Phonetography

[swifty]

At the rate that serious camera makers are 'innovating'(if that's an appropriate term to use ) .. smart phones will eventually overtake all the serious camera devices capabilities ... combined.

It won't happen soon, and it may not happen in our lifetimes, but I seriously think it may eventually happen (unless of course the serious camera makers start pushing features boundaries).

Haha.. I was actually probably not looking that far into the future. Not that its not exciting but the realms of possibilities just explodes and we starts to loose context and familiarity with what we have today. Let's for argument sake keep this to the next generation or two of smartphones. Which at the rate they come out, can be just 1-2 years.

There're a lot of material in your next section,AK so rather than address all the points, I'll try and discuss some general issues raised.

Certainly workflow is a big issue and at the heart of why smartphones have been so successful. For the average consumer, the destination for those photos are immediate use/sharing via web publishing.
But we're talking about moving beyond this and whether smartphones can be improved to cater for enthusiast photographers too. If so, how?
But stepping back a bit, do we need to do this at all (cater for photo enthusiasts)? Afterall if the enthusiast photographer market is small, why bother at all.
Well, there is bragging rights. Often the consumer mentality is not so much 'will I need it/use it'. Its 'what's the best?' If you have the best photographic smartphone out there, the message will be perpetuated and win over some consumers regardless of the way they use the phone. Nokia somewhat went down this route with their Pureview phones but the original 808 was a Symbian and the newer ones are Windows 8 which aren't OS with significant market share. I'm reminded of the camera industry where no.3 and beyond always have to take bigger risks to knock off no.1 and 2 but its hard to gain traction.

So back to this workflow issue.
Do I really want to process RAW shots on my phone? Do I need RAW for every photo? For me, the answer is no on both accounts.
But do I want RAW photos some of the time - yes. Do I want access to those RAW files off my phone - yes again.
What happens to all the RAW photos cluttering up the phone storage? AK mentioned access to removable storage mediums. For us Apple users, sadly this has never been an option. But it would be nice to dump the RAWs in a microSD whilst keeping all jpegs on-phone.
Cloud storage is becoming more mainstream and likely to be increasingly important.
Features such as handoff on the iOS allows data to be synced across all your devices when you have access to wifi.
Right now I don't pay to increase my free iCloud storage but I do pay for a manicured web gallery on Smugmug, money which can easily be diverted to the other cloud service that offers me the best convenience and features.
Its not hard to imagine manageable cloud syncing where the appropriate data is made available to the appropriate devices. I'm leaving this quite open because what's appropriate for one person will be different to others. For me with an established photo editing workflow using LR, I can't be bothered with others unless it can be shown to offer me significant improvements or convenience. Which means RAW files are only worked on on my laptop (or desktop).

Onto other aspects, and you mentioned not restricting the smartphones.
I'd argue many restrictions are required otherwise we might get a 'The Homer' car (for those familiar with Simpsons references) situation. Basically they let Homer, the average American man unrestricted design of a car that suits him and it turns out to be a disaster.
Sure there are tinkerers out there willing to hack their phones (though I'd argue the percentage is relatively small) but the most successful single smartphone today exists in probably the most restricted ecosystem available. I'm trying not to sound like an Apple fanboy here although I think I'm failing LOL.
On the flip side, of course there are plenty of flaws in the Apple ecosystem. The most obvious being that if Apple didn't design it to operate that way and you want it to, you're gonna have a baaaaaad day.

I'm less familiar with the Android OS but being the largest volume of users on a world wide level (although fragmented into many varieties of Android) how Google perceive photography on the software and workflow side will likely have a large impact on manufacturer's hardware.

Back to phone photographic hardware.
The sensor is restrictive, the lens are restrictive, the ergonomics are restrictive, the flash is restrictive yet despite all these restrictions they actually make great photographic devices many of the times.
We're back to the form factor conundrum as their primary function remains a phone/web device so maybe there're no ways around these restrictions... or is there?

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I think phones can provide damn good quality at times. In the hands of a photographer or person who understands how to make the most of the limitations of the sensor size and other factors.

Absolutely. Making the most of limitations sums up my feeling.
Can we reduce some of those limitations and realise more of the camera phone's potential?

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Random thought:
With all the sensors (proximity, accelerometer, gyroscope etc.) and processing power of modern smartphones, they make excellent stitching cameras.
If it doesn't exist already someone needs to make a Brenizer method stitching app. It effectively increases your sensor size shooting (semi) static subjects. Its only a slight extension of the stich panorama.
If you could do that with a longer focal length lens then you can start to more effectively control DOF for isolation despite the smaller sensor restriction.

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More thoughts:
I see that the immediate use of camera phone images is usually for web publishing. So lets forget RAW for a moment. The market that wants this may indeed be too small.
But the market for image filters are surprisingly big. I remember being gobsmacked by purchase price of Instagram by Facebook.
A quick search of the App store reveals no filter app from the old film giants like Fujifilm and Kodak.
Apps exists that help you send your photos to their printing kiosk though. Seem like they may be playing catch up with how people commonly use their phone images.
I'm pretty sure Fujifilm and Kodak should understand colour as good or better than others, especially their own films that many filter companies are emulating.
Seems like they are missing out on big opportunities with things they are already the best at.