New smartphone cameras are technically superior but visually worse. MKBHD's core argument: manufacturers like Apple, Samsung, and Google have shifted from capturing photos to generating them, using computational photography and AI processing to produce images that look sharp and clean but feel artificial and over-processed compared to shots from phones several years old.
The interesting part is not the conclusion but the evidence. MKBHD runs direct comparisons across every iPhone and every Samsung and Google phone in both daylight and low light, documented in four companion Shorts linked in the description. The gap between raw sensor capability and final output is where the story lives. Third-party apps like Halide and MotionCam are presented as practical workarounds, using alternate processing pipelines to recover more natural-looking results from the same hardware.
This matters because it reframes how you evaluate a phone upgrade. Megapixel counts and sensor sizes are not the problem. The software stack deciding what your photo should look like before you see it is. If you have ever wondered why your new phone's photos look like paintings, this video explains the mechanism, not just the symptom.
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