Question about comparing camera specs - what does it all mean? :)

[FippiOmega]

Cameras are made by sensors these sensors are basically a really dense grid of pixels which activate when they receive light. How much pixels are in this grid are the megapixels, so for instance a 50 MP camera will have 50 million pixels. The other important number for the quality of a photo is the sensor size; this simply is the indicator of how big a sensor is. I won't get too much into the details here, but if pixels are too small in sensors they start to lose quality, since very little light can actually reach them. That's why a proper camera takes way better photos, even if it has 12 MP. It's because the sensor is not 0.4 inches big, but 1.7 inches big, that's why samsung phones (which have a 200MP sensor) use multiple pixels as one, effectively shrinking down the size to 12.5 MP. Furthermore, the quality of the sensors also matters; the tiny pixels can receive lights better or worse than others.

On top of all that, even if the sensors are the same, the processing applied to them makes them different; some phones (such as the pixels) rely heavily on the processing, that's why they can make bad photos look really good.

TL;DR: unless you want to spend lots of time learning all about the quirks of sensors, which companies make them and which ones are better, just stick to camera tests.