Megapixels mean nothing: Apple iPhone 6 trounces Samsung Galaxy S5 in camera shootout

“With the iPhone 6, Apple shows why the megapixel race in camera phones is over,” Geoffrey A. Fowler reports for The Wall Street Journal. “”

“Apple arch-rival Samsung includes a 16-megapixel camera in its Galaxy S5 phone. The main camera on the latest upgrades to the iPhone line still has just 8 megapixels,” Fowler reports. “Yet the images from both the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are the best I’ve tested on a phone to date.”

“What’s so special? The iPhone 6 boasts an improved sensor and a focus technology called phase-detection, both of which shine in dark or fast-moving situations,” Fowler reports. “On the iPhone 6 Plus, Apple also included optical image stabilization to the lens, to help accommodate for shaky hands, particularly in low light when shutter speeds are slower… Both phones produced more detailed, less noisy photos than their predecessor and the Samsung Galaxy S5.”

Fowler reports, “You can judge for yourself. Here are some shots I took in different scenarios with the iPhone 5S, 6, 6 Plus, and Galaxy S5…”

See the photos in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dan K.” for the heads up.]

18 Comments

    1. You made a good point is snarky statement( don’t get me wrong, I like it). The processor is very important. Speed is everything in getting a good photo. This goes back to the 1800’s. On high end DSLRs they have 2 processors. One for the photo and the other to control the camera. The 5s, 6 and 6+ also have 2 processors. The M chips take away some of stabilization work for the A chips. This helps a lot with video. The droid heads have denied the M exists and keep saying 64bit is unimportant.

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  1. The night time pavilion shots, both the 5s and the 6 look better than Samsung. Overall the 6 Plus does look better. For a family guy, it’s hair splitting. Where the 6 Plus will shine, are those moments where you don’t have time to think about your shot. This for me is 90% of the time. So my photos will look immensely better.

    Thanks Apple, your efforts are greatly appreciated. Also, this isn’t a stretch. Please let us have RAW too. 😉

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    1. I get the feeling none of those dolts opened the photos to compare them… the difference is drastic. Then there are the other idiots crowing about how great the extra megapixels are for zoom. That would be great… if the photo wasn’t a crunched up pos to begin with.

  2. Wow – open the photos up and compare them – it’s not even close – you really can’t tell from the photos on the web page. Can’t wait to get my hands on the new phone… doing some stop motion for a job – the 5S is doing great, but I do have some low light stuff that the 6 will excel in.

    1. At first I didn’t open them, I just looked at the thumb nails and thought they all looked about the same. When you open them, there is a drastic difference. The iPhone 6 and 5s did much better in most of the shots. The outdoor shot was mostly the same, though the sky in the samsung one was over exposed.

  3. Well, it hasn’t been about megapixels in a long time. Any photographer worth her name knows that there comes a point when cramming ever more photo sites on a small sensor becomes counterproductive. That is, once the optimum number of megapixels has been reached for a given sized sensor, the addition of more pixels begins to degrade the result. Phone camera sensors are by necessity very small, so it doesn’t take long before the optimum number of megapixels are exceeded and results begin to degrade. DSLR’s usually have higher pixel counts than phone cameras but also have enormous sized sensors in comparison, so their actual pixel density is much lower than many camera phones. Once again it’s a case of marketing using technical specifications that few people understand to try and sell an inferior product.

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