this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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There was always three things that made a standalone camera better than a smartphone camera: larger sensors, better glass, better ergonomics. For most people people those advantages went away once computational photography got good enough and technology improved which allowed for very compact lenses on larger sensors.
I've got a different background than most photographers in that I have a lot of experience in testing camera image quality. For me, a full frame mirrorless is still the way I prefer to take photos, as it has noticeably better and more natural looking images due to better hardware. Phone cameras suck in some ways like having realistic depth of field (portrait modes look so bad to me), but they also excel in using image stacking and AI enhancements to alleviate the hardware downsides to the point that I'll sometimes prefer the phone over the prospect of trying to achieve the same on my full frame.
For me a good viewfinder makes framing and composition decisions way easier than the phone screen. Especially in bright sunlight.
Also, some of us just aren't good enough photographers to take advantage of what that full frame mirrorless offers.
Honestly I would more put it that a lot of people aren't interested in putting in the work to get the most out of a mirrorless camera. You need to be shooting raw and processing the images. Lots of people who use their phones are great at conceptualizing a photo, they just don't want to deal with the back end stuff.