Apple iPhone 18 Pro Camera test

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...

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.

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.

> "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"?

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

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

Zooming in on a clock 4-500yds away and expecting a fully crisp image seems somewhat of a useless benchmark.

I’m not convinced that this is a particularly scientific or rigorous test of the cameras! Seems rather lacking in control variables, documented processes, actual measurements etc.

My gripe with iPhone is hunting white balance. Always happening when I'm shooting video.

I wonder if newer phones / camera apps are better.

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.

> 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?

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

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.

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.

Vibe-reviewed.

Ok so let's hack it

I’ll pass on the opinion of a website that has not only a cookie banner, but a stupid modal.