The limiting factor on webcams in laptops is internal USB bus. On phones the camera is wired directly on the board with direct channel to the CPU so the phone c

The limiting factor on webcams in laptops is internal USB bus. On phones the camera is wired directly on the board with direct channel to the CPU so the phone can do all the computation processing as fast as possible on the fly. The laptop webcams use standard USB 2.0, which has very limited bandwidth compared to what phones have. There's no reason this couldn't be circumvented, but some custom webcam bus would significantly increase the cost disproportionate to the value it adds. Ppl just don't care about laptop cameras enough to pay that much more money for a good one.