It seems to be a good enough balance between the resolution size (which is sufficient for most people's needs), camera specs (e.g. pixel size, ability to record 4k and such) and the drawbacks (file size, processing power needed to process the pictures etc.). More on reddit.com

You already have everything you need. The 4mm is the physical focal length, 26mm is the FF-equivalent. Sensor size: You have the size of a single pixel, so just multiply the 1.4µm by the x and y-dimensions of the image (before downsizing, etc.). You can sanity check this by comparing the crop factor from the focal length to the crop factor from the sensor dimensions. I found the iPhone 12 resolution as 4042x3024, so sensor size is 4042*1.4µm and 3024*1.4µm, so 5.66mm by 4.23mm. Crop factor is 26/4 = 6.5 going by the given focal length values. 5.66mm*6.5 = 36.79mm which is quite close to the ideal 36.00mm. For sensor height we get 27.5mm but the iPhone sensor is a different aspect ratio (4:3 compared to the typical 3:2 sensors in cameras). Not as exact as one would like, but it is a good starting point for you. What might help you could be narrowing down the focal length by using the sensor measurements from above and getting a more precise value for the focal length or angle of view by measuring the distance from the camera and what the camera covers in x- and y-direction. More on reddit.com

Why does my iPhone 12 only go up to 5x I’m camera?? Why does my iPhone 12 only go up to 5x in camera 2642 1 · iPhone 11 Pro Cameras Does the Camera quality and performance of iPhone 11 Pro different than the cameras of iPhone 11 Pro Max due to the size? More on discussions.apple.com

"Megapixel" is a marketing buzzword used to compare megapixel capability between phones and cameras but falls way short of telling the entire story of overall image quality and largely irrelevant. What really matters in image quality is the cameras image sensors and the way they process images. A cheap Android with 108 megapixel capability still has to be cheap and affordable so people will buy them so they stick these impressive numbers for camera quality and skimp on the all-important image processors using smaller and inferior parts. Meanwhile, Apple clearly doesn't choose to market megapixel capability in their iPhones that comes anywhere close to Samsungs arbitrary marketing gimmick. Instead, the image sensors and processing used by cameras in iPhones are significantly more powerful and tends to perform better than Android in overall performance taking pictures in any lighting conditions. The cheapass Androids do a decent job with camera quality considering its basically a potato but if you had one in one hand with an image taken on an iPhone in the other hand to compare them, you would notice a significant difference in quality, less vibrant colors, and fuzzy or missing details. So what happens when you compare Flagship iPhones with Flagship Samsung models? Despite my disdain for Android and Samsung, I will acknowledge the top-of-the-line S23 Ultras do take really good pictures and somehow excel at capturing zoomed in quality images of the moon. But why the hell does it need four cameras on the back of it that take up quite a bit of space uncovered by protective cases and I've seen a few of them broken without being dropped. Conversely, the iPhone 15 Pro Max also takes some really good pictures with its three camera configuration. Both of the phones cameras excel at some areas in image quality and have their shortcomings in other areas. I took an S23 Ultra and 15PM and ran some camera testing at work one day for a wireless carrier. I took the two phones, one in each hand, and took photos with both of them at the same time in the same lighting conditions, and took photos outside in plenty of sunlight, indoors using artificial light, inside a small closet with lowlight, and one selfie for testing the front camera. So how did they compare? The outdoor bright sunlight photos were incredibly similar between the two phones and you would have to be a digital imaging expert to see any differences. Both were incredibly vibrant photos with an image focused on the same point on a flower. The indoor artificial lighting photos also seemed similar at first but we were able to see differences between the two. While the color quality remained similar, the iPhone image captured additional small details absent in the Ultra image. Additionally, the 15PM lowlight closet image managed to capture significantly more details with a more crisp image while the Ultra image appeared dark and useless. It should be noted Apple specifically mentions the iPhone's ability to perform well in lowlight and uses a dimly lit concert venue as an example in their marketing materials. We did not change any camera settings and if there were any special modes or switches for low light, we weren't aware of them. Finally, both selfie images seemed very similar and the Ultra image appeared slightly more vibrant while the 15PM managed to capture slightly more details. Based on this short, unscientific, impromptu camera testing experiment, both phones performed well under natural light, indoor artificial light testing gives the 15PM a slight edge, the 15PM performed better in lowlight conditions, while the front facing cameras produced similar quality images that appeared to sacrifice capturing additional image details for a slightly more vibrant looking image and in our opinion, we'd rather have the smaller details. Setting the phone comparison aside, take a 12 megapixel iPhone and compare the image quality with an image taken by a 12 megapixel DSL-R camera under the same lighting conditions. The DSL-R image will be vastly superior in every way because the image sensors are significantly bigger and produces larger pixels in the image producing more details and light processing power. Now that we've discussed megapixels versus image sensors and image quality differences between low priced and higher priced phones, how much better would you estimate the DSL-R's image would be compared to the cheap Android with a 108 megapixel camera. What about the S23 Ultra 200-megapixel camera compared to the DSL-R? Still no comparison which is why you see professional photographers using dedicated cameras and only pull out their phones in a pinch. The bottom line difference between Samsung and Apple when it comes to differences in specs and features appearing more powerful with Samsung boils down to Samsung pushing to packing new features and processing power into their phones as fast as possible no matter if those features are actually ready to be released as a finished product. Apple prefers to rollout significant feature changes like TouchID/FaceID more slowly and test the absolute shit out of them until they are perfected before releasing them. Right now consider how Samsung has already released multiple versions of two foldable smartphones for a couple years now which have been largely underwhelming, significantly flawed, and may have been recalled. Meanwhile, there have been no rumblings of talks from Apple that a foldable iPhone is anywhere remotely close to a final product release stage because Apple likes to learn from Samsung's mistakes. More on reddit.com