Google Pixel 7a smashes Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, iPhone 15 Pro in massive blind smartphone camera test

As cameras have quickly become one of the main considerations for smartphone shoppers, it's become more and more difficult to sort through the marketing to figure out which phone takes better images and which is the better buy.

Hoping to somewhat remedy the situation, YouTube's tech review darling, Marques Brownlee (aka MKBHD), has once again pitted 20 of the year's biggest smartphones against one another in a blind test and asked the community to vote. The test consisted of three scenes meant to simulate three of the most common smartphone camera use cases — a normal wide angle medium snapshot, a low-light snapshot at night, and a portrait mode snapshot in decent daylight.

In order to keep things reasonably scientific, Marques and his team stripped the phones of all identifying information, pitted them against each other in a randomised bracket, and had the channel's viewers vote on which photo they preferred when two were placed side by side. In the end, the team ended up with 20 million total votes and a score for each phone in each scenario.

In a surprising turn of events, the Google Pixel 7a (curr. $459.99 on Amazon) was the most consistent of the lot, scoring first place in the daylight test, third in the night scene, and fourth in the portrait mode photo. The only scene where a Google Pixel smartphone didn't win was the night mode photo, where the iPhone 15 Pro took home the crown.

When averaging out the ELO scores, the Google Pixel 7a came out on top, followed closely by the Google Pixel 8 Pro, while the Google Pixel Fold scored in third place. For context, the Samsung Galaxy S23 scored fifth, while Apple iPhone 15 Pro (curr. $1,179.95 on Amazon) scored seventh, and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra came in was down in 16th place out of 20 devices.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most drastic differences in the images were seen in the low-light photo comparisons, where many of the test devices had a tendency to artificially over expose the image, leading to some very strange results.

Of note is the image capture method, which is literally a snapshot with no tap to focus or tap to expose and seems to skew strongly towards devices with a wider appeal. The Sony Xperia 1 V (curr. $1,099.29 on Amazon), for example, which has an incredibly powerful camera system, scored dead last in the portrait mode photo, and in the bottom of the pack in both of the other tests. The Sony Xperia 1 V's poor performance could be explained by the phone's focus on being a photographer's smartphone that asks its users to slow down and pay attention to what they're doing when they take photos with their phones.

The result also highlights the difference in how reviewers and average consumers and smartphone fans evaluate images. While phones like the iPhone 15 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra (curr. $1,120 on Amazon) consistently receive strong praise for their camera performance, they were nowhere near the top of the chart. The smartphones that won out in the end also didn't have particularly high-end or high-resolution image sensors, as opposed to the 200 MP monstrosity found in the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's main camera module.

Previously, MKBHD himself gave the Smartphone of the Year Award for Best Camera of 2023 to Apple's iPhone Pro, with the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra getting an honourable mention in the same category, especially for stills.

To get the full scoop and a look at the full results table, check out MKBHD's 2023 Blind Smartphone Camera Test video below.