Week 58 was posted by Charanjit Chana on 2018-12-03.
Including a range of smartphones form different price points, MKHD kicked off a 16-way smartphone camera blind test. Using the traditional and well known knock-out formula, 16 started but only two would remain for the final three days layer with phone 'B' being crowned the winner.
There were major upsets in the first round and I'm sure all the way to the final. This is how things stood when the final started.
This is it. We've arrived at the Blind Camera Test Finals. In the next 24 hours, you crown your champion. Then all the letters are revealed. Let your voice be heard and vote! pic.twitter.com/ofLLBzrYo3
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) November 29, 2018
I had my own predictions for the eventual outcome once we knew which phone was which. While I'm not sure what my confidence levels would be, they were that at least one of the phones in the final...
- ... would use a single camera system (AI driven?)
- ... isn't amongst the top 5 most expensive phones
- ... isn't in the top 5 from DxOMark
Whether it's a multi-camera or AI driven camera system, the results are generally very good right now. There was plenty of praise for the iPhone XR's single camera when it was first released and I've seen some great results from the Pixel 2 too.
This test threw in a range of price points so I'd be surprised if only the most expensive made it to the top. Similarly, I don't DxOMark to be a massive factor here either, although the Pixel 3 isn't listed yet so that could change if the improvements year-on-year were big enough. These are three things that would also turn smart phone photography on its head. As I've said before, I'm all in on the Apple ecosystem so having an iPhone take excellent photos is a real plus, but that's not to say phones like the Pixel 2 XL aren't tempting.
My votes
I picked 12 out of the 15 victors correctly, but until we know which phone was which it's hard to know how I feel about that it. You can see my votes below, with the winner in bold:
Round 1
- Phone A vs Phone B — B/B
- Phone C vs Phone D — C/C
- Phone E vs Phone F — E/E
- Phone G vs Phone H — H/H
- Phone I vs Phone J — J/J
- Phone K vs Phone L — K/K
- Phone M vs Phone N — N/M
- Phone O vs Phone P — P/P
Round 2
- Phone B vs Phone C — B/B
- Phone E vs Phone H — H/H
- Phone J vs Phone K — K/K
- Phone M vs Phone P — M/M
Semi-finals
- Phone B vs Phone H — B/B
- Phone K vs Phone P — KP
Final
- Phone B vs Phone P — P/B
And the real winner is...
You can watch the video below to see who the winner was or scroll down to get a simplified version of the outcome, but surprising to me was that two dual camera iPhones were used rather than pitting the XS against the XR
Tags: blind test, knock-out, mkbhd, photography, twitter, blind test, knock-out, mkbhd, photography, twitter