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Which Company Makes the Best Camera Phone in 2018? Not Apple
Which smartphone takes the best photos? For years, the unequivocal answer to that question has been the iPhone. Apple has, for years, taken pride in the pictures its iPhones are able to capture. And rightly so. But over the years, the competition has been catching up, and now it feels like it has stolen that crown from the iPhone. Here's a review of various reviews of the iPhones.
The Verge, reviewing the iPhone 6 launched in 2014: There's one feature that stands out, though, the one that most strongly makes the iPhone 6's case as the best smartphone on the planet: the camera. A year later, The Verge reviews the iPhone 6s: But these improvements aren't dramatic, since the previous rear camera was already terrific. Still, the new rear camera will maintain the iPhone's position as the best smartphone camera around. In another review, it said: I noticed slightly better macro performance and slightly better bokeh in a few shots, but Apple's been taking iPhone 6 photos and blowing them up to put on billboards for a year, so the bar is pretty damn high. Let's put it this way: the iPhone 6S is the best camera most people will ever own, but it's not going to keep anyone out of the market for a mirrorless rig. The camera review of the iPhone 7 Plus: This all adds up to a decent improvement, but the iPhone 6S was already operating at the top of the scale, bested only recently by the latest cameras in the Galaxy S7 and Note 7. In low light, that faster lens and optical image stabilization means that the 7 significantly outperforms the 6S. But compared to the iPhone 6S, the iPhone 7 is a step improvement, not a major leap. The camera review of the last year's iPhone 8 Plus: Over the past year, the S8 and Pixel pulled ahead of the iPhone 7 in various tests. Apple told me they don't look at benchmarks closely, but the images from the iPhone 8 camera definitely look more like Apple's competitors than before. Like Samsung, iPhone images are now more saturated by default, although Apple says it's still aiming for realism instead of the saturated colors and smoothing of the S8. And HDR is just on all the time, like the Pixel -- you can't turn it off, although you can set it to save a non-HDR image as well. We ran around shooting with an iPhone 8, a Pixel XL, and S8, and iPhone 7 on auto, and the iPhone 8 produced the most consistent and richest images of the group, although the Pixel was the clear winner several times, especially in extreme low light. The camera review of the $1,000 iPhone X, which was also launched last year: Now that we have an iPhone X and the Google Pixel 2, we're going to do a super in-depth camera comparison, but here's what I can tell you right now: the iPhone X has basically the same cameras as the iPhone 8, and the photos look almost exactly the same. And at the end of the day, I tend to prefer the photos from the Pixel 2 XL. And now, the camera review of the iPhone XS and XS Max, which The Verge published Tuesday (video): The camera upgrades in the XS over the X are significant. But I'm just going to come out and say this: I don't think the iPhone XS has better cameras than the [Google] Pixel 2 ... and Pixel 3 comes out in just a few weeks. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good camera, and I think people are going to like the photos it takes. But the Pixel 2 is the standard to beat and the iPhone XS doesn't do it for me.
The Verge, reviewing the iPhone 6 launched in 2014: There's one feature that stands out, though, the one that most strongly makes the iPhone 6's case as the best smartphone on the planet: the camera. A year later, The Verge reviews the iPhone 6s: But these improvements aren't dramatic, since the previous rear camera was already terrific. Still, the new rear camera will maintain the iPhone's position as the best smartphone camera around. In another review, it said: I noticed slightly better macro performance and slightly better bokeh in a few shots, but Apple's been taking iPhone 6 photos and blowing them up to put on billboards for a year, so the bar is pretty damn high. Let's put it this way: the iPhone 6S is the best camera most people will ever own, but it's not going to keep anyone out of the market for a mirrorless rig. The camera review of the iPhone 7 Plus: This all adds up to a decent improvement, but the iPhone 6S was already operating at the top of the scale, bested only recently by the latest cameras in the Galaxy S7 and Note 7. In low light, that faster lens and optical image stabilization means that the 7 significantly outperforms the 6S. But compared to the iPhone 6S, the iPhone 7 is a step improvement, not a major leap. The camera review of the last year's iPhone 8 Plus: Over the past year, the S8 and Pixel pulled ahead of the iPhone 7 in various tests. Apple told me they don't look at benchmarks closely, but the images from the iPhone 8 camera definitely look more like Apple's competitors than before. Like Samsung, iPhone images are now more saturated by default, although Apple says it's still aiming for realism instead of the saturated colors and smoothing of the S8. And HDR is just on all the time, like the Pixel -- you can't turn it off, although you can set it to save a non-HDR image as well. We ran around shooting with an iPhone 8, a Pixel XL, and S8, and iPhone 7 on auto, and the iPhone 8 produced the most consistent and richest images of the group, although the Pixel was the clear winner several times, especially in extreme low light. The camera review of the $1,000 iPhone X, which was also launched last year: Now that we have an iPhone X and the Google Pixel 2, we're going to do a super in-depth camera comparison, but here's what I can tell you right now: the iPhone X has basically the same cameras as the iPhone 8, and the photos look almost exactly the same. And at the end of the day, I tend to prefer the photos from the Pixel 2 XL. And now, the camera review of the iPhone XS and XS Max, which The Verge published Tuesday (video): The camera upgrades in the XS over the X are significant. But I'm just going to come out and say this: I don't think the iPhone XS has better cameras than the [Google] Pixel 2 ... and Pixel 3 comes out in just a few weeks. Don't get me wrong, it's a really good camera, and I think people are going to like the photos it takes. But the Pixel 2 is the standard to beat and the iPhone XS doesn't do it for me.
'Nuff said.
... but not professional photographers. DXO Mark is a bit more respected, and put the iPhone X at the top, and we can wait and see for the new crop. Some layman saying “I like ...” is not a great metric.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
The Pixel 3 photo sensor is still only 1/2.3"... the same as my P&S camera from 2004. It's a phone. The photos are best for snapshots and, if the light is really good, the occasional "serious" photo. Who cares *that* much about image quality? It's still far better than a Kodak Disc camera. Or a 110. (Yes, I'm old.) And the phone is always in your pocket, ready to go.
More important question: when are they going to stop making phones so damned huge? The Internet sucks on a phone. Stop trying to make it a do-all web terminal.
Fact: I have no interest in carrying around another Android phone right now. The photos coming from the latest iPhones look excellent. As Apple pointed out in their presentation, even a cover photo for Time magazine was shot with one. So arguing whether or not a Google Pixel has a better camera is, IMO, a bit pointless. I mean, kudos to Google for making that good a camera in their phone .... I just fail to see how it changes anything? Very few people who prefer using iOS to Android's OS would switch products to a Pixel phone just because of the slightly better camera capabilities.
If the camera functionality is THE most critical factor for you? I'm wondering why you didn't invest in an SLR to use for your photography instead? A good SLR will still handily beat even Google's Pixel 3 when it comes out.
The iPhone camera has never been a superior camera to real full fledged digital cameras (of their time).
Smartphone cameras don't (usually) make superior images to "real" cameras. But smartphone cameras do several things FAR better than "real" cameras, most related to work flow for certain types of tasks.
1) Far better ability to share and back up images via the internet. Any picture I snap with my smartphone is automatically backed up to the cloud and can be shared immediately via email, text message, or social media. Not so much for "real" cameras which still require plugging in a cable or pulling out an SD card and finding a PC somewhere. They are seriously terrible at this and it's costing them dearly in sales against smartphones.
2) Bigger and more useful screens to view and edit images. Better touch screens too.
3) Fit in my pocket. I can carry my smartphone almost everywhere. Not so much for my bulky "real" camera. The best camera is the one you have with you. I'm not lugging a Sony A9 with a 70-200F2.8 around very often - the thing weighs the better part of 2kg and is bulky as heck. Awesome under the right circumstances and yes it makes better images but that comes at a cost both financial and in work flow. Hard to justify if you aren't getting paid to take pictures. Even compact point and shoot cameras like the RX100 which make great images are still bulkier than my smartphone and can't do anything else besides take images.
4) Has a FAR more elegant interface for basic shooting. Seriously the interfaces on interchangeable lens cameras are universally awful and almost useless for anything more than basic chimping.
5) Unless you get into some pretty pricey gear smartphones often actually do as good or better on video than a shocking number of "real" cameras for certain applications.
So called "real" cameras get better images (if you know what you are doing) but there is a LOT of overhead in achieving that. The work flow for basic point and shoot picture taking and image sharing is vastly superior on smartphones than any "real" camera. No they can't get the best possible image in most cases but most of the time that's not important to most people. There is a reason why the point and shoot camera market has basically died despite the fact that they can produce measurably better images. Image quality is NOT the only thing that matters for most people most of the time. The overhead, shitty work flow, and bulky equipment required to achieve these (usually marginally) better images with "real" cameras is simply not worth the hassle. And I say this as someone who is a photography enthusiast with a lot of very expensive camera bodies and lenses.
iPhone's camera is made by Sony.
It's obviously not apple, because apple barely makes anything.
From an optical standpoint, smartphone cameras are shit, all of them. Good cameras need big lenses and big sensors. Quantum physics told us that light has a size, its wavelength, and it comes in small packets called photons, it means you can't expect to make a camera smaller and expect the same quality as something bigger.
The reason smartphones are able to take decent pictures is all about photo-processing. There is analog and digital image processing in the camera itself, plus additional processing by the smartphone. They are now going as far as using machine learning in order to make something out of the noisy mess these sensors are outputting. That's quite impressive, really.
It may just be that she's outsmarted you....in that if YOU are taking all the pics with your camera, then SHE is more likely to be IN all of the pictures taken when ya'll are out....?
The curse of the photographer, you're never in that many pictures since you're behind the camera 99% of the time.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Processing depends on what your goals are "out of the box". You can apply a noise filter, up edge sharpness, increase the saturation to make things more vivid, etc.... but you can also do that in post. On the other hand, such filtering can throw out real details and is not always desirable. On the opposite end of the spectrum, unfiltered HDR images can look washed out and grainy, but you'll get the best results if you use them as a starting point for further processing.
A good comparison between heavy filtering and low filtering can be seen here in this comparison between the same plant shot in low light conditions between the Note 9 (heavy filtering) and the XZ2 Premium (low filtering). The leaves on the Note 9 look "prettier", all smooth from being filtered out. Yet you can hardly see any real details on them like the veins - indeed, on the XZ2, on the large upper leaves you can even see secondary veins in the leaves. The Note 9's filtering also at times smooths together different leaves (not seeing enough of a contrast between them to treat them as separate objects), but the differences are all distinct in the XZ2.
So the real question is... do you want filters, or real detail? And honestly there is no single "one choice is best for everyone" answer.
(Also beware of "smoothness due to dragging out the exposure" issues... note the difference in the fountains between these two shots)
"Who the hell is Nietzche? It's a question stupid people are asking." -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Compact point and shoots still have _crappy_ glass. Better than a cell phone, but still crap.
That's not true at all. There are some point and shoots with very good quality glass. Far better than smartphones in the right hands. The problem point and shoots have is that their workflow after the picture is taken SUCKS and they are one trick ponies. They take good pictures just fine but then what? They offer nothing after that. With a smartphone I can edit the photo, add filters, back it up to the cloud, share it with my friends, post to social media, all within seconds. And I have a device that does other things. The makers of point and shoot cameras have completely shit the bed in realizing that for these cameras it's the workflow that matters more than the image. They never bothered to make them web connected, give them editing and social media tools, etc which would actually make the possibly worth bothering with. They still live in the SD card to a PC world which smartphones made obsolete years ago.
If they wanted to make a point and shoot relevant again it should have LTE and wifi. It should back up to dropbox and the cloud. It should have a big and good touch screen. High quality glass. GPS and location tagging. Seamless transfer to tablets. It should have image processing better than that on a smartphone. Image cataloging. Flip screens for vlogging. It should have 4K video at high frame rates and tools to actually do something useful with it IN CAMERA. All this should be automated to a high degree in a compact size and the cost cannot be more than a smartphone. Better images only matter when you can actually use them to do what you want and taking the picture is just the start. Nobody wants a point and shoot camera that can only take pictures and can't do anything in post. Smartphone makers understand this and camera makers remain utterly clueless about it.
Oh and a LOT of these complaints apply to high end pro cameras too. They also have shit interfaces and terrible connectivity and work flow. Canon, Nikon, Sony, etc all persist with the delusion that only image quality and physical ergonomics matter. And this myopia will cost them dearly.
The same Verge that posted, defended, and, eventually, took down this How to build a PC video while complaining that the critics were all just a bunch of racists? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jciJ39djxC4
Yea, pardon me if I really don't trust their judgement.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.