That analogy breaks down a bit because in the former case, there are very many circumstances where the small unpowered tool is the best fit for a job (touching up an area, finishing off a mortise, trimming off something by hand where a power tool would not be able to give the proper feedback).
In photography, the preference is a lot more subjective, at least when it comes to 35mm formats.
Most carpenters will carry hand saws and chisels with them even if they have all the top of the line power tools because they remain relevant and immensely useful.
You can make a scanner back out of a normal CCD film scanner. It comes with a lot of downsides since you have a giant "rolling shutter" that works on the scale of 10s+ but it does give you an image.
I suspect the cost was in the millions of dollars for the one-of-a-kind sensor, but I bet you could get a great deal on a second one since they've already done the R&D!
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vera_C._Rubin_Observatory#Came...
https://petapixel.com/2018/04/17/largesense-unveils-worlds-f...
I must admit 12MP is lower than I expected. It seems the intent was to use large pixels to get huge tonal range rather than small pixels for resolution.
Bigger sensors tend to have shallower depth of field for a given aperture, which requires stopping down the lens further or using lens movements to compensate to keep the subject in focus. But that can be desirable where you want to isolate a subject or otherwise create an effect.
However, stopping down further also tends to cause an increase in diffraction as the Airy discs become larger and start to engage each other in constructive/destructive wave interference which reduces the theoretical resolution of the system. This particularly affects smaller sensors but since you stop a larger lens down farther it also affects them as well.
And in contrast - smaller sensors need wider apertures for a given amount of subject isolation, but they are also subject to diffraction at much wider apertures. This means you need a lens that can deliver maximum resolution at very wide apertures. This is why your cellphone camera has a f/2 or f/1.8 lens, the sensor is tiny and it needs a very wide aperture or diffraction will rob the image of all sharpness. It's also why, for the most part, cellphone cameras haven't gone much above the 10-12mp range.
https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/diffraction-phot...
(I've always suspected there is probably some asymptotic limit to the amount of resolution that can be extracted for a given amount of depth of field, even with an infinitely large film/sensor size. as you increase the sensor size you have to stop down further and the diffraction becomes stronger and limits the lp/mm)
Note some people use large format negatives for ultra-sharp small prints, in that case you might be looking for 1000 dpi or higher to match the fidelity of a large negative.
As someone who shoots film, there are a number of reasons, one being the asthetic you get from film that you can't (even with x hours in Photoshop) get from digital. I shoot large format and there are no (within my budget, at the very least) 8" x 10" digital sensors.
Film also more or less forces you to make prints. I would hazard a guess that a small percentage of digital photos ever make it to print and half of a photograph for me is a tactile thing you can hold in your hands and give to someone else.
Lastly, it's the process. That's something I can't explain.