DxoMark score : Learn how to judge which phone has camera that you need

It is recently revealed that DxOMark has given highest smartphone camera rating for Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus camera. The thing is, a phone with highest DxOMark rating is not exactly the best camera. DxOMark analyze various aspects of a smartphone camera and rates each aspect. There are over a dozen scores that are considered for one final score which is what we see in the news. In this post, we give clear detail on S9 vs iPhone X vs Pixel 2 comparison to understand which phone is better in each condition.

DxOMark mobile camera evaluation makes use of 50 challenging and realistic indoor and outdoor scenes. Overall and sub scores for photos are based on following criteria:

• Exposure and contrast, including dynamic range, exposure repeatability, and contrast
• Color, including saturation and hue, white balance, white balance repeatability, and color shading
• Texture and noise
• Autofocus, including AF speed and repeatability
• Artifacts, including softness in the frame, distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberrations, ringing, flare, ghosting, aliasing, moiré patterns, and more
• Flash
• Zoom at several subject distances
• Bokeh

Video score and sub score is based on following criteria:

• Exposure
• Color
• Texture and noise
• Autofocus
• Artifacts
• Stabilization

How to pick the right camera phone?

You need to decide what kind of camera you need on the phone. Look at all  DxOmark criteria to see which phone’s camera matches your need. Let us take Google Pixel 2 vs Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus vs Apple iPhone X for example.

In Video performance, Pixel 2 has managed to beat S9 Plus as well as iPhone X in all criteria so if you are going to take a lot of videos, Pixel 2 is the best one. As you can see the chart below, Pixel 2 has much better color accuracy, texture, faster autofocus, better stabilization, lower amount of noise and S9 Plus is second best and iPhone X last of the three.

So, which is the better camera phone among these three? Well, there is no clear winner here. If you want a phone that can take really good videos and strong portrait mode photos in any lighting conditions, you have to go with Pixel 2. if you want a phone that can take good videos and extremely good photos in all conditions, go with Galaxy S9 Plus. If you are looking for a phone that is a head turned and most of your photography is in well lit conditions and you do not mind occasional lower quality photos (compared to the other two), go with the Apple iPhone X.

To get even more detail of each sub score category, head to this page.