Low light faceoff: Apple iPhone 6s Plus vs Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ vs Motorola Moto X Style

It’s that time of the year when all smartphone companies are out with their flagship devices. With Diwali just around the corner, a lot of readers will be pondering over getting some flagship phone or the other, if they have the budget. While our detailed reviews will be coming out shortly, we decided to try out the low light photography prowess of three flagship phones we have with us at the moment. We have already done a detailed review of the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ and were impressed with its photography features and image quality. But last week we got two more devices – the Motorola Moto X Style and the Apple iPhone 6s Plus. While Apple is known for its camera performance over the years, the Moto X Style has bumped up its camera to a 21MP sensor which Motorola claims is capable of shooting great photographs. So we set out to put the cameras on these phones to test on one Mumbai night. All images were shot on auto mode with the last one shot in HDR mode. Before we start off with the images and our observations, here’s a quick primer on which phone has which camera. Motorola Moto X Style: 21MP rear camera with an f/2.0 aperture and phase-detect AF; no OIS Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+: 16MP rear camera with an f/1.9 aperture; features OIS Apple iPhone 6S Plus: 12MP iSight camera with f/2.2 aperture; features OIS Please note: Click on the images to see the high resolution uncompressed images The Galaxy S6 edge+ managed to extract more details in this shot despite the harsh light conditions. While the iPhone 6s Plus and Moto X Style just show the lit up hoarding well, Galaxy S6 edge+ was able to show the hoarding as well as some detail of the plastic in the background. It achieves this at the cost of giving a minor halo and dithering around the lit up areas which may not be to everyone’s taste. The iPhone 6s Plus is able to control dithering better and gives sharper edges on the logo. The post processing on the iPhone 6s Plus isn’t as aggressive as seen on the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ which gives an unnaturally smooth output specially along the contours of the floral designs on the fountain. Moto X Style showed the least amount of detail on 100% zooming. The iPhone 6s Plus gave a more natural looking image whereas the Moto X Style tends to add a lot of warmth as compared to the S6 edge+. This was quite a challenging subject to shoot as half of it was in a shadow region. The Moto X Style gave the poorest image quality on this one. On 100% zooming, one can clearly see a lot of blue chroma noise in the shadow regions. The output from iPhone 6s Plus as well as the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ was equally good. Although the S6 edge+ manages to control noise better than the iPhone 6s Plus, the noise with the iPhone’s image is more of luminance noise which gives the image a film-grain like appeal. Unlike Samsung, the Apple photo also has a more balanced colour tone. Here again, the iPhone 6s Plus and Galaxy S6 edge+ show more detail than the Moto X Style. As far as noise control goes, the S6 edge+ manages it better than the iPhone 6s Plus, and unlike the image of Flora Fountain, the noise control isn’t that aggressive to make the image look unreal. Diwali is just around the corner and clicking photographs with these sort of LED lights will be a given. The idea here was to see how well the cameras on the phones could extract details on the leaves as well as who would manage to show detail in the shadow region. As is evident, the Galaxy s6 edge+ manages to do well on both grounds. The Moto X Style manages to keep the noise under control, but details aren’t as well as those seen on the iPhone 6s Plus and the Galaxy S6 edge+. Also for a change, the iPhone 6s Plus had a warmer tinge as compared to the S6 edge+. The Moto X Style and the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ give a better output on this than the iPhone 6s Plus. The luminance noise on the iPhone 6s Plus tends to overwhelm when images are seen on 100% zoom. As far as the edges are concerned, the iPhone 6s Plus and Galaxy S6 edge+ manage to have a uniform output as compared to the centre region, but with the Moto X Style one does notice chroma noise. The light drop off on the Moto X Style is more abrupt than that seen with the iPhone 6s Plus and the Galaxy S6 edge+. In terms of overall image quality we would go with the iPhone 6s Plus despite the noise as it manages to keep a neutral colour tone, which becomes reddish in the case of Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+. Also around the white board towards the base, the purple fringing was most well controlled on the S6 edge+ followed by the iPhone 6s Plus. Lack of optical image stabilisation on the Moto X Style shows up in this HDR image. The Galaxy S6 edge+ manages to give the best output among the three, not just in the central region with the focussed area, but also around the edges. The Moto X Style overprocesses the image giving it an unnaturally smooth look.   Conclusion Over the years, Apple phones have been consistently excelling when it came to the camera performance and image quality. Low light photography has been Apple’s strong point in addition to daylight image quality. In fact, last year we had rated the iPhone 6's camera as the best on a smartphone. But as far as low light photography goes, and from the image comparisons we have seen above, it is quite evident that the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+ has produced a camera which excels over the iPhone 6s Plus. The Moto X Style, while not at the same level as the iPhone 6s plus and the Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+, still managed to give a usable image output except in some extremely low lit situations. In terms of focus acquisition, we felt that the Samsung Galaxy edge+ offered quicker speeds than the Moto X Style and the iPhone 6s Plus, which we noticed to be hunting on a couple of occassions. According to our testing, between the Apple iPhone 6s Plus, Motorola Moto X Style and Samsung Galaxy S6 edge+, the crown for low light photography clearly goes to the Galaxy S6 edge+, so far. We say so far, because we have yet to test the Galaxy S6 edge+ against other flagships such as the Sony Xperia Z5, Google Nexus 6P and even the Gionee Elife E8; all of which claim to offer a good overall camera performance. So you will have to wait for that. Also do look out for the full reviews of the Motorola Moto X Style and the Apple iPhone 6s Plus in the coming days.