Smartphone Camera Evolution: Beyond Megapixels, What Really Counts?

i remember that phone.

Even Microsoft used Carl Zeiss on the Lumia's and that large 1" sensor at 41MP was amazing and still a hard camera to beat.

There are several factors that go into the camera and affect the photo, different photos will be limited by different limiting factors, and different desired outcomes will require different improvents.

Night photos require more light and more light per pixel. This can be achieved a variety of ways. Bigger lenses collect more light. Bigger sensors allow bigger pixels, which capture more light per pixel. Binning with higher pixel counts allow multiple pixels to act like one bigger pixel, with the flexibility to act like individual pixels in bright conditions.

If you were asking me to build or optimize a phone camera, give me the biggest lens you can fit and the biggest sensor you can fit. Then I think 16MP is great, but I'd rather have 64MP with 4:1 binning. You can still get great night shots, but can deactivate binning for real 64MP quality in good light, or use that 64MP for a clean 4x digital zoom.

For me though, one thing I want is the best image compression. All these improvements are worth a lot less if you're still using jpeg image compression. JPEG is from the early 90s. Nobody uses Windows 3.1 anymore, or DOS, why in the world is anyone still using jpeg? It's just stupid. HEIC/HEIF is inarguably vastly superior, and every camera should be using it.

It doesn't matter if your hardwear is top notch if you then compress your photos using a crappy compression format like jpeg and lose all the quality you just worked so hard for.