Gadgetory

when choosing a phone camera quality is more important than ever if you're looking at the pixel 3 and the iPhone 10's it's time to see which one comes out on top no surprises here that they both have 12 megapixel cameras at the back but the iPhone 10s has two a wide-angle lens at F 1.8 and a telephoto at F 2.4 while the pixel 3 just has one single rear camera a wide-angle lens at F 1.8 now the iPhone 10s this year has a lot of computational photography tricks up its sleeve which traditionally has been something that the pixel line has really excelled at so I think this comparison is going to be really interesting and don't forget that the tennis and the tennis Max and the pixel three and the pixel three accel share the same cameras so the results should be the same the general photos the phones are neck-and-neck both produced shots with pleasing color saturation and good exposures the iPhone has a new HDR mode called smart HDR while the pixel has hdr+ and hdr+ enhanced when active both make a big difference in boosting dynamic range in images for portraits they each let you change the bokeh or the blur in the background after the shots been taken I really like the way the iPhone has the simulated f-stop but the pixel also lets you change the focus point and add foreground blur the iPhone has a natural-looking blur with smoother transitions between subject and the fall-off the pixels photos look pin-sharp and pop off the screen but hair or complicated backgrounds can confuse the effect so you'll see the line where the subject ends and the blur begins for selfie fans the pixel has two front-facing cameras one's a regular field of view and what is a wide-angle for getting multiple people or more of the background in the shot you can also add face retouching options on the pixel without any filters photos are incredibly detailed and they're almost a little too harsh for my taste natural is a good middle ground that doesn't look fake or cartoonish like the softer setting can white balance is a little bit warmer on the 10s overall and some people do feel the front-facing camera applies a slight smoothing effect especially in low-light shots we spend a lot of time talking about the photo and video quality but let's talk for a second about the actual camera interfaces themselves on the pixel 3 there is this extra setting if you toggle over to more you'll see photosphere google lens and this fun one called photobooth pop-up which is kind of cute if you smile it'll actually automatically start taking photos which is nice if you just want to do some hands-free stuff also there is a settings option which is my personal favorite to tweak around in there is option to turn on gridlines but if you tap into the advanced menu you get the option to toggle an HDR plus control on the camera app itself so you just have that easily accessible on the interface raw and JPEG control the iPhone 10's on the other hand the interface is pretty similar to iPhones of old it's simple a lot of people like that for the most part I do too but there's a few things that I really wish it would be add just like the pixels so I don't have to go out of the camera interface into that settings menu to turn on things like grid lines or even toggle on smart HDR I just wish there was an option to do that in the default camera app and of course you can shoot raw on the iPhone tennis and tennis Mac's as well however you do need a third-party camera app to do that the pixel has the edge in low-light producing photos with less noise than the iPhone I really pushed these phones with some extreme low-light shots but the pixel does saturate the red Channel a little bit more than the iPhone so photos can look a bit too vivid for flash photos I think the pixel looks a bit more natural but this one is really close the iPhone produces less dramatic shadows which you might prefer and Google's nitesite feature that promises better looking photos without flash wasn't available at the time of testing the pixel only has a wide-angle lens at the back so to make up for the lack of an optical telephoto lens like the iPhone it uses super as zoom it does an impressive job of keeping up with a 2 X optical zoom from the iPhone even in low-light but if you push it to extremes results can look a little messy both phones recording 4k but only the iPhone gets to 60 frames a second at this resolution clips in good light look decent on both but the iPhones video looks just a bit sharper with smoother shifts in exposure when the light changes the pixel also crops in a bit more on the image I like how the pixel can track moving subjects in stills or video but overall video stabilization looks a little less jello-like and more natural from the iPhone and the iPhones recording sounds more rich and full Don the Pyxis track even though they're both recording in stereo the slow motion both film at 240 frames a second but the pixel maxes out at 720 while the iPhone is full 1080p in low light the pixel struggles to acquire focus when recording and the image just looks messy and noisy the iPhone by comparison looks great a setting called Auto low-light fps automatically drops the frame rate from 30 to 24 frames a second the difference between the two in low-light is night and day overall both the pixel 3 and iPhone 10s are incredibly good camera phones and have made big leaps over their predecessors I would be happy with either but I think the pixel has the edge in still images especially in low-light while the iPhone easily pulls ahead for video so which one did you prefer iPhone 10s or Google pixel three let me know in the comments below and if you want to find more photo samples there in the article on cnet.com and make sure to LIKE and subscribe