is there a limit on how big a cell phones camera sensor can be without having a huge lens? (camera bump being less than 14mm in total depth)
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Yes. A bigger sensor means the light has to leave the lens at a steeper angle for the same distance away. This is a harder lens design problem. Going through the edges of steeply curved lenses causes the light to not line up quite as well, and these “aberrations” make blurry pictures.
You can make it better by making the combination of lenses longer, but that makes the bump bigger. The combination of that with not being able to move the sensor farther back than the other side of the phone is the single biggest challenge in phone camera design.
Additionally, you want to make the lens bigger to let more light in, to take better pictures especially in the dark. But making the lenses bigger causes a similar problem to the above, which is why it’s been so hard to get good low-light performance. It’s gotten a lot better recently, but it’s the same core challenge.
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