The Samsung Galaxy S6 has the best smartphone camera
Samsung's newest phone, the Galaxy S6, has the best camera you can get in a smartphone.
It's close, and there are some nuances, but I think the Galaxy S6 camera slightly outperforms the iPhone 6 camera. It also blows away the camera on the new HTC One M9, which will be Samsung's primary Android competition this year.
I'm not going to get into a spec comparison about megapixels, because that's only one part of the equation. Megapixels refer to the size of the image. With smartphones, you usually don't need more than an 8 MP camera. Instead, it's more important how well the cameras take images in low light, how well they reproduce color, and how much detail they can grab.
The Galaxy S6 camera wins in all categories.
Here's a photo of the Flatiron building I took last week using the Galaxy S6 camera:
And here's the same photo taken with the iPhone 6:
You can see a lot more detail on the photo taken with the Galaxy S6, and the color reproduction is much better.
The contest is a bit closer with photos taken in low light.
Here's a photo my colleague Lisa Eadicicco took with the Galaxy S6:
And here's the same photo taken with the iPhone 6:
But even if the contest is close in some areas, the Galaxy S6 has one other advantage.
By double tapping the home button, you can automatically launch the camera app. The camera sensor is always on too, so you can start shooting right away without having to wait a few beats for the image to appear on your screen. The iPhone 6 camera has to boot up for a second before you can start snapping photos, which can be annoying if you need to capture a moment quickly.