eli5: What is the purpose and/or advantage of multiple cameras and lenses on a phone?

Question

As the title suggests, I don’t understand how this works.

In: 41

Answer 1

As others have said, they use multiple cameras and then use all the results to come up with an image. Cameras in high end phones these days can do TRILLIONS of operations for each photo taken.
ie identifying faces, eyes are open, smiles, skin tones of each person, movement, depth of field, contrast levels, sky, snow, camera movement etc etc etc. They may even take a number of photos per lens, and then use bits of each photo depending on what is required. And as others have said, use the results of different lenses to come up with the end photo.
No wonder DSLRs and point and shoot cameras are now only used by enthusiasts, they haven’t got a mini super computer and soft wear inside them. I have one of each and 95% of my photos are with an iPhone 12(not even a high end phone or camera)