I noticed this a lot when taking pictures in the mountains.

I used to have a high resolution phone camera from a cheaper phone and then later switched to an iPhone. The latter produced much nicer pictures, my old phone just produces very flat-looking pictures.

People say that the iPhone camera automatically edits the images to look better. And in a way I notice that too. But that’s the wrong way of looking at it; the more-edited picture from the iPhone actually corrresponds more to my perception when I’m actually looking at the scene. The white of the snow and glaciers and the deep blue sky really does look amazing in real life, and when my old phone captured it into a flat and disappointing looking photo with less postprocessing than an iPhone, it genuinely failed to capture what I can see with my eyes. And the more vibrant post processed colours of an iPhone really do look more like what I think I’m looking at.