One of the advantages of the fully formed JPEG output of a smartphone computational camera is the total shift in post processing. The smartphone photograph is a finished product ready for use in almost any situation. If there is any adjustment needed it is usually a small, global “tweak”.
The photographs shown here were all taken in May 2026 using three different camera systems, eight with the original Apple iPhone (a pixel based, fixed processing camera, 37mm equivalent, producing a 2megapixel JPEG file), eight with a Samsung Galaxy S7 (an early computational camera system, 26mm equivalent, producing a 12 megapixel JPEG file ) and eight with an iPhone 15 Pro Max (a fully computational camera system, 35mm equivalent, producing a 24 megapixel JPEG file). All of the photographs were taken at the same place, and at the same time and at the same distance to the subject.
All pretty standard stuff so far… here is where it gets interesting from a workstation / workflow point of view…
All of the photographs had any needed processing done on an HP 625 laptop…
...not recognizing this as a current or recent model? The HP 625 was released in 2010 with an AMD Athlon II processor running at 2gHz. This is a two-core CPU with limited cache, no hyper-threading, and an extremely limited GPU in it’s Radeon HD 4200 graphics system. The laptop has 6gb of integrated memory.
Obviously not a candidate for a modern version of Windows, the system is running the latest release of the Linux Mint Xfce operating system, using KDE's digiKam as the processing software. digiKam is a free and open source photo management and processing software that will run on Linux, Windows or Mac. It should be noted that the optional AI components offered after installation were not installed.
This absolutely low-power system had no difficulty at all dealing with the 2mp files from the original iPhone or with the 12mp files from the Galaxy. There was a one or two second hesitation opening the 24mp iPhone 15 files but that was the only issue. During processing all instructions were carried out instantly and, according to the Psensor monitor software, the system never broke a sweat as processor temperature never got above 60 degrees C.
And while we are seeing more ‘large-number’ sensors out there – 50mp, 108mp, 200mp – 12mp is still the de facto output standard for smartphone photography, with most systems pixel-binning down to that range. Apple is the acknowledged outlier at 24mp, but only in its main camera.
The upshot of all of this is you don’t need a monster Hollywood-size workstation or even a new system. Your five year old laptop with the right setup will do just fine for the foreseeable future.
As you look through the photographs please remember that any adjustments were made in keeping with the camera system’s character. Apple tends to be more conservative in its processing and display, gearing its processing to the widest possible range of displays while Samsung is more aggressive and tends to gear its output to the phone’s own display.
