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DXOMark mobile camera rankings corrected


Andrew Reid
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A nice side project... Mobile camera tests. It's good fun.

I have so far tested:

  • Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro
  • Xiaomi Mi 10
  • Huawei P40 Pro Plus
  • Huawei P40 Pro
  • Huawei Mate 30 Pro
  • Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra
  • iPhone 11 Pro Max
  • Samsung Note 10+
  • Oppo Find X2 Pro (OnePlus 8 Pro is very similar)

I'll keep it short. The big blog post is coming soon.

But the DXOMark chart is wrong 🙂

Here's my EOSHDMark ranking:

  • Huawei P40 Pro - 150
    • Pros: Superbly useful 5x zoom, overall camera quality, nice colours, price. Cons: IR pollution, screen size could be a bit bigger
  • Huawei P40 Pro Plus - 150
    • Pros: Low light, overall camera quality, nice build. Cons: Lacks 5x module from P40 Pro, 10x module too long for regular use
  • Huawei Mate 30 Pro - 140
    • Pros: Main camera again is superb like P40 Pro and 3x telephoto not bad either. Nice Samsung Note-like form factor & screen. Cons: Lacks 5x periscope camera of P40 Pro and overall zoom quality
  • Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro - 135
    • Pros: 8K video and very good main camera, superb screen. Cons: Colours can be a bit clinical, a bit flat, 5x zoom quality is lacking compared to Huawei, back feels & looks cheap
  • Xiaomi Mi 10 - 130
    • Pros: 8k video and very good main camera, superb screen. Cons: No 3x or 5x zoom modules and back feels / looks cheap.
  • Oppo Find X2 Pro - 110
    • Pros: A good all-rounder, decent 5x zoom, market leading 3K 120hz screen. Cons: Poor tonality. Oversharpened camera output, beaten by Huawei. Poor choice of back material / weird finish
  • iPhone 11 Pro Max - 105
    • Pros: Good dynamic range, natural colours, iOS, great build. Cons: Camera hardware dated compared to Chinese competition, poor zoom capabilities.
  • Samsung Note 10+ - 100
    • Pros: Nice colours and decent main sensor, great form factor. Cons: Dated camera hardware especially compared to Huawei.
  • Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra - 95
    • Pros: Great in-hand feel and wonderful screen. Cons: Camera processing feels unfinished and is a complete let down, especially in low light. Mediocre 5x periscope zoom is soft. Main camera is muddy in low light and feels overly binned & over sharpened in good light. Xiaomi Mi 10 soundly beats it with same sensor! Expensive too!

Google Play Store and Google Services installed OK on the Huawei phones.

Couple of surprises:

P40 Pro 5x optical zoom is the best on the market. Unfortunately they went crazy with the Plus version which is the flagship ($1000+) handset. That has a 10x optical zoom (240mm). It's way less useful than the 5x (135mm). Also the Plus version has a 3x optical zoom camera module, but I'll take the 5x over that any day. The other area of surprise is with colour - the Leica profiles on the standard P40 Pro are less "consumer". Much warmer and more day-glo on the Plus. One area where the Plus does win though is with build quality and low light. Also, there's fewer colour casts and less IR pollution indoors with black fabric, which come out almost purple on the P40 Pro.

Also the P40 Pro has quite a cool and quite a green cast sometimes, especially in artificial light - and some will prefer the P40 Pro PLUS here. I find the P40 Pro quite artistic and moody looking though.

One thing is for sure - 10x optical zoom lens on a smartphone is quite unique on the market - and when you have a use for it, it does deliver the goods for sure.

Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro / Mi 10 / Samsung S20 Ultra share similar 108MP sensor. Xiaomi THRAAAASHES the Samsung. They just get much more out of it. Especially in low light, where the S20 Ultra is a mushy mess. Even the old Note 10+ has a preferable look in most circumstances to the S20 Ultra, and to make things worse the 5x optical zoom (actually more like 4x glass) is mediocre at best and significantly softer than the P40 Pro. Also the 8K video on the S20 Ultra is heavily cropped and looks dreadful, whereas the Mi 10 and Mi 10 Pro don't have a crop and again get much more out of the sensor in the processing. It is not 8K that pixel peeps well but it does make for very good 4K, even in low light. Downsides to the M10 Pro... the 5x zoom is pretty mediocre and noisy... and the Mi 10 makes do with nothing beyond 2x. Great screens though.

Oppo Find X2 Pro puts in a good effort but it just looks brittle and thin compared to the Huawei on the main wide angle sensor. The ultra wide isn't as good either. The 5x is pretty good - nice and detailed, but dynamic range and colour lag behind the P40 Pro 5x. Indeed, the main sensor output fairs better for dynamic range but not for colour and it is a very over-sharpened output. I like the Oppo implementation of Android. Shame about the boring design of the back and the odd texture of the glass (has a kind of scratchy feel). Absolutely amazing 3K screen running at 120hz but not as bright in direct sunlight as the Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro and Mi 10 standard.

There's a bit of a gap from the Huawei phones to everything else in my view. Especially with regards to tonality and the large 1" sensor look. Also the lenses are less flare prone when not absolutely grease free, compared to the Mi 10 Pro which is particularly badly effected and the Find X2 Pro. The iPhone 11 Pro Max fairs best for flare.

The Apple device still has great dynamic range and the most natural looking colour - almost a flat look, good for filters. However it is distinctly backward from the Huawei and has that 'small sensor look' to it. The zoom is a complete non-starter against the 5x folded optics in the Huawei.

I hope this helps anybody looking at the top 10 of DXOMark.

The Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra I have not yet tried but output looks a bit brittle and thin compared to the Huawei P40 Pro to me, judging by their own samples on the site. The zoom looks good. It shoots 8k. I shall have to try it.

Oh and the Mate 30 Pro is my choice for a more "Note 10" handling style of Huawei phone - The main sensor is just as good as the P40 Pro in my opinion. Colours seem a bit closer to the Plus than the standard P40 Pro. Sometimes too consumer. But sometimes better with improved WB and less casts in low light. The 3x zoom is good in daylight. Less so in low light. It doesn't have the wow factor of the 5x on the P40 Pro though.

I really wish Huawei had kept the 5x zoom on the P40 Pro Plus with the lovely build quality and ceramic back. I really wish they'd corrected the colour casts and IR pollution without throwing out the "Leica look". It can apply HDR too strongly sometimes even in the Leica profiles. The P40 Pro standard model does this too sometimes but not as often. Maybe they couldn't fit the 10x module and 5x into one phone!!

DXOMark's numbers are too close together and don't reflect the differences in main sensor image quality well enough either:

  • P40 Pro - 128
  • X2 Pro - 124
  • Mi 10 Pro - 124
  • Mate 30 Pro - 123
  • S20 Ultra - 122

The biggest problem is that S20 Ultra score - there is no way it is even in the same league as the others, especially in low light. Mate 30 Pro is significantly more than 1 point better than the S20 Ultra.

Also there should be more than 4 points between the P40 Pro and the Oppo Find X2 Pro.

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EOSHD Pro Color 5 for Sony cameras EOSHD Z LOG for Nikon CamerasEOSHD C-LOG and Film Profiles for All Canon DSLRs
  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks a lot for the analysis!

Really impressed with huawei.. and I have given up buying a ricoh GRII. 

Since the xiaomi mi note 10 ( CC9 on list) is so cheap and has the same sensor I wonder if the colours are awful or if it's a solid budget cameraphone alternative.  Have you considered it?

 

P.s: xiaomi names are a disaster, just spent hours trying to understand what is what and realize even reviewers confuse the name

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