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Comment by microtonal | Hacker News Reader

Cameras of flagships are still significantly better than a $150 Moto G. If you are using a smartphone in place of a camera and like good-quality photos, it's worth the money. That said, flagships can last many years as well.

I update pretty frequently, but all the older devices get used by family members, etc.

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The camera has actually been getting worse now that they bake in AI smoothing to muddle details. I think we hit the sweet spot already going forward.

The camera is probably the least important thing on the phone for me, but yeah if photos are important to you then that might rule out the cheaper tiers of phones.

Yeah, people have different needs. One of the nice things with GrapheneOS on Pixels is that you can even pick up the latest Pixel 10a for ~400 Euro (and older models even cheaper) and it will still have what Google calls a flagship chip, but more importantly all the nice security stuff like the Titan M2. For a mid-range phone it also has pretty ok cameras.

I hope that a few years down the line there will also be great midrange Motorola phones with GrapheneOS support. But they have to start somewhere.

Tbh this is up to Qualcomm more than anything. Pessimist in me says that they’ll gatekeep the security features to higher chips in order to max out profits.

Depends on what e.g. Mediatek does I guess. So far only Tensor and Exynos had the required security features, but I don’t think you can buy either chip when you are an OEM.

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