Honestly, as someone who is starting to go long-sighted, this is tempting me towards getting a 13 pro (or Pixel 6 i it is similarly good).

I frequently find myself using my phone camera to zoom in on ridiculously small text on things, but my phone has always struggled with it. Good phone macro will be a feature I would use all the time.

I've heard of people who are very near-sighted using their smartphones to help them find their glasses. Just hold the phone close to your face, so you can see it in focus, and open the camera app. Voila, you can see the whole room in focus!

Never thought of that. Good idea

I don't want to interfere with a rationalization for a new phone, but how does your phone struggle? I use my iPhone SE (Gen 1) for this all the time.

I have a Moto Z2 Play and its camera is not great when close up, it stuggles to focus.

I suspect a lot of current phones would do a good job with this task, but I'm on the lookout for something that will last me 5 years or more so the 13 pro is in the short list.

The iPhones have a special magnifier feature specifically for this purpose. With one tap it opens the camera, focuses close and does a little digital enlargement on a live image. It will be interesting if they incorporate the Macro mode in that feature soon.

It’s nice to have a do-all device, but a head-mounted dental loupe is hands-free and can light up your subject.

Or just old people like me trying to read serial numbers on electronics hardware.

Yep! I knew I wasn't the only one :)

You can't really use machine learning based image upscaling for that type of work