Whilst true it seems likely that had sensor technology not evolved with point and shoots, phones wouldn't have been able to include cameras - certainly not as quickly as they did.

Phones are only better than the entry point and shoots, and have absolutely demolished that market.

Where they compete with more advanced point and shoots (I.e. the 1” sensor class) is in their ability to take the picture, edit it, and publish it seemlessly. They only match those cameras if you are consuming on a phone as well; as soon as anything higher quality comes into play their shortcomings become clear very quickly.

I’m a hobby photographer and haven’t bothered with a pocket camera for years due to this. I have a full frame Canon and my iPhone and that’s a good enough divide for me.

Conversely a phone will get you "acceptable" quality very reliably, whereas something like my Canon 5D (outdated now I know) always felt like a complete wildcard, and since I don't know photography, not worth the hassle at all.

Which is to say: my phone will reliably get me a perfectly good image even blown up in size for viewing - which is to say, no blurriness under most conditions. My 5D wants me to account for all sorts of stuff, and then I still wind up with a blurry image or can't tell if I got the focus dead on for sharpness or a dozen other things.

I think that's largely because the post-image review on dedicated cameras sucks, whereas phone screens are high resolution with pinch-to-zoom so you can actually inspect the output quite quickly. I am very surprised no one's cottened onto making a higher-end camera which slots a phone right onto the back so you can real-time view what you've just taken a picture of to check it came out okay, because it's the biggest flaw.

I am not so surprised, the challenges for connecting a phone to a camera quick and reliably is formidable. You need a connection capable of transferring a several hundreds megabit file in a reasonable time (a RAW is like 40MB). Bluetooth just won't cut it. Of course, in theory WiFi Direct would do it but then Apple obviously does something else. Wired connection, unless you want to fiddle with the connector would require magnetic connectors and at least today there are no USB C magnetic cables which would or rather could adhere to the specification. It's been three years since https://twitter.com/USBCGuy/status/1186718432932159488 and there's still nothing.

And of course this is just the electronics, then you'd need to work something out mechanically. It needs to attach safely and quickly but also detach when needed. It's instructive how most quality phone cases are not universal rather there's a separate one for each model.

> since I don't know photography, not worth the hassle at all.

I think that's the market that was destroyed though. Just the average person that wants a photo can just use their phone. But if you still want professional quality (or even as a hobby) a dedicated camera is still highly beneficial. The difference is that even in the automatic mode (which you should learn to not use) you _just_ get the photo. Your phone on the other hand does a significant amount of post processing. You have little control over this, which isn't going to make it great for even amateur photography. But just for posting to your instagram, yeah, phones are going to win.

I don’t disagree with what you’re saying but want to add that phones are good enough for journalism and reporting (whereas previously photojournalists were often identified by their Leicas).

Oh I agree with this.

It's worth pointing out that Kodak did pioneer digital photography but were too early for it to be affordable with acceptable quality for the average consumer. In niche fields like photo-journalism they were the king of digital until they weren't.

There was probably an exit ramp for some of the smaller camera makers in the consulting/branding game. Once camera phones became good enough people might willingly use them, there was an opportunity to position yourself as "the phone with real camera expertise behind it". Send over a few engineers and optics experts to the phone manufacturer, develop some co-branded apps, and bingo, the new Xiaomi P300 Presented By Minolta.

I know there were occasional "camera first" designs (the Lumia 1020 comes to mind) but they tended to be creamed on the market for reasons other than the camera factor. Modern phones are a study in "okay, you compensated for mediocre optical components with a lot of software", so I have to wonder what we'd get if we combined them with inherently better optics.

I'd think the possible targets here would have been the "second tier" camera brands that had narrower product lines and less distribution, but decent brand recognition. It didn't matter if you were cut out of the point-and-shoot market if nobody was buying your point-and-shoot cameras in the first place.

Did the camera firms themselves reject the concept of slumming with VGA sensors and plastic lenses, or was there just no percieved market?