An iPhone is great for capturing spur-of-the-moment snapshots/videos that would otherwise be missed by the time one gets out/sets up a camera. However, it is not a replacement for those that really care about great images. It's a fantastic supplement.
iPhone images lack the latitude to process the photos much making high quality / large prints difficult to possible to produce. It also only saves photos as compressed jpegs. I'd like to see a RAW option to preserve a little more flexibility in post. This is more feasible in the near-term than an optical zoom.
For people who want something super-compact, a good camera option is a Sony RX100 - the sensor is much larger, it has a quality Zeiss lens (with optical zoom), saves RAW files for flexibility in post, and has other imaging advantages.
For those people who otherwise would never buy or use a discreet camera, an iphone is good enough because it captures things that would never be captured. For people who would buy or use a discreet camera or want flexibility with the images, an iphone isn't a great choice as a replacement.
iPhone images lack the latitude to process the photos much making high quality / large prints difficult to possible to produce. It also only saves photos as compressed jpegs. I'd like to see a RAW option to preserve a little more flexibility in post. This is more feasible in the near-term than an optical zoom.
For people who want something super-compact, a good camera option is a Sony RX100 - the sensor is much larger, it has a quality Zeiss lens (with optical zoom), saves RAW files for flexibility in post, and has other imaging advantages.
For those people who otherwise would never buy or use a discreet camera, an iphone is good enough because it captures things that would never be captured. For people who would buy or use a discreet camera or want flexibility with the images, an iphone isn't a great choice as a replacement.
