Ah, I have wondered about the pause in photos. A regular photographer would have probably figured it out on their own.
There was word of progress being made with AI-enhanced low-light photography so I have to wonder what it's like on phones with ai-optimized processors right now. The cheapest CPUs of that kind are Qualcomm's Snapdragon 660 and Mediatek's Helio P60 -- you can get them in sets around or slightly below 200 USD these days.
I resteemed a post on AI-enhanced photography about a month ago. I
I met a guy at the pub last week who told me his Samsung S something had an automatic HDR functionality. He didn't even know what HDR was until I pointed out that his camera must have used two exposures in some of the photos he showed to me. One of his holiday photos taken in low-light conditions in a monastery in Cyprus where there was simultaneously a bright chandelier in the foreground and a well-lit wall with many icons on it in the background. Everything was nearly perfectly lit. He told me he had seen the text "HDR" in one corner of the screen when shooting in auto mode. Where I'm going with the HDR example is that advanced features are being introduced in smart phone cameras to an increasing degree, so why not AI-powered ones, too.
Ah, was it this post?
I've seen it, but I guess it didn't stick because photoshop was mentioned, but looking into the article linked from that post it makes sense that "AI-enhanced" cameras shoot a bunch of pictures with different exposures and then average them automatically... Although I'm not sure what else they might be doing, considering these shooters often come with a second (often lower-resolution) back camera for "depth-sensing".
And on an HDR not, I'm pretty sure I've seen it in a ~$150 Xiaomi phone, so it's not even terribly exclusive at this point. I guess good camera sensors are in high demand, but not too expensive to produce en masse to the point where mid-range phones can opt for inexpensive optics but great sensors. Screens and cameras have become the main selling point for modern phones, now that memory (and soon processing power) is hitting price roadblocks.
Yes, it was that post. They may do more than just simple averaging whatever that means.