I'm now confused... Supposedly Pixel 6 was supposed to have a huge camera upgrade to 50MP (and latest Samsung has 108MP).

But in the device info and camera apps the highest quality is still ~12MP.

So what exactly is different then, how is it better than before?

Any phones with 50+MP sensors typically use pixel binning (combining adjacent pixels which shrinks the final image) to boost brightness in photos because the sensors have such tiny pixels that they can't capture enough light at the native camera resolution.

One phone manufacturer (I think it was Samsung but I don't know for sure) started marketing their huge-megapixel sensors while downplaying the fact that they use pixel binning, and the other manufacturers did the same to remain competitive. It's stupid.

@EmberQuill It is the 3g/4g/5g of cameras.
mostly because people think higher numbers is better.

@EmberQuill high resolution sensors can be better in low light than equivalent sensors with fewer pixels. The noise is easier to filter out when you have more data.

Maybe there are also benefits when you use zoom in the camera app.

@electrineer To be fair, there are definitely advantages to having high-megapixel sensors binned down to 12MP instead of just having 12MP sensors with no binning. I just replaced my Galaxy S8 (12MP camera) with a Pixel 6 Pro (50MP camera binned down to 12.5MP) and the quality of photos taken with my new phone absolutely blew my mind even though the resolution has barely changed.

The only real problem is the misleading marketing making people believe they'll get 50MP photos instead of extremely good 12.5MP photos.