Samsung has made leaps in improving its branding over the years, coming up with sleek designs for its newest phones and packing them with advanced features. Apple, on the other hand, is not giving up its leading position without a fight with the release of its iPhone 7 and 7 Plus.
There's no denying the fact that the cameras on the Galaxy S7 and iPhone 7 are anything but average. The former packs a 12-megapixel camera with f/1.7 aperture, dual-LED two-tone flash and dual-pixel phase detection autofocus, and is one of the fastest smartphone cameras to date. Meanwhile, the latter is bringing its A game with a 12-megapixel main shooter and f/1.8 aperture, quad-LED with flicker sensor flash and a new six-element lens.
Because it is customary for several sites to review phones hand-in-hand and compare their features according to the reviewer's point of view, a popular Apple blog decided to organize an extensive camera comparison test using a method that's entirely different: a blind review.
Various similar photos were captured using the Galaxy S7, iPhone 7, as well as other phones like the Microsoft Lumia 950 and LG V20, and were all posted online with no labels of which device captured them. The audience were left with the task of choosing which they think has the best image quality for specific scenes.
More than 13,000 votes were tallied, and the Samsung Galaxy S7 camera came out on top. But how did it win?
Indoors
In an artificially lit indoors shot, the Galaxy S7 bested the iPhone 7, 45 percent to 28 percent, mainly because of the former's better saturation. Dimming the indoor lights, the LG V20 actually performed admirably well thanks to its balanced picture results, compared to the iPhone 7's muted colors and the Galaxy S7's oversaturated look.
Outdoors
Despite falling short of balancing sunlight and shadows when stepping outdoors, the tendency of the Galaxy S7 to produce highly saturated shots became an asset as it brought brilliant and truer colors than the iPhone 7, whose images were somewhat indistinguishable.
Under bright lighting conditions, the Microsoft Lumia 950 produced the best result because its contrast gave the subjects depth in spite of adding brightness to the overall image.
Portrait
The portrait mode has always been one of the strongest suits of all the iPhones sold to date. In well-lit surroundings, the iPhone 7 lived up to its forte and produced the best natural-looking image.
In low light however, Samsung's inclination toward high saturation brought down the house in this category.
Overall Tally
Coming out on top was Samsung's Galaxy S7 garnering a whopping 39 percent of the total votes. Apple's iPhone 7 placed third after the LG V20 with 21 percent and 22 percent, respectively. Although already a year old, the Microsoft Lumia 950 came in with 18 percent of the total votes.
Breaking it all down, the photos captured using the iPhone 7 fared so much better than the Galaxy S7 under well-lit conditions. Take this factor away and the Galaxy S7 whacks the former. In the end, the choice will still be according to the user's preference and purpose.
