Camera Comparison – Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, Nokia Lumia 920 and iPhone 5
Gizmodo recently published a large smartphone camera test to try to decifer which smartphone, out of the Samsung Galaxy S4, Sony Xperia Z, HTC One, Nokia Lumia 920 and iPhone 5 is the ‘best’.
They tested them in “four common situations, two in daylight and two in a blacked out corner of the office”. Had we carried out this test ourselves in our own lab with our resident camera reviewer, also BJP contributor and DxO optics reviewer, Kevin Carter, it would have been very different. But, it’s interesting to note the winner that Gizmodo selected was actually for a joint overall place between the HTC One and the Nokia Lumia 920. They found the HTC One’s images to be ‘grainy’ at times and the Lumia 920 to not be good with color balance. The Samsung S4 despite being very good in many of the test was ‘terrible’ in low light and the Sony Xperia Z ‘fell short more often than not’. They reported that despite the iPhone 5 being just six months old, it lagged behind the competition.
Joanne Carter
Joanne Carter is a British photographer, photography journalist, editor and curator and the founder and editorial director of TheAppWhisperer.com, an independent international photography publication established in 2009.Her journalism, criticism and commentary have appeared in The Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Financial Times, BBC, Vogue Italia, LensCulture, Popular Photography, Android Magazine, NikonPro, DPReview, Which Digital Camera and Which Camera. She has lectured internationally on photography and mobile art, served as a juror for international photography awards, and exhibited her own photographic work across the UK, Europe, South Korea and the United States.Alongside her editorial work, Joanne's photographic and postgraduate research explores death, grief, memory, representation and social inequality through contemporary photography, participatory practice and visual research methods, with the longer-term aim of developing this work through doctoral research.Through TheAppWhisperer, she continues to publish independent photography journalism spanning contemporary photographic practice, mobile imaging, photographic apps, computational photography and emerging imaging technologies.Joanne is available for editorial commissions, photography projects, judging, curatorial work, speaking engagements, consultancy and selected collaborations.
