We compare iPhone 14 Pro, Google Pixel 7 Pro, OPPO Find X5 Pro and SamsungS22 Ultra » EFTM

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Last year we pitted the cameras of some of the best smartphones on the market against each other. In the end there wasn’t a clear winner, but we found some pretty big differences between all of them.

It was last year though. We’ve made incremental changes to smartphone cameras this year with computational photography advancing another 12 months as well, so we thought we’d give it another go.

The phones used in the shooting this year were:

OPPO Find X5 ProGoogle Pixel 7 ProSamsung Galaxy S22 UltraApple iPhone 14 Pro Max

I’ll insert a disclaimer here that the Galaxy S22 Ultra and Find X5 Pro are both at least six months old and therefore in the middle of their product cycles, so they can be excused if they don’t exactly match the just one month old Pixel 7 . Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max. That said though, let’s take a look at how all smartphone cameras fared, the results might surprise you.

The hardware differences

Samsung is the only one of the four flagships tested that still uses a quad camera setup. All of them included a main camera, an ultra wide angle camera and a telephoto camera. Of course, each manufacturer will include slightly different hardware specs in each of their flagship smartphones, so let’s take a quick look at each one:

Google Pixel 7 Pro Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra OPPO Find X5 Pro Wide: 50MP, f/1.85 Long Tele: 48MP, f/3.5 Ultra-Wide: 12MP, f/2.2Wide: 48MP, f/1.78 Ultra-Wide: 12MP, f/2.2Tele: 12MP, f/2.8Wide: 108MP, f/1.8Ultra-Wide: 12MP, f/2.2Tele: 10MP, f/2.4Long Tele: 10MP, f/4.9Wide: 50MP, f/1.7Ultra- Wide angle: 50MP, f/2.2 Telephoto: 13MP, f/2.4

So which spec produces the best images? Unfortunately it is not that simple. In 2022, a smartphone camera is only worth as much as its software. Post-processing onboard these smartphones is something thought impossible not too long ago.

OPPO includes its own onboard image processing chip only, Google has optimized and designed the Tensor G2 processor especially for onboard image processing, and Apple and Samsung have invested a lot of time and money in R&D for the image processing.

Let’s take a look at some of the photos I took with all four phones before discussing how they fared.

Day

Most of the photos were taken in decent light, although as winter extends into summer here in Melbourne, the Melbourne images were overcast. As a general rule, the Pixel 7 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max performed the best in my opinion. The Pixel 7 Pro had smoother color reproduction, with the iPhone 14 Pro Max occasionally washing out colors. The detailing was similar between the two though.

As for the phones that are more than six months older, the Samsung S22 Ultra and the OPPO Find X5 Pro, the Samsung performed more consistently, although it seemed to overwork the details a bit, introducing additional noise. in the image (which is a side effect of excessive image sharpening) but its colors were far less saturated than their effort last year. The Find X5 Pro performed well but lacked detail at times (most likely in post-processing as their specs are as good as any).

Unless you look very closely at the pictures I made, of course, all the pictures produced are damn good pictures, so you can’t say none were bad. Only that some were better than others.

Night mode

The night pictures looked amazing on all phones. It’s actually hard to select one over the other in all honesty. The Pixel again has better color reproduction, but the difference is extremely small. I declare them all winners.

Macro mode

I took a few macro images though I’ve chosen this one to include here. The Pixel and iPhone excelled here, even if the other two were no slouches. I again preferred the Pixel color reproduction. OPPO dropped the dedicated macro lens from its flagship phone this year, and its macro mode has suffered as a result. For this reason I still prefer Find X3 Pro for macro images.

Camera for selfies

One thing to be wary of is that some OPPO phones are ones that default to a weird filtered skin texture finish. Turn it off unless you want that greasy, fake lens result.

Again, the Pixel had the best color reproduction, especially with skin tones. Google focused a lot on this in the launch of Pixel 7 Pro and you can see the result of the work done by their software engineers.

The Pixel also had the best background texture detail with the iPhone in second place. Portrait mode was great in all cases, but the iPhone seems to have come out on top for this one. His ability to separate our hair/heads from the back is sharper and more precise, but you have to zoom in a lot to see it. OPPO and Samsung were able to match the Pixel in these images not bad for older phones.

The night selfie was also a close up thing. The Pixel once again has our best skin tone, but other than that the differences between them are small. OPPO has once again struggled with skin tone in this image quite badly. Pixel image is a bit blurry because it took longer to take the picture and my hand is not something that firm to be aware of if you too suffer from this affliction.

Splitting hair

We’re finally at a stage where all cameras are so good that we’re splitting hairs trying to determine if one is better than the other. I would say not entirely: in my opinion, the Google Pixel 7 Pro outperformed other flagship cameras in the tests we subjected it to. Her intelligence is so good with her skin tones looking incredibly natural in all scenarios with her true to life colors.

The iPhone 14 Pro Max was a close second, although colors were a little washed out for me at times, but its detail was fantastic. Samsung was in third place and OPPO unfortunately closed the row with a lack of detail and color reproduction at times. This was the first year with their MariSilicon X imaging NPU, so you’d expect it to get better in the future.

It matters?

Simple answer. No. By themselves, each of these smartphone cameras produced images that were entirely acceptable for an ultra-premium flagship. Nowadays, if you want great pictures, you only need to buy an ultra-premium flagship device – there are many other things that can be used to influence your purchase, as they all produce great pictures.

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