Why is my camera resolution so small? How can I use the maximum?

[Windows Central Question]

Hi,

I've just bought a Lumia 640 xl which claims to have a 13mp front facing camera. However the largest photo I've been able to produce is locked at 4 megapixels (2560x1913).

I can't see any apparent way of changing this. There are no resolution settings to be found anywhere in either the Lumia Camera App or the MS camera app.

Do I have a defective device?

 

[Harrie-S]

Hi,

I've just bought a Lumia 640 xl which claims to have a 13mp front facing camera. However the largest photo I've been able to produce is locked at 4 megapixels (2560x1913).

I can't see any apparent way of changing this. There are no resolution settings to be found anywhere in either the Lumia Camera App or the MS camera app.

Do I have a defective device?

No you do not have a defective device.
Your camera sensor has 13MP pixels but your photo is jpg and this means that your camera uses smart calculations to reduce the size and cancel out noise.
So basically your 4MP picture will look better than a "13MP" picture with not "calculations".

In the 830, 930 and 1520 you have an option to get "full" size pictures (DNG format) but you need to use post processing to optimize them.