Am I missing something? Is ACOG my only choice here?

[Amicus]

Your modern cell phone does a damn good job of taking pics

99% of the time you would be right. My actual digital camera has gone missing, and my phone has been described as "ultra-budget". The best thing about the camera on my phone that one reviewer could cough up was that it 'is by no means unusable.' It's pretty bad. I bought it for one reason only, and the camera was not included in the calculation.

The phone camera is miserable at best, and almost unusable in low light situations. I'm working on it.

Just for fun, here's another quote from the same review:

'Photos turn out even worse in low light, though if there's at least some light available, and you can keep the camera still for a second, you can often come away with a picture that isn't a complete disaster. The absence of any HDR processing or indeed any processing at all really shows, but we don't want you to think the camera is a complete write-off – it's just like stepping back a few years.'

Yeah, it's bad. But, like I said, I'm working on it.