The philosophy behind the PhoneArena Camera Score: what we’re measuring against

After revealing the PhoneArena Camera Score benchmark this week, I thought it was worth saying a little more about the philosophy behind the Camera Score.

In other words: what are we measuring against? What are these phone cameras trying to achieve? What is our standard for the best camera on the market? In simpler terms, what does a higher result mean in PA Camera Score parlance?

We thought about this question for a long time as we worked on different elements of scoring. And looking around in the camera benchmarking space, which is a pretty uninhabited space, it felt like the question that needed to be answered. For what? Because rating a camera, let alone a smartphone camera, is an inherently subjective matter.

So, what are you measuring against? Based on what principles do you qualify one camera as better than another?

One of the logical paths to follow, which has also been our intention for some time, is to take “reality” as a reference. In other words, this concept would require you to take brutally realistic photos of the test environment, as close as our eyes see it, and then measure the photos taken by the cameras of the phones we are testing against that benchmark realistic.

This all makes sense, but there’s a big problem with this concept: It goes against what users demand from their phone cameras. And what they demand is a camera that can produce the most impressive photos with the least amount of effort.

Aside from the many purists, the vast majority of us want photos that highlight us, that highlight the environment we’re in, and that are ready to share immediately. As we ourselves are convinced, no one wants a dark, gloomy and bluish photo, just because it was taken on an overcast day. If that’s the case, we’d like things in our photo to be a little more… balanced, a little more warm and friendly. Otherwise, what will we do with this dark photo?

We absolutely think phone makers are overdoing it with processing these days.
We are fed up with the artificially sharpened look, the always bright and sunny colors, the skin tones which make us appear orange…

But, at the same time, we realize that we cannot live in the land of fantasy, and that we cannot go against human nature and insist that phone cameras take such realistic photos as possible, because if we are completely honest – we do not want photos that are as realistic as possible.

What we want are photos that are simply stunning! And what does awesome mean? Well, I think that’s what phone makers are trying to figure out. Year after year, they refine, rework, shake up, improve, evolve, all in search of a formula that customers would prefer.

So we decided to take the road less traveled so far, which is the middle path. This is the middle path, because we don’t think we’ll ever return to realism in phone photography, but we also don’t like the overprocessed look that many popular phones offer these days. That’s why we based our benchmark on a concept we call “Reality Plus”, which simply means that we want things to be grounded in reality and not seem like they belong on another planet, but at the same time time we recognize the fact that we want photos that are simply stunning and ready to be viewed and shared.

The PhoneArena Camera Score measures several objective aspects, such as a camera’s ability to capture real details, or the reliability of its preview, or the level of excessive sharpness.

However, when it comes to how we evaluate the visual “style” of photos of our favorite small snappers, which has always been and continues to be a terribly subjective matter, we have decided to base our evaluations on a reality “. Plus”: a brightness level and approach to color reproduction that is grounded in reality, but tastefully adjusts the visual appeal of a photo.

We hope this philosophy makes sense to you. Let us know your thoughts on what modern phone photography should look like in the comments!