I'm sure they can, but for some reason they didn't. It's fun to speculate, but apply Hanlon's Razor and Occam's Razor; it's unlikely there is some evil corporat

I'm sure they can, but for some reason they didn't. It's fun to speculate, but apply Hanlon's Razor and Occam's Razor; it's unlikely there is some evil corporate scheme at play, and it's highly likely that the reason is very simple. Perhaps they never got the levels of feedback that drove them to upgrade it. Perhaps it has to do with internal designs of using an USB 2.0 bus or something that now has to be changed to a CSI or MIPI style interface that first has to be processed by something like the T2 before it is a readable data stream for the standard Intel architecture. They probably won't be able to fit the exact same iPhone module, the optics (Be it plastic or glass lenses) are too deep, but you could probably do with a better sensor for sure. Some manufacturers tried to 'fix' this by putting the camera below the screen which gives it a bit more space because you can then use the hinge area for the components; but now you end up looking at someone's chin all the time. We simply don't know.