Few years ago there was usual 'Apple look' on Instagram where every photo was taken at golden hour, all skin blemishes and moles ironed out into oblivion. Everybody was doing it in some form, but Apple was (is?) going furthest, into territory of painting more than representing reality (I compared my Samsung ultra with wife's iphone and its consistently this... but generally all reviews I saw few years ago stated the same).
Now pendulum has swung so all go for 'realistic look', but I expect people actually want rather milder version of above.
Phone photos look OK on phones, but enlarged even the top contender from current dxomark show very much how hardware limits work. Its just not presentable, maybe apart from very bright scenes. Now I wouldn't go bashing phones per se, its marvel what they achieve from those tiny plastic lenses and some CPU time. And they are always there. But any low hanging fruit in phone photography was picked up long time ago by whole market, what lies ahead are slow computational improvements, coupled with very slow increase in size and thickness of camera section of phones to capture more light.
Now pendulum has swung so all go for 'realistic look', but I expect people actually want rather milder version of above.
Phone photos look OK on phones, but enlarged even the top contender from current dxomark show very much how hardware limits work. Its just not presentable, maybe apart from very bright scenes. Now I wouldn't go bashing phones per se, its marvel what they achieve from those tiny plastic lenses and some CPU time. And they are always there. But any low hanging fruit in phone photography was picked up long time ago by whole market, what lies ahead are slow computational improvements, coupled with very slow increase in size and thickness of camera section of phones to capture more light.