I'm not sure how a phone with a 12MP can change an industry if flagships releases year ago had 21MP. Adding another lens is nice but if you are still 1/2 of the resolution of a DSLR or other phones it is quite funny to call it revolutionary.
MP resolution is not so important. What really matters is lens quality. You can get DSLRs with 12-18 MPs that take pretty nice pictures, though at a lower resolution. There were indeed 16+ MP snapshot cameras five years ago, but the pictures they took were generally rubbish, because of poor lens quality.
Waaay back in the day, I worked for a famous news agency that you've all heard of. We had blown up on all the walls large prints of some award-winning images, 40"x60" or bigger that had come from cameras like the original game-changer for photojournalism, the Nikon D1 which were all of 2.7 megapixels. And these prints looked fantastic. Since then I have never cared about megapixel count, it's a relatively minor factor in the final quality of an image.
On the flipside, the smaller the sensor, the deeper your field of view becomes at a given aperture (f-stop). This is really great for phone cameras, since it makes focusing a lot easier.
Think about it, when was the last time you got a photo or video that was out of focus on your phone? With a full-size sensor DSLR at f/1.8, I've seen professional broadcasters really struggle to deliver in-focus images. In fact, most broadcast cameras for television have significantly smaller sensors in order to get wide DOF at a large aperture.
I mean sure, super-shallow DOF with tons of bokeh can look really pretty when done well, but for 99.9% of people it would give crappy out-of-focus shots.
Can anyone explain why this is downvoted? If you want confirmation/more in-depth info, here is a great post on how sensor size affects DoF, using real examples from a full-frame DSLR compared to an iPhone 6:
> when was the last time you got a photo or video that was out of focus on your phone?
Um... every day? Every version of Android released since Jelly Bean has made the focusing worse on my Nexus 4. Right now if I don't explicitly tap on a subject to focus then the camera will always take an out of focus shot.
Eh. Sensor size increases low light performances a lot, and gives much better performances per increase that lens quality. Besides, lowest I saw a phone go is f2.4, it's going to take a while to reach dslr quality
Not saying I agree with the revolutionary label, but if there's any example of a stat on a device turning into a semi-meaningless game of min/maxing, it's camera resolutions.
Much more people will decide to buy iPhone 7Plus instead of new DSLR when difference in photos is not so obvious for amateurs. Double-camera is a driver for this decision, not size of sensor.
