The iPhone 12 Pro does well in the camera test, but lags behind its Chinese rivals

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Data sheet

The staff of the site DxO Mark, a benchmark when it comes to mobile photography, published this Friday (13) the complete analysis of the rear cameras of the iPhone 12 Pro, launched in October this year. Surprisingly, Apple’s new smartphone reached the fourth position in the ranking, only behind the Huawei Mate 40 Pro and P40 Pro, from Huawei, and the Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra.

With its three rear cameras, 12 MP each, the iPhone 12 Pro scored 128 points, 4 points ahead of the iPhone 11 Pro Max, tenth on the list. The analyst mainly praised the smartphone’s autofocus system, which offers speed and precision in most scenarios. Video recordings also stood out, with good dynamic range and very accurate colors.

Positive and negative points

As we always expect from a high-end smartphone, photos taken with the iPhone 12 Pro were mostly highly praised for their excellent color reproduction and satisfactory levels of exposure and contrast. Here, however, Apple’s mobile phone loses out to the competition due to the more limited dynamic range, resulting in less vibrant images.

Another point where the iPhone 12 Pro did not stand out was in the projection of colors, often throwing the hues of blue and green. As we can see in the comparison below in an external environment, the first image (iPhone 12 Pro) reproduces unnatural skin tones and a very saturated sky. In this sense, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra was the one that brought the most accurate results.

Thanks to the addition of the LiDAR sensor, the iPhone 12 Pro did very well in the autofocus category, performing excellently in virtually all lighting conditions, including low light and high contrast. Compared to the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and the P40 Pro, the Apple phone performed the best; see the comparison:

As for photos in night environments, the iPhone 12 Pro did not look bad, as expected, producing a good exposure on the face, but it does not escape the lack of detail and noise. Interestingly, images with blurred background are better on the iPhone 11 Pro Max, at least according to the results, providing better precision in the hair area.

When it comes to videos, the iPhone 12 Pro stands out for its 4K recording at 30 frames per second in HDR mode. In general, the results had a good level of exposure in most scenarios, in addition to a very wide dynamic range.

Classification

1. Huawei Mate 40 Pro – 136 points
2. Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra – 133 points
3. Huawei P40 Pro – 132 points
4. Apple iPhone 12 Pro – 128 points

5. Xiaomi Mi 10 Pro – 128 points

6. Vivo X50 Pro + – 127 points

7. OPPO Find X2 Pro – 126 points

8. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G – 126 points

9. Honor 30 Pro + – 125 points

10. Apple iPhone 11 Pro Max – 124 points

Check out the full iPhone 12 Pro camera review in its entirety by clicking here.

Review: iPhone 12 Pro

Source: DxO Mark