iPhone 14 Pro camera review: A small step, a huge leap (opens in new tab)

A photographer friend of mine always used to get comments like you can take such awesome shots because you are using a DSLR (this was 10 years back). So he started taking two pictures one with DSLR and one with a mobile cameras at that time.

He would still get the awesome shots comments even with the pics he took with the basic mobile camera and shared them on social media.

When he writes, "I took the iPhone 14 Pro on a trip around San Francisco and Northern California, to the remote Himalayas and mountains of the Kingdom of Bhutan, and Tokyo.", my first thought was: who IS this person? And is this article even at all real?

>...all the pictures in the article actually show that...

This simply is no longer as true as it once was. And has been for at least a decade. More than three decades ago my forward thinking cobol programmer friend stated, drunk, that in the future someone called a wedding photographer will be able to walk into an event with a digital camera, wave it around, then select images for publication without having to sit people, set tripods, or wait for that one-off unique special moment. They were right.

Kim Jung Gi (the artist) once said that the question he got most often was: what kind of brush pen do you use?

Is this serious? Some of the side by sides are totally blacked out vs beautifully lit. The improvements in cameras open up the possibility of taking shots that would have simply not been possible. Sure photography is a skill. The realtime feedback on a smartphone might actually be the most significant improvement that smartphone has made to the camera. But discounting the obvious improvements in sensing an processing is just nonsense.

This has always been true.

Most of what professional cameras and lenses get you is the ability to get shots you otherwise couldn't - lower light, further distance, faster action, etc. Particular effect in DOF of flattening. Nothing that makes a good photo.

Without an eye, it's all wasted. But a good eye will see shots that can't be made; more of them if the camera at hand is limited.

That’s a good observation so far as it motivates people to learn photography skills. As soon as you know how to take photos, though, you resume appreciating what the right equipment lets you capture, or have a better chance to capture.

That's all true, but sometimes your overriding goal isn't to create a beautiful photograph, it's to record a particular thing at a particular moment.

Then camera technology really does make a massive difference, especially in low light, etc.

My very amateurish pov: quantity is the most important quality, take enough photos and you will end up with a few very good ones.

Kind of. If you have an image worth capturing but can’t capture it that’s a problem.

Well yeah but it doesn't hurt to make photography more accessible to everyone.

I think Nikkor assumes that you would use software to do the post processing. It gives you something a lot closer to what's coming from the sensor, so you can choose which $XXX image editing suite you want to run it through. The iPhone knows the vast majority of people won't do that with their photos, so they can go all-out, but you're stuck with their specific result baked in to your photo.

Mine don't (iPhone 13 Pro Max, Fuji XT-2 and various lenses). They do in daylight, sure, but things like sunrise/sunset or unusual colors throw them off like crazy.

Textures can also throw them off - "amplification" of the texture effect, almost.

They also suffer a bit zoomed in.

The post-processing fixes a lot of problems of older phone cameras but it has its limits.

On good camera hardware there's very little that all that post-processing would add outside of extreme-high-ISO-noise, IMO. Which - would it be nice? Sure. But you can find software and stack exposures manually and such for those situations too.

And a lot of the other smart stuff gets fooled too easily.

The Nikon does minimal post processing. The iPhone throws a metric shit ton of algorithms at the image data to make it passable. For normal people the iPhone output is good enough - though it often looks very over-processed.

Nikon just expects you to handle that post processing part that your iPhone is doing for you. In exchange you get way more control over the final image.

Both devices are aimed at different people. I myself have an iPhone 13 pro and a Nikon Z6ii. I tend to take snapshots with my iPhone because getting out the Nikon + playing around with sliders in Capture One is just too much hassle for a snapshot. Now would I take the iPhone and do a landscape photo where I hiked 6 hours to the photo location at 3 a.m. in the morning? Probably not. ;)

Do they look the same when zoomed in/at 100% zoom? Phone photos look great on small screens but show weaknesses on desktop.

Just shoot your mirrorless in RAW and process them later. Lightroom gives great results, but you can also use Apple Photos to get similar color processing as your iPhone photos.

The mirrorless photos will look much better on a laptop or bigger screen but about the same on a phone.

Do the jpegs (or hief?) look as good on a 27-inch monitor, or just on the phone screen?

Capturing non-raw in my experience (iPhone 6S, now have 13 mini) the jpegs are heavily de-noised, and really don't look that good 1:1 on a large monitor: on the iphone screen they look very good, as they're downsampled.

The article mentions the 'watercolor' effect since the iPhone 8, but I definitely had the issue with all the jpegs taken on my iPhone 6S since 2015...

DNGs however DO look very good, so clearly the sensor is capable of pretty nice images.

A landscape photo is the easiest thing for any camera to capture. Focus is at infinity and no depth of field means the lens can be literally a greasy pinhole and still get sharp shots. You're probably taking photos in direct sunlight so again the camera has to do very little work and is flooded with light.

Try taking a portrait photo in iffy lighting, like at a concert, wedding, sporting event, etc. Something that really needs a fast and sharp lens.

I think it's processing power and engineering effort. I got a Sony RX100M2 for my mom and it has the same computational photography techniques that Google released the following year (https://ai.googleblog.com/2014/10/hdr-low-light-and-high-dyn...). But Sony's image stacking is only in "Superior Auto" mode, and is only used when necessary. Google's implementation does a lot of advanced work, including selecting and blending parts of the photo depending on motion, that Sony doesn't do. I assume Sony's imaging engineers have less expertise in advanced processing, and didn't have the resources to implement the features that Google did. Sony also has to devote engineering resources to other features - a lot of their sales are to photographers that will edit in post (RAW), and later, videographers. So features that are only in "auto" mode may have limited budget.

Good looking != captures reality.

iPhones apply filters to make the photos look more vivid and to make them "ready to share". If a professional camera would do that, it would not be professional.

Because deep down, it's not what they do. They are optics and camera hardware companies. In the race between physics and software, they are on the physics side. This is evident in the entire user experience. They keep missing the boat with the way people actually use photography today, and don't even seem to care much. There's not much evidence they have the kind of research expertise that Apple, Google or Adobe built in signal processing and image processing, either.

See also https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201... and https://www.dslrbodies.com/newsviews/news-archives/nikon-201...

Try zooming in, even a little bit. You'll notice squiggly oversharpening artifacts pretty quickly. Yes they probably look fine on a phone screen, but blow them up at all and they start to show their weaknesses

I doubt those iphone photos look the exact same as the nikon ones on a large display (i.e. anything bigger than an iphone...) It has not been the case for me.

The Nikon photos will be under sharpened because it's so easy to apply sharpening in post, and the amount of sharpening is very dependent on the size and format of your desired output. Also, in ideal conditions (medium sized, evenly and brightly lit, static subject a moderate distance away) practically all cameras will give good results: try comparing in less ideal circumstances like a darkish area indoors.

Well, put bluntly, the reason is that you probably are not using the Nikon properly. So, your photos are not coming out that great or as you hoped. Don't take this personally, I also have my limitations using cameras properly. But I understand I'm an amateur when it comes to this and that I'm part of the problem. I try to learn to do better. I try, and sometimes it works out nicely and I get a really nice shot. Landscape photography is tough to get right. You really need to understand your camera and lenses to make that work.

The point of such a camera is not the in camera processing, which most pro users would not use on principle. Instead it's gaining a lot of control over setting up the shot properly with a lot of control over all the parameters that matter to achieve a look that matches what you want, intentionally. And then you finish the job in post processing. There's reason these things have so many buttons and dials: you need to use them to get the most out of the camera. And the point of owning such a camera is having that level of control. The flip side is that that makes you responsible for the intelligence. That kind of is the whole point. If that's not what you wanted, you bought the wrong camera.

The iphone has a very limited set of controls. You actually have very little control over it. Nice if that's what you want and the AI is awesome. But it's also a bit limiting if you want more. Of course it's very nice when that's the camera you have and you want to take a shot quickly by just pointing and clicking. Nothing wrong with that. I have a Pixel 6 and a Fuji X-T30. I use them both but not the same way.

Obviously you don't look at close detail on computer, which is very strange for seemingly such a power photo user. Phones these days are good but not yet that good if you don't do some beginner mistakes with camera. Maybe Pixel 7 pro based on samples I saw, but definitely not ie iphone 13 pro max.

What people often mean by similar statements is they like default phone processing compared to 0 in the camera, and there is enough detail due to tons of light and due to landscapes being generally easiest scene to shoot.

As for why they are not comparable, also a very strange question from seemingly experienced photo shooter - compare software development department and budget in Apple vs Nikon, who is a tiny player we all love (have D750 since it came out and carried it everywhere up to 6000m), they use very specialized CPUs which are very good for 1 thing only (basic operations on raw sensor data and potential jpeg transformation), and various ML and stacking transformations aren't simply available there at performance required. The whole construction of camera and processing hardware isn't around snapping 30 pics and combining them together under 1s, pre-taking pictures before actually hitting shutter etc.

Nikon and Canon and all the other camera companies, Japanese, German, or otherwise, are not software companies and have a pretty awful track record for even the basic software in their camera interfaces. Post processing is something they could not or would not get involved in.

Apple ate their lunches and then some. While I'm an old-school photographer who thinks a great SLR camera is the photographic equivalent of driving a Porsche, I don't miss carrying pounds of gear around. (OTOH I HATE the Ux of iPhones for photography.) I digress. The camera biz is a classic biz school study in humans being human.

Apple and photography processing at this point is like TSMC and chips. They probably have a great deal of algorithmic knowhow that is in house and they're doing things that no one else is quite getting close to at any of the big camera brands. Maybe just Pixel phones have some clue in's on some of the post processing hacks. I'd guess in the dark ex apple helped consult.

Because Nikon's target audience (photographers) don't want that "fancy post-processing" done by their camera.

Because landscapes are easy. The subject isn't moving, you aren't in a hurry and the phone has all the time in the world to gather enough data for a photo. Same goes for posed portraits, the phone has time to use it's processing power to make the image look amazing.

Now try to do sports photography with a mobile phone.

The first problem is lack of zoom compared to a 200mm lens. The second issue is trying to get the 1/8000 exposure you need on a rainy football field you need to stop the action for a good photo.

There is no way they do. First of all you don't have a DSLR, but a mirorrless (Nikon Z) series. But nevermind, that's just nitpicking.

Likely a Z6 from the price point you mentioned. It has 24 MP (instead of iPhone 13's 12MP) and a much much higher dynamic range (more than 11 steps vs an iPhone's about 8). So unless you don't know what you're doing the Nikon is a way better camera (as it should be. It ways 5x as much with lens)

What settings are you shooting? How do you edit your images?

I've noticed it's getting easier and easier to take photos with the SUN in the frame than when digital sensors first came out.

Try photographing at night with short exposures.

Never got why camera manufactures never followed the phones. Like Live photo,and automatic hdr. Can we get rid of the shutter?

This is probably the wrong way to think of it. Especially at screen sizes, there are certain photos your iphone 13 can take that are comparable to what you would get with your nikon gear. However there are photos you can get with that 1.8 that won't work at all on your phone.

Because landscape photos are easy. No bokeh, no depth of field (everything at infinity), good lighting, no need for fast shutter speed or a big sensor. Your images will be sharper I guess, but that's not worth $2k in most cases.

iPhone 13 photos will look just as good as a Nikon photo on your iPhone. As soon as you view the iPhone photos on a monitor or print them out, everything falls apart.

iPhone photos are excellent as long as viewers are only seeing them on iPhones.

I guess if you like that look. I don't; not really. The photos from my phone are fine. If taken in really good light, they are actually pretty good. But they are always processed to within an inch of their lives.

Targeted audience doesn't demand the feature.

If a users needs are being met by an iPhone then they shouldn't worry about dslrs.

If a users needs aren't being met by the dslr gotta wonder is it the technology or the skill of the user?

It really won't beat modern fast lenses. Try a lowlight situation. You will not be able to beat a larger aperture for light collection, it's simply how many photons you can catch.

For the same reason you can't upload to Instagram from your $2k camera - they know how to make hardware.

But the idea of enhancing filters or social media features is completely alien to them.

I wouldn't necessarily assume that the optics are superior. Smartphone lenses are pretty sophisticated. Also, their smaller size and far greater production numbers open up manufacturing techniques that wouldn't be practical for DSLR lenses.

Edit: Apologies for commenting on downvotes, but I'd be genuinely curious to see some objective evidence that the optics of a typical DSLR lens have a superior design. Of course it is true that larger lenses for larger sensors tend to be superior because they do not need to resolve as many lines per mm and they do not need to be machined as precisely (all else being equal). But does anyone know of any actual lab tests that make relevant comparisons? I am a bit tired of people just assuming that DLSR lenses are higher quality than smartphone lenses, even though the cost of modern smartphones, and the enormous disparity in the number of units sold, makes it far from obvious that this should be the case.

Yeah but that is just software… and software is much more mailable than hardware. At some point perhaps the default will be 48mp

Why would you need more than 12MP if the photo is only going to be displayed on a 6 inch screen?

If you take a photo of a subject that is closer than 7.8 inches, you're no longer using the main camera on the 14 Pro. It automatically switches to the ultrawide camera and crops in to show the same field of view. I suspect that is happening to you in some cases, but you're unaware, based on the fact that you didn't mention anything about this limit.

The 48MP camera has the same color spatial resolution as a 12MP camera, but it has 48MP of monochromatic spatial resolution. Humans aren't as sensitive to color resolution as they are to spatial resolution in general. This is why the "2x" mode on the 14 Pro look great compared to what you might expect based on your comment. The 2x crop only has "3MP" of color resolution, but the 12MP of spatial resolution from the 2x crop makes it perfectly usable.

For your specific use case, the ultrawide camera may work fine as a "macro" lens, depending on the size of the pixels you're trying to capture. A real macro lens on an interchangeable lens camera would obviously do better.

I've been using the Halide app to take most of my daylight shots in 48mp HEIC mode (which has the benefit of being 5-15kb per photo).

The main advantage to me is that the result is much less affected by Apple's always-on edge-sharpening processing. The effective "resolution" of the processing artifacts is higher.

In previous iPhones if you take a photo of a bunch of leaves on a tree it's almost like it tries to draw a little sharpened outline around each one, which looks like a watercolor mess if you zoom in at all and doesn't capture what your eye sees.

With the 48mp compressed shots I find landscapes and trees look much more natural and in general you can crop and zoom into photos further before the detail is lost in the processing mess.

Why does that happen? Is it because there's a physical antialiasing filter in the lens?

Using something like Halide[1] gives you more control - once you pick a lens, it stays picked.

[1] Other camera apps are available, etc.

Same. As a casual Camera user / not an enthusiast, I find the camera experience on the 14 pro unpleasant and a downgrade from the 12 pro.

Agreed. I thought mine was broken when I received it but alas, this is how it is. Was hoping a software update would fix the framing issues.

Yeah the first time it did that to me when I was trying to use magnifier mode, I nearly threw the phone against the wall. Who the heck thinks it's a good idea to change cameras when trying to focus close-up? -poof- the thing you're pointing at disappears from the screen.

Yeah I am finding this too. Open the camera and it switches lenses almost 100% of the time. So the image shifts within a second. Just a bit jarring and very un-apple.

can't you turn that off?

That picture doesn't have a single correct white balance; no photo does if it has more than one light source in it. It's all to taste.

But it does look like it was shot through a window without a polarizer filter.

Reality Distortion Field.

I’m curious what you feel is “good enough” for concert images. I recently went to a concert and took a ton of pictures on my Pixel 5, which IMO performed much better than my previous android (non flagship) phones to a level I was pretty happy with, albeit I do not have an iPhone to compare with. I uploaded some (slightly decent) images to imgur, could you let me know if this is better than or similar to your experience/photos?

https://i.imgur.com/gm8jUkj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/hrBL18U.jpg https://i.imgur.com/zLPFgPW.jpg https://i.imgur.com/1kPzHZ3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/97R9asy.jpg https://i.imgur.com/3ITpUuT.jpg https://i.imgur.com/1MClydK.jpg

(No editing by me, though I did pick preferentially some photos that weren’t blurred majorly. The largest blurred object appears to be the DJ (BT) who was moving a decent bit.)

What is the thinking behind the "no detachable lens cameras" rule? I can't wrap my head around that choice.

A good reason to own a Ricoh GR IIIx (or Ricoh GR III, which has a 28mm equiv. lense instead of 40mm on the "x" version). It looks very simple and non-professional, but the picture quality is comparable with the latest Fuji X100 series cameras.

Even DSLRs have issues with image quality at concerts. Red lights are frequently used at concerts and cause notorious issues, regardless of camera.

It’s great you found that work around with Fuji x100. I just think this is a valid though minor complaint since most cameras suffer in the same context, and I wish people would stop taking photos at concerts hahaha.

One problem that Apple actually considers a hard won feature is color inaccuracy. They like to do default images look very instagram-ish, which may be what many folks like to see but they are pretty far from reality, more than most. Skin smoothing is another topic on its own.

Maybe I am very biased by almost a decade of full frame shooting basically everything, but I like photo representing what I actually see with my own eyes at that moment.

When talking about Pixels, when I saw some non-ideal light samples from latest one, it was pretty clear neither Apple nor ie Samsung (which I own and love, S22 ultra) are in same league in many aspects of photography. But Pixel 6 had some pretty annoying issues from user reports. On the other side it costed (and v7 still does) significantly less from day 1.

Coming from the Pixel 6 Pro, I feel the same. The camera is comparatively very slow with even daytime indoor lighting. Half the photos I take of a child at play end up in the trash due to blur. Hoping to find out that I'm just "holding it wrong".

As a Pixel 5 user I don’t really have any complaints about the cameras. If you pixel peep it definitely shows up, and I suppose the 48MP would be better, but gcam (Google camera) is probably one of the best pieces of software on android.

Having said that, I would love to see a large sensor camera with gcam esque chops. It’s not too hard to run into the limitations of the small sensor.

Coming from a Pixel 4a to the 14 Pro I'm really impressed instead. Like it's the much needed upgrade that I felt I needed (I'm really passionate about photography). I'm seriously considering selling my DSLR now.

I think google computational might be better in some edge cases, but it comes at the cost that sometimes it over-processes things: some textures look painted on my pixel photos, some night shoot feel "cool" but do not capture what I'm looking with my eyes at all, no matter my settings. And with portraits I have this feeling sometimes that I capture a nice image only to see it somehow ruined when the processing ends, with the face that becomes too "beautified" (smooth skin, etc).

I feel the iPhone computation is overall better for the most common lightning situations and maybe less aggressive, but I would need to test it for way more time to form a more complete opinion.

Do you have examples to share? I am interested as I shoot with film, mirrorless, and on iPhones.

You won't see one. All their past postings appear to be iPhone/pad camera reviews and they make two apps for the same. As a result, I am a little queasy about their objectivity too.

I believe the Pixel Pro phones also recently migrated from 12MP to 48MP, between the 6 Pro and the 7 Pro. I wonder if this blogger is already looking into the Pixel? They mentioned that it takes a couple of months to come to a conclusion on a new phone camera, and the Pixel 7 has only been out for a month-ish.

DxoMark is always good for comparing cameras: https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera/device-Goog...

> sitting on the floor of a halloween party bathroom

i feel there is more to this story

"To review this camera we went to these most interesting, most beautiful places."

Okay...but how does it perform taking pictures of my toy dog in suburb-town USA?

Phones don't rival or surpass DSLRs or any proper digital camera.

They just have lots of fancy processing that makes quick snaps look better than the same amount of effort on a camera.

Every iPhone release since the 11 I've been waiting for them to add support for Wifi 6E. So far not yet...

To be clear, it's the iPhone 14 Pro models that have the 48MP camera (with telephoto) described in the article. The non-Pro iPhone 14 camera is said to be improved somewhat over the iPhone 13 (slightly faster lens, software magic, etc), but it is not the high-end system in the iPhone 14 Pro.

The EU will force them switch to USB on the next iPhone so better start saving :)

As long as it's smaller than a smartphone plus an RX100 taped together I consider it a net win.

You’re not wrong at all. My 12 Pro was much better, but still a bit annoying.

But optics can’t beat physics. Better cameras need more space for lenses and sensors. They could make the whole phone thicker, but haven’t done that yet.

The trajectory seems unsustainable. We’ll see what happens I guess.

yeah not a fan, my iphone12 mini is bad enough. I get that taking a photo and posting it to instagram is 95% of the use case for the iphone but i still don't like the way the camera lenses protrude.

Yes, it is a minor annoyance and actually seems to be counter to Apple's historical product design

When you say annoying, what do you mean specifically?

I've been looking to buy "portrait focal length" cameras. You can get the AliExpress equivalent of a standard phone camera, dressed up as compatible to Raspberry Pi, and somebody even brought wide-angles to that market once, but no-one seems to have the long focal lengths.

Optics is weird. Either a device becomes a thing and then it's immediately a huge product, or the availability is straight up zero.

Are you sure these cameras are cheap? Regardless, these are regularly off-the-shelf sensors that "anyone" can buy (such as the ISOCELL GN1 https://semiconductor.samsung.com/image-sensor/mobile-image-... ).

Hell, my Nokia 1020 was faster with the 48MP resolution

This is related to the conservation of Etendue [1] in an optical system, which is basically a statement of conservation of power: you rightly point out that radiant flux is determined by the source and constant – and for that reason, the primary numerical aperture or f-number of the lens is ultimately what really matters – assuming, as you point out, that you want to use the narrower DoF that arises (in which case SNR scales as the square root of sensor area).

However, sensors get noise from different sources: and while you're right to point out that you might be up against photon shot noise, read noise goes down with pixel area: so, as long as pixel area scales with sensor area, and that scaling is performed by uniformly scaling the pixel, the larger sensor is intrinsically "a little bit better". Quoting shamelessly again from wikipedia [2]

> The read noise is the total of all the electronic noises in the conversion chain for the pixels in the sensor array. To compare it with photon noise, it must be referred back to its equivalent in photoelectrons, which requires the division of the noise measured in volts by the conversion gain of the pixel. This is given, for an active pixel sensor, by the voltage at the input (gate) of the read transistor divided by the charge which generates that voltage, CG = V_{rt}/Q_{rt}. This is the inverse of the capacitance of the read transistor gate (and the attached floating diffusion) since capacitance C = Q/V. Thus CG = 1/C_{rt}.

As capacitance is proportional to area, pixel area matters here – read noise is proportional to it linearly. In low-light conditions, read noise dominated most cellphone sensors (mostly for the above).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etendue [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_sensor_format#Read_noise

A real macro lens on a DSLR is like that. You could stop the lens down for more to be in focus, but then because you’re getting close to a pinhole camera you need a TON of light.

Maybe the iPhone would do better in studio conditions, I don’t know.

But it’s a very tough problem.

Perhaps it’s technically inaccurate but seems easy to read it as:

“ A nice side benefit of a larger sensor is a bit more depth of field effect”.

Eg referring to the visual effect of shallow DoF, not the DoF itself. Because the following sentence is unambiguous about his intent, I’m inclined to not be overly pedantic here and let us slide.

I think you're right. The point they were trying to make is that there is more separation between the subject and the background. So, in a way, an _improved_ DOF if not a _greater_ or _shallower_ DOF.

Maybe?

You're right, he should have written shallow depth of field.

I think it stems from the "depth of field effect" tool in post-processing, which then caused people to call the visual effect "depth of field" (instead of "shallowness of field" i guess)

I'd guess that Photoshop et al. are the cause, with virtual depth of field effects.

Because “depth of field is when blurry”

The HN game:

- Was it editorialized by the submitter?

- Was it changed by dang to de-clickbait it? (probably not in this case)

- Did one of HN's title filters remove some words?

That is strange. lol

Probably unintentional, but enough to get flagged for "editorializing" the title.

Because it's huge in clickbait. I've put it back in the title above.

character limit is my guess

I disagree and as a n00b/amateur I recently picked up my first "real" camera, a Fujifilm x-t20. I've managed to take some amazing photos that simply wouldn't have turned out as good on my iPhone 12.

I was sick of the smudgy look that happened often on the iPhone when the lighting wasn't perfect, and also there is a unique "look" that the Fuji mirrorless cameras spit out due to their x-trans sensor[1]. In my short 2 weeks with the camera I've had a ton of fun and gotten some great shots.

While no doubt the 14 pro is amazing, your statement isn't true.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X-Trans_sensor

> For anyone but professionals the reasons to buy a DSLR or mirrorless are virtually gone.

I'd say aesthetically, it's very difficult to get decent background seperation on a phone. The practical reasons for using a camera body (I kind of consider phones to be real cameras) is to deliver quality images and aesthetics that are not achievable trivially on the phone. There's a point where trying to use a phone the same way as a camera body actually becomes really awkward from both a user interface perspective and very difficult based on capabilities.

It's actually a bit infuriating how camera bodies have not been modernizing very much. You won't find many camera bodies having a built in GPS directly, no camera security options (anti-theft, preventing photo access, automatic cloud backup), I haven't found a single camera manufacturer phone app (tethers with camera) that actually works decently with RAW workflows. There is a demand for post-processing in cameras too, not for every photographer, but, fuji users in particular tend to use that camera because of its post-processing capabilities.

GPS is actually a pain for professionals that work in teams too even when you aren't using GPS for positioning. If you're covering an event and don't have GPS, your camera bodies won't usually have decently synchronised clocks and if you're trying to get photos from multiple photographers and trying to make a second by second story, the metadata in the photos will lead to a very jumbled mess quickly. Meanwhile, most phones are accurately keeping the time so perfectly, that if you import images from them, they're typically very well ordered.

You can have that. Just don't buy a new model "pro" iPhone...

Any cheap Android phone offers all that for 200 or even less.