My 5 cents about mobile phones (iphone 13) as a camera:
great for video (the need for an EVF and good controls is not as pronounced in my use case)
great for low light (due to their crazy computational photo stuff)
poor for anything else with regards to photography due to:
lack of control elements (buttons, dial, etc)
ugly form factor
inconvenient handling (you have to look at the screen to modify setting)
rather poor photo image quality (even compared to M4/3 (from my point of view))
In conclusion I believe it will be very hard to find a mobile phone that satisfies your requirement list. Although I make my phones last roughly 5-6 years with a new battery after 3-4 years of usage.
I am a bit afraid to suggest something related to smartphones because I can really open the classical ācan of wormsā
Joking aside, nowdays, in Europe, you are forced to spend around 900-1000 euros (to say the leastā¦) if you really want to buy a good product (e.g. to get excellent RAWs, to edit, later on, with your software). Sure, there are products which cost quite less but the final quality of their pictures is not the same, IMHO.
These very expensive smartphone are really big (in order to contain multiples lens) and therefore they are not so pocketable (quite the opposite, actually).
From what I have read and watched from many reviewers (e.g. on YouTube), nowdays, it looks like the best quality, as regards the hardware (lens), comes with Chinese products: for instance, the brand-new Xiaomi 15 pro.
Vivo also produces very ābeefyā smarphones as regards its hardware. E.g. the Vivo x100 Pro. They are about to release (maybe in Europe too) their X200 series.
Needless to say, the new Iphone 16 and Google Pixel 9 are both very good smartphones to take pictures. For video stuff, Iphone is probably still the best.
Size is not really related to camera count/sensor size but battery size. If you watch a teardown, the motherboard and the camera modules occupy almost no space, the large amount of vertical space is all battery. A good example is the asus zenfone 9 which was ātinyā (as tiny as modern phones are) and had very big lenses(or lens covers)/cameras for its size.
Very bad experience with my previous Xiaomi. Camera was OK, but they replace apps that work (Messages) by they own that donāt (no MMS), and to save battery life the system kills any application in sight (so my OSMAnd records about 50m before stopping, KDEConnect was never thereā¦). Changing for a Pixel7 was a life changer.
At work, we have always bought Galaxy smartphones (Samsung brand). Their software (that is, ONE UI interface) and the service of assistence (post rent) from Samsung is top-notch (at least, in Italy and from my past personal experienceā¦) .
IMHO, their RAWS (Dng) pictures are not so goodā¦
Comparing them with the RAWS of our Nikon cameras (both reflex and Z mirrorless) there is no contest in that Nikon wins hands downs (imho).
As regards the Chinese brands I have always read their hardware is veeery good even compared to Apple and Samsung (Cpu Snapdragon, Lens from Leica, big battery with super fast charging etc). As a consequence, nowdays, their price is high.
As regards their software the reviews, in Italy, are often not so good.
To be fair, It does look like these Chinese brands, lately, have improved their softwares together with their updates (for the security and so on). This being said, I am really curious to see how the newest Xiaomi 15 series will fareā¦
To be honest, the reviews for the Pixel 8 serie was not good either. Aside from the usual very good pictures from Google smartphones, Pixel 8 was not deemed so good as regards its hardware. When it was released it was also extremely ābuggyā.
This year Pixel 9 is a very different beast: quite improved indeed
The Panasonic Lx100 is a very enjoyable camera experience to use and great results although I had problems with dust getting in (usually rectified with a vaccum cleaner and a rolled up magazine). A bit larger than pocketable size but still very portable.
The Pixel software has been working hard over the last few years, at breaking my photography workflow. It used to be delightful, now I hate it.
Raws are now saved in a different directory than JPEGs, with different time stamps, so no raw developer can group them any more.
Raws used to be straight-forward DNGs with an embedded tone curve. Now they changed them and the white balancing is always way off and color-matching them to my camera pictures has become terribly tricky.
And worst of all, they simply removed the option to change the default camera app.
I am so pissed about that. Itās as if someone at Google looked at everything I liked about my phone and then systematically started to destroy that just to mess with me. And all of that during the lifetime of my current phone, delivered as software updates.
Have you tried the GrapheneOS camera app? I used to use it but I donāt remember very well how it handled RAWs.
I believe it uses Androidās camera APIs developed by Google so of they changed those things in the lower levels thereās not much hope. I have a pixel 6, Iāll give it a little test.
I have a Pixel 6a. If you disable the Google Camera App entirely in the system settings, you can indeed use a different camera app as your default. But itās a bit brittle, and I donāt trust it to last.
Well, I had mine cleaned (~200 ā¬) after roughly 10 years of semi-regular use (20k shots) to get rid of dust and a clogged zoom mechanism (the only downside of this camera that I can see). Thanks for the tip with the vacuum cleaner.
The original requirement was:
I assume that the LX-100 fits a coat pocket (at least for most coats) - if it fits a car glove compartment depends entirely on the car and the stuff already inside .
As far as I know GrapheneOSā camera uses CameraX. I donāt see it as brittle. As long as Google supports those APIās the camera will work, and they have all motivation to support them since many brands camera apps are built using them.
Edit: Misunderstood you I agree that google will do their best for you to use their app. They want to funnel people to Google Photos as best they can.
Whether a smartphone is satisfactory for you depends on how you do photography. Most smartphones are aimed people who donāt want any control, and prefer to have the software make all the shooting decisions and then enhance the results automatically with the latest algorithms and look which are fashionable.
This can be OK if you want to focus on composition, but challenging if you are used to the control even a pocket zoom offers. Variable aperture is still rare for phones, and I do not expect it to become widespread because the target audience does not really need it and may even find large apertures confusing (unexpected blurring for out of focus parts). Same applies to larger sensors, 1" is showing up for hideously expensive flagship models, but is still rare.
I expect that phone manufacturers will simulate photographic effects with software (eg now even cheapo phones have a decent āportraitā mode which blurs the background). And, interestingly, camera companies will release cameras that work like phones in the sense above. The Panasonic S9 is an example.
My EDC is a Casio Exilm EX-ZR 5000. Iāve had this a few years now. Not weather sealed but does take RAW. Cracking little camera, easy to chuck into your coat pocket.
Yeah, if you donāt know if you like photography, use your smartphone first and find out if you enjoy it, as phones will take you only so farā¦ then buy a camera
I agree that google will do their best for you to use their app. They want to funnel people to Google Photos as best they can.