We got our hands on the Samsung Galaxy S7 this week, boasting the best smartphone camera Samsung's ever made. So of course we wanted to compare it to the iPhone 6s Plus, until now the benchmark for high-end pocket photography.
Frankly, I expected the Galaxy S7 to underperform. Apple's cameras are legendary and tend to destroy any "revolutionary" new device in head-to-head comparisons. A big part of that is the sheer exposure smarts of the iOS software. But Samsung's new smartphone camera is amazing. In everyday situations the two 12-megapixel, 4:3 crop shooters produce nearly identical images. But on the margins — in low light, mixed light, and shooting motion — Samsung's hardware outperforms Apple by every objective measure (even if it does have a couple habits I find annoying).
Check out my detailed comparison of the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 6s Plus.
Both cameras do a great job in sunlight.
This is the perfect situation for any camera, and both handle it beautifully. The light changed a little between the shots, so the S7 looks a little more contrasty. But both cameras nailed the exposure.
Blown up to full size, the shots are indistinguishable in sharpness and detail.
The Galaxy S7 seems engineered to perfectly match the iPhone on detail. Both have 12 megapixel sensors and nearly identically sharp lenses. Look at the the bricks on this building — they're almost indistinguishable between these shots.
Shooting a flower fluttering in the wind, the S7 had a huge advantage.
I found this flower in a park fluttering rapidly back and forth in the wind, and it made for a great opportunity to try out the S7's rapid focus feature. Where it took five minutes or so of tapping the screen inside the moving flower to get a good shot on the iPhone, the Galaxy S7 nailed the focus on the first try.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider