Apart from powerful processors and GPUs, one thing in budget phones are changing too. Their CAMERA. Its regarded as the eye of the phone. View is better if the hardware is good. Years ago, typically low price phones had a just a simple camera capable enough just for taking shots, good or bad comes later. Now, capturing should be fast, detailing and colour accuracy comes later. Though, you wont be wining any competitions against flagships (except for a phone like the Oppo Realme1) if compared.
Talking about phone cameras these days, the new trend is DUAL CAMERA. Yes, the trick worked out very good. Using an extra secondary camera for sensing the depth and then creating a good blur on the subject's background usually comes handy when you are keep on capturing Macro shots. And you want the effect to be like those of DSLRs and their costly lenses. But one problem arises during the shootout. Unless you are patient enough to get the perfect shot (since most users get frustrated), the handling of depth shot is pretty much done by the processors well, sometimes the shot doesn't come out good. You either get a incomplete blurred background taking some parts of the subject too into the blurred area. You would have never thought of that to happen. Most of the Depth sense cameras come with this problem unless you are a good enough photographer.
Else for a DUAL CAMERA setup, an extra monochrome or a wide angle camera seems efficient. An optical zoom one seems fair too. But these modules are not that cheap to be put on a budget camera phone. Plus, these are mostly aimed at the midrange section. Else a single camera with a good sensor and good lens would be good enough unless you want useless a DUAL CAMERA in a phone without the good hardware.
Talking about an interesting thing, which aspect of a camera would you appreciate when analyzing a photo captured by it? the DETAILS? or the COLOURS?. And would you still agree with yourself if you were to find out that the camera was from a cheap phone? seems not easy. But its not. Firstly, when you compare smartphone cameras with typical point and shoot ones in the same price range, you notice that the hardwares are not similar. Atleast, the smartphone cameras have either a smallish 1/3" which is nowhere near a huge 1/2.3" sensor in the Nikon Coolpix low budget cameras. But the photo output was similar before, now its better with the same sensors. OK, the new Coolpix A300 is better than the most of the budget camera phones. But,if you keep side by side few phones with a same sized sensor, you will be surprised with the details and the colours. MUCH BETTER. But that those are priced phones (The Xperia XA1 costs around 15k). We are talking about low budgets.
Secondly, if you were to check out the details of a budget Point and Shoot camera (with a big 1/2.3" sensor CCD sensor) you will notice one thing. The details are high, but the overall clarity is not good. Colours are incredible though. Similar condition on phone cameras too. With such a small 1/3" sensor, the details and colours are good, but the overall clarity is low. Now back to the original question, the DETAILS or the COLOURS ? You have to go with colours as for phones with low grade camera hardware, there is low probability of fine detailing. But the camera algorithms can be altered to get a better colour output (The Oppo Realme1 has an AI camera which exactly does that). And for photo sharing, you would be still preferable toward a photo with better colours than just details.
Though ignoring that part, DUAL CAMERAs in now-a-days phones are very good. At least, the simple fact "TWO is better than ONE" seems reasonable unless we are talking about bigger 1/2.3" SONY EXMOR R sensors with wide f/1.7 lenses. Though with cheaper hardware, the camera can be made better by focusing on the basics. So what do you need to be done by the camera in a typically low priced phone?
1. It should be able to capture fast.
2. Detailing levels in the photos should be better than medium.
3. The Dynamic Range should be good.
4. White balance shouldn't go over too much.
5. Sensors are small, so the software should be improved for a better performance.
6. Wide lenses should be provided for more light input and better low light shots.
7. Auto focusing should be accurate if a Depth sense camera is given.
8. Most importantly, the COLOUR OUTPUT should be good and accurate.
Well, most of the smartphone cameras do come with a better colour output that just tuning up the details (only on low budget ones), since that works better. Comparing to point and shoot cameras, the colour output does become similar which makes you to just simply go on with your phone if you need to capture some impressive shots.
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