Smartphones have good cameras, that’s a given as more and more photos are taken by phones than by traditional digital or DSLR cameras. Even with this, however, the Samsung Galaxy S7 has an exceptional camera, as I explore in this detailed article…
Let’s get the numbers out of the way so we can focus on the experience and results of using the camera in the Galaxy S7. The rear facing camera — the better one, by far — is a 12 MP f/1.7 lens with an equivalent focal length of 26 mm, and features “dual pixel technology”, a way of imaging individual points on the image that’s also available on high-end Canon DSLR cameras. The front-facing camera is a bit less capable with its 5 MP front-facing lens and f / 1.7 aperture, but that’s still no slouch in the smartphone camera department.
My current smartphone of choice is the Apple iPhone 6s, with its rear facing 12MP f/2.2 lens that features what Apple calls “Focus Pixels” that are supposed to offer up improved local tone mapping. But f/1.7 and f/2.2 are a long way apart in photographic terms and while both might offer 12MP, the size of the image is far less important than the quality. So I decided to put them head-to-head and compare the rear facing cameras on both smartphones. And the winner? Well, read on and see for yourself…
First thing that people who have owned previous Galaxy units, particularly the Galaxy S6, is that the S7 now has a rear facing camera that’s flush to the back so it doesn’t sit slightly off the table any more. A subtle, but important design change:
Close inspection shows how detailed the camera system is too, with a variety of flash and image sensors on the side spot.
But let’s start at the most interesting place, picture quality. To test it, I took basically the same photo with both the iPhone 6s and the Galaxy S7, starting with this nighttime shot of fresh snowfall, with only the illumination of the street lights.
First, the Apple iPhone 6s:
Looks good, until you compare that with a shot taken just a few minutes earlier from the downstairs window, with, of course, the Samsung Galaxy S7:
As you can see, the entire picture seems better illuminated and there’s a gentle lighting that isn’t present in the iPhone picture.
And daytime, first the iPhone 6s landscape photo:
Rather a dark, snowy afternoon without much color saturation, but same place, same photo with the Galaxy S7 camera:
Again, it’s warmer and a bit richer a photo than the iPhone produces.
To see more, I’ll zoom in to a small portion of the photo, first with the iPhone 6s. Pay close attention to the branches of the tree:
Compare that to the Galaxy S7 closeup:
In all cases, to my eyes the Galaxy S7 did a better job with the photo, whether it was low light or a simple landscape.
Not only that, the camera app itself in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, as shipped with the S7, has lots of excellent features. Go to take a photo and you’ll see lots of options and settings:
I’ll also note that the photo of the iPhone 6s is pretty darn impressive unto itself, capturing the backlit screen while still properly exposing for the case and background wood surface. Go try taking a photo of a phone or device screen and you’ll see what I mean: most cameras expose to one or the other, doing at best a mediocre job.
The controls, bottom to top on the left, are settings, resolution, flash, timer, HDR and visual effects, and on the right, bottom to top, mode (photo, movie, etc), switch front/back camera, take the photo (always helpful!), record a video and a thumbnail of the most recently taken photo.
Tap on the resolution button and you’ll see that it’s super easy to change image size based on what you want:
In case you can’t read that, it’s a range of sizes from a max of 4032×3024 (12MP) down to 2160×2160 (a square at 4.7MP). Very useful because often you don’t need huge resolution photos – like for a Craigslist or eBay listing – so it’s smarter to step it down for those tasks, and that’s easily done.
The effects are interesting too, as shown:
Of course, programs like SnapChat and Instagram have built-in filters too, so there is some redundancy in functionality with the filters in the Android 6.0 camera app, but they’re still fun, and that’s important too.
There’s a lot more to the Samsung Galaxy S7 to explore, but the camera is one of the features that the company promotes as being exceptional and a step forward in smartphone photo technology, and from what I can tell from my own testing, it’s legit. The camera included with the Galaxy S7 really is that good, and now I want to carry it with me for photos rather than my iPhone 6s. in this case, I’ll end it with the score Galaxy S7: 1, iPhone 6S: 0. Nicely done, Samsung!
Disclosure: AT&T Wireless supplied us with the Samsung Galaxy S7 for testing and review purposes.