Best Photographer Enthusiast Phone
Posted: Apr 12, 2019, 7:18 PMPhone owned for less than 3 months
I feel that this phone is going to get a lot of polarized opinions as this phone packs some punch in the camera department but it might not be what people will expect. The main highlight of this phone is its 5 cameras and this might sound better than other flagship phones which have 2 or 3 cameras, but this phone's cameras are used in an entirely different way than the other phones. While most of the other phones process the picture after taking the picture e.g. they will enhance the contrast or details, this phone does not process the image in a similar way. The traditional image processing is kept at a minimum because that control is given to the user. I have found that with my earlier phone colors in the pictures were way more saturated than in real life. This has been a gripe for some of the photographers who use the phone to take a picture and find that the phone image processing has cranked the image attributes too high for their liking, so they prefer to shoot in RAW which lets them be in control. This phone seems to be aimed at doing that and gives control to the user to decide how they want their picture to look like. This might sound a good idea but most of the people don't want that much finer control and are fine
with what their phone cranks out. So while comparing stock pictures of a brightly lit scene from this phone and other phones, you might find this phone takes dull pictures while others have eye-popping colors and might end up in thinking that camera on this phone is not good. This phone is a photographer's phone who loves to tinker and play around with their images. If you think you are that kind of person
then this phone is for you. Of course, the camera on this phone has several other huge advantages over other phones as well (and not just the picture processing controls)
GOOD Things
1. The Android updates are fast. This phone got the March update in March, and the only other phones that have this update is Pixel and Essential phones.
2. The face-unlock feature works well. Most of the time it would unlock the phone before I could even reach for the fingerprint authentication. Though it doesn't seem to work in dark or low light conditions, which would need an IR scanner.
3. I love all the tweaking and picture controls on the phone. If you are shooting in bokeh mode then one more option "Color pop" shows up for the photo which mutes the color around the subject you want to focus on bringing out the colors of the subject.
BAD THINGS ABOUT THIS PHONE
1. For a phone that is marketed as a photographer's phone, the phone's camera app needs considerable work. Launching the app, changing the app mode (e.g. between slow motion, video, bokeh mode) is terribly slow. The camera app glitches out oftenby giving error "Unable to connect of the camera". I missed a couple of opportunities
to take a picture because the camera app took too long to open. I am hoping the camera app would get updated to fix next update
2.fingerprint sensor
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