I was WRONG about the iPhone 11 Pro Camera... - Smartphone Camera Showdown

**Nighttime Photography: A Tale of Two Phones**

As I delved into the world of nighttime photography with my trusty camera, I couldn't help but notice that both Google's Pixel 4 and Huawei's Mate 30 Pro have made significant strides in capturing the beauty of the night sky. However, I soon realized that while both phones excel in this department, they also have their own unique strengths and weaknesses.

The Pixel 4's Night Sight mode is undoubtedly one of its standout features, offering an impressive level of detail and dynamic range even in the darkest of conditions. But, as I experimented with different shooting techniques, I discovered that it can sometimes lead to an overly aggressive noise reduction that results in a posterized look. On the other hand, the Mate 30 Pro's camera has a more subtle approach, which, while not always perfect, often yields a more natural and nuanced image.

In this article, we'll take a closer look at the nighttime photography capabilities of both phones, as well as their overall performance in various lighting conditions.

**Video Recording: A Tale of Consistency**

When it comes to video recording, both cameras have proven themselves to be highly capable. However, as I compared footage shot on each device, I realized that while they excel in similar areas, there are some notable differences.

In daytime scenes, all four phones performed admirably, with the Mate 30 Pro seeming to favor a warmer color palette more often than not. The Note 10, on the other hand, struggled with dynamic range in highlights, which can result in blown-out images. The Pixel 4 fared the worst in low-light conditions, producing noisy footage that lacked detail.

But it's when we move into situations with sudden changes in lighting that the cameras truly shine (or falter). In our testing, both the Mate 30 Pro and Note 10 struggled to adapt to these changes, resulting in inconsistent color casts. However, the iPhone 11 Pro series demonstrated exceptional handling of such scenarios, with Apple's camera consistently delivering a more even and balanced image.

In particular, I was impressed by the iPhone's ability to maintain color consistency throughout a clip, even when the lighting conditions changed dramatically. This is particularly notable in shots featuring moving subjects, where stabilization becomes crucial. The Mate 30 Pro's stabilization system is undoubtedly effective, but it can't match the iPhone's smoothness and fluidity.

**The Verdict: A Tale of Consistency**

As I reflect on our testing results, I realize that while both cameras have their strengths and weaknesses, the iPhone 11 Pro series ultimately emerges as the most consistent performer. While it may not always take the best shot every time, its reliability and adaptability make it a more valuable asset in the long run.

In contrast, Google's Pixel 4 is a camera that can look absolutely spectacular under ideal conditions, but its consistency is occasionally compromised by noise and artifacts. The Mate 30 Pro, while an excellent camera in its own right, still falls short of the iPhone's overall performance.

So, to answer my earlier question: was I wrong to say that the Pixel 4 is as good as the iPhone? For most people, probably not โ€“ especially those who view images on a smaller scale. However, for photographers and videographers who demand the highest level of quality and consistency, the iPhone's strengths make it the better choice.

**Huawei's Overrated Reputation**

Finally, I'd like to address my earlier statement about Huawei's camera being overrated. While the Mate 30 Pro is undoubtedly a capable camera, its reputation as one of the best mobile cameras on the market may be slightly exaggerated.

In our testing, I found that the iPhone 11 Pro series was more consistently excellent than the Mate 30 Pro, and that its strengths in low-light conditions and video recording are particularly noteworthy. Of course, there's still room for improvement, but Huawei's camera is far from overrated โ€“ it's simply not quite at the level of the best.

**FreshBooks: The All-In-One Business Solution**

As a side note, I'd like to mention my experience with FreshBooks, an all-in-one business solution that's designed to streamline your accounting and invoicing tasks. With its intuitive interface and cloud-based storage, FreshBooks is perfect for freelancers, small businesses, and entrepreneurs looking to simplify their workflow.

Their 30-day free trial offer is a great way to get started, with pricing starting at just $15 per month (or $25 per month for up to 50 billable clients). It's definitely worth checking out if you're looking to upgrade your business's productivity and organization.

**Eating Humble Pie**

And finally, I'd like to conclude by eating a bit of humble pie. As I reflected on my earlier review of the Galaxy Fold, I realized that I didn't even mention the camera โ€“ who cares? Well, actually, a lot of people do care, as evidenced by the comments and feedback I received.

In any case, it's clear that both Google's Pixel 4 and Huawei's Mate 30 Pro are excellent cameras in their own right, with strengths and weaknesses that set them apart from one another. As we continue to explore the world of mobile photography and videography, it'll be fascinating to see how these two manufacturers continue to innovate and improve.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enmany of you criticized our coverage of the google pixel 4's camera when we declared it to be on par with the iphone 11 pro and pro max and one of the biggest critiques was our failure to address apple's deep fusion computational photography feature which at the time was in beta so now that it's out for real we are taking that opportunity to reopen the case of iphone versus pixel 2019 edition and for good measure we've thrown in both the note 10 and the mate 30 pro with pulseway you can remotely monitor manage and control all of your windows mac and linux machines from one app create your free account today at the link in the video description let's start off with a quick explanation of deep fusion and how it works when the feature is active the iphone's camera is constantly buffering in the background in the buffer the camera takes four standard exposure shots as well as four short exposure shots with a final long exposure shot at the very end once the shutter button is actually pressed the iphone then blends the best elements of the short exposure shots making a reference frame then it blends the standard exposure shots and the long exposure shot making a synthetic long frame the reference frame and the synthetic long frame are then run through more processing pixel by pixel to improve the appearance of sky hair skin and textures like fabrics all of this happens within about a second or two of pressing the shutter so that is great that apple has managed to cram a bunch of processing steps into just a couple seconds of a shutter press but does it really make that much of a difference the answer is yes some of the time so deep fusion adds more detail and sharpness without the undesirable effects that we commonly associate with normal image sharpening so check out this shot of a petro canada gas station upon immediate inspection honestly the two images don't look that different but check out these roof tiles in the background our deep fusion shot clearly retains more detail here but without any ugly noise or sharpening artifacts as for the grilles here and the concrete segment lines in this nighttime boat shot while the lines are both easily resolvable even if we zoom way in on both of the images what's notable is that there are no dark pixels that are out of line the line is much straighter and much finer again here in this bentley parking lot our deep fusion shot is better but this one the effect is definitely more subtle and we can mostly see it here in the sign as for this night boat shot the building in the background here is one of the best examples we've seen of deep fusion working its magic it is so clearly so much better defined than the non-deep fusion shot as a best-case scenario that one actually makes a lot of sense deep fusion was designed for medium to low light so it hits nicely right in the middle of smart hdr and apple's new night mode but the thing is guys if you were expecting this technique to dramatically change the quality of the photos you take on your iphone you probably haven't been paying much attention to the multi-frame capture techniques that are widespread in the industry even at apple already so while the technique may be unlike what we've seen before the result is not that different in most cases so let's change gears here and compare the iphone with all of the weapons at its disposal to our other phones this dim incandescent lit restaurant with afternoon daylight outside is an extremely challenging situation and it's one of the shots that actually made me doubt my conclusion about the pixel 4. the window in the back here is completely blown out and the contrasty look of the pixel is not doing our subject's face any favors the note 10 actually handled this shot the best in terms of skin tone with the iphone winning out on overall dynamic range and detail thanks in part here to deep fusion though i should note that in my opinion the iphone image makes our subject's skin look a little bit too pasty due to the iphone's more lifted look to skin now let's use this shot to talk about the way that the iphone handles shadows on the face now to me the layperson this image honestly looks wonderful and i would pick it first out of the lineup every time but brandon has an understandable bone to pick with apple about the way that they processed it now the pixel 4 image clearly has deeper shadows under the chin and the eyes making our subject look more tired to my eye i mean who would want that but given that this was shot under overhead light the pixel's image is actually a lot closer to how she actually looked at that time so apple is tinkering with the image a lot here and when they get it right the subject ends up looking like a doll which is great for posting to instagram but when you tinker with lighting you can also end up losing a lot of the perceived depth and the character of the shot as for samsung they're clearly going after an apple-esque look so if you like that aesthetic then they did great but the image comes out a bit softer than apple and the only nice thing that i can say about huawei's effort is that their larger sensor seems to be contributing to a really great natural bokeh in the background here moving into a studio situation the iphone and mate 30 pro both had trouble white balancing to our daylight balanced lighting here in the studio where the pixel 4 and the note 10 both delivered a pleasing warm image punching in even with deep fusion i would actually give the edge in detail to the pixel 4 with the note 10 doing a pretty good job as well and that pattern of the pixel 4 being sharper overall is one that was actually quite consistent throughout our testing as you can see in these images apple's team with or without deep fusion has clearly made the choice of taking a less contrasty approach to their image sharpening but a lot of the time people like a more neutral less contrasty image and the thing is we're not bringing up google's better sharpness as a way to prove that google's images are better every time there's a lot more to image quality than the detail that gets retained when you are super duper zoomed in in this shot for example the iphone did an excellent job of delivering true to life color the blue in this photo is the blue of this car straight up the pixel on the other hand ended up making our car look quite a bit duller the note 10 then does the same thing while having less detail when punched in on the front of the vehicle but i mean it's still overall a pretty good looking image and as for the mate 30 pro okay actually surprise surprise this is a cooler overall look but huawei did a fairly good job here with noise color and detail getting into some low light stuff just before apple's night mode would activate deep fusion is definitely working its magic here the detail in this car to go vehicle is significantly improved and the noise is also managed better than the non-deep fusion image looking at the deep fusion shot versus the other competitors i'd say it's close overall with the note 10 faring the worst and struggling to capture much detail going through a bunch more low light shots taken around downtown vancouver the iphone with deep fusion really shines in managing detail with noise performance that in my opinion beat out the pixel 4 a lot of the time in most cases the note 10 and the mate 30 pro fell farther and farther behind as the lighting conditions worsened the mate 30 in particular has such an aggressive noise reduction in low light that it just ends up smoothing everything over to the point where it looks almost posterized in some cases in night mode the iphone has hugely improved this year no doubt i wouldn't go as far as to say that it is better than google's night sight on the pixel 4 but it's close enough that most people wouldn't be able to notice the small differences that put google ever so slightly ahead images from both phones show that they're at the top of their game when it comes to nighttime photography now on to video this is a situation where i think google ended up with a pass because we didn't challenge the pixel 4's camera enough the iphone has long been the golden standard when it comes to recording video on a mobile device and that is still true today in daytime scenes all four phones in our test did a fairly good job of judging exposure the mate 30 pro seems to like its color on the warmer side more often than not the note 10 seems to struggle with its dynamic range in the highlights depending on the scene and our pixel 4 suffered the most in low light coming in as the noisiest of the bunch but honestly the thing that stands out most about the iphone 11 pro series is the way that apple has managed to handle sudden changes in the shooting conditions when we move inside with dennis here notice how the note 10 clips dennis's pants so there's no detail left in that light material and the pixel 4 ends up quite noisy until both of them have some time to adjust the iphone on the other hand manages not just to avoid this pitfall but if we move over to this walking shot of riley we actually find multiple situations where as the lighting changes the iphone is the only device that manages to keep the color of his jacket reasonably consistent throughout the entire clip that ain't easy i mean if it were i'm sure huawei would have done a better job of it so i have to take back what i said about the pixel being as good there are some areas where it excels its slow motion is still close and its stabilization is pretty damn good but in a wider variety of situations the iphone is clearly going to end up flexing its muscles so bottom line were we wrong yes and also no it's obvious from looking at everything today that under good conditions any modern cell phone camera can look absolutely spectacular i mean look at all the praise the mate 30 pro gets so were we wrong to say that the pixel 4 is as good as the iphone well for most people probably not since most people view images like this not like this and a lot of the differences do come down to aesthetic processing choices these days rather than quality however where the best get separated from the rest caught it is when it comes to consistency and this is where i feel like we let you guys down we failed to identify the iphone 11 pro's greatness in the quick comparison that we made in our pixel 4 review it may not take the best shot every time and especially in a deeper round up like this we can absolutely find situations where it falls behind one competitor or another but between me and brandon we couldn't find a shot where it clearly came in third once and as a consumer think about it i mean i'd rather have the camera where i get at least a silver medal every time versus the one where i you know win a few golds but break my ankle from time to time so then sorry guys i was wrong about the iphone 11 pro and pro max but if it's any consolation for me at least i get to say i was right about one thing huawei still makes the most overrated cell phone cameras on the market freshbooks is the all-in-one businessing solution if you need to do your accounting and your invoicing and all that businessing it's designed to be simple and intuitive to use so you can spend less time on paperwork you can automate your tasks like invoicing and organizing expenses and tracking your time and following up with clients and the best thing is that everything is stored in the cloud so you can switch from your pc to your mobile device and pick up exactly where you left off so start your 30 day free trial right now at freshbooks.com forward slash tech tips pricing starts at just 15 a month with their 25 a month package handling up to 50 billable clients now that's businessing that's definitely not their slogan so thanks for watching guys i hope you enjoyed watching me eat humble pie i certainly did um yeah if you enjoyed this video go check out uh my review of the uh galaxy fold i didn't even talk about the camera who cares so cool without it i actually didn't talk about the camera at all nobody even noticed there wasn't a single comment that was like what about the camera linusmany of you criticized our coverage of the google pixel 4's camera when we declared it to be on par with the iphone 11 pro and pro max and one of the biggest critiques was our failure to address apple's deep fusion computational photography feature which at the time was in beta so now that it's out for real we are taking that opportunity to reopen the case of iphone versus pixel 2019 edition and for good measure we've thrown in both the note 10 and the mate 30 pro with pulseway you can remotely monitor manage and control all of your windows mac and linux machines from one app create your free account today at the link in the video description let's start off with a quick explanation of deep fusion and how it works when the feature is active the iphone's camera is constantly buffering in the background in the buffer the camera takes four standard exposure shots as well as four short exposure shots with a final long exposure shot at the very end once the shutter button is actually pressed the iphone then blends the best elements of the short exposure shots making a reference frame then it blends the standard exposure shots and the long exposure shot making a synthetic long frame the reference frame and the synthetic long frame are then run through more processing pixel by pixel to improve the appearance of sky hair skin and textures like fabrics all of this happens within about a second or two of pressing the shutter so that is great that apple has managed to cram a bunch of processing steps into just a couple seconds of a shutter press but does it really make that much of a difference the answer is yes some of the time so deep fusion adds more detail and sharpness without the undesirable effects that we commonly associate with normal image sharpening so check out this shot of a petro canada gas station upon immediate inspection honestly the two images don't look that different but check out these roof tiles in the background our deep fusion shot clearly retains more detail here but without any ugly noise or sharpening artifacts as for the grilles here and the concrete segment lines in this nighttime boat shot while the lines are both easily resolvable even if we zoom way in on both of the images what's notable is that there are no dark pixels that are out of line the line is much straighter and much finer again here in this bentley parking lot our deep fusion shot is better but this one the effect is definitely more subtle and we can mostly see it here in the sign as for this night boat shot the building in the background here is one of the best examples we've seen of deep fusion working its magic it is so clearly so much better defined than the non-deep fusion shot as a best-case scenario that one actually makes a lot of sense deep fusion was designed for medium to low light so it hits nicely right in the middle of smart hdr and apple's new night mode but the thing is guys if you were expecting this technique to dramatically change the quality of the photos you take on your iphone you probably haven't been paying much attention to the multi-frame capture techniques that are widespread in the industry even at apple already so while the technique may be unlike what we've seen before the result is not that different in most cases so let's change gears here and compare the iphone with all of the weapons at its disposal to our other phones this dim incandescent lit restaurant with afternoon daylight outside is an extremely challenging situation and it's one of the shots that actually made me doubt my conclusion about the pixel 4. the window in the back here is completely blown out and the contrasty look of the pixel is not doing our subject's face any favors the note 10 actually handled this shot the best in terms of skin tone with the iphone winning out on overall dynamic range and detail thanks in part here to deep fusion though i should note that in my opinion the iphone image makes our subject's skin look a little bit too pasty due to the iphone's more lifted look to skin now let's use this shot to talk about the way that the iphone handles shadows on the face now to me the layperson this image honestly looks wonderful and i would pick it first out of the lineup every time but brandon has an understandable bone to pick with apple about the way that they processed it now the pixel 4 image clearly has deeper shadows under the chin and the eyes making our subject look more tired to my eye i mean who would want that but given that this was shot under overhead light the pixel's image is actually a lot closer to how she actually looked at that time so apple is tinkering with the image a lot here and when they get it right the subject ends up looking like a doll which is great for posting to instagram but when you tinker with lighting you can also end up losing a lot of the perceived depth and the character of the shot as for samsung they're clearly going after an apple-esque look so if you like that aesthetic then they did great but the image comes out a bit softer than apple and the only nice thing that i can say about huawei's effort is that their larger sensor seems to be contributing to a really great natural bokeh in the background here moving into a studio situation the iphone and mate 30 pro both had trouble white balancing to our daylight balanced lighting here in the studio where the pixel 4 and the note 10 both delivered a pleasing warm image punching in even with deep fusion i would actually give the edge in detail to the pixel 4 with the note 10 doing a pretty good job as well and that pattern of the pixel 4 being sharper overall is one that was actually quite consistent throughout our testing as you can see in these images apple's team with or without deep fusion has clearly made the choice of taking a less contrasty approach to their image sharpening but a lot of the time people like a more neutral less contrasty image and the thing is we're not bringing up google's better sharpness as a way to prove that google's images are better every time there's a lot more to image quality than the detail that gets retained when you are super duper zoomed in in this shot for example the iphone did an excellent job of delivering true to life color the blue in this photo is the blue of this car straight up the pixel on the other hand ended up making our car look quite a bit duller the note 10 then does the same thing while having less detail when punched in on the front of the vehicle but i mean it's still overall a pretty good looking image and as for the mate 30 pro okay actually surprise surprise this is a cooler overall look but huawei did a fairly good job here with noise color and detail getting into some low light stuff just before apple's night mode would activate deep fusion is definitely working its magic here the detail in this car to go vehicle is significantly improved and the noise is also managed better than the non-deep fusion image looking at the deep fusion shot versus the other competitors i'd say it's close overall with the note 10 faring the worst and struggling to capture much detail going through a bunch more low light shots taken around downtown vancouver the iphone with deep fusion really shines in managing detail with noise performance that in my opinion beat out the pixel 4 a lot of the time in most cases the note 10 and the mate 30 pro fell farther and farther behind as the lighting conditions worsened the mate 30 in particular has such an aggressive noise reduction in low light that it just ends up smoothing everything over to the point where it looks almost posterized in some cases in night mode the iphone has hugely improved this year no doubt i wouldn't go as far as to say that it is better than google's night sight on the pixel 4 but it's close enough that most people wouldn't be able to notice the small differences that put google ever so slightly ahead images from both phones show that they're at the top of their game when it comes to nighttime photography now on to video this is a situation where i think google ended up with a pass because we didn't challenge the pixel 4's camera enough the iphone has long been the golden standard when it comes to recording video on a mobile device and that is still true today in daytime scenes all four phones in our test did a fairly good job of judging exposure the mate 30 pro seems to like its color on the warmer side more often than not the note 10 seems to struggle with its dynamic range in the highlights depending on the scene and our pixel 4 suffered the most in low light coming in as the noisiest of the bunch but honestly the thing that stands out most about the iphone 11 pro series is the way that apple has managed to handle sudden changes in the shooting conditions when we move inside with dennis here notice how the note 10 clips dennis's pants so there's no detail left in that light material and the pixel 4 ends up quite noisy until both of them have some time to adjust the iphone on the other hand manages not just to avoid this pitfall but if we move over to this walking shot of riley we actually find multiple situations where as the lighting changes the iphone is the only device that manages to keep the color of his jacket reasonably consistent throughout the entire clip that ain't easy i mean if it were i'm sure huawei would have done a better job of it so i have to take back what i said about the pixel being as good there are some areas where it excels its slow motion is still close and its stabilization is pretty damn good but in a wider variety of situations the iphone is clearly going to end up flexing its muscles so bottom line were we wrong yes and also no it's obvious from looking at everything today that under good conditions any modern cell phone camera can look absolutely spectacular i mean look at all the praise the mate 30 pro gets so were we wrong to say that the pixel 4 is as good as the iphone well for most people probably not since most people view images like this not like this and a lot of the differences do come down to aesthetic processing choices these days rather than quality however where the best get separated from the rest caught it is when it comes to consistency and this is where i feel like we let you guys down we failed to identify the iphone 11 pro's greatness in the quick comparison that we made in our pixel 4 review it may not take the best shot every time and especially in a deeper round up like this we can absolutely find situations where it falls behind one competitor or another but between me and brandon we couldn't find a shot where it clearly came in third once and as a consumer think about it i mean i'd rather have the camera where i get at least a silver medal every time versus the one where i you know win a few golds but break my ankle from time to time so then sorry guys i was wrong about the iphone 11 pro and pro max but if it's any consolation for me at least i get to say i was right about one thing huawei still makes the most overrated cell phone cameras on the market freshbooks is the all-in-one businessing solution if you need to do your accounting and your invoicing and all that businessing it's designed to be simple and intuitive to use so you can spend less time on paperwork you can automate your tasks like invoicing and organizing expenses and tracking your time and following up with clients and the best thing is that everything is stored in the cloud so you can switch from your pc to your mobile device and pick up exactly where you left off so start your 30 day free trial right now at freshbooks.com forward slash tech tips pricing starts at just 15 a month with their 25 a month package handling up to 50 billable clients now that's businessing that's definitely not their slogan so thanks for watching guys i hope you enjoyed watching me eat humble pie i certainly did um yeah if you enjoyed this video go check out uh my review of the uh galaxy fold i didn't even talk about the camera who cares so cool without it i actually didn't talk about the camera at all nobody even noticed there wasn't a single comment that was like what about the camera linus\n"