Insightful. My excitement comes when I replace my $100 used iPhone with another $100 used iPhone every few years. Guess what: It's just as exciting, and the price stays pretty much the same over time, despite the improvements. Of course the best phone I had was a Nokia Windows phone about a dozen years ago. Zeiss optics. Now that is a phone that I miss. Has Apple improved the camera optics lately?

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coldtea 20 hours ago | parent [-]

They did bump the sensor resolution and size of the tele lens increased the max open aperture of one of the lenses 1-2 models ago.

But "Zeiss optics" itself was also an empty marketing boast of Nokia and other colaborators. Not that different in performance from regular third party or even OEM optics, and the phone's sensor wouldn't be able to show any discernible difference anyway.

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DaveZale 19 hours ago | parent [-]

Well my garden photos turned out great, even after I damaged the optics while working at that garden.

Isn't the iphone photo software lacking somehow? Maybe it was the software? I found a big difference with that phone. Very vivid photos. Not an expert but could it have been some "contrast" setting?

	▲	coldtea 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Could be their color science (photo industry bullshit term for the algorithms they use to proccess color information). Or just higher saturation as a default. Better lens optics can help with contrast or reduce fringing and such issues, but not to any extend that a Zeiss versus some regular current iPhone or Pixel or Samsung or Redmi lens would make any real difference to the picture. Such processing side differences, on the other hand, can have a huge effect - and vivid colors is something directly affected by this. A better sensor can too, but not very likely a sensor from 10 years or more ago is better than a current modern model. Though there are some changes some people prefer (CMOS vs CCD - though Nokia since the mid-00s had also switched to CMOS like the whole industry).
	▲	ashwinsundar 12 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Vividness can be modified easily by adjusting the contrast, changing the black/white point, or changing the color temperature of an image.