I've been considering getting my first Apple phone and this will probably seal the deal. I wish there was an alternative to Apple & Android which provided a cutting edge camera with good performance but sadly that doesn't seem to be the case.
A big issue nowadays is that computational photography is now about as important as the camera itself, so the software and computational hardware including ML accelerators are a big competitive edge that’s really only available to the big hitters.
To purist photographers though, it's a little deceptive to have computers modify the photo. It's hard to turn off all those ML augmentation settings on the iPhone. It brings back the old question of how much Photoshop is too much? Will phone photographers get disqualified from photo contests one day?
Literal photoshopping is an indispensable skill for photographers these days. None of the big photography contests disallow photoshopping in general (there are limits) and winning photos are clearly photoshopped. The phone just does it automatically.
Indeed but I’d argue it’s always been an essential skill. When it comes to film, people were already doing tricks to modify the image. Many photos people think of as right out of the camera are “photoshopped”. This applies to photos even from the 1800’s... I mean, the famous full body shot of Lincoln standing up is completely fake.
Interesting but how up to date is the OS? Can I expect current Android versions to show up over the next few years? Are the vendor customizations good or bad?
I tend to stick with Google phones because I like the stock Android experience. I've heard Sony isn't too bad. I really didn't like what Samsung did to Android but I last experienced it over a decade ago.
OEMs these days usually give 3 yrs of OS updates, though usually not as fast as Google. The phone doesn't become a brick after those 3 yrs though, all apps and tools remain updated independently of the OS, actually Androids receive those software updates for longer than iphones. I've got a few very old phones and tablets that are still as useful as on their 1st day, though well behind the current stuff.
Not to mention the fact that AOSP-based distributions like LineageOS can be used to keep the Android version on older hardware up to date for a long time after the vendor has given up on it, providing OTA updates to keep the device current. The real limiting factor ends up being the relatively low amount of memory in very old devices (512KB-1GB used to be common around 2010-2011, Android can still run on this hardware in a limited fashion but 1.5GB or more is preferred).
