Buying and Testing My New Phone's Camera

Finally, I bought myself a new phone because my 4-year-old LG G6 was in a grave with one leg already. I don't tend to switch phones every year or when a new one comes out because I don't care enough. I need it to make calls, surf the internet and send some shit Snapchat photos from time to time. I don't game often on the phone because I have a high-end PC for that purpose and I don't care about the camera much because I have a DSLR which I would use anyway.

So yesterday I walked into a local phone carrier shop and said I need a new phone, show me what's good. I just need it to be fast and reliable. Mostly I already knew what I wanted. Huawei... Nah, it is pretty good actually but feels like a cheap piece. Not a fan of Samsung for some reason. iPhone ?, Nah ain't gonna pay this premium for an apple logo( sorry fans ). No good LG-s available in Estonia for some reason but I really like the G series. So one option left on the table, One Plus 8. Fast 865 snapdragon chipset, really nice OS customization options, 2k 6.5inch AMOLED display and overall feels like a quality phone. There was also an 8 pro version but I am not a person who pays 900eur for a phone.

The real reason for this post was to show you how the camera on this phone handles itself. On paper it should be good, let's see...
It has a 16 MP wide-angle camera, 48MP main camera and 2MP( dafuq ) macro one + 16 front-facing.
Just came back from a walk testing em out.

This below is taken with a 48MP sensor and consider me impressed, It actually really nice and the photo can be zoomed in pretty far without losing much of the quality. Also, like the colors, let it be noted that I haven't edited any of the shots.

Next one taken with a 16MP wide-angle sensor. Also pretty good but on a larger screen, I can see a little bit lower quality, also a slight change in colors. What's funny that my old LG G6 had an even wider angle lol.

48MP

16MP

---

---

48

Zoom is only supported with a 16MP sensor and this digital zoom is pretty shit, loss of quality at 2x is already visible.

Maximum of 10x digital zoom, well it's total trash. The Pro version has a fourth camera with a telephoto sensor but why should I need it when I have a DSLR with big lenses. Even more, I'm pretty sure it won't compare at all.

In some cases the color difference between 48 and 16 sensors is heavy.

As you can see the colors are pretty shit on 16 below.

Moving on to the Macro sensor. And as you can imagine a 2MP already sounds awful. Testing only confirmed my expectations. You can get really close to objects that is nice but...
Some spruce thorns here. When viewed on a larger screen it is totally pixelated. This makes this camera absolutely useless and I can't see any reason why I would use it. Was it really that hard or expensive to give a macro sensor at least 8MP resolution? I simply don't get it, we are in the year of 2020.

Video recording is great at 4k 60fps, might even use it sometimes.

So for the summary, I would say I'm overall pleased with the camera performance. The 48Mpx main sensor is amazing for a phone and really sharp. 16mpx wide-angle one is also nice but accompanied by a slight loss of true colors, digital zoom is shit tho. Didn't show the selfies with 16 MPx front camera but it is also sharp and nice.
2MP macro is a fucking garbage and a joke, shouldn't even be there unless they made it with better resolution but the idea is nice.

So yeah, a great phone in this price category, very fast, nice camera, 5G, great screen, and also looks and feels quality + One plus Oxygen OS is better than an ordinary Android in my opinion. Will hopefully last me the next 4 years. Also hoping that the battery is not going to age fast. Right now it seems I can get 2 full days without charging.

Tell me what phone you use and how is your camera performance

---

---

---