Hi guys, its MTG here, and I have another highly requested camera comparison for you
today.
I'm going to be comparing inarguably two of the best smartphone camera systems out right
now, the Huawei P20 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S9+.
If you're new to the channel, consider subscribing because I post a lot of cool camera comparisons
like this one with lots of different phones, and I make pretty cool reviews.
In this video, I will be comparing the two camera systems in various lighting conditions,
and I will also look at the video and audio qualities of both phones.
Near the end of the video, I will also test out the S9+'s dual aperture and the P20 Pro's
night mode in lowlight.
Let’s get right into it.
The Huawei P20 Pro has a triple camera setup with Leica optics.
The main camera is 40 Megapixels, the monochrome camera is 20 Megapixels, and the telephoto
camera that allows for 3x optical zoom and portrait mode pictures is 8 Megapixels.
They have apertures of F/1.8, F/1.6, and F/2.4 respectively.
The camera can record 4K video at 30 fps, 1080p at up to 60 fps, and 720p at up to 960
fps.
The main camera has optical image stabilization, but can only utilize it at 1080p at 30 fps.
The P20 Pro's front camera is 24 Megapixels with an f/2.0 aperture, and can record video
at 1080p at 30 fps.
The S9 plus has a dual-12 megapixel camera setup.
The main, wide-angle camera can automatically vary between f/1.5 and f/2.4 apertures, whereas
the telephoto camera is a fixed f/2.4.
The second telephoto camera allows for 2x optical zoom, and helps with the depth-effect
pictures.
The S9 plus can shoot 4K and 1080p at 60 fps, and 720p at up to 960 fps.
Both cameras have optical image stabilization.
The front camera is 8 megapixels and has an aperture of f/1.7.
It can take portrait-style pictures using software and can record video at up to 1440p
at 30 fps.
Now that we know the specs of these two smartphones' cameras, I'm going to start off by looking
at pictures shot in great lighting.
Keep in mind that I turned off Intelligent AI on the P20 Pro because it just looked like
someone put filters on the pictures.
In this image, we can see that the P20 Pro's image processing focuses a lot on the colors,
whereas the S9+'s focuses more on contrast.
The blues in the sky, and the greens in the grass in the P20 Pro's image will look more
visually appealing to a lot of people, while others will rightfully point out that it walks
the line of oversaturation.
If we zoom in to the leaves in the tree, we can see that, despite the 40 Megapixel sensor
of the P20 Pro, it appears to be that the S9+ was able to pick up more detail in general.
This is another shot that came out really well on both phones.
You're going to start seeing certain trends like the P20 Pro's emphasis on colors, and
the S9+ always wanting to produce the overall brighter image.
Sometimes, the S9+ will try to make its images too bright, which leads to slight overexposure,
but in more challenging lighting scenarios, this can be very advantageous, which we'll
see later.
In great lighting, as expected, both phones do a terrific job overall.
With these side-by-sides, you should pick out for yourself the things you like about
the image processing of the two phones, so you can start to formulate an opinion as to
which smartphone camera system performs better overall.
In great lighting, the portrait modes of both phones were also very impressive.
Know that both of these photos were taken from the exact same spot, so the P20 Pro is
capable of taking much wider portrait shots.
The person taking the picture had to take a full step forward to achieve similar framing.
It seems as if both phones did a pretty good job with edge detection, and the P20 Pro did
the better job of maintaining the colors of the background.
On the other hand, the S9+ did the better job of maintaining details on my face and
neck.
Both phones can also take great selfies, but both also seem to soften my face even if beauty
mode was off on both devices.
The S9+ seems to show more colors on my face, whereas the P20 Pro's larger megapixel count
appears to pick up more detail.
Both phones are also able to blur the background using software, and in that regard, both phones
do a pretty solid job as well.
*Video montage* Before I get into more challenging lighting
scenarios, I wanted to look at the video and audio qualities of both phones.
Note that the S9+ is capable of shooting 4K at 60 fps, but I set it
to 4K at 30 fps because that is what this video was uploaded at.
Both phones have really high quality cameras, so it wasn't surprising to see that both phones
produced really great 4K video.
Both really saturated their videos, and seemed to process their videos very similarly in
terms of color temperature also.
But with the S9+, you get dual optical stabilization in 4K.
Yes, the P20 Pro is able to produce the wider-angled image, but the lack of any sort of stabilization
makes the 4K video shot on the P20 Pro basically unusable and unwatchable unless you plan to
use a gimbal or tripod.
This was such a shame because when I switched both phones to 1080p, the P20 Pro had some
of the most impressive image stabilization that I've ever seen on a smartphone.
I still like the dynamic range of the S9+ more than that of the P20 Pro, but the stabilization
makes for a much closer comparison.
In terms of the front video qualities of both phones, the S9+ appears to do the better job
with the colors in both the foreground and background.
On the other hand, the P20 Pro appears to pick up more details on my face and has the
wider-angled image.
The audio of both phones also sound really similar.
They both keep my voice sounding natural and clear, and do okay jobs of cancelling out
any noise in the background.
Even budget smartphones are able to produce pretty decent photos in good lighting, but
where the top tier smartphone cameras start to separate themselves from the pack is their
performance in more challenging lighting conditions.
This is a very challenging shot because of the different lighting.
The S9+ does a better job with handling all of the light coming in through the ceiling,
and also does a better job with keeping the foreground of the image bright.
Here, the sun was setting.
The P20 Pro again is able to maintain the blues in the sky better, but you can see much
more of the foreground in the S9+'s image.
It's just brighter overall.
Here, both phones produced really impressive shots given the circumstances.
Colors look great and light sources are not blown out on either phone.
When I look at a portrait mode picture shot in the same lighting, I'd say the quality
of the P20 Pro's image stayed consistent with the other portrait mode shot I showed, but
the S9+ produced an image that was significantly softer than before, in efforts to keep everything
looking bright.
Here, again, this image shows just how great the high dynamic range is on the S9+.
In this instance, all of the colors look better on the S9+'s image.
But if I turn on night mode, the P20 Pro shows that it can produce great photos in any lighting
conditions.
In night mode, the P20 Pro is able to keep its shutter open for 6 seconds, letting in
as much light and information as possible.
And using its AI, it's able to remove any motion blur and sharpen the image.
The difference night mode makes really shows itself when it gets really dark out.
With night mode, the P20 Pro can shoot the best low light pictures I've ever seen come
from a smartphone.
The S9+'s ability to switch to an f1.5 aperture has allowed it to be the king of auto lowlight
performance, but with night mode, the P20 Pro is able to get a lot more information,
creating an image that is just as bright, but has higher levels of detail.
Night mode is really impressive, but it should also be noted, the S9+ can still take comparable
lowlight shots instantly, whereas night mode takes a full, uninterrupted 6 seconds to shoot.
I'm still very impressed with both smartphones' abilities to shoot such high quality shots
given how dark it was when I captured those images.
These two phones are considered to have some of the best camera systems for a reason.
They take really great photos in whatever lighting conditions there are.
And they both add something special that really increases the cameras' performance.
The P20 Pro has night mode that takes the best lowlight pictures I've ever seen.
On the other hand, the S9+ has a dual aperture to maintain clarity and detail during the
day, and let in more light when the lighting requires it to.
You'll have to figure out for yourself what you like most in a smartphone camera system
and determine the best one based on that.
Make sure you're subscribed and have the notification bell clicked because I have a couple big reviews
in the works and more camera comparisons on the way.
Let me know your thoughts in the comment section, and as always, thanks for watching, and I
will see you in the next video.