CNET:

The Pixel 3 camera holds its own against Apple’s iPhone XS despite having one camera tied behind its back. It all but dispenses with the camera’s flash, using new low-light shooting abilities instead. And it offers enthusiasts a radically new variety of raw image that opens up photographic flexibility and artistic freedom.

It’s all possible because of a field called computational photography, a term invented in 2004 by Google distinguished engineer Marc Levoy while he was at Stanford, before he moved full-time to Google Research. Long gone are the days when photography was all about glass lenses and film chemistry. Fast receding are first-generation digital cameras that closely mirror the analog approach.

Now our cameras rely as much on computers as optics. And what we’ve seen so far is only the beginning.

I post this less to say one camera is better than the other but to point out as advancements happen in computational photography, everyone who shoots photos with their smartphone benefit as manufacturers leapfrog each other with each release.

I think there will always be a place for DSLRs but for more and more people, not only is their smartphone “good enough”, it’s become a damn good camera in its own right.