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I'm waiting for Anandtech's review before I make any judgements on what camera is better. It'll no doubt be in-depth and thorough, as usual. I've already got my 4S though, and I'm very very happy with it.
 
Think the face-off may have been more honest if he didn't approach it with such a GS2 bias? He says you can't text or mail with content in one step with Siri -- Of course you can, he just doesn't know how and declares the Samsung winner due to his own sloppiness. He says "you have to wait for Siri to respond to put in message"- no dude, you're unequivocally wrong.

Then idiot says "set an alarm for one hour" which makes no sense. Siri doesn't do nonsense. If you tell Siri, "set an alarm IN an hour" it works perfectly. Reviewer seems confused between timers and alarms. Ugh. Can't watch any more... Really sad and misleading.

He's not biased. He just didn't know that there was an option to enable mail notification. That doesn't mean he's biased. He even commented saying that he was sorry and that it does have email support. I have no idea why it's off by default though. As for the texting part, I don't know. He probably didn't know that he could text in one step. Does that make him bias? No.

I agree with your second statement though. But then again, Android got it right. :S
 
I have a 4S waiting for me when i get home and i plan on buying an unlocked GS II sometime late this week or early next. It will be neat to try out the comparison. I think the low light performance of the 4S is a key.

Amazing that we are talking the finer points of camera quality on phones. It wasn't that long ago that phone cameras were a novelty.

The GS II will be my third Android phone. I like Android a lot. I like the fact that there are so many handsets, flavors and at least two major app stores. I like the Google services integration. I much prefer the stock Google experience to all the carrier "improved" ones though.

Having said that I always go back to the iPhone and get the new one the day it comes out. The ecosystems, attention to detail, integration with Macs and my iPad is too good not to live in that walled garden.

The iPhone and Android phone comparison is like comparing a MacBook Air to a really good Windows 7 laptop from HP, Sony, Samsung etc. Both are really nice and have their strengths. The Mac is just better overall.
 
Before you do that why not trying watching a demo involving a reviewer who actually knows how to use Siri and is unbiased. That review is so flawed, it is beyond ridiculous. My 6 year old can make Siri dance circles around a GS2, don't kid yourself! :D

Funny how it works with Android and Not with Siri, he must be biased right? What's that moto that apple has? "It just works"... things are changing.


Hardly.. The 4s tonal fidelity is clearly the best of any of the phone cameras in there. Far sharper and more detailed than the SG2, and the others by a LONGSHOT and it kills it in low light. Check out how poor the other droids are, particularly the Bionic.

I've little doubt the Nikon will deliver better images than the 4s, and all things being equal it should, but I've got equally little doubt my 7d will crush the 300, so what is the point?

Have you looked at the test scores? Maybe if you take your rose tinted glasses you could see them properly. Overall the Slide 4G and SGS2 take better photos than iP4s. In low light, the Droid Bionic is better than the iP4s, in Video capability, the SGS2 is in another league to the iP4s...

The iP4s is a good all round phone for taking photos, but for me at least, who owns a SGS2 these results aren't much of a surprise. It's not really possible to improve on the picture quality of the top phones in such a small case, or without advanced lenses. The whole "magical photos" treatment that the iP4s received at the launch was merely hiding its lack of a killer feature that previous Apple products have had.

Assuming the iP5 is a year away at least, and with the arrival of the next gen Phones from Android, I know where my money will be placed once my contract runs out.
 
Have you looked at the test scores? Maybe if you take your rose tinted glasses you could see them properly. Overall the Slide 4G and SGS2 take better photos than iP4s. In low light, the Droid Bionic is better than the iP4s, in Video capability, the SGS2 is in another league to the iP4s...

That's total crap!!! The scores are BS and the 4S obviously took the most natural looking pics over the Galaxy 2. And I dare you to even say that the Galaxy 2 can even compare at low light.

If the the Galaxy 2 photos actual looked better than the 4S photos, I would have no problems admitting it, I don't own the 4S. But it's clear as day in the OP link that the 4S is the real winner.
 
I think what these tests show, if nothing else, is that phone makers are pushing the upper limits of what can be achieved with the imager/optics/aperture in a mobile device to comply with the design limits of what can be stuffed in a phone and going above 8mpix in the form factor is probably a waste of effort and just marketting hype for 'speeds and feeds' on a bullet list

Although I am not massively impressed by their testing setup in any case and didn't give ANY of the cameras a really good wide range of scenarios to show off high points and low points.

So i'm happy with my phone and i know what it can do in the right circumstances and how to work around what it can;t do so well.
 
Well, I might be wrong but I guess SG2 is bigger so can accommodate more hardware to make it a slightly better for pics etc. On other note size of SG2 is way too big for me so I will never buy smartphone of that size. Thats where Samsung failed , of course in my personal opinion.
 
I'm not a photographer, so the still pics all look very similar to me. The only pic that shows the differences well is the pic of the doll. The ip4s pic looks better to me because of the warmer tone. But based on all the pictures, especially the Nikon, the doll is probably more white than tan. So the ip4s is off and not as accurate. And if you look at only the wall, you can clearly see that the gs2 has better exposure. Both ip4s and gs2 picture quality are great but for different reasons. As for video, the scoring is totally right. Sg2 video owns in normal while ip4s owns in lowlight. If you can't see why sg2 got 88 in normal video, take a careful look at the colorful connect toy. Exquisite quality.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A334 Safari/7534.48.3)

Sigh. It's no secret that Android devices have way better specs than iOS devices. That isn't debatable. Did I miss something or when did the 4S receive the title as "best camera on a phone?" If the S2 camera is better, then it just it...just know the iPhone is RUNNING AT&T, Sprint and Verizon! You can have better specs all you want, but people want the iPhone! By now, it is proberly the best selling phone on all three networks.
 
Think the face-off may have been more honest if he didn't approach it with such a GS2 bias? He says you can't text or mail with content in one step with Siri -- Of course you can, he just doesn't know how and declares the Samsung winner due to his own sloppiness. He says "you have to wait for Siri to respond to put in message"- no dude, you're unequivocally wrong.

Then idiot says "set an alarm for one hour" which makes no sense. Siri doesn't do nonsense. If you tell Siri, "set an alarm IN an hour" it works perfectly. Reviewer seems confused between timers and alarms. Ugh. Can't watch any more... Really sad and misleading.

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There is no such thing as any digital camera that is 100% in terms of the aspects you stated. It was included as a benchmark, nothing more, nothing less.. It is a point and shoot for goodness sakes....

Bias? Are you kidding? He isnt biased. He compares every phone so it isnt some guy who owns a GS2 just comparing it to the iPhone. He does that with every new phone that comes out.

He may be wrong due to the fact that he perhaps didnt try and use Siri to its fullest...that i can agree with if true but the fact is the GS2 was smoother , faster and the voice commands pretty much do the same things and it looked to me the GS2 took less steps to get results.
 
Funny how it works with Android and Not with Siri, he must be biased right? What's that moto that apple has? "It just works"... things are changing.
My point is simple, I don't understand why you are intentionally "not getting it". He used phraseology that he was used to with the 'droid and it didn't work with Siri. The converse would be equally true, whether you want to be honest and admit it or not. A poorly prepared reviewer making erroneous conclusions based on his own testing inadequacy is utterly worthless, and that is beyond debate.

Have you looked at the test scores? Maybe if you take your rose tinted glasses you could see them properly. Overall the Slide 4G and SGS2 take better photos than iP4s. In low light, the Droid Bionic is better than the iP4s, in Video capability, the SGS2 is in another league to the iP4s...

You must be vision impaired. The Bionic looks like complete GARBAGE at low light. You must have been referring to a different smartphone, otherwise, visit your eye doctor immediately. ;)

And who needs synthetic test scores when evaluating images? My eyes are my arbiter of truth. I know you Droid guys get wrapped up in specs, but c'mon!

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They didn't even consider the iphone's image stabilization, huge improvement over the Galaxy

SPOT ON point, and completely relevant and critical to real life use!

But hey, did you read about the droid's specs and see those amazing test scores??!? :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

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Bias? Are you kidding? He isnt biased. He compares every phone so it isnt some guy who owns a GS2 just comparing it to the iPhone. He does that with every new phone that comes out.

He may be wrong due to the fact that he perhaps didnt try and use Siri to its fullest...that i can agree with if true but the fact is the GS2 was smoother , faster and the voice commands pretty much do the same things and it looked to me the GS2 took less steps to get results.

So, making conclusions because you don't understand the device you're reviewing is OK in your book? Or is this only when the conclusions confirm your own particular biases?

I've used android AND Mango voice software and promise you, Siri (in BETA no less!) is a FAR more polished, intuitive and useful tool, without any rational doubt. Someday you may actually TRY Siri yourself and you'll agree.
 
Of course they are comparable they both basically have the best technology available right now... That is what is so great we get to CHOOSE what we want. The 4S has a GREAT camera so the the galaxy S II. If you want to trash the iphone 4S okay then don't buy it! If you want to trash android OKAY but no one is making you buy anything! Choose your phone on YOUR preferences and what works best for YOU not based on a freaking test judged by individuals that rank the phones .5 points from one another...
 
I am continually impressed with the S2, hard to believe what Samsung have crammed into such a thin device with a display like that :eek:

Especially when I consider that a few years back, it was hard to even find a 1080p camcorder on the consumer market. In the end I paid like £600 for a very mediocre Panasonic HD camcorder because it was one of the few that could shoot in full HD.
 
Needless to say, I haven't seen a single iPhone 4S camera test that looks anywhere near as good as what Apple showed off.

I spent the morning here taking some pics with my Nikon D90 SLR, Nikon S4000 point & shoot, and the iPhone 4S. Inside images, outside shaded images and sunny images. The D90 looked great, but for a $3000 setup with the lenses and flash it would want to be. The S4000 is ok for a $200 point & shoot, and a little grainy in low light. The iPhone 4S is good in sunlight, but falls to (or slightly below) the performance of the S4000 in indoor and low light areas.

Thats not too bad for an addon to a phone, but for people who bought the phone with that as a large reason, well I actually expected a little better. I use my Phones camera occasionally, my son takes 100+ images a month on his phone and the 4S is a massive improvement for him over his old 3G - I wonder why? :D
 
Here you go- dynamic range and decent bokeh, from my 4s, and of course I spent no time and composition.

Based on two days of shooting I am comfortable you don't really know what the 4S imager is capable of.

It's not bokeh. It's just a shallow depth of field. I noticed that DOF is very shallow in most IP4S images. It's not really a good thing.


Quote:
Originally Posted by fastfinger
They didn't even consider the iphone's image stabilization, huge improvement over the Galaxy
SPOT ON point, and completely relevant and critical to real life use!

But hey, did you read about the droid's specs and see those amazing test scores??!? :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

What image stabilization? If iPhone has optical stabilization it would be a real thing. Electronic stabilization on the other hand is just a gimmick. The only reason Apple hyped it up was because they did not have much to talk about during iPhone 4S introduction. SGS2 also has it but you would not know that:

The Samsung Galaxy S2 also has something for all those photographers and people who enjoys taking pictures, it comes with a nice 8.0MP camera with a resolution up to 3264×2440 pixels! Some of the features it includes are auto focus, touch focus, face detection, image stabilization, and geo-tagging. On top of that, the Galaxy S2 can record in high definition at 1080p videos at 30 FPS. This can be great for those who daily vlog, so no need to carry multiple devices to get the job done. On the front of the android, it has a 2.0MP camera for video chatting and taking photos of yourself or whatever you like!


Link
 
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The photo test doesn't shock me. While iPhone 4 and 4s has very good cameras for phones, I always felt they weren't the best I've ever seen. The iPhone camera has GREATLY improved to see a major difference considering their cameras were never the best prior to the iPhone 4. The MyTouch Slide 4G which has been out months was known to already be a great cameraphone. Apple just knows how to market it certain features well even when others have comparable capability. Apple markets things that make you WANT them instead of actually NEEDING them. I just wished they also compared it with the 2010's Nokia N8 which was probably the best cameraphone of last year. Or this year's SE Xperia Arc which uses similar sensors to the 4S since they were manufactured by Sony.

You can never replace a P&S camera for me without OPTICAL ZOOM and XENON FLASH. And just holding a cameraphone vs real camera just doesn't feel right on trips to the museum, Disneyland, or the beach. Those dedicated devices are better at their craft. It is like trying to have a tablet replace your PC. It can temporarily replace it for long before you see its true limitations.

But what really surprised me was how the Galaxy S II won the video recording test. Sony's sensors have never been that great for video. Check the Arc vs iPhone 4 to know what I mean. But I always thought the iP4 was better at video recording than still shots. So seeing the 4s which has a improved capability than the 4 to lose out to the SII surprised me.

These are all charts. Depending how great of a photographer you are, it will always vary. It is like those BENCHMARK tests. You see how the 4S is faster than the GSII or whatever. But in real life, you will see a split second difference in opening up apps and websites to not even notice any difference. If you are an Apple fan, you really have to take those charts with a grain of salt because it goes against your beliefs of talking down on specs. They are just numbers, after all.

I just wished HTC was more consistent with their cameras on their phones like what their MyTouch Slide 4G has. I want the Sensation XE but the quality just isn't good on it.

The close to a perfect 2011 cameraphone would be MyTouch Slide 4G's image quality + Droid Bionic's low-light video capability + Galaxy S II's overall video quality.
 
I hate the whole Camera Shoot-out arguments. Kind of dumb, IMO.

Sure, One camera may be a little better than the other. But you have to look at all the factors.

Im not going to get into them. All camera's are incredible for a phone.
 
If you guys actually look at the test results, the only image quality category in which the GSII has an advantage is exposure quality. It's slightly inferior the iP4S in color accuracy, sharpness, and distortion.

The GSII's video quality carried the day, though it's interesting that there was no camera movement involved, which kind of leaves the 4S's solid shake reduction out in the cold.
 
If you guys actually look at the test results, the only image quality category in which the GSII has an advantage is exposure quality. It's slightly inferior the iP4S in color accuracy, sharpness, and distortion.

The GSII's video quality carried the day, though it's interesting that there was no camera movement involved, which kind of leaves the 4S's solid shake reduction out in the cold.

When camera movement does get involved, SGSII looks even better (comparatively). Here is a good comparison on youtube

iPhone 4S exhibits higher image compression.
 
They did a poor job on the comparisons. Different angles, distances...wtf. Still though it looks like the 4s handles light a lot better than the galaxy. The galaxy's picture of the model is really bad. It looks washed out and has a weird spot over her left hand. Either way they're pretty similar when all is said and done.
 
When camera movement does get involved, SGSII looks even better (comparatively). Here is a good comparison on youtube

iPhone 4S exhibits higher image compression.

Wow thats such a load of crap, my 4S does not do that laggy stuff AT ALL. I just posted a video that proves that fact very well.
 
Wow thats such a load of crap, my 4S does not do that laggy stuff AT ALL. I just posted a video that proves that fact very well.

The two videos are very different. Your video "challenges" the camera in the least possible way:

* clouded day - all objects are evenly lit (no exposure challenges)
* reasonable amount of light (try shooting in dark places and the noise will kill you)
* no zoom
* camera is not moving.

While there are moving objects (cars) in this video, they cover only small part of the view. As a result, only few pixels actually change from frame to frame. Compare this to the other video where the camera moves. As a result, all pixels change colors from frame to frame. This is where iPhone 4S (and Galaxy SII) start struggling.
 
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