Gadgetory

three phones enter one phone leaves we're taking the newest or current cameras of each phone ecosystem to see which company produces the best photos and videos I'm Juan Carlos bag now for pocket now and it's time for a good old-fashioned grudge match an Android and iPhone and a Lumia walk into a bar and I don't have a good ending for that joke while we're prepping to tackle the lg g5 we thought it would be fun to take a look at the current state of smartphone cameras the galaxy s7 is the new kid on the block the iPhone 6s is Apple's current flagship and the SE will likely perform similarly and we're rounding out this test with the megapixel monster lumia 950 and before we get a ton of comments complaining about how we should have picked different phones or waited for new phones to come out we got to start somewhere we will get to LG g5 comparisons Nexus comparisons note 6 and iPhone 7 comparisons when those phones are actually released now first a little housekeeping this trio represents the smaller sized flagship from each respective company all three shoot native four by three aspect ratio frames the iPhone and Galaxy both have 12 megapixel sensors while the Lumia saves a 19 megapixel image the Lumia sensor is the largest at 1-over two point four inches with the Galaxy a close second at one over 2.5 and the iphone a much smaller third place with a 1/3 inch sensor to keep things fair we're sticking with stock camera apps and the JPEGs delivered directly from each phone so we'll see what each manufacturer has chosen to focus on for producing pleasing images starting with outdoor brightly lit shots we instantly run into a small issue with the Lumia 950 there's a lot of image processing happening here and Microsoft is warming up the color quite a bit more than what the scene really calls for Apple is warming the scene up a little too but it's closer to reality Samsung actually lands the happiest balance between i pleasing saturation white balance hue and an accurate depiction of the scene another bright light test using UHD video and with a red subject in the landscape shows similar results from lumia to Apple to Samsung we go from warmest color tone to the most accurate moving to a shaded shot the Lumia 950 surprisingly swings the coldest apple remains in the middle and Samsung stays the warmest reality is somewhere in between the iPhone in the galaxy s7 both landing on either side of the balance between warm California Sun and cool shade we like to keep the lighting in our homes comfortable and this is an area where the galaxy s7 ekes out a victory producing the brightest image the lumia follows in second with a dimmer image but a little less smudging from noise reduction and the iPhone trails with the darkest shot and the smudgy estoy reduction especially when pixel peeping but night shots are where the galaxy s7 absolutely excels we see noticeably brighter images over the iPhone 6s and they tend to be less noisy than images from the Lumia though it produces the dimmest images at night the iPhone showed the least amount of distortion or chromatic aberration look at the uniform brightness of the streetlamp the Lumia came second though you can see some flaring and some color fringing issues with chromatic aberrations Samsung's lens on our review unit distorted the most and the wide aperture contributes to even more aberration looking at a zoom cropped test the Lumia 950 scores a win but not by as much as the numbers might lead you to believe matching the view on the galaxy there's more sharpening going on but it's not losing by as significant a margin in pixel level detail as we would have expected the iPhone is a little more honest in its reproduction and doesn't rely on as much sharpening but it still performs fairly well here too falling only slightly behind the Samsung for video zoom shooting UHD clips Samsung and Apple will both push well beyond the resolution of their respective sensors Microsoft on the other hand prevents you from zooming into image degradation territory but that doesn't leave you much room to get closer to your subject at night the Lumias resolution advantages are minimized further still as we have to incorporate more noise reduction all three cameras see significant image degradation and the iPhone is the poorest performer of the pack moving to ultra low light situations both the Lumia and Samsung are able to lock focus here in almost no light we're we're unable to tell if the iPhone ever does properly lock on to the subject as its continuously hunting through this test of course for a situation like that we should be using a flash and all three phones perform pretty well surprisingly the galaxy with only one led doesn't seem to be trailing that much behind the iPhone or Lumia using two and three LEDs respectively the iPhone had the most difficulty focusing but ended up with a brighter image than the galaxy the Lumia again exaggerates color but if shooting with rich capture on you are able to manipulate how much of the flash to use this is the only time you can reliably deliver multiple exposures but we'll talk about that more in the HDR section for colour reproduction the iPhone finds the happiest balance between lighting and subjects this gate is lit by a really ugly orangish yellow security light Samsung is varying a bit more gold than what this scene really looks like and Microsoft absolutely nails the white of the gate but almost entirely ignores the lighting information just for reference this scene looks more like this in real life it was an uncharacteristically windy day in LA while shooting so we couldn't deliver great audio samples but on the whole the Lumia will offer up better audio in most situations Samsung follows in second with more aggressive noise reduction dulling the nuances of a scene and Apple lands last as it still only produces a mono audio track for video which is supremely disappointing for a flagship phone a macro performance takes an interesting turn getting up close to a small subject Apple smaller sensor and smaller aperture is more forgiving and produces a longer depth of field making sure these flowers are in focus the Lumia follows close behind the larger sensor producing a shallower depth of field lastly on the galaxy with a large sensor and widest aperture has such a razor-thin plane of focus that these flowers look a bit softer hazy in my not so humble opinion the galaxy produces the most pleasant bouquet followed by the Lumia and the iPhone produces the busiest blur objects in the background of your photos will be more identifiable and can be more distracted looking at focusing performance Apple is the slowest of the bunch and occasionally missed the ball to focus on the tree or bench behind the ball a Lumia was quicker to move back and forth between these two objects but the galaxy s7 absolutely smokes the other two with the fastest focus lock and react juez ition we've ever seen on a phone moving to HDR the iPhone still reigns for the best image processing not only does Apple find more info and shadows we also see them rain in details in highlights Android HDR is really more of a shadow brightening mode and highlights are more likely to clip the Lumias rich capture mode is only in automatic mode and almost never triggers a true multiple exposure in fact looking at the incredible amount of image processing applied to every photo we think HDR style color processing might be applied to every shot regardless of the rich mode is activated or not another fun feature slow motion video Apple continues to dominate with the smoothest output and fewest drop frames Samsung and Microsoft battled to something of a tie here the image is crisper on the galaxy s7 but the Lumia slow-motion produces one of the coolest matrix style speed ramps we've ever seen nearly stopping time before sliding back to speed lastly looking at camera apps the iPhone has the most familiar setup for any phone as it's changed very little over the years that's good for consistency but there are some frustrating aspects to controlling things like video resolution which requires you to leave the camera app and head to the phone settings controls like HDR and flash are slightly more difficult to use as the option pops out tiny pieces of text on your viewfinder and while there's a whole separate mode for shooting square photos there isn't one to crop widescreen which is just silly in the year 2016 the windows phone camera app is terrifically elegant it can be as simple as a shutter and flash controls or a quick slide pops out manual controls for users to operate happily additional settings don't require you to leave the camera app nor do they completely block your viewfinder it could use a little updating though as options like white balance or slow to respond and don't offer the flexibility found on newer Android devices Samsung's app is the busiest of the bunch but still offers a reasonably simple auto mode and fantastic controls for people who like to dig deep so let's wrap this up between these three we see an excellent representation of the pros and cons of comparing different imaging solution looking only at the camera and not the rest of the phone attached to that camera our rankings overall placed the iPhone in third place the Lumia 950 and second and the galaxy s7 wins the day the iPhone offers very consistent color processing a best-in-class HDR mode and super smooth slow motion but represents the worst-performing flagship for low-light situations and the slowest focusing performance the sensor size and optics onboard also deliver the least photographic stills especially when looking at depth of field and bokeh the Lumia 950 will better satisfy resolution junkies audio files and has a tack sharp lens they'll this app is ageing poorly opposite competitors image processing is difficult to control and offers the least accurate representation of most scenes plus we didn't even do a panorama comparison because this phone's camera app just doesn't have that option included now the galaxy s7 displays the weakest macro performance of the bunch and more aberration in night photos but otherwise demonstrates a terrific balance between light and resolution in almost all shooting conditions the galaxy s7 takes the lead for yeah but it soon faces the LG g5 now we're sure you have thoughts on this comparison so drop us some comments below and hopefully we can get into some fun debates as always thanks for watching be sure to subscribe to this channel for more reviews and comparisons and hit that thumbs up button for a little extra positive reinforcement for pocket now I'm Juan Carlos now you can chat me up on Twitter and Instagram is some gadget guy and I will catch you all on the next video