When the new smartphones are announced these days, what people focuses more on, is the camera. There are many tech trends that may come and go but one is constant that continues to take the world by storm. There’s only one thing that comes to our mind while reading this, that is the ‘camera’. Yes, the camera is one, the smartphone companies are focusing on, and obviously, they have exploited this to their advantage. Many companies like- Xiaomi, Oppo, iPhone, Samsung and Vivo that even made their tagline ‘perfect selfie’, poured in a great amount of research money into developing even the better camera.
So, smartphones are getting better at clicking the pictures as the years are passing. You must be wondering when, if at all, smartphones competing for the larger camera. Are we at that point or might be approaching soon, where it won’t make any sense to buy a high-end DSLR or mirrorless camera in order to capture the professional looking picture? With the coming up of the smartphones with the dual lens like iPhone 7 Plus and iPhone X and other smartphones of Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo and Honor, the manufacturers are even pushing themselves for the larger sensors to specifically appeal the lovers of photography. So, in a way, we’re moving towards the extinction of those compact cameras.
The main camera manufacturing companies like Nikon and Canon have been reporting decreased camera sales in the past few years that is obviously because of the smartphones. It wasn’t so long ago that if you wanted photos of your life, it meant carrying a separate camera, but now the time has changed. I strongly believe that smartphones are indeed impacting the overall camera industry and sales. The proof of this change is found in the point-and-shoot market, which has been rapidly declining during the past few years. And for a good reason – why would anyone want to buy a point-and-shoot camera with a tiny sensor, when smartphones are there to click pretty decent pictures that is good enough for most people? While travelling, I have seen more people taking pictures with their phones and less with point-and-shoot cameras.
With a smartphone, one has the option to take a picture and instantly share it with the world, so the question of image quality becomes somewhat secondary in nature. And with a plethora of options for achieving a fairly good image using various apps and filters, there is a sense of instant gratification, which also becomes a key part of the process. If an image looks good enough to be shown on Facebook or Instagram, why bother with other options? That’s where simplicity, ease of use and time savings kick in as well. Knowing this, smartphone manufacturers are also heavily pushing more and more features to make people want to buy their products, instead of spending money on dedicated cameras. From dumb point-and-shoot devices, smartphones are transitioning into a highly capable image and video recording devices, with sophisticated and fairly accurate autofocus systems, improved image quality and lots of options to capture complex scenes using HDR and other technologies. Without a doubt, smartphones are playing a key role in eradicating the low-end point-and-shoot markets, where big camera manufacturers used to dominate in the past. And let’s not forget that those are also the markets that would yield high-profit margins.
However, all this does not mean that smartphones are capable of taking over the market of the large sensor cameras, at least at this moment. The photographers, on the other hand, are well versed in this area and they know and can differentiate between the image clicked by the large sensor camera and the image clicked by the smartphone. While most of us understand the limitations of the smaller vs the larger camera system, there are some, who won’t understand this without a prior knowledge that is not gonna happen. Well, this is also true that compact camera sales are also declining day by day and the smartphones are soon going to fit into their place.
