The Verge wrote about iPhone’s camera.
For a show overrun with various visions of smart drones and smarter homes for the future, the present of CES was remarkably uniform. I saw more iPhones in the hands of CES attendees than I did Android phones across the countless exhibitor booths. From the biggest keynote event to the smallest stall on the show floor, everything was being documented with Apple’s latest smartphone, and it all looked so irritatingly easy. I don’t want an iPhone, but dammit, I want the effortlessness of the iPhone’s camera.
I often tell my friends that the iPhone is a better camera, even though other phones have superior cameras, because it is a complete package. It is not just about the megapixels or the size of the sensor. The software and hardware are designed to work superbly together, giving you the best quality photos from the best performance Apple squeezes out of the phone. It is hard for competitorsto get such performance when the phone manufacturing and OS are developed separately.
To top it off, the massive selection of camera and photo-processing apps makes the iPhone an attractive camera.
The iPhone’s lead as the smartphone to beat has rarely been defined by just one thing. At one point, the biggest advantage was the simplicity and speed of its interface; at another, it was down to the diversity and quality of available apps; and most recently, the iPhone has distinguished itself with the quality of its 8-megapixel camera. Today, the combination of all these things — simple and fast operation, strong optics and image processing, and a wide app ecosystem — is helping people create the best possible images with the least possible hassle.
During my recent trip overseas, I ended using the iPhone a lot more than my DSLR and rangefinder. In fact, I preferred to shoot with the iPhone for most shots that didn’t require a telephoto lens or a shallow depth of field.
In all the years of Android’s existence, in spite of huge investments of time and money, there’s never been a standout Android cameraphone. Some have cameras that are better in low light than the iPhone’s, many have higher resolution, and a number claim to be faster at focusing — but none pull it all together into the same comprehensive package that the iPhone can offer. Samsung and LG give you a pared-down “just shoot” experience, but they lack software polish and speed; Motorola’s camera launches and shoots quickly, but the quality is mediocre; and Sony manages to combine an excellent image sensor with terrible autofocus. Microsoft’s PureView cameras fare better, but the Windows Phone camera app is comparatively slow and unintuitive, and there’s a reason why former Lumia chief Ari Partinen is now tagging his photos with #iPhone6Plus instead of #Lumia1520.
All this just boils down to Apple’s philosophy of “it just works”.
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