HTC took it upon itself to build a great custom camera framework for its smartphones long before Google released Android 5.0.
Developers are now beginning to take advantage of the finer level of control afforded to them by the new API, from manual focus to shutter control, but the offerings are few and far between. Google has done its part to improve the photo-taking experience in Lollipop with a new Camera2 API - the link that connects the hardware to third-party apps - and it’s a great start. There are tradeoffs to both strategies, as there always are with hardware. The HTC One M8, on the other hand, uses a sensor big enough to capture more light in less time. The LG G3, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Nexus 6, employs optical image stabilization to help those small pixels stay active longer, so as to let in more light, without blur. In practice, this doesn’t mean a whole lot except that some phones should be marginally better at capturing low-light photos than others.
There is nothing remarkable about the sensor inside the iPhone As a result, the individual pixels have increased to around 1.5um, a number right in the middle of the LG G3 (1.1um) and HTC One M8 (2um).
There’s a reason Apple has kept the iPhone at 8 megapixels since the 4S: it’s been forced to make considerations for chassis thickness (they’re getting thinner every two years) as well as sensor size (which is increased marginally). The next generation of smartphone sensors, however, need to be smarter, not just higher-resolution. This means less light can enter each pixel at once, leading to innovation in other areas, namely optical images stabilization and alternative backlight technologies like Samsung’s ISOCELL. It’s great that Samsung, Sony and LG can claim to have the highest-resolution cameras on the market, but when the sensor itself isn’t getting larger, they’re forced to cram more pixels into the same amount of space. Sensors have improved, too, but are physically limited by the ever-decreasing thickness of the average high-end smartphone.
In recent years, Android and Windows Phone have improved in this regard, too, giving developers greater access to the more granular aspects of a smartphone’s camera. Apple has just been smarter about processing, eking a better photo in more situations - thanks to software. While custom-made, at first by OmniVision and, from the iPhone 5 onwards, Sony, the actual innards are no different than those found inside the average Galaxy or Xperia. In truth, there is nothing remarkable about the sensor inside the iPhone. Those advantages don’t come from optics alone, though Apple pours resources into that, too, but from a three-pronged approach takes developers just as seriously as it does sensors. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it’s no coincidence the iPhone is often said to have the best smartphone camera on the market.