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Comment by rackforms | Hacker News Reader

The basic point and shoot camera tests are fascinating. A cursory glance shows the Pixel 3's camera the best of the bunch, sometimes by far.

That said, as an iPhone user it's annoying to see Apple purposely hobbling itself with its overly aggressive (re: terrible) image processing.

In this image, for example:

https://images.anandtech.com/galleries/6731/A_iX_IMG_0308.jp...

The cobblestone ground is literally left unrecognizable, a shame considering the sensor is capable of so much more.

Since iOS 7 we're able to shoot raw, and Apps like ProCam show just how much better our sensor can be if it weren't for all that blurring.

If you shoot with an iPhone I highly recommend using RAW, your shots will easily match the Pixels excellent results for basic point and shoot detail.

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Based on EXIF data that image was taken with an iPhone X back in October.

Which means the OS was 12.0 which had a widely reported bug where the image processing was interpolating images incorrectly. This has been fixed in 12.1. Would be interesting to see the photo taken again to see if the quality has improved.

Also why are you comparing an iPhone X against the Pixel 3. The iPhone Xs has had significant improvements to the camera.

Pretty sure that bug only affected the front facing camera.

Something I've been trying to figure out without much luck is how different the raw images are between the iPhone X and XS. Any idea where I could find a comparison?

The reason I ask is because feature such as smart HDR have shown great promise but I don't know how much is software and how much is sensor performance.

This might help. Also, check a few other posts on the same blog.

https://blog.halide.cam/iphone-xs-why-its-a-whole-new-camera...

> A cursory glance shows the Pixel 3's camera the best of the bunch, sometimes by far.

I am surprised that you drew that conslusion from the review. I got the impression that iPhone and Samsung flagships consistently beat the Pixel 3 in daylight and normal light shots. They just have better hardware. He stated multiple times that iPhone is a better representation of the actual scene. However the night mode is obviously best in class (given nothing in the frame is moving).

Yeah, looking for I should qualify in overall presentation yes.

My comment was more a remark on the de-noise Apple's default camera app applies.

Again, I'd check out that image I linked to. At 100% zoom the ground detail is quite literally erased from the iPhone X image, to the point where it looks like a stylized art filter was applied.

The Pixel at least retains detail in such places (also, for example, on the roof tiles). Link: https://images.anandtech.com/galleries/6731/G_Pixel3_IMG_201...

None are perfect of course -- Samsung loves them some sharpening, and the Pixels images have a slightly garish blue cast I'm not a fan of.

I will agree with you that iPhone X photo looks poor. But that is last years flagship. The iPhone xs looks as good, if not better then the pixel. And if you compare the pixel 3 and iPhone xs at 2x zoom for the same photo, you will that the iPhone has much more detail (thanks to the telephoto lens). Google just can’t compete with the better hardware of the iPhones and Samsung phones, even with their better algorithms.

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