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00:00All right, y'all have waited patiently for this.
00:05Once again, this year we've run our blind smartphone camera test, scientific style.
00:10You know, we always think we know what the absolute best smartphone cameras are, but
00:14do we actually know?
00:16Like what if we wanted an objective answer straight from real world data?
00:19Literally every time I review a phone, there's some people in the comment section saying,
00:23oh, I, you know, iPhone photos are the only good ones, or I only like pixel photos, or
00:27you know, Samsung is the only one who does good portrait mode.
00:30But what if we put that to the test?
00:31What if we took a bunch of the best smartphone cameras on the planet and took them out into
00:35the real world and took the exact same photo with each and every one of them and then strip
00:40them of all their labels and then had you, the public, vote on which one's photos you
00:45like the best.
00:46That should reveal the best actual smartphone camera.
00:50So that's exactly what we did.
00:51This year we took these 20 smartphones, updated all of their software, charged them all up,
00:57got their batteries to a hundred percent.
00:59Then we went out and took the same three photos with each one, one daytime photo, one low
01:04light photo, and one portrait mode photo.
01:07Yes, it is surprisingly hard to stay perfectly still for 20 identical photos to be taken
01:11in a row, but I did it for you.
01:12Then we had to go in and import all the photos from every single smartphone camera, harder
01:16than you think, strip them of all their EXIF data, and then upload them to a site that
01:20we've built that lets us put them side by side for you guys to vote on head to heads
01:25millions and millions and millions of times, which you did.
01:29That should give us a statistically significant winner and loser.
01:33We'll get to that.
01:34And the results this year were kind of interesting, a little bit.
01:38I almost didn't make this video, but I can tell people have been waiting.
01:41The competitive tension is high and the actual results might be a little surprising to some
01:46of you.
01:47So let's get into it.
01:48So the data our site spits out all comes in these text files with matchup ratings for
01:52every single combination of smartphones.
01:55We actually had them coded by letters of the alphabet.
01:57You can see A through T, but that little number, that one right here is the most important.
02:03That is the ELO rating.
02:04You know, the system that ranks chess players or tennis players, basically anything head
02:09to head with enough matchup information, we can sort of sort through all of these letters
02:14based on who they beat and who they lose to and create a power rankings.
02:19And that will give us our winners.
02:21So the question you probably all want to know, who were the winners?
02:25And so we'll go, we'll go category by category, because like I said, there were three different
02:28scenarios, daytime, low light and portrait mode.
02:32So let's go one by one.
02:33So daytime for the regular daylight photos, we kind of had it set up with just me sitting
02:37in front of this window here, but there's a lot to this photo.
02:39The strongest light is from inside the room, but then the window light is actually a good
02:43test of dynamic range.
02:45And then there's also a variety of colors.
02:47There's my skin tone.
02:48There's the orange chair next to the blue pillow.
02:51A few other things.
02:52This is on purpose.
02:53There's no individual variable that can dominate this test.
02:56So every single phone, we try to frame the exact same way from the exact same spot, holding
03:01one of them up as a reference so we can get as close as possible.
03:04And everything is fully auto.
03:06We just open the camera app, make sure the lens is clean and just hit the shutter button.
03:10We don't even tap to focus, just point and shoot.
03:13It takes about six minutes to go through all 20 phones.
03:17Like I said, it's kind of hard to sit still for six minutes straight, but we did it.
03:20So for this regular daylight photo situation, the winner with the highest ELO rating is
03:25the Pixel 7a.
03:28That's pretty impressive.
03:29So this is the photo that you guys, for the most part, voted as the winner in most of
03:33its matchups.
03:35Pretty neutral photo to be honest, not too bright, not too dark, pretty excellent dynamic
03:39range.
03:40And it's also not a fluke because the second highest ELO rating came from the Pixel Fold.
03:45So the Fold took a very similar photo and then finishing up on the podium was the OnePlus
03:50Open, one of those high-end folding phones.
03:54So I will say my personal favorite photo and the one that actually won for me when I blind
03:59tested myself was this one.
04:01This is the fourth highest ELO rating.
04:03This is the OnePlus 11.
04:04It's definitely a little on the contrastier side, but a little more confident with nailing
04:08the exposure and having dynamic range.
04:10Nevertheless, it's definitely interesting here.
04:12A lot of people pointed out that the sun behind me, you know, looked a little different in
04:16each photo.
04:17It might've been setting.
04:18So the background was a little different, which is a little bit true, but it wasn't
04:21late enough in the day for that to actually affect the photo.
04:25I think the fact that the 7a is the only one with this little lens flare is actually just
04:30a coincidence.
04:31And then fun fact in dead last with the absolute bottom lowest ELO rating for this daytime
04:36photo is the iPhone 15 Pro.
04:41Not a terrible photo.
04:42I mean, you can't really get a horrible photo and normal looking lighting for most of these
04:45smartphones, but when you put it up against the others, it's mostly just the darkest one.
04:50And so when you put it up side by side against these much brighter photos, people just picked
04:54the brighter one almost every single time.
04:56Funnily enough, though, you can absolutely overexpose for this competition as the second
05:01lowest ELO rating belongs to the Galaxy S23 Ultra for producing this weirdly overexposed
05:07masterpiece.
05:09So here are all the photos side by side with their ELO ratings.
05:12Feel free to pause it if you'd like to make some more observations, but let's move on
05:16to the nighttime photos.
05:18So low light, low light is a much more challenging shot for a smartphone camera, especially with
05:23a tiny sensor and tiny optics trying to take in as much light as possible.
05:27But you know, computational photography has come a long way.
05:30And even in this pretty dark rooftop where the only light source was like 40 feet away
05:34from me, these cameras still managed to do a good job.
05:38And if you're ready for the plot twist, the highest overall ELO rating for the low light
05:42photo comes from, dead last from the daylight photo, it is again the iPhone 15 Pro with
05:51another totally reasonable photo.
05:54Now following it very closely in second place was the Pixel 8 Pro and actually the Pixel
05:597a coming in third.
06:02And to be honest, I fully agree with all of these.
06:04It's kind of, it's starting to get ridiculous how much some of the other smartphone cameras
06:09started to pump up the light.
06:11Like literally the second you get outside the top four, you get straight into bad HDR
06:16territory.
06:17Like this is the, this is the fifth place photo from S23 Ultra, which is definitely
06:20too bright.
06:21And also you can see this little HDR halo effect starting to show up around my head.
06:26And then if you scroll all the way down to the Oppo Find X6 Pro, just my God, what happened?
06:34Like these cameras are going nuts.
06:35It looks like in this one, they literally painted sloppily over me and just dragged
06:39up the exposure.
06:40Matter of fact, yep, see, that's exactly what it looks like.
06:46The Zenfone did this too, along with a few others.
06:49And I honestly think the OnePlus Open not only made me brighter, but then it also identified
06:55the sky and made the sky darker, which just then starts to look ridiculous.
07:00I mean, real life looked nothing like this.
07:03So here are all the nighttime photos and their ELO ratings, pause it if you need it.
07:08And now we can move to the last but not least category, portrait mode.
07:11So portrait mode kind of turns out to be the hardest test like this to run because they
07:15all kind of do portrait mode a little bit differently.
07:17If you just open the camera app and switch to portrait mode, some of them do 2X, some
07:21of them are 3X.
07:22Some of them say 1X, but they're actually like 1.5X, it's kind of weird.
07:26So we tried to just keep it simple for this test and just open the camera app, switch
07:29to portrait mode, and then move our feet forward or backward to try to match the focal
07:33length with all of these shots.
07:35It kind of worked.
07:36And, you know, they all kind of also have different bokeh levels.
07:39Some of them are adjustable, some of them aren't, but like I said, we're just going
07:42with the default, the point and shoot that most people will get when they do it.
07:46And the portrait mode point and shoot winner with the highest ELO rating is the Pixel 8
07:51Pro.
07:52This was followed pretty closely by Samsung Z Fold 5, which I actually think had a better
07:57cutout.
07:59And then the third highest ELO here was the iPhone 15 Pro, which I think had the most
08:03natural looking blur.
08:04But basically all of these podium finishers have relatively subtle portrait modes, nothing
08:08too dramatic, and then pretty good detail and overall balance in just the rest of the
08:13photo.
08:14I say this because the losers here in this particular category were nothing like this.
08:20They were some of the wonkiest, weirdest photos in the entire competition.
08:24And the loser with the absolute lowest ELO rating for this category, and actually in
08:28any category, was the Sony Xperia 1 Mark V with this photo.
08:37With that?
08:39That's the photo?
08:40Like, okay, this one looks like a mistake.
08:42We all actually thought it was a mistake as we shot it.
08:45Like this can't possibly be right, right?
08:47We clean the lens, we take it again, it does it again.
08:51And then it did it again and again.
08:52So I mean, I guess for whatever reason, this $1,200 Android flagship phone in its auto
08:59portrait mode just could not handle this lighting.
09:02It had some weird issues.
09:04Anyway, here's all of the portrait mode photos and their ELO ratings.
09:08You're welcome.
09:09I'd like to give out some awards.
09:11Now that we have all of our matchup data and all of our voting and all of our ELO ratings
09:15from across every single person for what you guys voted for, for more than 20 million total
09:20votes, there's some pretty interesting stuff here.
09:23So we have our winners and losers in each of the three categories, which is cool.
09:26But if you average it all together, we have the highest overall average ELO rating.
09:32We'll call this one the People's Champ.
09:35And with the highest average of 1660, that's pretty competitive.
09:40It was the Pixel 7a.
09:42So this one won the daytime photo, as you probably remember, but then it also came in
09:45third place in the nighttime photo and fourth place of all 20 in the portrait mode photo.
09:52So that's pretty strong.
09:54But here's the kicker.
09:56The second highest average ELO rating was the Pixel 8 Pro.
10:01And the third highest average ELO rating, again, this is your votes, is the Pixel Fold.
10:08So pixel, pixel, pixel.
10:10It's a perfect pixel podium.
10:12So here you can see the whole list from top to bottom.
10:15The three pixels at the top, surprisingly in reverse price order, and then bringing
10:19up the rear for total ELO is the Sony Xperia 1 Mark V and the Xiaomi 13 Ultra.
10:25Then I also had to bring back the bang for the buck award, which I did this last year
10:28also.
10:29It's basically just most votes from you guys divided by MSRP at launch.
10:35So most votes per dollar, basically.
10:37And so your winner again is going to be the Pixel 7a.
10:40This was a phone that launched right around 500 bucks.
10:42It did incredible on the tests.
10:44But in second place in votes per dollar is the Nothing Phone 2.
10:48It's a pretty good performing phone and it actually launched like upper mid-range price.
10:53So this is a good phone, bang for the buck wise.
10:56And then in 3a, 3b, right next to each other underneath these two, you have the OnePlus
11:0111 and the Zenfone 10.
11:02And then impressively, actually the Sony is not dead last in this category.
11:05It is expensive and it did perform horribly, but not worse, bang for the buck wise, than
11:10a super expensive folding phone.
11:12The Z Flip 5 overall average did worse for the dollar.
11:17The more you know.
11:18So what did we learn with all this?
11:19Well, I'll leave you with this.
11:21First of all, the Pixels killed it.
11:23They had the one, two, three finish.
11:24They're great bang for the buck.
11:26It was weird that they're in reverse price order, but fine.
11:28But also there's a lot more to a smartphone camera, of course, than just a sitting down
11:33staged photo of a person.
11:36We learned a little bit about how it shoots my skin tones.
11:39There's a whole bunch of other things you might care about from auto-focus speed, to
11:42the UI, to the actual file format, how editable it is, to videos, like there's a bunch more
11:49to it.
11:50But at the end of the day, I think we were still pretty not shocked by the slightly brighter
11:56photos being the slightly less bright photos, and maybe we'll run it back again next year
12:01and learn something new.
12:02Either way, thanks for watching this one.
12:05Catch you guys next time.
12:06Peace.
12:07Peace.
12:08Peace.