PapuaNewGuinea

But smartphone cameras use telecentric lens…

Are you sure those half-second lags were there when it was new, or it’s just software becoming more inefficjent as usual, as newer models set a new performance baseline?

Lossy codecs suck at gapless playback. Some have support via vendor-specific extensions, but it’s hit or miss whether a particular player will support it. With FLAC you can always be 100% sure that your album is gapless.