Smartphone camera blind test: which flagship is the best shooter in 2019?

How we did the blind test

We have photographed five different scenarios with each smartphone and will show you the pictures in this article. The idea: we don't tell you which photo comes from which smartphone - and you vote on which picture you like best. Next week we'll have the full reveal, so you'll find out if your favorite has won the race.

For the photos we have reset all devices to the factory settings. Unless otherwise stated in the respective motif, we have only photographed with the automatic mode in order to reproduce the behavior of the vast majority of users. We took three photos of each subject on each smartphone and then selected the best one from each of the three to avoid any outliers caused by accidental shaking or similar.

Clicking on the photos shows the picture in maximum resolution. In order not to give you hints by slight differences in the focal length, we have cut the pictures partially.

Scenario 1: Portrait photo

In this scenario, we immediately deviated from the default settings of the smartphones: If available, we have selected the portrait mode here. Many camera apps automatically switch to the telephoto lens for a more flattering display, so we have also preferred this setting here. Only one smartphone in our test refused to zoom into the portrait image, so the perspective of one image differs.

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Comparative pictures: portrait

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Scenario 2: High contrast image

If not used artistically, the backlight is the arch-enemy of mobile photography. In this scenario, we challenge the HDR capabilities of our smartphones. Which device can deal best with the low sun and bring out as many details as possible both in the sky and in the foreground?

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Comparative pictures: high contrast image

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Scenario 3: Telezoom photo 5x

The Huawei Mate 30 Pro and the OnePlus 7T Pro have a more or less true triple optical zoom. This gives them, at least on paper, a head start when it comes to image quality at fivefold magnification - because they are simply closer to the hardware requirements. But who knows: in the age of computational photography, Google & Co. algorithms may be able to catch up. We are looking forward to your votes on this one!

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Comparative pictures: zoomed photo (5x)

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Scenario 4: Night scene

Poor light and a tiny sensor: night shots are the biggest challenge of smartphone photography. Each of the phones compared here has a special night mode, which of course we activated. The differences are clear - but will there also be a clear winner? At least one smartphone drops significantly in quality in the low light.

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Comparative pictures: night shot

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Scenario 5: Ultrawide Angle

In the beginning, these shots were an LG specialty, but now they are available from almost every manufacturer. Ultrawide-angle lenses are everywhere these days. However, it is not easy to design good and at the same time compact optics for such extreme image angles. Accordingly, there are also noticeable differences when it comes to quality. Only one smartphone in this blind test does not have an ultrawide-angle lens. We used the panorama mode instead, albeit with very modest success.

As the smartphones in this test sometimes offer a lot of different picture angles for ultrawide-angle shots, we didn't cut the photos in order not to give any smartphone an unfair advantage.

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Comparative pictures: ultrawide-angle

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Who do you think will win the race in this blind test? We are looking forward to your comments - and of course to your votes!