OnePlus Revealed Its Ambition To Make The Best Cameras On The Market

OnePlus smartphones are loved for the fast charging, performance, and speed, but their cameras are no match for those of competitors, which is why the company gave its latest flagship, the OnePlus 7 Pro, a triple camera setup on the rear.

On papers, it seems like the company has achieved what it aimed for. The device got a score of 111 on DxOMark, losing to the top performers, the Huawei P30 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S10 5G by a small margin of one point only. However, when people got the chance to experience the phone by themselves, many reviewers said that the performance is not as good as suggested by the score.

According to Zack Zhang, OnePlus’s product manager, the device comes with DxOMark firmware, but users may see different results in real situations. He also admitted that OnePlus did not do a good enough job of balancing the visual appeal and the natural look of the photos captured by OnePlus 7 Pro’s cameras.

What they did after that was to take feedback from users and did tests in different locations to adjust the algorithm accordingly.

OnePlus’ Camera History

OnePlus has been changing its hardware for cameras constantly ever since it introduced the dual-camera setup. While the company replaces the secondary sensor quite often, the front 16-megapixel snapper does not receive that same attention, evident in the fact that it has been without any noticeable upgrade for a few years.

This year, the hardware was updated, but users still report that they see no visible improvement. Explaining this move, Zhang reasoned that OnePlus was a young company and it was not sure what to give its customers to satisfy them. When the OnePlus 5 and 5T first came to the market, the dual-camera arrangement was still a new concept, so it decided to experiment with a few approaches to find the most suitable way to go.

He also explained it was not until last year that they had more resource to work on to find out what to give the selfie camera. Since this is a vital aspect of the smartphone market, the company will make sure that the next device of them have some more appealing features.

The Future Of OnePlus’s Camera

Zhang revealed that OnePlus recently came up with its photography philosophy, which is to aim at natural-looking photos with emotions.

What the OnePlus chose is totally different from that of Google or Huawei. It makes use of AI scene detection to improve Nightscape, HDR, and video instead of tuning pictures.

In a meeting took place earlier this year, Pete Lau, One of the company’s co-founders, urged the team to make the best cameras on the market following the newly-formed philosophy.

The product manager admitted that the cameras on OnePlus 7 Pro did not even meet their standards. However, the team is working hard to improve them.

OnePlus still has a long way to go to be the provider of the best camera phone on the market. He said that while the company chose a different path than Google and Huawei, OnePlus had a lot to learn from these two tech giants.

OnePlus is investing a lot in testing its cameras, and it has employed talents all over the world in India, China, Germany, and Taiwan to gather more feedback. The ultimate goal here is to meet users’ expectations.

The company’s effort is laudable, but we are afraid that only time can tell whether this investment can help it to realize its ambition. Stay tuned for a new release later this year for the answer.