iPhone X crowned the world's best camera… sort of

There's a new camera king in the smartphone world, at least if we're talking stills, and you buy into one particular benchmark.

The iPhone X has just been given the highest smartphone score ever for still photos by DxOMark – a site which comprehensively evaluates cameras and is generally held in high regard.

The iPhone X achieved a photo score of 101, which is one point higher than the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and Huawei Mate 10 Pro, which previously topped the charts for stills.

The site praised the iPhone X for its good exposure, accurate color rendering and white balance, good detail preservation, low levels of noise and a natural looking bokeh effect.

The main cons meanwhile were an occasionally slow autofocus, ghosting artifacts on moving objects, and underexposed pictures with visible red-eye in flash-only shots.

Not quite number one

But despite its chart-topping photo score, the iPhone X isn’t rated number one overall for its camera skills, as there’s a separate score for video, and for that it achieves just 89.

That’s still a decent score, with its accurate color rendering, good exposure, speedy autofocus, good detail preservation and effective stabilization being praised, but the camera apparently being let down by a slight loss of sharpness during tracking in low light, visible luminance noise in low light and some visible vibration when walking.

That video score left the iPhone X number two for its camera overall, with a total score of 97, below the Pixel 2, which scored 98. Notably the Mate 10 Pro tied with the iPhone X with a score of 97, while the Galaxy Note 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are just behind with 94.

Of course, DxOMark is just one opinion, and the difference between a 97 and a 98 is likely very subjective, so you might not want to read too much into the exact scores given.

The upshot though is that the iPhone X seemingly has a very good camera, and if you check out our iPhone X review you’ll see that’s an assessment we agree with.

Via PocketNow

James Rogerson

James is a freelance phones, tablets and wearables writer and sub-editor at TechRadar. He has a love for everything ‘smart’, from watches to lights, and can often be found arguing with AI assistants or drowning in the latest apps. James also contributes to 3G.co.uk, 4G.co.uk and 5G.co.uk and has written for T3, Digital Camera World, Clarity Media and others, with work on the web, in print and on TV.