velcrovan
Someone should assemble a chain of iPhone camera review
comparison images published over the years, 18 → 17, 17
→ 16, 16 → 15 etc. showing how each year's new phone
being so much better than the previous year's somehow
becomes perceivably bad next to the next year's phone.
|
> Krasnol
Could you provide at least one review to support that
claim?
|
matja
I'm surprised that in no reviews of the iPhone 18 camera
there is mention of the bad quality bokeh, it has heavy
ring shapes that looks like what you'd get from a cheap
catadioptric lens.Edit: e.g. the tree in one of the images
in the page:
https://www.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/PoleHDR
_D...
|
> dofm
That is from the normal (24mm) camera slightly stopped
down (f/1.8), judging by the EXIF.Odd bokeh was one of
the risks of adding a mechanical aperture, and bokeh
is very often weirdest at the first or second down
from open.I would hope that the telephoto lens does
not show this so severely (because it has a fixed
round aperture) but all mobile phone lenses in my
experience have had a tendency towards a sort of
concentric-ringed, quasi-soap-bubble bokeh; it's a
common part of the challenge of really tiny optics
(that you either like or dislike). (The iPhone X was
really distinctive in this regard). So it's not too
surprising to see the aperture do this on top of
that.As a general rule you don't see it in average
images, but I guess sensors are now high-enough
resolution that it's becoming more obvious, and the
blades of a mechanical aperture might make it quite
noticeable in some situations.
|
> > gyomu
> Odd bokeh was one of the risks of adding a
mechanical aperture, and bokeh is very often
weirdest at the first or second down from
open.Why? Where can I read/learn more about this?
|
> > > robotmay
This is usually due to the blade shape and
quantity I believe. The aperture is most
likely to be less circular on the widest
apertures after fully open unless you have
quite a lot of aperture blades, as the curve
to make a rounder aperture is usually applied
more towards the tip of the blade, and you're
only seeing the base of the blades at wider
apertures. That varies a lot by aperture
design, however - if you have the more
banana-shaped blades where the retaining pin
and pivot pin are at opposite ends (like in a
Yashica TLR) then I believe they can maintain
a more consistent curve along the length.
Those also suck massively to reassemble, but
that's a different story.I haven't seen a
diagram of how the aperture in this new iPhone
is designed yet. There's a lot of different
ways to do it, with lots of odd shape
possibilities.
|
> > > > dofm
> This is usually due to the blade shape
and quantity I believe.Also because of
things like angle of incidence?The purely
round lens will generally have nice round
(or at least cats-eye) bokeh across the
frame with an edge that degrades softly as
a result of aberration, so beams of light
from different angles tend to blur into
each other.As soon as you get aperture
blades, you lose that soft edge, get
contrast but also a lot of competing shape
influences at different angles. They will
tend towards more rounded shapes as you
stop down more.And that is putting aside
that some aperture shapes are just really
insane when they are nearly wide open,
right? (Konica 40mm f/1.8 AR I am looking
at you with your shuriken bokeh)
|
> > CarVac
Polygonal aperture openings are not the cause of
soap-bubble bokeh, it's the cause of polygonal
stopped-down bokeh.Heavily ringed bokeh just comes
from the optics.
|
> > > dofm
> Polygonal aperture openings are not the
cause of soap-bubble bokehErrr, quite
obviously not, indeed. But then I didn't say
they were?I said all phone lenses tend to have
soap bubble bokeh as a consequence of their
optics. Almost all phone lenses don't have
mechanical apertures; they have fixed ring
apertures and also tiny aspheric lenses.(In
the industry it's seemingly called "onion ring
bokeh" to distinguish from soap bubble,
presumably because it has more than one
ring.)However! The first stop down of a
mechanical iris has a tendency to have odd
effects on the lens's bokeh.You get both the
quirks of the aperture blades. With a lens
that is prone to bubble bokeh, slightly
stopping down will smear the edge of the
bubble, but in this case it is also clearly
boosting contrast as you expect.I think that
is what you're seeing here. Onion ring bokeh
with contrast boosted by the blades (and an
irregular shape because of them too)
|
> robotmay
Ooh that's fun bokeh, it's like the doughnut bokeh
from a mirror lens. Combined with the various
computational tweaks made to the images that's a
pretty bizarre effect, looks like micro motion blur at
a distance and properly weird when zoomed in.
|
gyomu
> "DXOMARK's objective measurements and perceptual
analyses"Where are the measurements? All I see are vague
generalities like "well-rendered images with improved
contrast and natural-looking skin tones". I guess those
are the "perceptual analyses"? Is there a "See full
measurements" button I'm missing? How do they come up with
numbers like "157 Portrait", "172 Outdoors"?
|
> opello
I was wondering about that too, it seems like it's
partly in this test
report:https://www.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2025
/06/AppleiPho...and then more context, especially for
the less objective categories, in this test protocol
description:https://www.dxomark.com/smartphone-camera-
image-quality-test...It was a little annoying to find
(About Us > How We Test) but not awful I suppose.
|
azatom
Where is a comparing site where the exact same subject and
lightening used? Why https://www.gsmarena.com/piccmp.php3
stopped it? I can only find these "trust me" reviews.
|
ricardobeat
A little hard to interpret as the Huawei pictures are not
cropped to the same frame. When zooming in the difference
is less striking.
|
sharktheone
Interesting to see what they got out of basically the same
camera sensor. It seems largely just like way better
denoising capabilities. Maybe that is why they needed the
extra NPU in the A20 chip.But even with that they are
still behind Android phones, while they dominated some
years ago
|
> microtonal
It seems that in their ranking currently only the
Huawei Pura 80 Ultra is
ahead?https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera
|
> matwood
> But even with that they are still behind Android
phones, while they dominated some years agoFlagship
Android and iOS device cameras have been 1a/1b for
awhile. It's video where Apple dominated. Did Android
make some huge strides in video lately?
|
> > torben-friis
Anecdotically, my current OPPO find x9 mops the
floor with my previous iphone 16 pro in
photography in practice. The 1-1 with apple only
seems to be there for Google and Samsung, but the
Chinese flagships are a step up.For video I think
the iphone hasn't been dethroned yet.
|
> > > eightysixfour
Wouldn't that comparison be quite a bit closer
vs the 17 Pro? I thought that was a decent
camera upgrade year but I can't keep track.
|
> > > > torben-friis
Generationally yes, the oppo is more
recent, but (AFAIR, I'm speaking from
memory) the 17 improved just on the selfie
and accesory lenses, the main camera
remained mostly untouched.
|
> iririririr
until the "denoiser" starts to hallucinate
|
> > LoganDark
At least it doesn't detect moon shaped objects and
impose a static image of the moon on top of it
|
Sharlin
>
https://www.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/DuoTabl
e_...Oh god that plasticization of the faces is absolutely
horrifying. Like a bad image gen AI from 2022. Or
reptilians wearing cheap rubber masks.Edit: what's with
the downvotes?
|
> hopfenspergerj
The face is the background is clearly an AI model
adding detail where the raw image is out of focus. The
people you're talking to on this site are just blind.
|
> > hopfenspergerj
Look at one eye has lashes and the other doesn't!
It's just a low-quality AI "denoise+sharpen"
filter.
|
> kccqzy
Some people's faces just naturally look like that.
Probably depends on the cosmetics applied.
|
> dpark
> what's with the downvotes?Presumably because others
disagree. I also do not see it here. Zooming in there
are clear pores and skin texture. Is it somewhat
smoothed? Yeah, it has that feel. Does it look like a
cheap rubber mask? No. And that phrasing is frankly
very insulting to the pictured subjects.
|
> > orbital-decay
What's insulting about overprocessed photos? You
can clearly see that the arbitrary part of the
face of the girl in front is literally blurred,
which happens neither to the other parts of her
face nor to the photo taken with Huawei where the
details are visible.It's smartphone cameras,
squeezing blood from stone is pretty hard.
|
sgt
How does it compare to the Samsung flagship phone cameras?
I have to say I was impressed by the Samsung cameras,
although being Android based it's not really an option for
me. It'd be like trading a Porsche 911 for a Pontiac
Aztec.
|
> heaney-555
https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera
|
> loloquwowndueo
That's harsh - the Aztek was not that bad ...
|
> > onionisafruit
Like trading something flashy, fast and
impractical for something ugly and practical (idk
if Azteks were fast but I suspect not notably so).
I don't know if it works for the camera phone
comparison.
|
> > > loloquwowndueo
I drove an Aztek once and it felt fast enough
for regular city driving. Why anyone would
_need_ a faster car is beyond me.
|
sharktheone
it tells something that the word "aperture" is only
mentioned 3 times in the test
|
> mathgeek
What are you inferring from that? Interested to hear.
|
> > brzz
I assume they're implying the new variable
aperture on the 18 Pro is more of a marketing/spec
sheet thing than an actual meaningful feature
|
> > > Danox
Most users will never use it, or I should say
adjust the aperture, most people appear to be
more interested in the video performance, and
the video performance depends upon having very
good software and hardware combined as one
which is where Apple is able to outdo the
competition, with Apple Silicon/video
software, Apple appears to only care about
still pictures up to a certain point, over the
last five or six years. In short video is king
in today's YouTube age.
|
> llm_nerd
What does it tell? Your comment seems weirdly cynical,
but maybe that's my reading?I mean, one of the uses is
the statement "Its variable aperture is a particular
strength, significantly improving the camera's ability
to maintain sharpness in complex scenes and when
multiple subjects are present.".DXOMark is a technical
test with generally little narrative, so I'm not sure
what your point even is. Would it surprise you that
their reviews of SLR lenses, where the aperture is a
critical element of the lens (and it would be a joke
not to have one), they generally don't mention it at
all?
|
miladyincontrol
Is it just me or in their initial photo the focus point is
in a wildly different point. On the iphone it's
prioritizing the foreground model, on the Huawei the
background.
Definitely noticeable based on hair, although the Huawei
seems to oversharpen the face with iPhone doing a bit of
the opposite.
|
ThePhysicist
The Huawei model just uses AI based upscaling and
filtering which is why the images look so sharp when
zoomed in, that's not depicting reality though... You can
also zoom into the moon on the night sky with these
cameras and easily "resolve" details that are optically
impossible to resolve with the camera lens as they are
beyond the Abbe limit. At the very least they should
compare RAW data in these posts, not the AI scaled slop
most of these cameras produce nowadays.
|
> lynndotpy
This sounds like speculation based on a few viral
instances. Can you provide any sources? The moon
problem you're describing was attributed to a 2023
Samsung, which was using neural upscaling. Can you
provide a source describing this for this specific
model (Huawei Pura 80 Ultra)?Computational photography
isn't just the smoke-and-mirrors of AI upscaling
faking information. You really can get around the
limitations of physics on a traditional lens with
non-generative computational photography techniques,
incorporating real information, like the time-series
data over the length of an exposure, the data from
other sensors like the accelerometer or lidar, or data
from an array of lenses (as others have pointed
out).Even without those tricks, the Pura 80 Ultra
specifically uses a much larger camera sensor than
most phones.
|
> kamranjon
Is that true though? It seems like the iphones are
doing some type of skin smoothing algorithm but the
Huawei is the only one that actually seems to produce
actual skin texture and blemishes. My initial read was
that the Huawei was the least processed of the bunch.
|
> esperent
> You can also zoom into the moon on the night sky
with these camerasiPhone, Samsung, Chinese phones,
they all do fake moons now.
|
> throwaway893257
The Huawei phone has five rear cameras.
|