What is the difference between a 16 MP smartphone camera and a 16 MP DSLR camera?

16 is just a number. it doesn’t define the picture quality alone. there are other factors which also responsible for a good photo.

• Pixel size

each pixel has information if a certain point in the picture. in the smartphone, there is a lack of space so there are many numbers of pixels in a small area but on the other hand in DSLR there are enough space for enough size of pixels. larger the pixel size maps the larger area and good quality information.

• Aperture

the aperture is the opening of the lens. larger aperture extracts more light which results in a brighter picture. aperture is a major factor of quality of photos when it comes to low light photography. in this situation, the same pixel contains more information.

• Image processing

it’s a major factor nowadays and only answer to why smartphone cameras are competing with DSLR. you have collected a good amount of information from your hardware to produce a good quality picture but until it doesn’t go through a good image processing it can’t make the picture quality good. google is leading in this field which software image processing. now it’s producing the better picture with less information only on the basis of image processing