Well you still end up with less sensor surface area with 4x as many pixels on the same substrate because there’s a gap around each cell and the micro lenses are

Well you still end up with less sensor surface area with 4x as many pixels on the same substrate because there’s a gap around each cell and the micro lenses are smaller. So you can aggregate them but you’re still getting less light. There’s a happy medium somewhere on density vs performance. I think the iPhone 13 pro seems to have it about right for “reasonable compromise”