system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why is it that some phones today have cameras with hundreds of megapixels but advanced DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras have only 64?

What are megapixels? How do they work? What is the difference between a 64mp mirrorless camera and a 24mp mirrorless camera of the same brand?
gpt
Images are made up of squares of a single color, pixels. A megapixel of course refers to a million pixels, 64 million pixels means 64 million tiny color squares.


>Why is it that some phones today have cameras with hundreds of megapixels but advanced DSLRs and Mirrorless cameras have only 64?

Because not all pixels are made the same. A digital camera has a sensor, this sensor is divided into smaller sensors for each pixel. While phones can have higher number of pixels, the sensors that absorb these pixels are smaller and thus more prone to error. The sensors on the DSLR are not only larger, allowing them to absorb more light to avoid this error, they also take in more light because these cameras have bigger lenses to get more light.

DSLR manufacturers just have little reason to join in these "megapixel wars" since their customers know more megapixels doesnt necessarily mean better.