Same way as digital cameras in general work, just scaled down.
You have a lens that focuses light onto an image sensor. The image sensor is an electronic chip with millions of light-sensitive spots. When enough light rays hit a certain spot on it, it sends a signal that this pixel should be bright rather than dark.
The camera lenses are usually “fixed” because this saves a lot of space and avoids having the lens stick far out of the phone. This means you usually don’t have optical zoom. Even then, there is still usually a “camera bump” because it wasn’t possible to fit all the optics in the same thickness as the rest of the phone.
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