Which has the best camera, iPhone 8 Plus or Pixel 2 XL?
Both phones have cool tricks and take great pics — but one of them wins by a hair
OK Google, we love the new Pixel 2 XL smartphone as a camera, but alas, for photos and videos, our hearts go to the Apple iPhone 8 Plus.
By just a hair.
With each new smartphone release, critics are quick to dub a new one as the best mobile camera out there. We said just that last year about the then-new Google Pixel, which won our 2017 shootout.
But months have gone by, and many new mobile cameras have been released.
So this year — and again, it’s a razor-thin margin — we reserve top honors for the newer iPhone for color reproduction, low-light performance and sharpness.
Video on both phones looks fabulous — so it’s a tie there.
Our tests are simple: We take both phones to the Venice beach section of this metropolis in late afternoon and early morning and shoot back-to-back shots. For this viewer, seven of the 10 shots displayed were best on iPhone, three on Pixel.
The new Pixel 2 ($649, 5-inch screen) or larger XL ($849, 6inch) touts a 12-megapixel frontfacing camera, with a huge lens opening, which makes it easier than ever to shoot in low light.
Last year’s editions had a smaller lens opening and cost $100 less ($549 and $749 respectively.)
Unlike Apple, which saves its advanced camera features for the premium ($799) Plus model, Google puts its best foot forward on both phones.
To get closer to the action with the Pixel, you pinch the screen to use the digital zoom. In reality, all the digital zoom does is crop the photo. In our tests, Google’s crop looks OK, predictably, and not as good as the iPhone portrait feature.
Smartphone cameras have gotten so good, so fast, that the days of reaching for a point-and-shoot camera to capture family memories seem distant. Because so many people shoot on smartphones — Apple recently said more than 1 trillion photos have been snapped on the iPhone — engineers have gotten really good and using software to work around the issues many of us have with cameras.
The image stabilization on the iPhone 8 Plus and Pixel 2 phones is so stellar, you don’t need a tripod.
Beyond the basics, both phones have software tricks to enhance your images — slow motion, panoramas and “portrait” mode, to blur the background. Apple has more possibilities with its portrait mode than Google does, but in my tests, I liked Google’s portraits better. They looked more real, had better color and lighting.
I also love a Google trick called Photo Sphere. It’s like Panorama mode, but easier to create.
Apple’s iPhone X goes on sale Nov. 3. At $999, it will be the most expensive Apple smartphone to date.
It adds two more photo features the 8 Plus doesn’t have. It will have the ability to use “portrait” mode on selfies, which the Pixel now has, and it will create animated emojis based on your facial responses.
Smartphone cameras have gotten so good that the days of reaching for a point-and-shoot camera seem distant.