add extra shooting modes to most smartphone camera such as "Good food" or even scan images, a scene, or a product, and find more information on the Internet on what the camera is seeing. Beyond this, you can add apps, designed specifically for certain types of photography: such as a "Foodie" app to help take better food photographs, or you can use Photoshop Lightroom CC on your smartphone to edit raw files. So far, there's only one current camera that offers the ability to use Lightroom on it, and that's on the Zeiss XZ1. 

In comparison, almost all cameras seem stuck with the features and abilities as when it was first released. If you're lucky you might get firmware updates to fix errors and bugs, and if you're even luckier your camera may get new features with a firmware update*. But most will remain the same as the day they were released, even if they were released several years ago and are still on sale (like the Sony Cyber-shot RX100 Mark III). With mobile phones, not only do you get the choice of any number of apps, but you regularly get system updates, as well as fixes and feature upgrades (depending on model and company) such as the Samsung Galaxy S8 getting a super slow-motion mode.

Want to shoot with a true monochrome camera? Huawei offers a number of smartphones with a monochrome sensor.

Will compact cameras, or non-connected, traditional cameras exist in future, if they aren't prepared to innovate?

Smartphones continue to chip away at the traditional camera market. Of course there will always be some things you can't do with a smartphone - for example, it's extremely unlikely that you'll ever have a smartphone with the reach of a travel zoom (30-40x optical zoom) or ultra zoom camera (with 65x, 83x, 90x, 125x optical zoom), and there have been very few smartphones with a large (1inch +) sensor, with the only smartphone the Panasonic Lumix CM1. 

Smartphones continue to improve, and smartphone companies are desperate to make the camera one of the biggest selling points. Huawei recently ran a photography competition, judged by their Artificial Intelligence (AI) system, which is built-in to their smartphones, with over 400,000 entries. 

Notice how much time is spent talking about all the new shooting features whenever a new smartphone is announced. As smartphone continue to improve, they continue to encroach on the camera market, giving less reason to purchase a dedicated camera. Smartphones pack the latest processors, and excellent speed, with stacks of memory to process images, perhaps this is where cameras are lacking. 

What do you think? Do you wish you could process images more easily on your camera? Are you using your smartphone for photography?

*Cameras to get big firmware updates include Olympus, Fujifilm and occasionally Canon.