In article ,
Whisky-dave wrote:

My smartphone camera and my point and shoot don't
seem to have any arrangement to move lenses further out or do much
anything different.

not all lenses do because macro is nowhere near as common as ordinary
photos.

Is Macro mode on such cameras essentially a con because their Normal
mode
can focus as close as macro mode?

no, and it can't.

if you want to do macro with a lens that lacks a macro setting or can't
focus close enough, get a closeup lens attachment.

an alternative method was to reverse the lens,

that won't work for cellphones or point & shoot cameras, which is what
the original poster has.

He wasn;t asking to be able to do it but was asking why he can't which is
differnt,

he mentioned cameras he had, ones where reversing the lens is not
possible.

the overall cheapst method is to use a water droplet on the 'lens'
of a cellphone camera,

that's only cheap for a few seconds.

then, when the phone stops working due to water ingress, it becomes
very expensive.

not all phones are water resistant.

it's probbaly not practical on a P&S unless you can
get a really big droplet on the lens.

even less likely to be water resistant.

closeup lenses are cheap, although the better ones not so much.