OnePlus 3 camera comparison: Can it beat the Samsung Galaxy S7?

By Rahul Sethi

OnePlus 3, the third and latest offering in the OnePlus line up, was recently launched with some impressive specifications that prove it to be a marked improvement over its previous version. Its camera has seen a similar upgrade – it now houses a 16MP rear camera with a Sony IMX298 sensor, with a 1.12µm pixel size.

Pitting it against the best camera in the market currently, the Samsung Galaxy S7, reveals both its beauty and its flaws. Find out how well it stood against the dual-pixel 12MP camera on the Samsung – at about half the price.

Speed

Both the cameras are super fast at taking photographs. Good light, low light, HDR, or selfie, the cameras can click in a split-second in almost every situation.

In the burst shooting mode (single press continuous shooting), the Galaxy S7 can take up to a 100 of them at once (and show them all in a single image file), while the OnePlus 3 can take only 20.

Colour production and details

This is a tricky area, and you will be surprised to know that OnePlus 3’s 16MP rear camera stacks up pretty well against the Galaxy S7’s 12MP shooter.

Notice the colour of the sky, the texture of leaves on the trees beside the temple and the tone of white text written on the temple wall – all make the OnePlus 3 shot look more realistic.

The better texture of leaves is because of a higher megapixel count. OnePlus 3 captures more details and the pixels remain intact even when you zoom in.

Galaxy S7 makes up with sharper auto-focus.

Auto Focus and Macro capabilities

Both the smartphones have phase detection auto focus, but Samsung has what it calls a dual pixel sensor, that uses a fast focus-locking mechanism. It’s faster than the Galaxy S6, and faster than the iPhone 6S. Nothing has beaten it till date.

Another important thing.

Both the phones are kept at the same distance. Note that the OnePlus 3 misses the flower, but keeps the leaves below it in focus, which shows its greater minimum focus distance. Bokeh-wise the Galaxy S7 can get closer to small objects and create a nice de-focused background.

Whereas, the OnePlus 3 shoots a wider frame. You might just squeeze in one more person when shooting group photographs, but shooting objects up close isn’t a glorified affair.

Low light shots

To a great extent, OnePlus 3 was able to keep up in low-light conditions. Details are good, and the light is evenly read by the sensor.

Going by the sample shots, you may believe that the Galaxy S7 has better low light capability; which is true, but only to an extent.

In several cases, I noted that light sensitivity results from a compromise on noise. For example, in another shot below, Galaxy S7 captures more light and hence a wider area of the house is visible, whereas the OnePlus 3 shot misses out completely on the white colour house, which is next to the yellow-lit house. But the S7’s shot is wrecked with noise. Still, since it’s all about capturing sensitively in low light, Galaxy S7 takes the accolades.

Out of the ordinary

There are several shots I could take only with the Samsung Galaxy S7. All the shots shown above by both cameras were shot in Auto mode. Most people shoot in auto mode 99 percent of the time. Our time on earth, it seems, is too short to fiddle with controls on our phone’s camera.

Nevertheless, that couldn’t stop me from clicking the Big Dipper in the clear night sky. The shutter is set to 10s and phone is handheld, steadied beside a wall. Shooting in the rain is another thing I couldn’t do on the OnePlus 3.

Conclusion

Cranking up the megapixels has worked in the favour of the OnePlus 3. It almost matches up to the Galaxy S7 in terms of speed, colour reproduction and details. If Samsung wouldn’t have innovated on its camera sensor, it probably would have just raised the pixels – and lost this battle. On the other hand, for the price of the OnePlus 3, its 16MP Sony sensor gives a good bang for every penny spent.