I created this section to show that modern smartphones with its RAW capabilities have gotten pretty powerful in the last years.
Their form factor makes them invaluable for location scouting, tracking of the sun, taking test pictures and GPS information readouts.
Additionally in some unique situations they also serve as a “main camera”. I was always interested to test the limits of smartphone photography in my daily life.
Careful composition and postproduction with these devices sometimes can achieve a photographic quality almost as good as from its more expensive counterparts from Nikon, Canon, Sony or Fuji.

Read more about the RAW format and postproduction here.
But please keep in mind that the low megapixel amount, the noise behaviour in low light situations and the limited dynamic range in modern sensors are still posing issues in smartphone photography.
Due to its small size there are physical limitations that (still) cannot be overcome even by computational photography.
Especially in architectural photography there are major limitations for keystoning (straighten) vertical lines in the images which result in a severe loss of resolution.
But their great advantage - as everybody knows - is their ubiquity and their small form factor. Because:
»The best camera is the one you have with you.«
The iphones I used for this section were:
- iPhone 7
- iPhone XR
- iPhone 13 Pro
You can try guessing which photo is taken by which iPhone.

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