Photo comparison: With two of the best camera smartphones at Lake Chiemsee in 2024

Our two test candidates are two high-end devices, both of which are priced accordingly:

• The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is no longer a price breaker, unlike its predecessors, but costs €1,149 (~$1220) directly from the manufacturer in the 128 GB storage version, although prices can rise to up to €1,639 (~$1741) with 1 TB of storage. At amazon.de, you can currently save around €100 (~$106) on the smallest storage variant. In return, you get a 50-megapixel main camera with f/1.68 aperture. The 48-megapixel telephoto lens enables up to 10x optical zoom and up to 30x digital zoom. However, the f/2.8 aperture is significantly smaller, so good lighting conditions are required for zoom shots.
  
  
• The OnePlus 12 is available at a much lower price: The variant with 512 GB mass storage costs €1,099 (~$1167), with 256 GB it is even €150 (~$159) cheaper. At amazon.de you can save even more, so you can get the smallest version for €849 (~$902). The OnePlus phone also has a 50 megapixel camera, which is even more light-sensitive with an aperture of f/1.6. The telephoto camera has a higher resolution of 64 megapixels, offers a wider aperture (f/2.6) and a maximum 12x zoom, whereby the image section is simply reduced from 6x zoom. With digital zoom, OnePlus allows up to 120x magnification.
  

Our first glance across the lake shows a clear difference in the colors of the two phones: While the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL chooses a slightly cooler white balance, the OnePlus 12 depicts the scenery in much warmer colors. We generally like both pictures, but the OnePlus phone makes the subject look even more vivid.

The washed-up wood in the foreground also shows more details and the overall sharpness of the image is slightly higher. But it was only a first attempt, let's see how the two phones perform in the further course of the test.

As we walk along the lakeshore, we discover palm trees and the waving pirate flag of a kiosk as an ideal photo motif, despite the Upper Bavarian climate, which is not necessarily mild in winter. Again, this confirms our impression of a higher sharpness of detail on the OnePlus 12, above all, the flag moving in the wind is also much sharper. But the clouds, the flagpole and, on closer inspection, the palm leaves also look crisper in the photo from the OnePlus phone.

A few meters away lies a boat underwater. Not an easy subject for a cell phone camera: the contours of the object are blurred in the water, there are many different levels with the water surface and the object itself and additional reflections. An exact representation is therefore required here.

Again, we like the performance of the OnePlus camera better here: There are many details to discover in the picture and the object edges are displayed exactly, whereas in the picture from the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL they appear strangely blurred and undefined. The leaves of the tree in the foreground also appear sharper in the photo from the OnePlus 12. The flotsam on the shore also looks more detailed on the OnePlus, but is also more overshadowed than in the Google photo.

Now we want to see how both smartphones perform when we want to get closer to distant objects on the lake. We spot a sailing boat some distance away and take a shot at 30x zoom. Here the OnePlus 12 has to resort to a significantly stronger digital zoom (10x compared to 6x for the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL). If you don't look at the images in detail and don't zoom in too much, the image from the Google phone actually appears somewhat sharper and more detailed. However, if you take a closer look, both phones reveal relatively low image quality at such a high zoom.

The Fraueninsel is about 10 kilometers (~6.2 mi) away from us as the crow flies and can only be seen with the naked eye if you look closely. It's a good thing that the smartphones we brought with us offer large zoom ranges, but they take very different approaches here: the Google Phone allows a maximum magnification of 30x, but here you can at least make out the tower of the monastery and a few other buildings.

With the OnePlus 12, you can get much closer to the island: the 120x digital zoom makes it possible. However, the image quality is then really poor and the function is more useful for roughly identifying very distant objects than for taking serious photos.

We now want to try out the zoom range of the two smartphones and compare the results. We will only go up to 30x magnification, as this is the maximum that the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL supports.

The ultra-wide-angle shots on both smartphones give a good impression of the surroundings, but details such as the waterfowl can only be recognized dimly. The Google phone produces a good image up to 5x magnification, after which the quality decreases visibly as the digital zoom kicks in.

With OnePlus, autofocus problems suddenly occur at 1x and 2x magnification. As soon as you switch to the telephoto lens, the focus is correct again. Here, too, a clear drop in quality is visible between 5x and 10x magnification.

You can therefore take sharp pictures with both cameras up to 5x zoom (unless the OnePlus 12's autofocus stops working, which actually happened twice in the test, but should be fixable with a software update). After that, the image sharpness steadily decreases and the photos are only really usable for viewing on the phone display or for social media.

Both smartphones capture the reflection of the clouds in the water well, although it is not an easy subject due to the sunlight.

The coot in the water, which we photographed with 5x zoom, is visible on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL with significantly more detail. Here, the image quality of the OnePlus 12 drops noticeably and the image also appears much less bright.

We walk on and discover a show garden on the bank with various perennials, fruit trees and flowers.

While the OnePlus 12 again shows significantly more sharpness and detail in the foreground, the Pixel 9 Pro XL achieves better image quality in the center of the picture and especially in the bright area in the background, which is also rich in detail due to HDR.

The other shots of the plants from the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL look sharper and the autofocus can also be made to focus more easily on objects in the foreground or background, thus customizing the image. With the OnePlus 12 we actually had difficulties and were unable to focus on the plant in the foreground despite several attempts.

Both smartphones take good pictures of the boats in the harbor, but the OnePlus phone shows a slight tendency to over-focus on very bright areas.

We want to try out the video capabilities of the two smartphones with a short test video. Looking at the data sheet, the differences are small: while the Google phone can also record 8K videos at 30 fps, the OnePlus 12 can only record at 24 fps. 4K videos can be created on both phones at 60 fps.

In general, the video quality on both phones is at a high level; with the OnePlus 12 you can see a few more details in the distance than with the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. The color scheme on the Google phone almost suggests an evening mood, but the videos were recorded in the early afternoon, so the tuning of the OnePlus 12 looks more authentic here.