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theamk

What if I want:

(1) a camera with zoom and night shot capability comparable to my 2010 Sony Cybershot camera.

(2) An internet terminal with enough CPU/RAM to browse modern websites.

(3) A music player with a space for 150-300 GB of MP3's and nice-ish UI

(4) Online and offline map

(5) wireless charging (because I keep destroying charging ports in my devices)

(6) all of this should fit in my pocket. I've spent >5 years of my life carrying a separate camera on the belt, I am not doing this again.

All functional requirements, no "outward signalling or flex". What should I get?

(Genuine question, I've spent few days researching this recently and high-end smartphone aeems to be the only match. Weirdly, it's good camera and wireless charging that raises the price, not CPU)

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Regardless of how 'good' a phone camera sensor might be on a spec list, it's looking through a massively aspherical plastic lens that's about 5mm thick and admits a magnitude less light than your Sony camera for any given scene.

I think the best comment on the subject was here in HN years ago; although they're both called cameras, they're really different media. One is like charcoal sketching and the other is like oil painting.

How so? They may be a different media for a professional photographer, but for a layman (like me) they have exactly the same purpose: I press the button, and I get a picture of my friends / that bird / landscape. And while I can easily tell charcoal sketching vs oil painting apart, I (and most of my friends) cannot tell real camera picture apart from high quality cell phone.

So no, I would not say it's a different media for the modern-ish phones (like pixel 8, iphones, etc...). If your impressions are based on cheap smartphones, they are out of date - there is a whole new world out there.

On a more advanced level, I am awed how a camera with ultra-high-FPS + many GFLOPs of CPU + advanced post-processing algorithms can make tiny lens work like regular ones, while still being thin enough to fit in the pocket.

Get Samsung A series and it will last you easily four years or five. Priced around $300 or so.

I went from an A52 5G to a S25+ (3 years between the two models). The S25 is infinitely nicer to use. The screen is usable in direct sunlight. OneUI is noticeably smoother. The camera is way better (like, way, way better, in both good and poor lighting conditions). Background apps don't close as frequently. Heavy social media apps perform more smoothly.

I just bought a refurbished pixel 8 for $200

Um... where?

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