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Comment by yankput | Hacker News Reader

_please_ make a Fairphone with a good camera :( and I will switch from iPhone in a heartbeat.

Making pictures of my kids is what I do with my phone the most.

Good phone cameras rely on a bunch of proprietary blobs for the sensor color science which are considered trade secrets and kept close to the chest when licensed for $$$.

Fairphone could invest in rolling their own open color science but I doubt they have the money to do it and come anywhere near what Apple or the other big Android makers are doing.

Looks like if you want open devices running FOSS you'll have to live with shit camera quality, for now.

Fairphone is not FOSS though… I don’t think their angle is “we are FOSS”, they are open to proprietary blobs as long as the hardware is ethically sourced. (From what I get, their definition of “ethical” doesn’t include FOSS.)

Sensor vendors will work with you to give you their blobs if you aren't idealogically required to distribute their source code. The SoC they are using should have a few blessed sensors which work pretty well out of the box.

Unless Qualcomm is totally out to lunch. I dunno I haven't worked with their SoCs personally.

I upgraded my fp3's camera to the fp3+'s, and it's noticeably better. Also, the upgrade was the easiest. Pop the old camera out and the new one in.

'Good' is relative. No doubt an iPhone's camera is better, but I suspect most people have no need for such high quality photos. They just want to take photos for themselves or social media. And for that the FF3 camera is totally good enough.

Could you replace your phone with a camera then?

I don’t want to carry two devices, same reason why I don’t have a separate GPS, separate watch, separate music player, separate gaming handheld.

They do bring up a good point. An actual camera is almost always better than a camera module. But most people value cost and convenience over having the superior tool.

I've witnessed people who are unable to navigate when their phone shows SOS only. They were unaware that GPS does not depend on cellular Internet. People scoff at dedicated GPS navigation devices or paper maps as antiquated.

You phone will navigate without cell service. All you need is offline maps. No need for a dedicated GPS

Hence why I said "replace"

What do you mean, the photos seem fine to me?

Most Android cameras are fine for social media pics. However if you edit and print your photos the iPhone and flagship Android cameras are noticeably better in color, image noise, brightness, contrast and low light.

judge for yourself

https://forum.fairphone.com/t/fp4-pictures-gallery/78667/20

Those all look fine to me, but I'm a poor judge. I rarely take pictures of anything. I realized a long time ago that I almost never go back and look at them again, and I am better off enjoying the moment than trying to stand outside of it taking pictures.

You might want to get your eyes checked at your next appointment. I'm severely color blind and yet I can see a significant difference in color diversity, vibrancy and image quality in these examples. The FP image is muted and muddy.

Well I’m one of the people who thought NSTC television was “good enough” video quality. 4k is so sharp it puts me in an uncanny valley and I find it b be borderline unwatchable

Note that some of those look worse than they would if taken today, because FP4 used to have an issue where some interface wasn't made available for third-party camera apps to use.

The thread god updated very recently.

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