It all depends on how important photography is as a part of one's hiking experience. I very much want decent quality snapshots of my trips, but I don't pursue high quality to the extent of carrying a DSLR camera and my only tripod is a tiny 2 oz. one that I leave home as often as not.

Because I have not (until a month ago) even owned a smartphone or ever taken any kind of cell phone with me on backpacks, due to the poor to non-existent coverage where I hike, my cameras have been compact digital cameras for the past decade or more. My current one is a 7 oz. Fuji FinePix that claims to be water resistant and shock resistant (but I don't care to test out those claims). I've also owned Olympus and Canon compact digitals and they worked just fine for me, too.

Now that I finally own a smartphone, I may experiment with taking it on short backpacks to see if it adds any benefits (such as GPS, MP3, e-reader) that aren't offset by the rapid depletion of the batteries and the overall less rugged construction that could turn it into a hunk of junk if it gets physically abused during a trip.