The Only Phone Feature I Care About Now is a Macro Camera
If you can’t handle images of insects less cute than the jumping spider above, you probably won’t want to go any further.
I recently realized that my decade-long love affair with the flagship phone had ended. Mid-range phones are now better than I need them to be, so there’s no reason to pay the asking price for the best phones on the market.
This got me thinking: what is the feature that bothers me if a phone doesn’t have it? Something that, if a phone didn’t have it at all, would make it a no-go for me. Surprisingly, the only truly non-negotiable feature I can personally think of is a good macro camera.
Why Macro Changed the Way I Look at Phones
The first phone I owned that I noticed macro mode on was my old Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. Now, these phones don’t really have a dedicated macro lens like you would buy for an SLR or mirrorless camera. No, it’s usually a special mode of the ultra-wide camera, but the results are stunning nonetheless.
I’ve never been much of a photographer, although I’ve had camera phones for a little over 20 years, a few years before smartphones. I don’t really care about photographing landscapes or what I had for lunch. My use of phone cameras over the years has been largely utilitarian. Taking pictures of computer parts or sending my wife a picture of something in the store to make sure I’m buying the right one.
However, I have always been a fan of the little things. The only thing I wanted for my 4th grade birthday was a microscope (which I got) and I spent hours looking at salt crystals and bee stingers in a sample slide.
So, always having a camera that can capture the little flora and fauna I encounter has become the start of a new hobby. After a lot of practice, I dare say I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and I’m saving up for a suitable probe-style macro lens for our mirrorless camera, but even then, your phone’s macro mode is what you’ll always have ready.
Why I won’t buy a phone without one
This is why I can’t bring myself to buy a phone without a good macro camera. Having to pull out an SLR or attach a macro lens kit to my phone means I’ll simply miss out on the great photos I want. The vast majority of the best macro photos I’ve taken only exist because I was able to whip out my phone and have it ready in seconds.
I’m reaching the end of the contract with my iPhone 14 Pro and I’m looking for a good mid-range Android phone to replace it. My wife enjoys her Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, and it’s not that expensive these days, but it can’t do what I need it to do. Even the novelty of the screen is not enough to make me sacrifice macro mode. Even when mid-range phones have macro modes, they may not be very good at all. Maybe that’s what keeps me in the flagship arena, or more likely, it makes me buy a much cheaper flagship from the year before.
The little details that I like
It’s easy to completely ignore the tiny ecosystems that do their thing all around us every day. As you sit and work at a desk, a war is going on right under your nose between two armies of ants. Somewhere, a little gecko is stalking insects. It never ends and it’s endlessly fascinating to me.
What’s even better about these macro modes is that you don’t have to limit yourself to photos either, you can even shoot videos at this scale. It’s just a pain to keep things in focus with such a shallow depth of field.
Yet insects, spiders and reptiles contain too many details that the naked eye cannot see. Here are some of my favorite photos I’ve taken over the last four years.
I plan to glue the best of them together and print them as high quality on A3 paper, frame them and display them in my home. I’ve never had the urge to decorate my house with photos I took myself until now, so personally, this is a big deal for me.
How macro cameras are changing phone photography
Just as adding ultra-wide and telephoto lenses expands the type of photos you can take with a phone, macro modes expand the bottom end of the range of possible photos. You can now capture distant, large, and (with macro shots) very small or close-up subjects. It’s a whole new realm of creative expression that makes you aware of the small-scale world that most of us blindly walk through every day.
The idea of losing access to this part of the photography field doesn’t sit well with me. I’d rather give up screen resolution, processing power, or even a little battery life instead of giving up a good macro camera.
8/10
- Brand
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Samsung
- SoC
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Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy
- Display
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6.9″, 3120 x 1440, AMOLED LTPO, 120 Hz
- RAM
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12 GB
