Google product VP Brian Rakowski calls this "the best smartphone camera anyone has ever made." Usually you don't hear such bold claims, but he's confident —
DxOMark gave it the highest score it's ever given a phone.
But benchmarks are one thing, results are very much another. Luckily for Google, the results on the Pixel are very, very good. I put it in the same ballpark as the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy S7 in most situations, which is not something I expected to say going in.
The Pixel bested the iPhone in picking up detail and color in my test shots. To my eyes, it seems to be making more pleasing decisions with lighting and HDR, too. I want to put the emphasis on "more pleasing," because my hunch is that if we looked at the raw input each sensor is getting we'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference. Instead, the distinctions between all three of these phone cameras are more about the stylistic decisions each company is making. Both Google and Samsung are slightly more aggressive at processing the image into something pleasing, while the iPhone seems to give a more natural look.
...Bottom line: if you wanted to agree with Google and call this the best smartphone camera, I wouldn't argue with you. Instead I would say that picking the best camera among the Pixel, the iPhone 7, and the Samsung Galaxy S7 is more a matter of personal preference than it is of pure picture quality. And I would add that I don't think Google would have gotten this far if it hadn't controlled both the hardware and the software from the start.
