Battle of the megapixels: 6-way blind camera comparison

UPDATE: Voting is now over and the results have been posted here.

To keep things fair, all of the smartphones we're comparing were set to their standard camera mode during the shootout – no scenes modes were used, nor manual tweaks, nor exposure controls. In other words, we decided to let each camera decide for itself what the optimum settings in each scene were.

In addition, all images have been scaled down from their original size to a resolution of about 2.8 megapixels (width of 1920 pixels at an aspect ratio of 4:3), including the reference photos taken with a Panasonic Lumix GH2 and its kit lens. Seems low? Well, it's actually not. A photo of such size is large enough to fill any of today's high-definition displays and offers sufficient resolution to produce quality 6" by 4" printed photographs. Besides, those photos from last weekend's party that you were tagged in on Facebook are much smaller in size, yet nobody seems to be complaining.

Outdoor photos

We're now giving you our first set of photo samples – four outdoor scenes captured with six different high-end smartphones and a reference shot for each scene taken with the aforementioned camera. Judging by what you see below, which phone's photos do you like the most?

Which phone's outdoor photos do you like the most?

Phone #1

5.22%

Phone #2

4.06%

Phone #3

6.38%

Phone #4

46.23%

Phone #5

27.85%

Phone #6

10.25%

Indoor photos

Now it's time to up the ante as we're moving the action indoors. In here the smartphones we're comparing will have an even harder time taking a good-looking photo as the light that's available just can't beat the brightness output of good ol' Mr Sun. A total of three scenes were captured in our studio – one using a strong light source, another with the lights dimmed down to a medium setting, and the last frame was taken with the lights set to "low". Which phone's indoor photos do you like the most?

Which phone's indoor photos do you like the most?

Phone #1

4.49%

Phone #2

14.96%

Phone #3

4.27%

Phone #4

44.02%

Phone #5

16.24%

Phone #6

16.03%

And lastly we're going to demonstrate how good these six mysterious smartphones are at capturing video. As any other high-end device out there, these handsets are capable of capturing 1080 video at 30 frames per second. Which one does that best, however, is up to you to decide. We've stitched together a set of 15-second video samples taken with the phones we're comparing so check them out and then cast your vote below! Note that the audio from the videos has been removed – we're focusing solely on video quality after all.

Video quality: which phone you think is best?

Phone #1

9.44%

Phone #2

3.33%

Phone #3

4.44%

Phone #4

56.94%

Phone #5

16.94%

Phone #6

8.89%

The true identity of each smartphone used in the comparison will be revealed in a few days. Now vote for your favorite, in case you haven't done so already, and don't hesitate to join the discussion down in the comments!