The smartphone camera market is a fiercely competitive arena, where manufacturers constantly vie to produce the best camera. This fantastic video takes a look at some of the best to help you choose the right option for you.
Coming to you from Marques Brownlee, this enlightening video unveils the results of a unique blind smartphone camera test. The experiment involved taking identical photos with 20 of the best smartphone cameras and then having the public vote on their favorites without brand biases, cutting through brand loyalty and marketing to reveal real-world performance and preferences. Each phone captured a daytime photo, a low-light photo, and a portrait-mode photo, representing common shooting scenarios that photographers and regular users face.
The test's results are intriguing, with some surprising outcomes in each category. For instance, the Pixel 7a excelled in the daytime photo category, while the iPhone 15 Pro emerged as the top choice in low-light conditions. The Pixel 8 Pro won the portrait mode category, showcasing the diverse strengths of different brands under varying conditions. One thing is for sure, though: it's hard to go wrong nowadays, as all the smartphones are incredibly capable. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Brownlee.
I just wish iPhone to have the zoom of Samsung... Or android to have the apps of iPhone.
To anyone wondering what the final conclusions were: Pixel perfect podium with the champion of the people being the Pixel 7A
Thanks, I hate when an article is sending you to a video.
One major flaw from the test, is that it didn't push for comparisons at the full res or 1:1 zoom. Due to that, cameras that have issues such as overly heavy handed processing that causes an oil painting look but gets hidden.
For example, the pixel 7A has good colors and tonality, but bad SNR even at the base ISO, but compared to the pro models, it has less detail, and used heavier processing. The issue is that the softer resulting image with heavier processing, looks fairly good when scaled down by a massive amount, as there are no issues with bicubic remapping when dealing with fine details that are already sharp at 12-16 megapixel.
The easiest ways to see the issue is to look at the full res images from the pixel 7a reviews like this
https://www.dpreview.com/articles/8090524604/google-pixel-7a-a-new-owner...
Compare its images to the pixel 8 https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/2720344555/google-pixel-8-samp...
And Pixel 8 Pro: https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/5228403326/google-pixel-8-pro-...
Examine the images at 1:1 and you will notice that Pixel 7a has many artifacts and noticeably less detail. The heavy handed noise reduction also smoothens over many details.
The images simply do not hold up compared to even older models such as the Pixel 6 pro.
The website used for the comparison, uses html to scale the images, thus various forms of scaling can be used, but it will vary based on browser and device used, but one thing is that images with good native sharpness, will not look as nice using the in-browser scaling.
A better test would be to have both camera images side by side, but also have a zoom function that displays them 1:1, similarly to the dpreview compare tool, or the lightroom compare tool.