Can you believe it has been 10 years since the iPhone was triumphantly introduced by the late Steve Jobs? The iPhone has changed the way we used cell phones, and how Apple’s competitors make their own phones. The camera has become a major component of smart phones, and has effectively killed off compact digital cameras as a category. DxOMark—the French-based independent test lab that specializes in testing and rating digital cameras—has been testing smart phone cameras for several years now. How did the latest iPhone X camera do in their tests?
DxOMark declared the iPhone X the highest-scoring phone for photos so far. Video quality is not quite as good, but overall the phone is in the top three for overall on-board image quality.
“With a Photo score of 101, the Apple iPhone X achieves the best results so far for still images, edging out the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Note 8, the previous joint leaders in the Photo ranking, by one point,” says DxOMark. The lab compared exposure, color, texture, noise and artifacts, as well as zoom performance (the X has an optical zoom lens). The score is calculated from scores in tests that examine these different aspects of the camera’s performance under a variety of lighting conditions.
Bokeh effect
DxOMark says that the iPhone X did extremely well in bright light, as expected. It also did surprisingly well in high-contrast scenes. Image quality isn’t as good in extreme low light, with slightly less saturation, but were deemed “usable,” according to DxOMark’s report. Flash pictures in good light are said to display good detail and low noise, neutral white balance, and slight light fall-off at the corners of the frame. However, when using flash in low light didn’t impress DxOMark’s testers. They observed “occasional underexposure, particularly in flash-only pictures. A red-eye effect with portraits is frequently visible as well.”
Indoors, natural light/dynamic range/color balance test photo
The wider aperture f/1.8 main camera lens helps in low light, and the camera’s on-board Bokeh simulation software, while less than perfect (“some artifacts visible around the edges of the portrait, and slight depth estimation failures result in parts of the portrait being slightly blurred, although not as blurred as the background,” says DxOMark), will be acceptable for many snapshooters.
The knock against smart phones—Apple, Android, or whatever—is that their on-board cameras are limited in quality and abilities when compared to DSLRs and mirrorless cameras with larger sensors. The physics of sensor design will always make this so.
Shot at 100 lux.
Nevertheless, DxO concludes that the iPhone X “delivers the goods”:
“The iPhone X turns in an excellent result, delivering outstanding images for smartphone photography enthusiasts. It’s exceptional for stills, achieving the best Photo sub-score yet at 101 points. The overall score is affected by a slightly lower result for video, but at 97 points, the iPhone X ties with the Huawei Mate 10 for the second-highest score in our database of overall mobile image quality. For portraits, the improved telephoto lens delivers sharp results even indoors, and the bokeh simulation produces a natural and pleasing background blur. Outdoors, exposures are outstanding, with great dynamic range, impressive skies, good fine detail, and punchy color rendering. Add to all that the extra features on the front-facing camera, including a Portrait mode for blurred-background selfies, and the iPhone X delivers one hell of a smartphone camera.”
View the entire report on DxOMark’s web site.
Have you replaced your compact digital camera with a smart phone? How’s that working out for ya?
