“For better cameras” like… I don’t see it. Back in the mid 2010s and late 2010s before the bump trend iPhone, Google and Samsung had the best phone cameras, and both were flat and with decent digital zoom and stability (for a phone). If you look at the photo samples for back then and compare it with now the difference is almost imperceptible.
That ugly bump makes big phones even harder to use and weight more now, plus if you’re one of those who never liked using a cover now I bet you’re forced to use one because of the added vulnerability of the bump.
Edit mid 2010s to late 2010s (until the camera bump appears around 2018)
Phone thickness is definitely up for debate but as someone who takes a lot of photos, the cameras of todays phones are vastly better than the early ones.
Here’s some photos from my collection I found from that era.
I have a bunch of really good examples of pub nights but I don’t want to post anything with people in them.
Unless you had perfect lighting conditions they looked like ass. In order to fix the problems you see in these photos you need a combination of larger sensors, larger lenses and optical stabilization. All of which we’re bumping up against the limitations of physics.
Digital zoom is definitely not a replacement for optical zoom. Digital zoom is just cropping your photo on the fly, you might as well just do it yourself in post. Optical zoom retains the full sensor image. You can also modify focal length with optical zoom. I find myself lately standing further back and zooming in to get that background compression for more intimate shots that you get with a telephoto focal length.
Cameras on phones are getting good enough that I don’t find myself reaching for my SLR much anymore.
I like how the Pixel 6 (my current phone) handled the bump, just one long bar across the back. It doesn’t rock when you have it lying on a table and the bump actually slightly angles it towards your view. I wish there was more of that rather than the stove top bump on one side.
I dunno how you had taken those photos but look bad lol, phones from 2016 2017 (and without any bump) could take better photos, now that I remember Google photos had the best camera with iPhone at that time
Here’s some pictures from a Google Pixel 1. There’s a reason they never advertised low light handheld photos because you basically had to take 20 pictures of the same subject to get one that didn’t exhibit some kind of motion blur. Optical stabilization reduced all this dramatically.
They had to have large amounts of post processing to make up for the small sensor and relied on AI to clean up your image. Personally I always prefer to have good source images and leave upscaling as a last resort.