iPhone 12 Pro Max vs. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra vs. Google Pixel 5: Flagship Photography War

The iPhone 12 Pro Max is the top of the line when it comes to Apple’s photography technologies but how does it hold up against other flagship phones like The Google Pixel 5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra? Let’s find out.

The iPhone 12 Pro Max features a triple-camera setup with 12MP wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses with enhancement in stability and sensor size compared to the iPhone 12 Pro.

Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, on the other hand, features a 108MP wide-angle camera, a 12MP ultra-wide snapper, and a 12MP telephoto lens. In comparison, Google Pixel 5 sports a 12.2MP wide-angle camera, and a 16MP ultra-wide lens.

All three flagship phones offer similar capabilities like background blurring for portrait mode, HDR enhancements, and night mode. ‌iPhone 12 Pro Max has a LiDAR Scanner onboard while the Note 20 Ultra sports a laser AF sensor for low-light photography.

All three phones offer excellent photography ability so it all comes down to personal preference. Some users may prefer cooler and some like warmer tones, so there is no clear winner here.

When taking pictures during a cloudy day, the ‌iPhone 12 Pro Max‌, for some reason, creates an artificial blue sky. Apple said HDR 3 Scene Recognition is onboard this year’s iPhones to better recognize the sky and buildings to enhance shots, so that might be the cause here. The shots look decent and some people may prefer a blue sky to a grey one, but that isn’t what the sky was like that day.

In the same situation, Galaxy Note 20 Ultra does a similar thing painting the sky blue but at the subtler level. Google Pixel 5 comes out the best camera when it comes to realistic colors.

Photos taken by the iPhone 12 Pro Max look more engaging and brighter than those of the Pixel 5 but if you put the pictures side by side, you will see a clear difference. In some situations, all that the iPhone 12 Pro Max does is to paint the sky blue but in others, it creates a blue tint everywhere in the picture. The issue isn’t big but is persists across all three cameras.

In daylight and shooting in Portrait Mode, iPhone 12 Pro Max tends to exaggerate the highlights by making shots look brighter and boosting the colors. This isn’t bad at all and some people may love the results but the Pixel 5 and Note 20 Ultra offer cooler tones.

iPhone 12 Pro Max does a better job when it comes to edges than previous iPhones but it is still too soft compared to what Pixel 5 can do. However, that doesn’t mean Google’s flagship is the best in this respect. It sometimes detects the wrong edges and sharpens where it isn’t supposed to. The picture below is a good example of what we are talking about:

In low light, iPhone 12 Pro Max yields warmer tones than both the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra and Pixel 5. Note 20 Ultra is warmer too and Pixel 5 tends to lean toward to cooler side. The photo of the gazebo below has a warm cast despite the gazebo being white, which is unusual.

While Pixel 5 can sometimes make pictures taken with Night Mode too bright in some areas, iPhone 12 Pro Max produces photos with the evenest lighting. It is also softer in some pictures, like the one below.

Overall, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra seems to be the worst of the three but again, it comes down to personal preference. If you like what the phone produces, there is no reason not to rank it higher. While iPhone 12 Pro Max’s photos are arguably more visually beautiful, Pixel 5 can ensure more realistic shots with better white balance.

Video is where iPhone 12 Pro Max is an outright champion. With 4K at 60FPS, no other phone can be on par with Apple’s latest flagship in terms of stability and image quality. In low light situations, the quality is similar across the three phones but Apple still offers the best stability.

So again, the winner here depends on what you like best, photos you can instantly share on social media platforms without much editing or realistic and cooler ones?

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