Xiaomi 5/Xplay5/Mate8 all use Sony's IMX298 sensor. Their imaging has made significant progress in independent evaluation, but are they still significantly different from top flagship brands such as Note5/iPhone 6s Plus? Where is the gap?
Sony IMX214 and Snapdragon 801 were the flagship standard configuration for two years. Later, the IMX258 with phase focusing added to the former has appeared in a few mobile phones such as Xiaomi 4c. IMX298 was first launched by Huawei Mate8 at the end of 2015, followed by Xiaomi 5, vivo Xplay5 and other models. It is likely to become a new "flagship scheme" together with Snapdragon 820. Now let's take a look at the performance of this new scheme.
Parameter comparison between IMX series multi generation sensors and iPhone sensors
This comparison model includes the iPhone 6s/6s Plus with Sony customized sensor (Apple's name is iSight), the Note5 with IMX240 and still probably the most powerful camera, and the other Mate8/Xiaomi 5/Xplay5 with IMX298. Except for iPhone 6s and Xplay5, other machines have optical anti shake (Xiaomi 5 is 4-axis optical anti shake).
PS: All focus points are at the center. Click the picture to view the large picture. Both the Xplay5 and Xiaomi 5 are engineering machines, and others are mass production machines.
Here we use iPhone 6s/6s Plus and Note5 as benchmarks, The iPhone 6s is the most balanced flagship among the machines without optical anti shake, while the Note 5 is the benchmark of the peak, and the iPhone 6s Plus in the middle is the upstream benchmark with many believers and good photo performance.
Photo experience
Focusing: All the tested machines have phase focusing, but the focusing performance of Note5 and iPhone is more stable and excellent, followed by Xiaomi 5, Xplay5 and Mate8. But except for weak light, 6 machines The focusing speed of is not big.
Imaging speed: also cannot open the gap, except The processing speed of Xiaomi 5 and Xplay5 is slow in night view and HDR mode Other machines are fast.
It should be noted here that, except for the Xplay5, all other machines have the function of automatically triggering HDR/night view. There is no need to manually start them. They are all of the type of shooting when picking up. However, the HDR mode effect of Xiaomi 5 is not ideal. It is recommended to turn off its automatic HDR mode, because the previous video evaluation can be stamped《 》The photo part of.
White balance and photometry
Daytime Scenario 1
Daytime scene 2 (three IMX298 models restore the red leaves in a similar way, and they are all pink)
Daytime scenario 3
Indoor lighting scene 1
Indoor lighting scene 2
Indoor lighting scene 3
Weak light scene 1
Indoor lighting scene 2
Metering: Note5 metering is closer to the naked eye, and the metering of iPhone is slightly darker (more obvious in weak light). Comparing these three benchmarks, Mate8 and Xiaomi 5 are darker than the naked eye, while Xplay5 is brighter.
White balance: iPhone tends to turn blue in most scenes, and Note5 is slightly warm and yellow. Mate8 has a very obvious graying problem in the picture, and the white balance is blue and graying; The Xplay5 is uniformly blue, but to a lesser extent; Xiaomi 5 turns blue in the daytime, and tends to turn green under weak light.
Daytime discrimination
All samples are arranged from strong to weak light according to ISO and shutter speed:
Daytime scene 1 central zoom in
Zoom in below the center of daytime scene 1
Daytime scene 2 central zoom in
Daytime scene 3 central zoom in
Zoom in below the center of daytime scene 3
Daytime scene 4 central zoom in
Daytime scene 5 central zoom in
Daytime scene 6 central zoom in
Daytime scene 7 central zoom in
Daytime scene 8 central zoom in
For mobile phones, in addition to the quality of pixels and lenses, as well as their wide-angle size, even the addition of optical anti shake will generally affect the edge discrimination. In addition, The number of pixels is fixed. The larger the wide-angle, the lower the number of pixels for the same scene, which affects the discrimination.
Except for the two iPhones, the rest are 16 million pixel machines. Among them, the Xplay5 has no optical anti shake, and the wide angle of the Xiaomi5 is smaller than that of other machines (the range of objects photographed at the same distance is smaller). If the other conditions are the same, their discrimination power should be higher.
The actual result is to add two obviously sharpened iPhones, and the iPhone 6s Plus is slightly weaker than the iPhone 6s (of course, it does not rule out that it is the individual difference between the two machines). Except Mate8 whose screen is grayed out, The rest of the machines easily beat the iPhone in daytime discrimination. Both Xplay5 and Xiaomi 5 have the ability of discrimination very close to Note5, which deserves praise. Among them, Xplay5 is slightly stronger than Xiaomi 5.
Light Scene 1 Center Enlarged
The center of light scene 2 is enlarged (the sample of Xplay5 is blurred due to shaking hands). The light starts to weaken, and EXIF information is added to the lower loft sheet. Readers who want to study can click on the picture to view the large picture.
Light Scene 3 Center Enlarged
Weak light scene 1 central amplification
Extremely weak light scene 1 central amplification
Extremely weak light scene 2 central amplification
Extremely weak light scene 3 central amplification
Light discrimination: indoor and under strong light, The gap between the three IMX298 models and the benchmark began to be obvious In addition to the obvious white balance floating, their discrimination also began to decline to varying degrees. yes The four axis optical anti shake Xiaomi 5 is not as good as expected, but it also performs well; While the Xplay5 without optical anti shake has begun to decline, it can still maintain a slightly stronger analytical power than Mate8 by virtue of its algorithm and lens quality advantages.
Weak light and extremely weak light: this is the field of optical anti shake models. Even for the iPhone 6s, the Mate8 with optical anti shake is very difficult (in extremely weak light scene 1). open The Xplay5 in night view mode is better than the iPhone in picture purity, but some details are lost; Xiaomi 5 has very serious color noise, and some extremely weak light scenes can't even guarantee the brightness, but it still retains a lot of details. Although it is far away from Note5 and iPhone 6s Plus, it still has very obvious advantages over the other two IMX298 models.
summary
The three existing IMX298 models all show Good focusing speed and daytime discrimination In addition, the weak light imaging performance after optical anti shake is also remarkable. Although the white balance algorithm still needs to be improved, the discrimination has exceeded that of the iPhone 6s without optical anti shake.
In a word, the imaging quality of several mobile phones equipped with IMX298 has made a qualitative leap over that of the domestic flagship last year.
Although the degree of leap depends on the lens and algorithm matching of different manufacturers, and the white balance and metering are not as stable as the benchmarks The domestic flagship has the ability to overwhelm the iPhone 6s in terms of discrimination , which is really worth praising, and by the way, I have to pay a silent tribute to the apples and fans
