PhoneArena redefines smartphone camera testing with the PhoneArena Camera Score benchmark

The camera is arguably the most important feature of smartphones these days. This is the most contested battleground for manufacturers: they devote enormous resources to R&D and often spend the majority of time at launch events showcasing their new camera innovations. Meanwhile, emotions are still running high among fans trying to determine who has the best camera of all: the iPhone, the Galaxy, the Pixel, or an up-and-coming challenger like OnePlus or Huawei. In the race toward the most advanced imaging setup, phones began to come equipped with two, three, four, and sometimes even more snappers on board, each performing a different function. This has made them extremely versatile, but the fact is that the smartphone camera has become an increasingly complex behemoth, and while tech media has done its best to provide fair and unbiased coverage, this increasing complexity , as well as the ever-increasing competition in this field meant that superficial and subjective evaluation was no longer enough. Don’t get us wrong, we believe that subjective expert assessment cannot be entirely replaced in areas such as photography and camera capabilities, but we have realized that this approach alone is not enough . The market needed a reliable and holistic approach to the smartphone. camera test: a test that takes into account the almost countless major and minor performance aspects of all cameras involved in a single camera setup. If you wanted to get a complete view of a phone’s camera performance, you had to make do with partial, fragmented coverage, often scattered across different sources.

So we decided that it was time to systematize the enormous camera testing know-how that we had accumulated over the years and create a completely new process for more objective and unbiased testing that represents a Holistic assessment of a phone’s total camera setup.

We called this process: PhoneArena Camera Score.

But we didn’t stop there. We knew it was extremely important for enthusiasts and casual users to be able to compare and choose the best phone camera for their needs (or just for fun), so we structured the testing process as a reference which gives reliable results. results that can be compared between brands and models.

This is how PhoneArena camera scoring works

We evaluate every phone camera on a multitude of criteria: from essentials such as exposure, color representation and detail resolution, to specialties such as separation quality in portrait mode and the reliability of the viewfinder.

Depending on the camera (main, zoom, ultra-wide, or selfie), there is more emphasis on the features considered most fundamental to the camera lens. For example, the level of detail resolved has a higher relative weight when evaluating zoom cameras than when evaluating the ultra-wide camera, for example.

Currently our testing procedure covers over 15 different criteria just for the main camera! To get a better idea of ​​the type of things we look at, here are some examples:

• Exposure
• Subject exposure
• Color temperature
• Color tint
• Detail resolution level
• Oversharpening artifacts
• Separation quality in portrait mode
• Preview reliability (HDR, resolution, portrait mode)
• Stabilization

We measure the still and video performance of each camera in a controlled environment, to maintain comparable results. Our studio environment challenges phones with a number of different scenes, intended to provide a more holistic measure of performance in different scenarios.

However, it is important to note that we have repeatedly verified these controlled environment tests against performance in real-world scenarios and are confident that our test results are representative of the type of image quality you will get once on the spot. and start taking photos. In addition to this, we continue to check real-world performance and use real-world results to evaluate certain aspects of the camera, such as separation quality in portrait mode.

The widget will display an overall rating of the camera score, the main sub-ratings for the photo score and video score, as well as the sub-ratings per camera, so readers can get a feel for the display. particular camera.

The widget displays all of these scores and provides an indication of how a particular score compares to the best in each category. In the case of the examples above, you can see that the iPhone 15 Pro Max holds the current best score for the main camera in video, while its zoom photo score of 23 is a bit short of the current best, which is 24 and belongs to the Pixel 8 Pro.

It’s important to note that we assigned different weights to different camera types (main, zoom, ultra-wide, and selfie). The weight ratios are as follows: 100 for the main camera; 35 for Zoom; 30 for Ultrawide; and 35 for Selfie. These ratios are the same between the photo and video categories.

All sub-scores in the photo category make up the overall photo score, while the final camera score is the result of the photo and video scores, with the current weighting being 50:50 between photo and video.

The road to follow

This is just the beginning of the PhoneArena Camera Score, which ushers in a new era of sophisticated, objective, and easy-to-understand camera scoring, and we’re excited to offer this solution to all smartphone fans who want to do the right thing. decision when choosing their new product. Today we are launching v1 of the PhoneArena Camera Score, but we are already planning to add more testing criteria to our procedure, for an even deeper, more holistic and relevant evaluation of smartphone cameras. Our controlled testing setup will only become more sophisticated over time.

You can already find Camera Score widgets for some of today’s best flagships (the entire iPhone 15 family, Pixel 8 and 8 Pro, iPhone 14 Pro Max, Galaxy S23 Ultra, and Pixel 7 Pro) in the camera sections of their reviews, as well as in our articles dedicated to camera reviews for each of these products. Over the coming weeks and months, we’ll be adding camera scores for all new phones submitted for review, as well as major releases that hit the market over the last year.