Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “MKBHD Picks The Best Smartphone Camera”.
So while I’ve got you here, I wanted to talk about this. I had to talk about this. This is the blind, smartphone camera test, video that you did a couple million views on it, a lot of people talking about it. I saw people talking about it on Twitter and so on, and I mean the basic idea. The premise here is a bunch of photos. You don’t tell anyone which smartphone camera they were shot on and then you ask people hey, which ones look the best. It’S blind blind, shrilly blind! That’S that’s why the word is in the title: yep, the blind, smartphone camera test and you tested a bunch of cameras how many total 16, something like that that a full-on bracket play.
That’S a ton of smartphone cast here’s the thing like when you have 16 they’re, not all gon na, be great right. So we have everything from the highest and iPhones to the pixels. But then we have we go down the list. You go LG. You go, read! Samsung, then, you suddenly have the oneplus and the BlackBerry and you’re just kind of filling in the bracket mm-, so the hardest part about that at the very beginning was making the bracket right. What do I blindly put up against the iPhone? Can do I put another great phone or just sacrifice a BlackBerry against it? When I watch the video, I actually didn’t think about that yeah, but you’re kind of right, because in a typical bracket fashion you would see it would have one seed versus 16 seed.
So the favorites will be more likely to make it through. What did you end up doing? We kind of had sort of a seating. You attempted you attempted one seed versus 16z.
I think we essentially thought we’d end up with an iPhone and a pixel. At the end, or something like that, so we didn’t want to put I phone versus pixel on round one mm-. So we kind of had a huawei phone against the palm phone blackberry against an iPhone.
A lot of matchups like that in the first round, but spoiler alert, didn’t quite go that way, and that’s actually why I wanted to bring it up yeah, because what ends up happening in this experiment here is that the results are not what anyone expected them to Be you know now, of course, there’s reasons for that I mean I immediately had my speculation on why that might be the case in the video you actually talked about it a little bit but ultimately and we’re gon na kind of spoil the video a little bit Here, yeah, but some phones make it through this bracket that have no big this in most people’s minds, making it through the bracket. You would traditionally think certain characteristics would carry through and make the photo obviously better, but we did the tests and the voting on Instagram and Twitter, so it ended up kind of boiling down to putting them to side by side. People generally fell towards voting for the brighter more saturated, more vivid one mm-, even though the highest and best smartphone cameras. We traditionally know, as you know, the iPhone of the pixel. Don’T do the brightest vivid, most crazy photos, they do sort of more neutral, more adjustable. Gradable higher dynamic range photos which didn’t win an interesting thing for me about about this about this experiment.
This video was, it brings into question the idea of good in general, who gets to decide which is better. Is it it’s not strictly? This is a higher resolution photo, it’s which one do you like? Better was the way it was positioned, and so when people went and picked phones that that typically wouldn’t be. You know, like you, let’s say the polka phone against iPhone 10 or the blackberry beats the beefy. The 10s, like on paper, no one’s supposed to pick that, but blindly they do right like who gets to pick what’s good and bad? Is it you and I or is it the general public? I mean they had the same photos at their disposal.
Yeah right you had these photos, you published them on social media after you saw them post compression. I blind tested myself a little bit. That was what I was wondering so on my computer when I’m looking at the full resolution, because we basically like crop the two and put the top in the bottom next to each other, so I’m looking at the original files next to each other original files. I pick the higher end expected winner every time right, but then I put them on Instagram stories and I forgot about the letters and I tested myself and I voted for the crowd favorites the upsets more often than not – and most of this was because, when I’m Looking at the original files on my iMac they’re high resolution, I can see the detail in one and the softness and the other and nealy I picked that one but yeah.
We lost that particular characteristic of the high-end phones and suddenly it’s just like. Well, I like the fact that I can see all the colors in one of them and the other one looks a little muted, so I’ll pick the brighter one, so that so you have the same effect that the audience they’ve had the same effect on me. Yeah and you ended up picking the cheaper devices a couple times yeah sometimes – and I also like I put 16 phones in because I wanted to eliminate the oh. I know this is the pixel Saul vote for it.
So if it was a versus B – and I told you one’s a pixel one’s an iPhone at a certain point – you can kind of identify a photograph dot on a pixel for sure out of the side, you want to pick one or the other. So when we had 16 options like this, it was like well every single time. One of these might be the pixel and I was kind of like I don’t want to evaluate too hard. I just kind of glanced at it and picked one and moved on.
You know when I’m just doing that which is kind of like what most people do on Twitter. Anyway, I was picking the BlackBerry in the book of unexpected but interesting. Nonetheless, the crazy part here is that these companies spend tremendous amounts of time and energy to create these amazing cameras that have completely replaced these gigantic systems that people have had in the past and and, of course, point-and-shoot cameras and so on. And then people end up taking these photos and, and the only way we end up seeing them, is on the cell phone Instagram, Twitter and your phone, and so people aren’t like really what the story is about.
This particular video is that people are not sharing their photos and receiving their photos in such a manner that constitutes spending the extra money on the better camera in the first place, you’ve got to know what you want out of it. If all you want is to take a photo, that’s good enough for Instagram or Twitter literally any of those phones. That’S what I learned, because I wouldn’t have even any photos an Instagram photo it’s hard to find a really truly bad phone nowadays, but I think if you also value that like well, you know Apple is running a shot on iphone contest where you can share your Original images to be put on a billboard like if you care about seeing them on as a wallpaper on your you, want a little more detail or a little extra finesse for things like that, then you’re, actually looking at the top couple. Instead of just whatever looks fine on Instagram, however, you take a lot of selfies.
I don’t know, there’s all kinds of priorities, but if you know what you want out of a phone that’ll dictate what kind of weight you put into this test right. There’S something to be said for like the extra work that gets put into pushing that bleeding edge of phones. That’S why I love, but I carried the pixel as like a camera yeah like I keep trying like all these other phones, and I keep falling back to the camera that camera for me sidenote. That camera for me, was the most like just point it and shoot it yeah out of any smartphone camera.
I’Ve ever tried, Nightside, yeah, absolutely yeah. No, it’s it’s ridiculous! I mean again somehow in the blind test, but it lost what a pickle. Oh.
It lost. Mate. 20, Pro yeah, which venom went on to win the whole thing, really crush the whole thing. Yeah it did win the whole thing right. I think yeah it did okay.
So let me ask you something, then, in closing out of this entire bracket here, obviously, the mate 20 Pro ended up winning, but some cheaper devices like the Polka phone, went all the way to the final round yeah, and now that smartphone cameras are such a differentiating Factor for people and one of the main reasons people will actually spend more on a smartphone out of this group, which do you think, represents the best value for money. I think it’d be hard to argue with if I’m just looking at this test, the Polka phone being one of the less expensive phones going so far, mm- the BlackBerry, but it’s still, you have to like a blackberry like there’s a whole lot more baggage. That comes with switching to a blackberry, but I think a lot of people who were like. Oh well, I’m on this older phone, I’m thinking about this polka phone, but I don’t know if the cameras gon na be good enough.
I think they can probably rest easy. I think this is a good enough camera mm-. If you want the highest end, the most detail, the most dynamic range, the test results won’t really help you so much, but I found this really interesting. The way it played out which phone wins your bracket of like cost, doesn’t matter, you had the you had full res files.
You had your own taste buds made Tony Pro, oh really and in the reason is because, like it took the brightest photos and that’s why I kept winning, but it was also very detailed and had a good amount of dynamic range. So you can, you can pull down exposure if you don’t like that high exposure, if you want that’s just kind of like how some bias Samsung biases a little high exposure Apple, tends to go a little lower. But I think, looking at the raw file is why blind tested myself with the raw files and not the compressed version. I think I would have ended up picking Nate on 24 yeah .