Can a 3rd party app *technically* take better pictures? I've seen in several forums that some phones have very good cameras and the photos  taken are compressed too much and the details are lost.

I was wondering whether a 3rd party application (forgetting the post processing done by the application) have access to the full resolution image without any compression.

So can another application access the raw data from the camera or all applications gets the same raw data when they access the camera?
Yes, the interface that applications use to access the camera does offer the raw image data to the application, so a 3rd party app can offer more control over image compression, white balance, and so on.

In addition, many quality improvements are achievable through software alone, whether by controlling the camera better or post-processing. Examples commonly found on compact cameras include taking several frames in quick succession and automatically choosing the sharpest, better choosing autofocus targets, blending multiple exposures, filtering to remove artifacts of the lens construction, &hellip;