“Shortly after Apple launched the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus smartphones, DxOMark Image Labs published the results of its testing of the cameras on the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus,” Ashraf Eassa writes for The Motley Fool. “The iPhone 8 Plus achieved a composite score of 94 in DxOMark Image Labs’ testing, with sub-scores of 96 for still photography and 89 for video. At the time, DxOMark Image Labs said that this was the best mobile camera that it had ever tested.”
“Apple marketing chief Phil Schiller, the individual who has presented the key new features of Apple’s new iPhones at Apple’s product release keynotes for years now, tweeted out a link to DxOMark’s iPhone 8 Plus testing,” Eassa writes. “It wasn’t long before the iPhone 8 Plus was beaten in DxOMark by the Pixel 2 smartphone, which achieved a composite score of 98. The iPhone X, which was tested after the Pixel 2 was, only achieved a composite score of 97. To make matters worse for Apple’s lineup, the newly launched Galaxy S9+ achieved a composite score of 99 across DxOMark Image Labs’ testing suite.”
“By tweeting out a link to the DxOMark results of the iPhone 8 Plus, Schiller, in effect, made it clear that he and, indeed, Apple as an organization, approve of using DxOMark scores as an objective measure of smartphone camera quality and capability,” Eassa writes. “This seal of approval from Schiller will make it easier for Apple’s competitors — whose devices beat out Apple’s three flagship smartphones in DxOMark’s tests — to advertise to consumers that their smartphone cameras are better than anything that Apple has to offer.”
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MacDailyNews Take: Apple’s iPhone cameras remain excellent, among the very best smartphone cameras in the world, but Schiller did hand the keys of legitimacy over to a third-party which was a marketing mistake. Camera quality tests often contain subjective conclusions that amount to matters of taste (warm images vs. accurate images, for example). Apple should let their cameras speak for themselves while doubling down on quality and innovation.