App sideloading on iOS exists so much that you still have to pay for it and/or accept various quirks. There's no painless process without gotchas where a broke OSS dev friend sends you an .ipa they just compiled that you decide to permanently keep installed and nothing particular ever happens afterwards.

Don't ever let big cam guys near the smartphones, they'll come with extravagant terms for the most normal things ever that would be available everywhere due to their simplicity if only the market cared enough.

Tldr: there's an app on iPhone allowing you to record 4:3 video, aka "open gate", because it's the full sensor FoV. This shouldn't ever be special since the concept is trivial to implement and third party Android camera apps offer it since many years. I'd even say more, it wouldn't be odd to offer it in a stock cam. The market is simply incapable of recognizing the value of the obvious until it's popularized. LG G2 in 2013 with thin bezels, Sharp in 2015 with 120 Hz screen, any manual controls in the camera app.

As for this term specifically – yes, big cameras are filled with the same kind of cancer, except that they're missing features to move you into a costlier model rather than because of lack of popularity of a given feature alone. It may as well be popular and yet still only available on the high-end cameras of a given vendor.

For a matter of fact, many phones don't even have a 16:9 sensor mode except for slowmo, since there usually isn't much to gain by analog cropping, while using the same sensor mode for both photos and videos reduces driver and tuning complexity. Moreover, some sensor vendors will provide you with analog cropped register presets, but will stick to the clock utilized by 4:3 mode of the same frame rate, reducing the chance of quality and energy improvements by a lot. (Not that higher clock has no benefits, it just isn't meant to increase the quality of a single frame and is likely to do the opposite)

To simplify the clock mechanics of a sensor, the rule of thumb is:
Higher clock – less rolling shutter distortion, availability of higher frame rate, but more noise per frame (even at the same exposure times).

S21 FE users aren't doing well

Despite very reasonable dynamic range when you press it...
https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/reviews/25/sony-xperia-1-vii/rev13/camera/gsmarena_4204.jpg

... Xperia 1 VII seems to take every opportunity at burning shadows to black, for no good reason
https://fdn.gsmarena.com/imgroot/reviews/25/sony-xperia-1-vii/rev13/camera/gsmarena_1109.jpg

https://www.gsmarena.com/sony_xperia_1_vii-review-2828p5.php

And even Samsung! Do they really (and rightfully) lack a belief in 4x4 CFAs with 2x2 OCL or lawyers said there's a limit to what you can call "optical quality zoom"?

Okay, I think S25U explains it a little. Saying an S5KHP series sensor is capable of "4x optical quality zoom" would be like saying the short tele here is useless. While it isn't. But would anyone else even point that out?

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/workflow_2x.png

How ROM devs see users asking for a working proprietary blob instead of half-assed OSS version of it

Funny stuff is happening with Play Integrity API now as the new checks are now default. Basic now seemingly serves as a monopoly enforcement, while app vendors using strong will have to resign from it due to old security patch rejection.

I'll let you know more once I'll go through more real world reports.

Now also by Google!
https://developer.android.com/google/play/integrity/device-recall

You can't use it for fingerprinting because we say so! Just ignore that we're making it 8 times easier by giving you 3 bits for free, and then giving you the option to fingerprint by each bit write date with accuracy of month + year as an extra. Oh, and that only matters if you want to fingerprint everyone. If you want to silently mark the categories of people of interest and have that live through factory reset, this API is specifically designed for it.

And the fun thing: this thing only works when you force users to download your app from GP. Is it another way to entice app vendors into Google-less user exclusion? Again, only then this feature can work.

Now I see, the meanings of new integrity checks are the following:

Basic – device from OEM that paid (for GMS license, which isn't free) and obeys Google (by restricting any undesired features on stock), the state of device isn't crazy compromised but can be anything
Device – device from OEM that paid and obeys Google, the state of device is locked stock with old SPL
Strong – device from OEM that paid and obeys Google, the state of device is locked stock with fresh SPL

In other words, unless your device successfully spoofs being older than Android 13, it's forced to have an attestation keybox to pass basic (and you'll never get one from Google as an OEM if your device is more flexible than they want), just as Google describes the changes themselves. I'm yet to know if it has to be an unrevoked Google keybox, but it's most likely. A friend speculated that the goal of going so hard on it is to eliminate emulators and make sure that physical device farms can get banned through device recall.