YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Apple iPhone 18 Pro Camera test

29 points luu 16 hours ago 38 comments

sharktheone 15 hours ago | parent

Interesting to see what they got out of basically the same camera sensor. It seems largely just like way better denoising capabilities. Maybe that is why they needed the extra NPU in the A20 chip.

But even with that they are still behind Android phones, while they dominated some years ago

iririririr 15 hours ago | parent

until the "denoiser" starts to hallucinate

LoganDark 1 hour ago | parent

At least it doesn't detect moon shaped objects and impose a static image of the moon on top of it

matwood 1 hour ago | parent

> But even with that they are still behind Android phones, while they dominated some years ago

Flagship Android and iOS device cameras have been 1a/1b for awhile. It's video where Apple dominated. Did Android make some huge strides in video lately?

torben-friis 1 hour ago | parent

Anecdotically, my current OPPO find x9 mops the floor with my previous iphone 16 pro in photography in practice. The 1-1 with apple only seems to be there for Google and Samsung, but the Chinese flagships are a step up.

For video I think the iphone hasn't been dethroned yet.

microtonal 1 hour ago | parent

It seems that in their ranking currently only the Huawei Pura 80 Ultra is ahead?

https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/#sort-camera

sharktheone 15 hours ago | parent

it tells something that the word "aperture" is only mentioned 3 times in the test

mathgeek 1 hour ago | parent

What are you inferring from that? Interested to hear.

brzz 59 minutes ago | parent

I assume they're implying the new variable aperture on the 18 Pro is more of a marketing/spec sheet thing than an actual meaningful feature

llm_nerd 35 minutes ago | parent

What does it tell? Your comment seems weirdly cynical, but maybe that's my reading?

I mean, one of the uses is the statement "Its variable aperture is a particular strength, significantly improving the camera’s ability to maintain sharpness in complex scenes and when multiple subjects are present.".

DXOMark is a technical test with generally little narrative, so I'm not sure what your point even is. Would it surprise you that their reviews of SLR lenses, where the aperture is a critical element of the lens (and it would be a joke not to have one), they generally don't mention it at all?

azatom 15 hours ago | parent

Where is a comparing site where the exact same subject and lightening used? Why https://www.gsmarena.com/piccmp.php3 stopped it? I can only find these "trust me" reviews.

ThePhysicist 1 hour ago | parent

The Huawei model just uses AI based upscaling and filtering which is why the images look so sharp when zoomed in, that's not depicting reality though... You can also zoom into the moon on the night sky with these cameras and easily "resolve" details that are optically impossible to resolve with the camera lens as they are beyond the Abbe limit. At the very least they should compare RAW data in these posts, not the AI scaled slop most of these cameras produce nowadays.

kamranjon 1 hour ago | parent

Is that true though? It seems like the iphones are doing some type of skin smoothing algorithm but the Huawei is the only one that actually seems to produce actual skin texture and blemishes. My initial read was that the Huawei was the least processed of the bunch.

throwaway893257 1 hour ago | parent

The Huawei phone has five rear cameras.

esperent 26 minutes ago | parent

> You can also zoom into the moon on the night sky with these cameras

iPhone, Samsung, Chinese phones, they all do fake moons now.

lynndotpy 13 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

matja 1 hour ago | parent

I'm surprised that in no reviews of the iPhone 18 camera there is mention of the bad quality bokeh, it has heavy ring shapes that looks like what you'd get from a cheap catadioptric lens.

Edit: e.g. the tree in one of the images in the page: https://www.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/PoleHDR_D...

robotmay 58 minutes ago | parent

Ooh that's fun bokeh, it's like the doughnut bokeh from a mirror lens. Combined with the various computational tweaks made to the images that's a pretty bizarre effect, looks like micro motion blur at a distance and properly weird when zoomed in.

dofm 45 minutes ago | parent

That is from the normal (24mm) camera slightly stopped down (f/1.8), judging by the EXIF.

Odd bokeh was one of the risks of adding a mechanical aperture, and bokeh is very often weirdest at the first or second down from open.

I would hope that the telephoto lens does not show this so severely (because it has a fixed round aperture) but all mobile phone lenses in my experience have had a tendency towards a sort of concentric-ringed, quasi-soap-bubble bokeh; it's a common part of the challenge of really tiny optics (that you either like or dislike). (The iPhone X was really distinctive in this regard). So it's not too surprising to see the aperture do this on top of that.

As a general rule you don't see it in average images, but I guess sensors are now high-enough resolution that it's becoming more obvious, and the blades of a mechanical aperture might make it quite noticeable in some situations.

gyomu 24 minutes ago | parent

> Odd bokeh was one of the risks of adding a mechanical aperture, and bokeh is very often weirdest at the first or second down from open.

Why? Where can I read/learn more about this?

robotmay 4 minutes ago | parent

This is usually due to the blade shape and quantity I believe. The aperture is most likely to be less circular on the widest apertures after fully open unless you have quite a lot of aperture blades, as the curve to make a rounder aperture is usually applied more towards the tip of the blade, and you're only seeing the base of the blades at wider apertures. That varies a lot by aperture design, however - if you have the more banana-shaped blades where the retaining pin and pivot pin are at opposite ends (like in a Yashica TLR) then I believe they can maintain a more consistent curve along the length. Those also suck massively to reassemble, but that's a different story.

I haven't seen a diagram of how the aperture in this new iPhone is designed yet. There's a lot of different ways to do it, with lots of odd shape possibilities.

CarVac 23 minutes ago | parent

Polygonal aperture openings are not the cause of soap-bubble bokeh, it's the cause of polygonal stopped-down bokeh.

Heavily ringed bokeh just comes from the optics.

Sharlin 1 hour ago | parent

> https://www.dxomark.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/DuoTable_...

Oh god that plasticization of the faces is absolutely horrifying. Like a bad image gen AI from 2022. Or reptilians wearing cheap rubber masks.

Edit: what's with the downvotes?

kccqzy 47 minutes ago | parent

Some people’s faces just naturally look like that. Probably depends on the cosmetics applied.

dpark 21 minutes ago | parent

> what's with the downvotes?

Presumably because others disagree. I also do not see it here. Zooming in there are clear pores and skin texture. Is it somewhat smoothed? Yeah, it has that feel. Does it look like a cheap rubber mask? No. And that phrasing is frankly very insulting to the pictured subjects.

hopfenspergerj 5 minutes ago | parent

The face is the background is clearly an AI model adding detail where the raw image is out of focus. The people you're talking to on this site are just blind.

hopfenspergerj 4 minutes ago | parent

Look at one eye has lashes and the other doesn't! It's just a low-quality AI "denoise+sharpen" filter.

sgt 1 hour ago | parent

How does it compare to the Samsung flagship phone cameras? I have to say I was impressed by the Samsung cameras, although being Android based it's not really an option for me. It'd be like trading a Porsche 911 for a Pontiac Aztec.

loloquwowndueo 57 minutes ago | parent

That’s harsh - the Aztek was not that bad …

onionisafruit 44 minutes ago | parent

Like trading something flashy, fast and impractical for something ugly and practical (idk if Azteks were fast but I suspect not notably so). I don’t know if it works for the camera phone comparison.

loloquwowndueo 13 minutes ago | parent

I drove an Aztek once and it felt fast enough for regular city driving. Why anyone would _need_ a faster car is beyond me.

miladyincontrol 57 minutes ago | parent

Is it just me or in their initial photo the focus point is in a wildly different point. On the iphone it's prioritizing the foreground model, on the Huawei the background. Definitely noticeable based on hair, although the Huawei seems to oversharpen the face with iPhone doing a bit of the opposite.

ricardobeat 49 minutes ago | parent

A little hard to interpret as the Huawei pictures are not cropped to the same frame. When zooming in the difference is less striking.

gyomu 26 minutes ago | parent

> "DXOMARK’s objective measurements and perceptual analyses"

Where are the measurements? All I see are vague generalities like "well-rendered images with improved contrast and natural-looking skin tones". I guess those are the "perceptual analyses"? Is there a "See full measurements" button I'm missing? How do they come up with numbers like "157 Portrait", "172 Outdoors"?

velcrovan 9 minutes ago | parent

Someone should assemble a chain of iPhone camera review comparison images published over the years, 18 → 17, 17 → 16, 16 → 15 etc. showing how each year's new phone being so much better than the previous year's somehow becomes perceivably bad next to the next year's phone.