How does the iPhone 6S’s new camera hold up to the Galaxy S6 Edge’s?
iPhone 6S vs. Galaxy S6 – Camera Comparison
So after 4 longs years of being stuck with a 8 megapixel camera in the iPhone, Apple decided to up the camera in the iPhone 6S with a 12 megapixel camera. Now there’s a lot more to a camera than megapixels and there’s been a slew of upgrades to the camera since then but with the iPhone 6S, the 8 megapixel sensor is now an amazing 12 megapixel sensor which is still amazingly, 25% percent smaller than the 16 megapixels of the S6 Edge.
So for this comparison, Aaron took several pictures of the same object between an iPhone 6, iPhone 6s and Galaxy S6 Edge. Aaron doubled this photo taking expedition with a iPhone 6S Plus bendgate test so if that’s of interest to you, you can find out more here. Also, this comparison is only for camera stills, not video.
Here’s what we’ve concluded in our camera comparison. The iPhone 6S is the better camera if you like snapping action shots and if you enjoy having photographs with richer colors. The Galaxy S6 Edge is better for the selfie monger and panoramic stills. Both cameras are better than the one found on the iPhone 6 (this wasn’t surprising).
Image size – Wider isn’t necessarily better
Right off the bat, the actual image dimensions are quite different. The S6 Edge captures more stuff going from left to right (dimensions: 5312×2988) whereas the photos by the iPhone 6S are taller (dimensions: 4032×3024).
Panoramic shots are way more epic with the S6 Edge as you capture more of that panorama with a wider image. Viewing the photographs are incredibly on S6 Edge because it fills up the entire screen whereas the photos on the 6S fill up approx. 80% of the screen. The image size of the iPhone 6S is closer to a 4:3 ratio which makes the image viewing process feel “outdated” in our opinion.
However, that’s not to say that the iPhone 6S’s images are worse than the S6 Edge’s as wider images work better when you’re shooting something specific. Macro photography and food porn shots work better with a square image as it really allows you to draw the attention to the subject. Check out our comparison video for a good example as its much easier to explain.
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Picture Quality – Who has better color and exposure?
In terms of picture quality, the Galaxy S6 edge generally captures photos that are a little over exposed in our opinion which makes the photo’s seem duller, less vibrant. In the panoramic photo above, you can definitely tell that the sky in the iPhone 6S’s photo is definitely deeper which results in a better looking photo.
Another example is the white flower in the white flower in this set of photographs. You can definitely see the detail of the white flower in the 6S but its literally a white flower in the S6 photo. In lower light conditions, as seen in our comparison video, the color difference is quite noticeable as the color of our red Incipio DualPro’s are very different between the two cameras.
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Low light photography – One camera’s weakness is its strength here
Low-light photography performance was tough for us to decide as both cameras (actually, most cameras) don’t perform well in low-light conditions. With that being said, we felt that if you’re shooting photos with your smartphone in low light conditions, you’re probably caring more about what’s going on so low-light photography goes to Galaxy S6 Edge.
As mentioned above, the S6 Edge tends to overexpose its photographs which means that you’ll be able to see more in that photograph.
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Selfie Camera – A clear winner
Onto the selfie camera which the 6S closes the gap on the S6 Edge but the Edge still comes out on top solely because of its wider field of view. The selfie screen flash that’s built into the camera app does improve the iPhone 6S’s tiny selfies a little better due to the over-exposure of the Galaxy S6, that benefit doesn’t make the 6S better.
If taking selfies is very important to you, the question you have to ask is “How many friends do you have?” If you have lots, then get the S6 Edge because you’ll be able to fit them all into your selfie and with the “beauty” feature, you can make their faces look like pieces of plastic.
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So that’s all we got for our photo comparison between the iPhone 6S and Galaxy S6 Edge. This is by no means any sort of comprehensive comparison but we feel that we’ve hit the major points for each camera. Many of the issues that we described for each device can be taken into account using a custom photo app but since the majority of users will be using the stock camera apps, we felt to leave those out of this comparison.
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