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Galaxy S7 vs Note 5 Camera - More Pixels or Bigger Pixels?

2016-04-02
my neck is hurt and this camera angle is not working for me what's up guys lon here from Android authority and this year Samsung made a pretty interesting move by going with fewer megapixels in favor of a larger pixel size in the galaxy s7 but was it a good decision and how much of a difference does it actually make over something like say the galaxy note 5 let's find out if bigger pixels is actually better than more pixels and if it's worth the trade-off the whole idea behind the reduction in megapixels is to create for larger pixels for a better low-light performance and we saw Google do something very similar with last year's Nexus phones but we're going to take a look at a variety of different lighting situations between these two phones just to see exactly what other differences there might be now I want to preface this by saying that both phones were shot at their maximum resolutions so 16 megapixels on the note 5 and 12 megapixels on the s7 and they're both shot in complete auto mode with HDR mode turned on just to keep things as level as possible alright so the first photo that we're going to take a look at here is just a simple outdoor shot with a camera facing upwards at a building towards the sky this is the galaxy note 5 here on the left and this is the s7 edge over here on the right and as far as the actual colors the level of detail and just looking at these photos as a whole they both look like really great shots but when you look at the colors and the sharpening that's where you'll notice a lot of differences so if you look the sky here on the galaxy note 5 versus the sky on the s7 edge there are two very different shades of blue the galaxy note 5 is just a little bit deeper whereas the s7 edge is a slightly lighter shade of blue it's not a huge deal but it is the difference that you noticed and I sort of prefer the lighter shade of blue on the s7 edge I think it looks a little bit better but that's just personal preference and the second difference is this Valencia play sign here the Reds are actually very different they're a lot deeper and much more vibrant on the note 5 whereas on the s7 edge they're a little bit more washed out not quite as a not quite of a punchy red so I definitely like the way the Reds are hit being handled here on the note 5 a little bit better now if I were to zoom in at these two shots and take a closer look at the details on the buildings like the windows for example you'll notice the s7 edge is a lot more over sharpened in comparison to the note 5 you can see an over sharpening halo effect on the s7 edge that you don't see with the note 5 and I'm not entirely sure why Samsung chose to be a lot more aggressive with the over sharpening I don't know if that's their way of sort of compensating for the fewer megapixels and in some situations I like the over sharpening and we'll talk about what some of those situations are when we take a look at some more photos but sort of in wider shots or landscape shots where there's a lot of stuff going on the over sharpening actually hurts the photos more than it helps the second photo that were going to take a look at is a close-up shot of a flower and unlike the building photo that we just took a look at I actually don't notice too much of a difference between these two photos in terms of their color representation and the depth of field they look nearly identical so you can see the yellows and the Greens here don't really look all that different between these two shots and they're both again really great-looking photos now if you zoom in on the flower here you'll notice that the s7 edge is slightly more over sharpened compared to the note 5 but in close-up shots or macro shots where there's a very specific point of focus I actually think the over sharpening is a lot more beneficial in these types of photos so here's another example of a close-up or macro shot and again these two photos look very very similar but the major difference here is again in the sky you can see that there are two completely different shades of blue and the Galaxy Note 5s image is actually ever so slightly overexposed these shadows are a lot lighter and you can see that the highlights are a little bit more blown out in the background here you can't see quite as much detail as you can on the s7 edge here is another close-up shot but this one is of a sandwich and it's indoors and right away you can already see the over sharpening in effect on the s7 edge if you take a look at the sandwich the entire sandwich is actually in focus whereas on the galaxy note 5 the focus is more towards the centre and it's sort of focused out as you move along the edges of the photo and if you zoom in on something like the tomato here for example which has some water droplets on it you can see a little bit more of the water and the detail and tomato on the s7 edge than you can on the note 5 and this is another one of those situations where it's a very clear point of focus a very clear subject and I think the over sharpening actually is more of a good thing than it is bad what people really want to know is how much better is the s7 in low-light because of those larger pixels and when taking a look at these two nighttime shots here there's actually a lot of differences and the first one that I notice right away is how much more yellow the s7 edge is photo is compared to the note 5 they're both really yellow photos but it's a lot more dramatic on the s7 the second difference is in the highlights so if you zoom into this lamp here you can see that the note 5 is a little bit more overexposed there's a bigger halo effect within the highlights and the same thing can be seen if you go over to this McCormick and Schmidt's sign here you can see that there's a much bigger halo effect the last difference that I see is just in the brightness of the photo this one is probably not too surprising but the s7 edge is a much brighter photo overall you can see the buildings up top a lot easier than you can on the note 5 and this is probably due to the larger pixels and also because you're dealing with a much brighter lens on the s7 edge with an F 1.7 aperture here is another outdoor nighttime shot but this one is of some flowers and neither one of these photos really look that great to be honest but there are a lot of differences between these two photos so with the galaxy note 5 you actually have a much more colourful shot but it's also very very yellow and you don't really get a whole lot of detail whereas on the s7 edge there's a lot more detail the photo looks a lot sharper overall but the colors are extremely extremely washed out but you'll notice that it's a much brighter image which allows you to get a lot more detail you can see a lot more in the concrete on the ground here you need to see the left side of the flowers a lot more whereas on the note 5 the whole entire left side of that image is pretty much completely blacked out the last photo that we're going to take a look at here is an indoor shot of an Android figurine on my desk and the only thing illuminating this photo is the Philips hue lights in the background so there's no office lights on there's no studio lights on and there's no lights coming through the windows because this was actually taken at nighttime but right off the bat you'll notice that the s7 edge is a much brighter image if you look at the Android figurine you can see him very clearly whereas on the note 5 you can't really see him quite as well because it's a lot darker the same thing can be said about the background so if you take a look at the toy car on the left there you can see the toy car pretty easily on the s7 edge whereas on the note 5 you can really only see about half of that car so you have a much brighter image on the s7 edge a much more well detailed image and this is where having those larger pixels and that wider aperture that F 1.7 aperture really makes a difference in low-light so did Samsung make the right decision here by going with fewer megapixels in favor of larger pixels and personally I think they did I think it was worth the trade-off the camera still takes fantastic looking images and pretty much all lighting conditions and the nighttime shots are a lot brighter there's a lot more detail and it handles exposure in the highlights a lot better they still aren't amazing but they're definitely an improvement over the galaxy note 5 or the s6 from last year that's really going to do it for this video guys hopefully you enjoyed it and found it helpful if you did please give it a thumbs up down below we definitely appreciate it and also subscribe to the channel which is also down below if you haven't already and check out our social media on snapchat Twitter Instagram Google+ and what-have-you and feel free to follow me on Twitter as well those links are all down here below me right now and once again thank you so much for watching keep tuned here to Android 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