Poll: Do you ever shoot images at your phone camera's full resolution?

It’s tough to find a smartphone these days that doesn’t have at least one high-resolution camera aboard. You can find 48MP, 50MP, 64MP, and 108MP cameras on even cheap phones today. In fact, we’re also seeing 200MP phones on flagship phones and upper mid-rangers.

So that got us wondering whether you actually shoot images at your phone camera’s full resolution (i.e. 32MP or higher). Go ahead and vote in our poll below and leave a comment if you’d like to elaborate on your choice.

Almost all phones today default to a so-called pixel-binned shooting mode for photos. Pixel binning sees data from adjacent camera pixels combined into one, resulting in reduced resolution but cleaner, brighter snaps. These shots typically weigh in at 8MP to 16MP and feature much smaller file sizes than a full-resolution snap. So we can understand if you stick to this default shooting mode and don’t opt for the full-resolution shooting option.

Still, many phones indeed have a full-resolution mode (with the exception of devices like the Pixel 7 series), and this can be quite handy in ideal conditions. Using the full-resolution mode can deliver plenty more detail than the default capture mode in daytime scenarios, although elevated noise levels aren’t uncommon. This mode can sometimes deliver a more natural-looking image too compared to the standard shooting mode.