Chinese manufaturer OnePlus makes damn good mid-range phones for enthusiast Android users,
but their phone cameras have always fallen short.
So how does their newest phone, the 5t, compare to our current phone camera champ, Huawei’s
Mate 10 Pro?
Let’s put them head to head in Last Cam Standing!
Last Cam Standing is PCWorld’s video series that determines the best phone camera for
still images in a King-of-the-hill style battle.
Whichever phone wins moves on to face the next major smartphone release.
Last year, the Mate 10 from Huawei finished at the top of the smartphone pile.
It’s impressive optics and AI-powered scene recognition help it to take captivating photos.
But OnePlus has once again reconfigured its camera setup, and on the 5t they pair a standard
camera with a secondary low-light sensor.
On paper these specs appear similar, but I’ll let the results of the testing speak for themselves.
As always, we divide the testing into 4 catagories: color, clarity, exposure, and user experience.
All our testing mimics how people use phones in the real world.
I just pull the phone from my pocket, and use the stock camera app with HDR processing
set to auto.
Now some of you have asked ‘why not shoot in manual mode on a tripod saving to raw files?’.
Well, first, that’s not even close to real-world testing.
Second, we aim for tests that reveal how the phone companies have tuned their camera settings
for auto use.
So while I’m confident in my ability to take a good photograph on a tripod in manual
mode, I’m more interested in seeing if the phone can without those things.
But I’m always open to hear about different testing ideas so subscribe and drop a comment
or shoot me a tweet.
With that out of the way, let’s get to the results!
The first category is color, and here we’re going over color reproduction and white balance.
This first shot of grafitti appears very close in terms of color reproduction.
There’s plenty of variation in each color but we’re starting to see differences in
white balance.
The Mate 10 skews cooler, while the 5t is skewing warmer.
But this next shot of a plant switches things up.
Huawei’s intelligent algorythm accurately identitifed this scene as a plant and boosted
the warmer tones.The 5t on the other hand kept things cooler but lost contrast and vibrancy.
Neither of them is accurate to the eye, but both phones are tuned to respond to scenarios
in different ways.
This next scene is also very interesting - check out the yellow curb and red pole.
The Mate 10’s shot feels natural, while the 5t produces almost pastel-looking fake
colors.
Now look at the grey curb in the backgroud, the 5t exhibits some serious green tint that
affects the whole photo.
This hallway in the Wynn at Las Vegas has a heavy mixture of natural and artificial
light.
The Mate 10 Pro once again leans cooler and the 5t warmer, but the 5t really floods the
background in a heavy handed deep oragne.
Lets finish with a landscape shot of San Francisco.
By looking at the white clouds, we can see how tinting can affect the overall mood of
a photo.
On the Mate 10, a purple tint and cooler color temperature gives us a chilly winter day.
But a warmer color temp and a green tint on the 5t feels more like a warm summer day.
I say it time and time again, but color is a matter of personal taste.
Personally, I found the Mate 10 to be more accurate and its scenes are better suited
to what I look for from a camera.
So the color category goes to the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.
The second category is clarity.
We’re looking at the sharpness of each image, and how well each camera handles dark environments.
Here we have a shot of fake plants at Ikea.
Disregarding the dynamic range (we’ll get to that later) we see a bit more noise from
the Mate 10.
BUT we also have a clearer image overall, despite the higher megapixel count of the
5t.
Checking out this long shot in the warehouse shows the 5t faring even worse.
The individual packages on the shelf have good separation on the Mate 10 pro, while
the 5t just doesn’t come close.
So where does the 5t shine?
How about outside in full sunlight?
Nope.
Alcatraz island is clearer on the Mate 10.
Maybe when we get a little closer?
Eh, not really
Zooming in on this beer list reveals an odd ghosting around the edges on the 5t’s shot.
It’s not camera shake, and the photo is in focus, so I can’t really explain what
happened.
But, surely the 5t is great in low light, right?
That’s the whole point of the second sensor?
As we head into a dark garage I’ve lost all hope in the 5t—the zoomed in results
are rough.
And this is just the main camera on the OnePlus, as I actually had to try really hard to engage
the second ‘low light’ camera.
You would hope that’s where the 5t can redeem itself.
Unfortunatly it’s not the case.
This shot does engage that second low-light sensor, and we see a bit more texture quality
on the bricks.
But zoom into the labels and I wouldn’t call that a win over the Mate 10.
So the clairty category easily goes to the Huawei Mate 10 Pro.
The third category is exposure.
We’ll look at the dynamic range of each image and how each camera decided to expose
for a scene.
I’ll include historgrams in this section so you can follow along as well.
In almost every lighting situation, I was pleased with how both phones exposed for a
scene.
I couldn’t find any extreme examples of improper exposure, so there isn’t much to
report there, and thats a good thing.
But when we start to compare dynamic range in photos with high contrast environments,
that’s a different story.
Here on Alcatraz there’s a good amount of information lost in the shadows on the 5t.
The Mate 10 Pro is a bit washed out, but I’d rather add contrast back in in post rather
than try to take it out.
Same thing here.
The Mate 10 feels a bit more processed as a result, but it’s still holding more information
in the extreme ends of the exposure than the 5t.
This next shot I took in Vegas isn’t great looking, but it helps to illustrate a point.
The highlights on the 5t are blown out.
And there isn’t even as much detail in the shadows either.
So it’s not an exposure problem -- the 5t’s HDR tuning just isn’t as agressive as the
Mate 10’s.
So while it’s not a huge win, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro takes the exposure category.
The final category is user experience.
Here we’ll look at extra features, and what it’s like to use the camera day to day.
Like I said in the last episode of Last Cam Standing, the Mate 10 Pro doesn’t have the
most user friendly interface.
But it does offer a whole host of features like a manual mode, a stunning black and wide
mode, RAW file support, and even an apeture slider for varrying amounts of bokeh.
But at the heart of the Mate 10 Pro is it’s AI powered real-time scene and object recognition.
The phone reads every scene, and tries to tune the processing to match whats being shot.
It’s a whole other level of computational photography.
On the 5T side, I was not blown away.
The camera app is very close to stock Android, which means it was straightforward and easy
to use, but it lacks any fancy features.
It was pretty quick to launch and ran reliably, but it’s nothing special.
Like the 5 before it, the 5t also lacks OIS, or optical image stabilization.
OnePlus’ version of EIS, electronic stabilization, is not great either so it’s a real bummer
and I certainly felt it’s absence day to day.
So Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro takes the user experience category as well.
For the money the OnePlus 5t provides a solid camera system, but it’s not enough to take
the top spot.
So, for the second time in a row, Huawei’s Mate 10 Pro wins Last Cam Standing.
The Mate 10 Pro’s dual camera setup, custom processing chip, and Leica partnership all
help to secure the win.
The second 20MP black and white sensor not only helps the main camera take better photos,
but also produces amazing shots on it’s own.
It’s a fun camera to use and I have no problem recommending it.
But the Samsung Galaxy s9 is right around the corner.
Will Huawei be able to hang onto the top spot for long?
Subscribe, share, leave me comments, and definitely come back for the next Last Cam Standing!