* writer's note: of course, when I talk about the Lumia 950 XL here, it could equally well have been the Lumia 950, since they share the same camera unit.
In terms of comparing the U11's camera with the 950 XL's:
- the resolutions best match is at 9MP/8MP at 16:9 (I do like to match up resolutions as best possible so that I can use Rafe's fancy interactive comparator, below.) I do realise that this is putting the 950 XL at a disadvantage, since it's equally happy at 16MP, but on the other hand there's the PureView oversampling, so you get lower noise at the lower resolution, plus using 8MP on the 950 XL means that the full sensor still gets used when zooming.
- all photos were taken on full 'auto' on both phones, unless stated otherwise.
But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say. So let’s start snapping and pit the results against each other, using our Famed Interactive Comparator (FIC). All 1:1 crops are at 900x500 for comparison, but see the links for full versions.
| Note that the interactive comparator below uses javascript and does need to load each pair of images. Please be patient while this page loads, if you see a pair of images above each other than you've either not waited long enough or your browser isn't capable enough! You ideally need a powerful, large-screened tablet or a proper laptop or desktop. This comparator may not work in some browsers. Sorry about that. On Windows 10 Mobile, use the 'AAWP Universal' UWP app, which handles the comparator very competently (see the tips in the app's help screens). |
Test 1: Sunny scene
Some boats (and geese) down by the lake, under hazy sun. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Both shots look processed - which they are. The Lumia 950 is oversampling down to 8MP and this results in 'purer', artefact-free detail - though it still doesn't really nail the colours of real life in the way that, say, a Lumia 1020 or Nokia 808 would have done here. The U11 disappoints here, even in these perfect lighting conditions, with the colours being muted from what my eyes saw in the sun, and with details (e.g. on the geese) looking overly-strained. A slight win for the 950, I think you'll agree.
Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; HTC U11: 7 pts
Test 2: Sunny zoom
The sun was out a bit more here, I'm watching cricket, but the players are just dots of white without any zoom on each phone camera. So I tried approximately 2x zoom, though it's impossible to tell on either phone because the UIs don't break out the vital zoom factor stat! Here is the whole scene, unzoomed, as presented by the HTC U11:
In case you want to grab the original zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Quite an amazing difference here, mainly because the Lumia 950 XL has an underlying 20MP sensor to draw on, so the 2x zoom asked for in our test 9MP/8MP shots is at least half achieved without any loss of quality whatsoever. And, while digital zoom has never been the 950 XL's speciality, an extra 0.5x here isn't a problem and I was surprised how good the results were. In contrast, the U11's relatively low resolution sensor (and cheaper optics) are left struggling, with just digital zoom to draw on.
Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; HTC U11: 6 pts
Test 3: Fun with flags
With apologies to Sheldon Cooper (etc!) - I spotted these flags as a nice HDR test subject, shooting them almost silhouetted against a bright sunny sky - what could the auto-HDR routines in both phones achieve? Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central crops ( I couldn't do 1:1 as the wind kept moving them around too much, so the detail would have been very different!), just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Despite the differences in white balance, there's not that much to choose here, both phone cameras picked out the flag detail superbly - interestingly, the 950 XL managed this without the HDR multi-exposure being triggered - possibly the amount of movement in the flags prevented this kicking in? Although I prefer the 950's shot as a piece of photo art, this is mainly due to luck at the breeze blowing the flags about - the U11's photo has the better and more accurate white balance and wins here by a whisker.
Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; HTC U11: 10 pts
Test 4: Macro time
A close up of a flower in decent outdoor light (though overcast). Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
The two phone cameras are again very close, but I'm going to give this one to the Lumia 950 XL because it kept more of the flower's lilac petal colour. Still, both great macro photos.
Lumia 950 XL: 10 pts; HTC U11: 9 pts
Test 5: Zooming... further
Another typical subject where zoom was absolutely needed - my local plane museum, closed again and this was shot through the closed gates. Here is the whole unzoomed scene, as presented by the U11:
In case you want to grab the original zoomed images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Again the natural resolution available for 'smart zooming' on the Lumia 950 XL helps out, though here I had to go to 3x zoom (approx) so the playing field was much more level - both photos show typical digital zoom artefacts and blurriness. The 950 XL's version has slightly more detail still, and is certainly sharper, but only a small margin of victory this time round, etc.
Lumia 950 XL: 8 pts; HTC U11: 7 pts
Test 6: Artificial light
A detailed and colourful display in a shop, lit only by fluorescent light. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Now this is fascinating - the OIS in the U11 can't be too bad as light levels go down, since the text here is incredibly crisp and legible - a credit to the U11 and HTC's software engineers. Having said that, there's much more digital noise in the U11 shot and neither phone managed to get anywhere near capturing and resolving the pale blue ale on the left of each crop. Pros and cons either way and I have to award a score draw - both phones showing the limitations of phone-sized optics and sensors.
Lumia 950 XL: 8 pts; HTC U11: 8 pts
Test 7: Challenging light, natural zoom
By 'natural' here, I mean that the plaque, in a local church, was high up on a wall and the only way to get it larger in the frame was to do some zooming in the camera UIs. Here is the zoomed scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original zoomed 8MP images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Considering that the U11's zoom was all 'lossy' and digital, its photo result is remarkable, being amazingly crisp and detailed (again) - yet it's also dark and digitally noisy, while the Lumia 950 XL manages a lighter, cleaner shot with less edge enhancement. Against my better judgement, I have to say that the U11 does the better job overall, with amazing details, thanks partly to the 2017 sensor and partly the sharpening and enhancement algorithms. Still, I'd argue that the Lumia is only a notch behind overall, with its own advantages.
Lumia 950 XL: 7 pts; HTC U11: 8 pts
Test 8: Extreme low light
Also in the church was an altar in an alcove - it was almost pitch dark to my eyes and the results below from both smartphone cameras are astonishing - they represent a degree of light that simply wasn't present in real life. Is this good or bad? Discuss! Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
What you're seeing above is the Lumia 950 XL's PureView oversampling again - reducing noise in a single shot by combining information from adjacent pixels of higher underlying resolution. Another factor is that the 950 XL went for a full 1/5s exposure, handheld, while the U11 went for a 1/15s shot. The three times length of shot, added in with the PureView magic are what creates the 950 XL's astonishing photo (under the circumstances).
Of course, you could argue that the darker U11 shot was much closer to the pitch dark reality and that this is worth a credit, but I think the end result from the 950 XL should let it win out by a healthy margin, however unrepresentative it is of real life here.
Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; HTC U11: 7 pts
Test 9: Night scene
A dusk supermarket shot, with extremes of bright and dark. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
And here's the same scene, as captured by the HTC U11:
Both OIS-assisted shots are excellent, of course, though the Lumia 950 XL's version has greater dynamic range. You could argue that the extra set of car headlights in its frame caused the algorithms to dial down the exposure slightly, but the 950 XL still went for a longer shutter time than the U11, plus the eventual exposures were very similar.
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download.
You'll have noticed that the in-shop details are different for each, so let's also look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
Looked at in this level of detail, the Lumia 950 XL photo is just astonishing, with the dynamic range naturally capturing individual items on shelves and with almost no digital noise evident in the photo. The U11 produces superb detail where things aren't blown out, but this is more a testament to the cleverness of the sharpening routines - and these also produce jagged edges here and there (e.g. the car door edges). Overall, I have to give this one to the 950 XL - I'm sure I could have played with the U11's framing and exposure at the time to produce a better result, but these are just real world photos, snapped on the go, at it were.
Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; HTC U11: 8 pts
Test 10: Dead of night
Some cars at 50m to provide detail to focus on, but very dark to my eyes, darker than it looks below! An ultimate low light test. Here is the whole scene, as presented by the Lumia 950 XL:
In case you want to grab the original images to do your own analysis, here they are, from the Lumia 950 XL and U11, click the links to download. And to look at the images in more detail, here are fairly central 1:1 crops, just wait to make sure the page has fully loaded and then use your mouse or trackpad pointer to compare the images:
The Nokia/Microsoft OIS in the Lumia 950 is clearly to be trusted when shooting handheld, and the result is an automatic 1/4s exposure, letting in a lot of light. Then add in the PureView oversampling to reduce noise in the single shot and the result is vastly cleaner than the competition's. The U11 does well enough, with its own OIS, using a 1/10s exposure, and the result isn't blurred, but the noise is pretty horrible down here at the pixel level.
Lumia 950 XL: 9 pts; HTC U11: 7 pts
Verdict
As usual, adding up the points gives us a feel for how the two phone cameras did:
- Lumia 950 XL: 87/100pts
- U11: 77/100pts
This series of smartphone camera comparisons is showing a distinct trend, across dozens and dozens of test shots and challenging light scenarios. Microsoft's 2015 flagship had/has an astonishing camera (mainly inherited from the Nokia imaging engineers and the work on the 930 and 1520) and this still can't be beaten, even mid-2017. Android pretenders come and go, producing what are very good cameras in ultra-thin devices - yet physics continues to win, aided by some PureView oversampling and some post-processing magic. The largish sensor, the largish aperture, the mature OIS, the ZEISS optics, the PureView software tech, all come together in the 950 range to produce the phone imaging benchmark device of modern times.
I've tested the lot, including the Pixel, the OnePlus 5, the iPhone 7 Plus (albeit only looking at zooming), and now the U11 above, and - across all subject and lighting ranges, and even though it itself isn't perfect - the Lumia 950 XL is guaranteed to win out. Still.
The U11 is probably the best Android camera phone in the world though and credit to it here, especially on early firmware, so it can only get better.
PS. There are, as people will point out, other factors to take into account with smartphone cameras - shot to shot time (the 950 is slower than the U11), post-processing time (ditto, massively), speed of focussing (slower, again), and so on. But I'm looking here at what matters most of the time - sheer image quality, giving you a JPG that you can treasure (and re-use) for years to come.
PPS. It still beggars belief that the like of DxOMark can proclaim recent phones as top of the imaging tree (the U11 is their current champion), when my on-screen tests here, which you can verify with your own eyes, prove otherwise, that the much-ignored Nokia/Microsoft Lumias are massively underrated in terms of image quality (just check out their ratings for the Nokia 808 and 1020!) In fact, DxOMark have never even tested the Lumia 950 XL camera because they're loathe to admit that a '2015 Windows Phone' could knock their 2017 Android favourites into a cocked hat... Anyone for a 'SteveMark'?