Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more.
iPhone XS Max camera can't beat reigning champ HUAWEI P20 Pro
- The DxOMark score for the iPhone XS Max camera is 105.
- The score for the HUAWEI P20 Pro in March was 109, securing the P20 Pro as the reigning king of cameras.
- Early reviews also point to the iPhone XS Max camera being inferior to the Google Pixel 2.
Apple spent a large portion of its iPhone keynote event talking about the superior camera abilities of the iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max. In fact, it likely spent more time promoting the camera than it did any other aspects of the devices.
However good the camera might be in Apple’s eyes, it still doesn’t rank as well as the reigning king of smartphone cameras: the triple-lensed HUAWEI P20 Pro. This ranking comes from DxOMark, which ranks mobile cameras using a scoring system.
The iPhone XS Max camera netted a score of 105, four points less than the score of 109 that the HUAWEI P20 Pro received in March.
Granted, the iPhone XS Max score is nothing to sneer at, as clearly the camera is a powerhouse — just the second-best powerhouse. Regardless, this new DxOMark score combined with early reviews stating that the new iPhone cameras don’t match up with the Google Pixel 2 – another camera that continuously beats rivals even at nearly a year old – lends credence to the idea that the new iPhone cameras just aren’t at the top of the game.
As usual, the DxOMark review of the iPhone XS Max camera goes through an exhaustive series of tests which push nearly every feature of the camera to the limit. In more than one case, the iPhone clearly loses out to the competition.
As an example, check out this image taken with the iPhone XS Max of a backlit indoor scene (left) compared with the same image taken with a HUAWEI P20 Pro (right):
The subject’s face is much clearer in the P20 Pro shot, without sacrificing the brightness of the background.
As another example, here’s a mid-range zoom shot taken with the iPhone XS Max that’s then been cropped (left) as compared with the same image taken with the HUAWEI P20 Pro (right):
The iPhone’s shot is completely illegible, while much of the wording of the sign is clearly legible with the P20 Pro shot.
You can read DxOMark’s full review of the iPhone XS Max camera here, and you can read the original HUAWEI P20 Pro camera review here. Also, click here to read Android Authority’s explanation of the HUAWEI P20 Pro triple camera.