Of course, we’ll be comparing it to the other flagship phone cameras – these are currently the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Google Pixel 6 Pro. They all claim to take photos with incredible detail, can zoom in for well-compressed portraits, and take night photography to another level. Well, who does it best?
Below you can find a quick comparison of the camera features of the three models.
iPhone14 Pro MaxGalaxyS22 UltraPixel6 ProMain camera48MP, 24mm, f/1.78108MP, 23mm, f/1.850MP, 25mm, f/1.9Ultra-wide12MP, 13mm, f/2.212MP, 13mm, f/2.212MP, 17mm, f/2.2Telephoto12MP , 3x zoom, f/2.810MP, 3X zoom, f/2.410MP, 10X zoom, f/4.948MP, 4X zoom, f/3.5Front12MP, f/1.940MP, f/2.211MP, f/2.2
For the first time in… quite a while, Apple has increased the megapixel count of its main camera. Now, it still takes 12MP photos by default, but this 48MP sensor allows it to collect pixels in clusters of 4, allowing for faster light capture and less noise. If you want to access the full 48MP sensor, you can do so in ProRAW shooting mode.
One more thing about the 48-megapixel sensor — Apple is now using it to add another step of zoom. It crops out to give you a 2x frame option in portrait mode. Of course you also have a telephoto camera to jump up to 3x from there. However, Apple is still not playing the “crazy zoom game” as the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max limit 15x zoom (and 9x for video!).
Daily photos
The sun is out! Let’s spin them
In 2022, every flagship phone needs to do great during the day when the sun is out. Challenges can arise when shooting with the bright sky in the background or in scenes where there are too many shadows and bright spots in close proximity. Will the highlights go away? Will the shadows be “squished” to black?
Right out of the gate, we can see that the iPhone still hasn’t kicked the habit of over-sharpening small details – just compare the tree leaves and thin branches in all three scenes. Funny, a few years ago Samsung was the big offender when it came to excessive sharpness. When it comes to exposure and dynamics, both the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Pixel 6 Pro seem to do equally well. The Galaxy S22 Ultra kind of flirts with blowing out the highlights in most of these shots. They look brighter, which may be more appealing to share directly on social networks. But when comparing them head-to-head with the competition, we weren’t happy with how overexposed the sunlit areas of flowers and shrubs turned out to be. Contrast looks best on the Pixel 6 Pro, with a noticeable dramatic difference in highlights and shadows, but without losing detail in them. However, in a few shots, it veers too close to underexposed. The iPhone 14 Pro Max gets second place here with nice, contrasty images and great balance and a dramatic look to all photos. The Galaxy S22 Ultra, with its tendency to take brighter photos, seems to have a slightly flatter contrast.
For colors, again, the Pixel 6 Pro did an outstanding job in these photos. Close to reality and added a pinch of saturation for some artistic flair. The iPhone 14 Pro’s photos, by comparison, are a bit more yellowish and lack that pop provided by saturation (though the iPhone has the benefit of a Photo Styles feature that lets you fine-tune these things to taste). The Galaxy S22 Ultra likes to oversaturate colors, and its green hues are a bit washed out—it’s definitely a signature look. The good news is that skin tones look realistic on all three phones.
Low light: are these phones afraid of the dark?
It’s time to test their limits
Low-light photography will always be a challenge for smartphone sensors – they can only gather so much light with their small size, right? Well, in recent years, manufacturers have made huge strides in computer-enhanced photography, especially when it comes to night shots. All three phones have a night mode that will turn on automatically or you can activate it manually. For this test, we just did the point-and-shoot method—as you would if you were trying to capture a fleeting moment.
Continuing some trends here, we can see that the iPhone 14 Pro sharpens some details, making them jagged. Colors are true to life, if a little muted. The Galaxy S22 Ultra’s tendency to produce bright and vibrant photos works great for night photography, although it doesn’t do very well with skin tones, making us look a little pink. The Pixel 6 Pro does pretty well in most shots, although high dynamics seems to bother it. Note the photo of the pink flamingo — the S22 Ultra did a fantastic job there, the Pixel missed the mark. The iPhone was down the middle, producing great colors and details, but not as accurate on neon flamingos as the S22 Ultra.
The last two samples were taken in pitch black, and here the iPhone 14 Pro Max really shines. Especially the last shot — its detail is similar to what the Pixel 6 Pro did, but it also managed to extract a lot of color from the scene there. The Galaxy S22 Ultra isn’t far behind those two, but it kind of got the details wrong in the last shot.
Overall, an impressive performance by the entire trio, although we’re kind of not loving how these ‘night mode’ shots are starting to turn night into day. Some of the charm and drama in natural night photography is lost. It’s great for point-and-click applications, but if you want to get more of that nighttime look in your photo, we recommend adjusting the exposure timer manually.
Ultrawide: Can we go epic?
Capture more of the world
Each of these phones has an ultrawide camera, of course, though the Pixel doesn’t go too ultra with it. While the iPhone 14 Pro and Galaxy S22 Ultra have 13mm focal lengths for their ultra-wide lenses, the Pixel 6 Pro is a tighter 18mm.
However, we like an ultra-wide camera that can produce the same colors and dynamics as the main camera of the corresponding phone, and detail is always a challenge here. A wide lens will distort and phones will try to correct for that to some extent. But is the final image any good?
So, in terms of exposure and dynamics, we can see some different trends. The iPhone turns out to be the most contrasty here, but it crushes the shadows a bit. The Pixel 6 Pro seems to have a flatter contrast here, possibly its HDR+ algorithm working overtime with the ultra-wide camera. The Galaxy S22 Ultra remains consistent with its high brightness.
As far as colors go, the iPhone’s ultrawide camera seems to be the closest to reality here. The Pixel can take an oversaturated photo with its own ultrawide lens, it seems, depending on how HDR+ works to keep highlights at a distance. The S22 Ultra here continues its trend of rich, bright colors.
When it comes to nighttime performance, the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s ultrawide camera holds it together the best of the three, offering better brightness and detail than its rivals. The Pixel 6 Pro is in the middle, with some photos looking good and others underexposed or bleached. And the iPhone 14 Pro Max’s ultra-wide camera still struggles, with detail distorted by noise reduction and underexposure from rivals.
Magnification comparison
Telephoto battles The iPhone 14 Pro Max has a 3x telephoto lens, and also an added 2x zoom step, which uses the new 48MP main sensor for a crop that Apple calls “optical quality”. Make no mistake, it’s digital, but hey, Samsung’s done it before, and we’ve got it covered in the end. At least Apple is being a little more open about what’s going on here. As for the actual optical zooms – we have 3x on the iPhone, 3x and 10x lenses on the S22 Ultra and 4x on the Pixel 6 Pro. Since we’re comparing the iPhone here, we’ll play by its rules – so the samples are in 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 3x and 10x.
That said, let’s actually measure the increase:
On the iPhone and Galaxy, we can see that image quality changes a bit at 3x zoom as the phones switch to a telephoto camera. The colors on the iPhone are toned down a bit, making the greens look a bit more washed out. The galaxy, on the other hand, has become a little hazy, but it’s still so saturated. As for the Pixel 6 Pro — 3x zoom doesn’t do it justice because it can’t use its 4x telephoto camera, so it uses digital cropping on the main sensor and it shows.
At 10x zoom, the Galaxy kills it with sharpness and detail, but that’s hardly a surprise – the phone has a dedicated 10x telephoto lens. The Pixel 6 Pro also did surprisingly well, in fact, not letting its digital cropping bring it down too much. The iPhone 14 Pro Max’s detail here is a bit softer than the competition, but it’s still a pretty impressive shot at 10x — I wouldn’t think anything was wrong if I saw it scrolling through my social channel.
Portrait Mode: Who Can Crop Best?
Once a novelty, now a default feature that demands perfection
Portrait mode is pretty much the default feature on all phones these days — even mid-range phones. And while we expect poor portrait mode on a budget device, it’s always fun to see how top-tier devices will handle edge detection and artificial background blur. Will they create a good emulation of a nice portrait lens or should we continue to stick with our DSLRs? Let’s see:
Right off the bat, the Pixel 6 Pro is on the back foot. First, it doesn’t use its telephoto camera for portraits — it will use digital cropping from the main sensor. And you can tell. Second, the Pixel 6 Pro doesn’t offer a wide-angle portrait option — it offers two stops called “1x” and “2x,” though from what we can tell they roughly equate to 2x zoom and 3x zoom. In any case, it looks like Google didn’t focus much on portrait mode – the Pixel’s edge detection is sloppy and its bokeh isn’t super convincing. At least the contrast and dynamics are great.
So, it’s a race between iPhone and Galaxy. It was Apple who first introduced portrait mode with the iPhone 7 Plus a while back, but Samsung…
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