We remember our first cellphone purchased that had a camera, in 2002. It was heavily researched and nabbed at Best Buy the day it came out. It was a Nokia 3650, cutting edge at the time, with color screen, and (stunner!) a 0.3 Megapixel camera. 😆

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The photos it took were horrendous, small, grainy, poor color, and bad resolution in even the best of light. Night photos were quite simply impossible.

Fast forward to 2020, and we’re on the 11th generation iPhone, with three cameras that work together, creating images so crisp, you’d swear they were taken on a big SLR camera rig.

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Below are the winners of Apple’s Night mode photo challenge, where people from all over the world showcase what an un-retouched cell phone photo can look like.

The winning photos are beautiful captures of rural and urban life, all remarkable photos on their own, and even more so when you realize they’re captured on a thin slab of metal and glass in your pocket.  What will phone photography hold in another 20 years?

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Konstantin Chalabov (Moscow, Russia), iPhone 11 Pro

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Andrei Manuilov (Moscow, Russia), iPhone 11 Pro Max

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Mitsun Soni (Mumbai, Maharashtra, India), iPhone 11 Pro

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Rubén P. Bescós (Pamplona, Navarra, Spain), iPhone 11 Pro Max

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Rustam Shagimordanov (Moscow, Russia), iPhone 11

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Yu “Eric” Zhang (Beijing, China), iPhone 11 Pro Max 


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Author

Ben VanderVeen is the founder and editor of Moss & Fog, one of the web’s longest-running visual culture destinations. Since 2009, he’s been finding and framing the most beautiful, surprising, and thought-provoking work in art, architecture, design, and nature — reaching over 325,000 readers each month. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

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