Even though us phone geeks know there are more than a handful of brands that put out great premium smartphones, to the average consumer their only real options appear to still be Apple and Samsung. And so every year around this time,
it’s worth comparing the latest iPhone against the latest Galaxy Note, because they represent the two most mainstream,
widely-available premium phones for consumers around the world. With both Apple and Samsung claiming major camera breakthroughs for their respective top flagship, we figure it’s time for a camera shootout between the iPhone 12 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
Over the past couple of years, Chinese phone brands such as Huawei and Xiaomi have been stuffing the spec sheet with more pixels,
larger sensors and more lenses, while Samsung and Apple played it safe and stuck with camera hardware that seemed pedestrian on paper.
In addition to the now standard wide, ultra-wide, zoom triple focal length set-up, each device has an additional sensor: the iPhone 12 Pro Max sports a LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) sensor which is mainly used for AR tech,
but Apple also says it helps with focusing at night (spoiler alert: I compared the 12 Pro Max against the standard iPhone 12 without LIDAR and could not see a difference in focusing prowess).
Samsung, meanwhile, gave the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra a laser sensor to help with that 108MP sensor’s focusing,
which was slightly unreliable on the Galaxy S20 Ultra (spoiler alert: the Note 20 Ultra’s auto-focusing improves from the S20 Ultra but it’s still a bit wonky compared to other top phones).
Nonetheless, both are very powerful systems, and they look the part too, with large, pronounced modules that grab attention.
Around the front, the iPhone 12 Pro sports a 12MP camera placed with the Face ID facial scanning system — resulting in a huge notch — while Samsung uses a 10MP selfie lens in a tiny hole-punch cut-out. Anyway, enough with specs, let’s start the test.
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