The iPhone might have emerged as the most popular camera on the image sharing website, Flickr, but when it comes to photography, the cellphone is considered by most photography ‘purists’ to be a tool of convenience, rather than excellence — good enough for the times when one has no time to pull out and adjust a camera or a DSLR, but not more than that. That, however, could be set to change, courtesy some innovation from cellphone manufacturers who seem to upping the imaging ante in their handsets, and coming out with devices that can take on decent point and shoot cameras, if not DSLRs. The past few weeks have seen phone photography get a major boost in qualitative terms, courtesy three very innovative devices, each of which gives you the option of leaving home without your point and shoot.

Nokia Lumia 1020: Megapixel Mania
It comes with a dual core processor, Windows Phone 8, a 4.5 inch AMOLED display, 32 GB of onboard storage and lots of connectivity options. But all that pales in front of a single statistic — the 41.0-megapixel sensor on the camera of the Lumia 1020.You literally can take pictures fit for poster size from this phone, and can actually zoom upto 3X without compromising on detail. And of course, this being a Nokia, the camera blends in perfectly with phone functions as well. Nokia has even designed a special app (Pro Camera) that allows users to make the most of the camera and make adjustments to focus, ISO, white balance and the like.There are a few quirks, though — you will have to plug the phone into a computer to see the 34 and 38 megapixel images shot by the camera (oh-so-2010!). And that price is as jaw dropping as the megapixel count on the sensor. Still, when it comes to image quality, this can go toe to toe with most point and shooters. And win more often than not.