Smartphone cameras may have stretched too wide

35mm and the truth

You might not have noticed if you’re the type to upgrade your smartphone frequently, but their primary cameras have been getting wider and wider throughout the years. While phones are now indisputably the most popular cameras in the world, most manufacturers have settled on a type of lens that used to be considered quite exotic and challenging to use in the camera space.

The main camera on the iPhone 17 Pro, for example, has the same field of view as a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera, which is the general photographic standard for measuring focal lengths. This is a perspective that few companies would have considered using on a point-and-shoot camera in the past — it’s compositionally awkward for a non-zooming lens. Nonetheless, it is clearly now a new standard of its own.

But what if there’s a better way?