Which mobile phone has the best camera: Samsung Galaxy S9+ vs Huawei P20 Pro vs Sony Xperia XZ2
Smartphone manufacturers are going all out to woo customers with great camera set-ups, from Samsung’s variable apertures to Sony’s 4K HDR video capability to Huawei’s triple cameras. We test them to find which is the best
In today’s smartphone wars, the camera is the only battleground left. While phone geeks still mull over features like battery life, display panel quality, processor performance or artificial intelligence (AI), all the average consumer cares about is whether the handset takes good images and videos.
That is why Huawei, Samsung and Sony each recently developed new camera systems that are not just powerful, but allow each brand to make a “world’s first” marketing claim.
Huawei P20 Pro first impressions: triple rear cameras, amazing lowlight stabilisation
Samsung’s Galaxy S9 and S9+, for example, have “the world’s first variable aperture” phone camera. Sony’s Xperia XZ2, meanwhile, sports a camera that is “the world’s first to shoot 4K HDR videos and 960fps slow motion videos at 1080p”. Not to be outdone, Huawei’s just-launched P20 Pro has “the world’s first triple-camera set-up” on a phone.
But which “first” is the best? Given every smartphone worth its salt these days can capture perfectly fine photos under great lighting conditions, we decided to pit the three new flagship models against each other to find out which perform best in challenging shooting conditions – such as really low light scenes or zooming shots.
All our photos, except for one set, are shot in auto mode with no focus or lighting tweaks, as we want to mimic the point-and-shoot method that the average consumer tends to use.
Night shots part I
This first set of photos was shot in Hong Kong’s Tsim Sha Tsui East entertainment district, with a variety of light and shade going on.
