Pixel smartphone camera review: At the top
dxomark.com
dxomark.com
There's an easy explanation for it too. Pretty much every single high-end phone released in the last two years uses a Sony sensor. They completely dominate the smartphone sensor market right now.
I know Aptina[1] has made sensors used in smartphones in the past. And was also the initial manufacturer for sensors used by Nikon in their 1 series mirrorless cameras.
Toshiba has manufactured some in the past, but sold their image sensor business to Sony[2] last year.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptina [2] http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/4/9848222/sony-buys-toshiba-...
Based on what we're seeing here, there might be a viable competitor to the iPhone in this space, but that hasn't really been the case until now.
Let's stop perpetuating this falsehood. Agreed that iPhones produce great results. But as you can see from the previous and current DxOMark results, there have been several cameras that had better image quality than the iPhone. High end Samsung and Sony cameras have been consistently good for a while.
what do you think of nexus 5x in that regard?
The Nexus 5X's camera also kills the Nexus 5's. Nexus 5's camera was poor.
Looking at any sort of comparative review, you'll find that on some shots the Samsung produces better results; on others, an iPhone looks better. Each phone may perform a little differently in different situations -- low light, high contrast, whatever. But taken as a whole, at least some Android flagships' cameras have been as good as the iPhone's for a couple of years now.
Nexus phones have been noticeably worse, but they've also tended to cost 60% as much, so it's not exactly an easy comparison to make.
I'm not expecting D810 quality, but I do find it suspect when artifacts appear in blue skies. There is plenty of light, there shouldn't be any noise. Then again, there are a lot of pixels packed into a very small space.
[1] Current list of these unremovable apps on my Nexus 4: Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Spreadsheets, Google Presentations, Cloud Print, E-mail, Google Now, Google Drive, Google Earth, Google Indic Keyboard, Google Keep, Google News & Weather, Google Play Books, Google Play Movies, Google Play Music, Google Play Games, Google Play News kiosk, Google street view, Google talkback, Google text to speech, Google+, Hangouts, Google Wifi connectivity, Youtube.
That seems a little short sighted. You seem to assume the only way an update can fail is in because of a software bug, and it's just a matter of not enough testing. If the phone loses power for some reason, or one of the hardware components is misbehaving, I would rather it not brick my phone. This is the industry standard, because shit happens, and CYA is a good thing.
> Sorry, not buying this. If the phone had expandable storage, then yeah maybe, but this is the 16GB story all over again (woops, 11GB actually and less after the Play apps updates).
Buying what? I'm not selling you anything. Is there somewhere I tried to convince you it was ultimately the best solution? I simply explained it had an additional (likely primary) purpose that you were not accounting for.
Android correctly gets a lot of flack for having a fragmented user base which makes it a security and developing nightmare, if this feature were to become standard it would help everyone.
It should also be noted that they are giving away unlimited cloud storage for photos and videos which makes leaving some free space for updates a lot less painful. You probably won't fill your phone with app binaries, it's the photos and videos that take up lots of space.
While I don't think you can properly "uninstall" Google+ and Hangouts, you can "disable" them, which makes them inaccessible. I don't think you get updates pushed for disabled apps, either.
It also stops their services, and whatnot. It wastes room inside of the ROM partition, but not inside of the user data partition.
I'll also be abandoning several paid apps that I've bought over the years that are only available on the Play Store. It's going to be hard extricating myself from that ecosystem.
Sony gets a lot of hate online from people comparing full-resolution pictures at 100%. Sony has been using 23MP/25MP sensors in their own phones for a while, but in auto mode images are supersampled to 8MP. In manual mode you can use the full resolution. People always compare the full 25MP pictures at 100% to full 12MP pictures from other devices at 100%. And at that point, they will indeed look a bit less good and less detailed. At Sony's default 8MP things actually do look great. And their camera apps are pretty good too.
Perhaps just as importantly, it takes at least four seconds for the camera app to activate and be ready to take a photo. Simply put, the software is awful.
So yeah Sony, you used to have shit cameras but amazing battery life, but now the battery life is trending downwards, great job.
And yes everyone, if you look at just the hardware the Sony phone's cameras should be great, but the software and processing has always been so shitty that the pictures you get have been awful despite the great components.
That said, there is TREMENDOUS variance in image quality, even if you're using the same sensor. The ISP and color tuning process is extraordinarily complex and severely subjective; the noise filtering and encoding processes are incredibly difficult as well.
And then there is Autofocus; HDR blending; when to do HDR at all; video stabilization; and so on and so on.
The only successful hardware by Google is chromecast which is very cheap to buy. So ~$650 price of phone despite having best camera does not seem attractive enough. It does not have cutting edge custom components like e.g. TPU etc which I wonder would make its price lot more palatable.
I actually just bought myself an iPhone 5s to replace it because the iPhone 5's battery life finally became unusably short after many years, but I didn't want a big phone to replace it. My 5s is also performing very well with iOS10.
My 5s is a second-hand refurb, markedly cheaper than the SE, which I was reluctant to buy after several of my acquaintances complained of the device expiring days after purchase.
My comparably old Android phone won't even allow a software update and is still on Android 4. My partner prefers Android and has a Moto G (and has a tendency to drop phones hence why I suggested something cheap to replace) and it also won't update to the latest Android version.
So while the Pixel might be the shiniest, I would be reluctant to invest in something which will not have the effective lifespan of an iPhone.
I really wish Google would make a great Android phone so I could have better integration with my Chromebook and G-Suite. Android phones can be used to unlock Chromebooks in lieu of password entry, which would be a cool feature. I use G-Suite for my business so it would be better for that too. I've never owned a Mac computer and I've little loyalty to any company. The iPhone 5s was simply the apex in terms of phone-to-pocket-size/toughness/tactility/features (for me personally).
As a counter point, myself and 2 friends all have the SE, and we all love it. iPhone 5 form factor, better battery life and equal performance to the iPhone 6s made it the winning choice for all 3 of us.
2 of us have had it since launch day, no regrets.
As a comparison, my younger daughter inherited my old Nexus 4 (bought couple of months before I got company-issued iPhone 5), the phone introduced more or less in the same time as iPhone 5, and not only the hardware is failing (the top of the screen doesn't respond anymore), Google stopped supporting the phone after a year and some.
Have you considered that it may be user error?
My Nexus 4 is still my favorite form-factor/experience out-of-the-box for my "I just need quick access to my email and sometimes a camera-phone/video" purposes. It was exactly what I wanted in a phone - $200 - no contract, minimalist, no junkware, hackable out of the box, large enough to one-hand for my average male 5'10 hands, decent battery life.
Granted I actively try to stay away from technology when I'm not working - i.e. I mostly use it as an equivalent for a doctors' pager in case anything catastrophic happens. It's mostly used for GPS (which is pretty phenomenal), to listen to music, and track my speeds/path when I run, etc) so I'm certainly not the power-user who needs 16gb of RAM to support 100 active Safari tabs.
When this breaks, I'm going to upgrade just out of necessity at some point at which point, assuming this isn't cluttered with junkware it's one of the few phones I'm entertaining (since there's no real viable 'open' phone on the market right now, as far as I can tell). The alternatives I'm considering is going for one of those Asian vendors (Lenovo, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Huawei). My Euro and Asian friends say they're all are putting out quality (e.g. Samsung level) stuff with no contract lock-in .
Depending on what's next, I may have to switch to something else entirely.
Many clamored for a flagship-quality phone and we got it, but the sticker shock is real.
Unfortunately, I'll have to flash CM soon due to Lenovo deciding to leave the phone on a May 2016 security patch. I'm missing the Nexus updates, but Google's hardware and pricing is leaving a lot to be desired.
I then had a Nexus 7 that after an update wouldn't turn on. I tried many things until finding on some random forum from another update that you had to hold the power button will holding the volume buttons and then insert the USB charger to start it....
I don't own a tablet anymore.
Heck, look at the OnePlus 3 right now, it has more battery than a Pixel, an 820 instead of an 821, but also 2 GB more RAM than the Pixel. Pretty close specs overall, but one device costs $250 USD less. Unless the only thing you care about is camera quality, you really have to consider if that Pixel will be $250 more worth of phone than the OP3. Is that 820->821 upgrade going to make a difference in your daily usage?
I think the answer is probably not, and I think that holds true for other flagship devices. Never will I pay $650 when I can get a roughly comparable phone for $400 or less.
If oneplus worked with Google to put vanilla android | a fully supported bug free version | onto the OP3 I'd consider it, but the form factor would still likely be a deal breaker.
I've run CM for a few years on it actually, decided to try Paranoid Android again recently when it looked like they started back up (I missed HOLO) but that now seems abandoned again and I really missed some features that turned out to be from CM, so I'm probably going back soon.
It really seems like inexpensive high-end phones should sell like hotcakes, but in practice, it doesn't happen. It's arguably very possible that a $650 phone will sell better than a $450 phone even with the same components, because it'll get perceived as "high-end" in a way the inexpensive one wouldn't.
I'll give Google the benefit of doubt here. I suspect they priced it high either because their production isn't fully in place to handle a massive surge.
OR they are signalling to the market that Google is not just a bunch of free services but also a premium brand like Apple, and they are willing to sacrifice revenue today to solidify their brand.
I think it's a bit of both. Android has its market established, so Google has more to gain through positioning their brand than driving a little extra revenue.
Edit: Now that I think about it undercutting Android partners might be their primary reason–they can risk upsetting Samsung, but prefer not to piss them off too much.
I'm not saying Google is doing this specifically, but I don't imagine they're as anti-discounting as Apple is.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2016/02/13/apples-iph...
Why do you think that is? There are around 3x as many Android handsets being sold as iOS handsets, right? The market for high-end Android phones should be as big as the market for Apple phones. I understand there are more Android manufacturers, but that still leaves a pretty big market for Google to sell into.
The camera's performance is impressive, but to me Google Photos is the biggest differentiator.
If the pixel makes 4K videos, then that would be over the original unlimited limit.
I hadn't heard about this until now; is this for all Android users, or just Pixel users? If the latter, do you lose the unlimited space once you move off a Pixel?
It seems possible they'd be more likely to extend support lifetime to this rather than branded partner phones.
You can upgrade a 3.5 year old Galaxy S4 to over 128 GB storage (~35 € for a microSD card) and a fresh battery (~10 € for a new one). And with custom ROMs you can also run Nougat (I'm personally still running Marshmallow on mine though).
Luckily I'm from Germany and we have the international version (with a Qualcomm SoC).
But it's true that you have to be careful which phone you buy if you want to run a custom ROM. For example there are several "Value Editions" of Samsung's phones which can't be rooted.
Btw: You can officially unlock the bootloader of some of LG's phones, see http://developer.lge.com/resource/mobile/RetrieveBootloader....
You're one of the last few remaining ;)
They are so useful, my next phone will have all these features too.
"Android 7.1 Nougat, the latest Android OS
2 years of OS updates
3 years of security updates"
By my calculations, Apple is doubling this (based on iPhone 5, and OS updates, not security updates). I think in $/month for disposable hardware like phones.
Plus, Apple's model is to charge for software development, while Google subsidizes it with ads/surveillance/platform lock-in. I'm happy to (and did, with the iPhone 6) pay 2x to opt-out of the OS-level surveillance.
So, for me, this phone is 4x more expensive than an iPhone. That takes real "courage". Of course, most people don't think like me, so they'll probably sell lots of these.
I do think that Google's support lifetime of these phones is atrocious, my comment was in reference to the "At least they are being more transparent than in the past."
If they want me back as a customer, they need to add a "turn off all telemetry" button (just like Microsoft needs one), and they'd need to double the support lifetime or half the price of this phone to be inline with Apple.
I've noticed Apple tended to command a ~2x price premium on Android, even when their phones had shorter support periods. I personally am willing to pay that premium for privacy/security, but not the camera or apps / os features, which are largely comparable between the two platforms.
I'm genuinely not sure what to do now. My Nexus 6 has a crack in its screen, which is expensive to replace, so I was looking at a new phone. Google were supposed (dammit), supposed to release a new phone with cutting edge software, almost-flagship hardware and at a mid-market price. Instead they've gone straight for the high end of the market, and they've made the screens smaller, and not included wireless charging, something I've grown to like a lot.
So now my choices seem to be a galaxy note 7 (I prefer vanilla android), or... That's about it for phones with a good size, good res display that support QI. Without QI there's the P9 Plus and Oneplus 3, but both have comparatively low res screens. The moto Z has no QI, the LG V20 hasn't surfaced yet... Is there another phablet that can tick all the boxes?
What my current plan of action is to find something of last-gen and ride it out for another year. I'm okay spending $300-$400 on something that I'll probably flash a custom ROM into and recycle in a year's time when another round of flagships are announced. Unless there's some segment of the market that's eating the Pixel up the general reception I've been seeing hopefully clues Google into what people were looking for (Nexus iteration)
The oneplus 3 is less than half the price. I can have a very good phone for $520 and save the "leftover" money to purchase the OP5 in 2018 which will probably trump the XL.
I think Google's following this strategy to show they're just as valuable as apple from a mobile device perspective, but they lost me. With the mid-range high-quality chinese phones available i can't justify flagship prices anymore
I'm also kinda-sorta interested in the elephone "P9000 edge", but it seems to have been in "unconfirmed release date" hell for about 9 months.
https://www.cnet.com/products/oneplus-3-review/
http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/14/11931290/oneplus-3-android...
https://www.amazon.com/OnePlus-Graphite-Unlocked-Internation...
http://www.amazon.in/product-reviews/B01DDP7UQ0/ref=acr_dpx_...
How bad is the screen crack? I had a Samsung S3, which I found a very disappointing handset from the start, and then I managed to crack its screen after two months in a two-foot drop. I hung onto it for 22 more months because I had a grudge going on (it was at least a good opportunity anti-advertise Samsung). After a while I hardly noticed the crack and it didn't affect operation. So maybe you could live with it for some months.
I've been relatively happy with the Note 4 that replaced it, though the headphone jack recently died so I've unintentionally become bluetooth-only.
I might hang on for another month or so, until a couple more potential replacements are released.
I have been on the lookout for addons. The only ones I've seen so far for most models have been quite ugly external stickers that plug in to the usb port.
I was hoping the MotoZ would have a 'mod' that provided it, but the only mod they sell that provides wireless charging is also a massive backup battery and adds significant weight and thickness.
From the presentation and all the hands-on so far, the Pixel is definitely a high-end phone (both in prices, and specs).
And from the reviews the camera sounds pretty awesome (good quality, fast, good low-light performance).
For wireless charging, my understanding was the issue is the metal body. (I used to use Qi wireless charging on my Nexus 5 - but to be honest, it was always flakey and sensitive to placement - and super slow). With the super-fast USB PD charging (7 hours of use time in 15 minutes), I'd honestly prefer that over slow wireless charging:
https://ausdroid.net/2016/10/05/google-pixel-pixel-xl-new-18...
And of course, like the Nexus phones, software updates would be fast, and some of the software stuff they demoed in Android 7.1 is pretty nice.
If it was me, I'd either get one of the Pixels now, or hold out for a price drop. But that's me...haha.
Still very looks like a very impressive camera. The biggest drawback I see from phone cameras now is shutter lag and just how long it takes to get the camera app ready to take pictures. I hope Google has this nailed now.
And then you see a slide where Google uses the word iPhone 5 times to tell the world why their iPhone is well worth the iPhone price, lacking a score for the iPhone 7 Plus, and the reason for the delay suddenly becomes clear.
Well paid, Google. Well paid.
And Dxomark: you only have one reputation...
That was a big selling point during the announcement of the iPhone 7+, so seems worth waiting for that feature to be ready before completing the review.
They are consistent, very indepth, have objective scoring metrics and haven't shown any bias towards any brand or maker.
The iPhone 7 plus isn't an easy phone to evaluate because it has dual cameras, reviews of other phones with dual cameras also tended to lag and those were simpler where the 2 cameras were identical and were used to speed up or add additional digital zoom whilst the iPhone 7P uses 2 different cameras.
The iPhone 7 review was up 20 days after it was announced, and effectively about 9-10 days after it has became available in Europe.
It's pretty laughable that pretty much the only objective source out there and the only one that has bothered to take a scientific approach to evaluating the quality of cameras for mobile phones is accused of bias and being a paid lip service just because their current methodology is not compatible with the iPhone 7 Plus not to mention considering that iOS 10 also lacks support for certain modes for the 7P, and they want to actually give it a proper review, which means put it in cases where both cameras can be measured objectively.
This is not free, even if only they received services or free hardware for it in return. Once you start doing that there's no return.
Because they could have reviewed the iPhone 7 Plus using the iOS 10.1 betas. And what about the final number? Isn't the difference between 88, 89 or 90 also up to the personal opinion of the reviewer? How are bokeh foto's and true zoom weighed? If it is 88 instead of 89, how much did the Google bribe influence it? It's still a possible deviation within their rigid testing methodology depending on the reviewer's opinion.
I see a lot of websites that are clearly sponsored in one way or another. Samsung does it, Lenovo does it. I think Samsung and Lenovo products aren't bad but I know they spend a lot of money on massaging online review sources.
Dxomark didn't give me that "might be sponsored in a way" feeling, now I just don't know.
Their methodology and scoring algorithms are open.
https://www.dxomark.com/About/In-depth-measurements/DxOMark-...
They have evaluated 1000's of cameras, lenses and sensors, and all of a sudden they are biased because Apple doesn't ship pre-production units to get reviewed?
This is beyond pathetic, I love my iPhone but I never considered it to be the king of anything, even as far as the camera quality goes, it was overall one of the best rounded camera's but for quite a long time it wasn't the king.
The iPhone 3/3GS had pretty shitty camera's, like god damn awful, things have started to pick up with the 4 and 5 and the 5 was probably the only period where the iPhone might have been more or less uncontested, but since the 6 there were phones that were getting very close and even beating the iOS devices at certain aspects of the camera, and with this generation things are pretty much dead even as far high end devices go.
P.S.
It's quite likely that their full reports are available to purchase indirectly, this is how many of these niche firms work, this doesn't mean that there is bias, it's just the nature of these things these reviews are extremely expensive.
You're guessing just as much as me now. The only fact is that Google definitely had to pay to get these results and that review exactly at the moment of their keynote.
And it was definitely convenient for their slides to not have to show a iPhone 7 Plus score in it. It wouldn't have looked so suspicious if they just were proud about their own score on itself.
How is that a fact?
> how much did the Google bribe influence it?
There's no way readers can say anything definitive about Pixel's camera quality without real data.
Photos from mobile phones will be most often viewed on a service (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp) which will almost always do some sort of resizing and recompression which would render that +/- 5 spread between all the top cell phones meaningless.
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/55npvs/so_impressed_...
https://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/55rxnx/iphone_7_plus...
It seems almost unbelievable to me that a camera supposedly focused on quality would do this, so I wonder if DXOMark, despite claiming to be "The reference for image quality", actually destroyed image quality with terrible downscaling. I know people like sharpness, but if you insist on pushing it this far, ringing is far less objectionable than aliasing.
Reviewers that check for MTF and end it there are also problematic. There is more to photography than line pairs per millimeter.
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/External_filters#Deringing_.26_...
In the affirmative, how can the camera effectively stabilize the video since the sensor resolution (4K) is almost the same as the video resolution?
For the record, I've never owned an iPhone, and am very interested in seeing how the Pixel works out, but I just thought I'd mention the comments in case anyone had missed them..!
So far none of the cell phones even come close to looking like the real thing. Reds look yellow...
My wife's SLR does a good job of capturing it, but not our cells phones.
https://www.dxomark.com/var/ezwebin_site/storage/images/medi...
Interested to see if there is still the option to toggle it on and off even if "auto" is the default.
I'm just pondering how it happens. The HDR flag not a decision the software makes at the instant of capture. While composing the shot, there is a liveview from the sensor plus the processing pipeline, including the HDR processing. Does the user not realize/perceive that HDR is enabled before pressing the shutter?
The later has a better dxomark.
It's one of those cases where Apple identifies a technological gap of a few years they can open up between them and the rest of the pack and then invests in stealing a march on everybody else. Eventually the others catch up, but meanwhile if you want the best in that category only Apple has it. Right now in screen tech it's wide colour gamut and 5K desktop displays.
And while it's of course great that they built such a good camera, it's the least of what people expect. Cameras seem to be the last domain where phones differentiate. Software is similar, speed is similar, shape and size anyway.
more serious: if you compare automatic white balance you have to have the same framing for all shots!
Furthermore my comment was also about the shot with the chair, showing very different framing for the pixel cam.
On paper, the google pixel should have inferior results, given its slower lens (f2.0 vs f1.8 on the iPhone and f1.7 on the s7). Yet they apparently are superior.
All modern high end smartphone cameras use the same sensors (Sony) with different lenses. Did google achieve this through better software? Or better hardware? Hardware seems unlikely given that both Samsung and Apple likely have much larger budgets and a longer knowledge history.
I just ordered an iPhone 7 plus because of the camera, and this is clearly making me question whether this was the right choice.
You can't make that claim, yet. Reviews are subjective and it's possible other reviewers may have different opinions on photo quality. Additionally, DXOMark still haven't reviewed the iPhone 7 plus.
In any case, 2x optical zoom and iOS 10.1's portrait mode make the iPhone 7 plus a far more versatile option.
It definitely wasn't the iPhone 1, it had terrible camera even for its time but it also had the most handy camera, so it had the highest usage. My memory of the time around the 3g/3gs is fuzzy, but I do remember carrying a point and click together with my 3gs.
4 or 4s was when apple claimed parity with point and click, and I remember a lot of buzz around that time.
Looking at the link we see contemporary phones with similar or higher scores from 5s and forward.
Nokia was the clear leader until 2014. Not coincidentally Apple hired Nokia's camera development leader around that time [1].
Since then, Apple has been roughly at parity with Samsung's flagships.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/05/09/ari-partinen-joins-apple/
Hopefully next year they use an f/1.8 or wider aperture, too.
I think it would be weirder and less likely if they ordered a "next-gen" camera that had exactly 12.3MP resolution and f/2.0 lens, just as last year's camera. There's still a small chance I could be wrong, though, so just take it with a grain of salt. Perhaps Google will confirm it either way soon.
It looks like the Pixel is using the IMX378 -- I'm not sure what differences there are between the IMX377 and IMX378.
It's also worth noting that there is a lot more that goes into a good camera system than the sensor
With a modern low-noise DSLR sensor you might just be able to use that aperture indoors at ISO3200+ On a tiny phone sensor you'll need flash.