Three changes I would like to see in smartphone camera in 2022

Smartphone Camera has become the extreme differentiating factor among the flagship models. Manufactures are willing to do anything to keep their name on top thus we have seen some insane and weirdest camera from 108 MP lens to huge camera bump. We have come a long way in the world of smartphone photography and still we have miles to go. But before we run those miles, I hope to see these three changes to smartphone camera.

1) Adaptation of Gimbal into main camera

When I thought innovation has reached its peak and nothing can be improvised in existing camera set-up, vivo launched vivo X50 Pro – The world’s first smartphone with built in gimbal in 2020. In smartphone, videography is not appreciated as much as photography. Everyone is focused on improving the photography, Gimbal camera made videography more stable.

Image credit: vivo

I honestly thought more brands would adopt gimbal in their flagship and soon it will be common feature in budget smartphone. But eventually hype died and nobody even noticed the future of videography on smartphone. I hope in 2022 Gimbal camera gets picked-up by all the major smartphone brand and it becomes mainstream feature.

2) Under Display camera

We have already started seeing under display front camera in some Flagship like Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Xiaomi Mi Mix 4. But the innovation is still in development and hasn’t reached a point where it can be rolled out to mass users through adaptation in budget segment smartphones.

Image Credit: MKBHD

In Samsung fold 3, we can still see translucent aperture in the screen and the images captured through front camera are blurry which are sharpened through machine learning. I would love to see a clean no notch, punch hole free display in 2022.

3) No more unnecessary cameras

More number of cameras might lead to good marketing but not better photography. Smartphone marketing has been all about photography since last couple of years and that’s working. People are bragging about the number of cameras on their phone but at the same time they hardly use the extra cameras, especially Macro. OnePlus even gave fourth camera as Monochrome camera in OnePlus 9 Pro just to keep up with trend of higher number of cameras. Nokia even took it to next step and released Nokia pure view with five cameras on the back.

Macro camera is overhyped and can also be integrated with ultrawide lens. It’s just clean marketing strategy for selling the unnecessary features. I hope they stop with this trend in 2022 and focus on improving main camera.

Image Credit: Nokia

What other changes you would like to see in upcoming smartphone? Leave the comment below.