Cameras and photo quality are the new proving ground for flagship smartphones

The sincerest form of flattery: Motorola 'borrows' Apple's Shot on iPhone 6 campaign to show its new Moto X is a worthy competitor to Apple's camera phone

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Over 1.5bn new photos are shared every day on Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat alone, which equates to about 550bn a year

Forget processor speeds, performance or screen resolution. The battleground for flagship smartphones today is camera and picture quality. We're taking an insane amount of pictures on our devices, everything from baby and pet shots, to selfies and food shots and our smartphones are the best devices for this sort of manic snap-happy photography fest.

Most smartphone users don't even take calls anymore, they may message or text and even play games and use apps and social media services, but you can be certain almost everyone takes pictures and video. Smartphone makers have responded by packing in the megapixels and improving the aperture for better low-light photography.

Today's premium smartphones have optical image stabilization, they feature a gamut of controls and features that are fit for DSLRs of ILC's like manual control, RAW image capture, 1080p HD or 4K video as well a powerhouse sensors, cutting edge optics and even smart flash technology that puts a vast amount of photographic control in one's hands.

The advantage smartphones with cameras have over standalone cameras is that they're connected and they're smart. You shoot a picture and you can edit in camera, share to an app or service and even email to your pharmacy to get decent printouts.

The iPhone remains the king of this domain. Despite having a relatively small 8 megapixel camera, the iPhone's speed, ease of use and quick image processing almost guarantees great photos under any condition. If you're a newbie, you'll get great pictures but if you're a bit more thoughtful, you can make truly stunning images. 

Apple's 'Shot on iPhone 6' campaign takes photos taken by regular joes and janes on their iPhones and blows them up to mammoth proportions to fill up billboards and the sides of large buildings. The chosen photos look like they could have been shot with a full-frame film camera, but no....just an iPhone 6, with an 8 megapixel sensor.

'Shot on iPhone 6,' is more important than a list of specs and features that the majority of smartphone users don't care about. But if a phone you have with you can take freaking amazing photos and video, that's just another reason to stick with it.

The competition has responded. The LG G4 is likely the second best cameraphone in the market today, it has manual controls, a fast f/1.8 aperture fit for an expensive prime lens and does great at video too. The Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has proven to be an impressive point-and-shoot camera as well and the Galaxy S6 Edge takes this to an even higher level with intuitive controls.

Motorola, who just launched the Moto X Style and Moto X Play, kept repeating that their new 21-inch megapixel camera (a Sony sensor) is going to be a game changer. While this was happening, I was looking at my 16 Megapixel work Sony NEX camera and shaking my head. Smartphones are surpassing interchangeable lens cameras.

So, I expect camera performance and picture quality to weigh heavily on upcoming devices and this, after all, is an area where any consumer can compare quality, ease of use and performance and decide what works best for them.