Can we stop treating smartphones like cameras?

As far as marketing is concerned, smartphones have become cameras that you can chat on and occasionally take a call with.

Every new model has the super zoom, or the special selfie camera, or AI that helps you take better photos, or AI that edits your photos for you, so on and so forth.

I have to admit, I’ve taken part in this hype for a time. Though, things didn’t use to be that way.

Some 11 years ago, when I was just joining PhoneArena, I was an aspiring geek that cared about hardware power and screen quality. I had the following hot take at the time:

“Give me a smartphone that doesn’t have a camera at all, equip it with the best chip and RAM, and pass on the savings. I’d buy that in a heartbeat!”

But, to be fair, smartphone cameras back then were pretty bad — definitely outshone by the point-and-click consumer cameras that were still common at the time.

Things have changed, great improvements were made, and at some point, I got sucked in as a “smartphone photography” enjoyer.



Portrait Mode, telephoto lenses with about “60 mm equivalent” focal lengths became my favorites. I compared this camera to that camera, video quality, stabilization, ultra-wide cameras as action cams, so on and so forth.

And again, to be fair, a lot of these upgrades did make the smartphone camera a meaningful replacement for the point-and-click.

Essentially rounding up the smartphone as…

The ultimate consumer device

From its early days, the smartphone was a breakthrough device because it combined a few different things… in one.

An Internet browser and communicator, an mp3 player, and an actual mobile phone.

It only made sense that it would replace the point-and-click camera at some point.

Nowadays, we don’t need to carry 4-5 different devices, we have an all-in-one that is conveniently thin and light, stylish to boot, and is always with us.

This is why, for a long time, it was easy to justify a flagship phone’s price

‘Member when a flagship phone used to cost $650? I ‘member. At that time, it was easy to ask the question “Well, it makes sense to buy this one expensive device, instead of an mp3 player, camera, mobile phone, and netbook separately…”

Well, reality seeped in

Of course, that was Mr. Brain trying to justify an expensive purchase for us. The reality is that you didn’t buy a new camera, new audio player, or new netbook once every two years. But smartphones back then were on a steady biennial upgrade cycle, as the tech was evolving very rapidly.

Also, if you happen to drop and break your mp3 player, you only need to replace that, you don’t go out and buy a new camera and mobile phone.

We are going back to being price-conscious, and some things are just not making sense

The current trends show that inflation is going wild, the future is uncertain, and luxury purchases are starting to look like a not-so-good idea. Don’t get me wrong — if it makes you happy and you are secure, go for it. But I am pretty sure that most savvy shoppers understand the current realities, even as they are placing the money down.

Users are starting to ask the question — why are we paying $1k+ for “camera advancements” that we mostly do not need?



Deep Fusion 3x Pro, Super Zoom Mega LoL, Extra HDR+ x2², cinematic video, et cetera.

It looks to me that the main features that users in our comments and over the Internet seem to care more about are: battery life and performance.

While nobody is being as extreme as me 11 years in the past — we do enjoy having decent cameras on our phones — users seem to be exceedingly irritated that they are being asked to pay extra money for the upgrades that they no longer deem important.

Do I agree with this anti-camera sentiment?

I am in a deadlock with myself. Two versions of me are fighting — the 2015 Pres that was not hyped about cameras at all is now showing up from the depths of my mind, saying “See, dude? I told you camera is not that important!”.

But, the one that did have tons of fun and took plenty of photos with the iPhone Pro Maxes, Galaxy Ultras, and other more obscure phones over the years is arguing back “But smartphone cameras are good now!”.

Ooop, hold on! Could this be it? Smartphone cameras are… good now. The last time I took a photo and thought to myself “This looks horrible” was a couple of years ago, and the phone was an obscure brand, niche, budget device.

Let’s look back at my reality. My current favorite camera smartphone is the Vivo X300 Pro. I am not saying it’s the best; some people are arguing against me, and that’s fine. I like it, that’s my point.

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