What is a phone doing that my DSLR isn’t?

This is the first question that we have to ask when comparing photos from our phone and camera. You can use the same focal length but get a radically different image. Sometimes, the differences are huge due to a few simple reasons. 

Your phone is automatic, but your DSLR requires a lot of manual control. This usually means that a mobile phone is doing a lot of work behind the scenes that you can’t control. For photographers like me, that simple fact is frustrating, because it does a lot of things that I don’t want it to. But for most users, it’s so good that they’re putting their DSLRs down forever. 

Mobile phones achieve the quality of images they do thanks to computational photography. Most phones are actually taking multiple photos in a short burst and then combining and editing them very quickly. If you watch carefully, you can typically see a dull, flat image on the screen for less than a second while the phone processes it.

Sources:

Shields, T. (2021, September 9). Why your iPhone or Android phone takes better images than a DSLR. Photography Academy. https://www.photographyacademy.com/why-phones-take-better-pictures-than-your-dslr/ 

Jones, B. (2022, June 22). iPhone vs. DSLR/Mirrorless Cameras - Which Should You Buy? TechReviewer. https://www.techreviewer.com/tech-answers/iphone-vs-dslr/