I wanted to share some of my thoughts on the direction of mobile photography—namely, where things are headed and what you can expect for the OnePlus 6T.In my lifetime, I’ve witnessed two major shifts in photography: the development of digital sensors and the convergence of the camera and the mobile phone.When I was young, photography was a relatively niche and cost-prohibitive hobby. Not everyone could afford to take pictures, and if you did, you certainly had to make every shot count. Many cameras lacked auto-exposure modes or even basic light meters, so you had to learn how to expose your images properly. I was never much of a good photographer, and often-times, my friends and family were disappointed by the pictures I took of them. Imagine that—to come back from a memorable trip, with everyone excited to see the pictures. You wait at the lab for the film to process, only for the photos to come out blurry and poorly composed!I remember how excited I was when the first digital cameras were announced. Sure, the designs were clunky, and the image quality was lacking, but the advantages were obvious: digital photography reduced the cost of taking photos and gave people instant feedback—no more waiting for photos to develop.This is a theme that has been repeated throughout the history of photography. Each photographic advancement has afforded users increased convenience and accessibility.Nowhere is this more apparent than mobile photography. The smartphone is a great photographic tool not just because it allows us to carry a camera with us at all times, but because it allows us to easilythe photos we take. Now, you can shoot, review, and share your photos, all from one convenient device. If digital photography allowed us to takephotographs, then mobile photography gave us a compellingto do so.People take more photos than ever, so it’s a given that smartphone cameras need to be fast and reliable. And to a certain degree, most smartphone cameras nowadaysfast and reliable—in all but the most demanding situations. Of course, that’s not to say there isn’t a lot of work left to do. On the contrary, there’s more work to do than ever, because putting on that final layer of polish, going into painstaking details, is hard work that demands a lot of patience and ingenuity.This is all part of a broader initiative to make the image-making process more direct, simple, and intuitive. The goal, as always, is to allow users to create incredible images more easily. In a past deep-dive, I talked at length about honest design. That concept extends to the camera on the OnePlus 6T.I believe a smartphone camera is at its best when it’s able to produce images that remain faithful and true to the scene it’s representing. That means a variety of things, including good exposure, accurate colors, and the preservation of fine detail. From a technical perspective, these are the essential qualities of a good photo. The user can just snap, send, and share.Of course, we want to give users the option of editing the photos they take as well. In the film days, you could pick out the exact type of film you wanted to put in your camera. Some produced high-contrast images with vivid colors, while others produced low-contrast images with soft colors. The point is, you got to choose the exact look you want—a look that color scientists spent years tweaking.With smartphone cameras, the smartphone itself is like the film stock. Let me explain: when you take a photo with your smartphone, the smartphone is pulling raw data from the camera sensor. It then interprets and compresses this data, creating an image file that’sto share and send, and broadlyon all devices. However, certain in-camera processing can hurt the final quality of the image. You can only do so much to correct an overly sharpened image. Excessive noise reduction can be permanent when applied in-camera. As with anything, moderation is key. A light touch is all that’s needed.That’s not to say there isn’t any room for fun filters or editing. In fact, as I scroll through the #ShotonOnePlus campaign, it’s easy to see that many of the photos are edited in some way.With the OnePlus 6T, we wanted to better connect users to the image-making process, to allow them to create documents with honest results that preserve the special moments in their day-to-day lives. And if they want, they can adjust their photos to suit their taste. As always, I look forward to seeing the OnePlus community share their best photos with the world.