Camera Comparison: Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom vs Galaxy S4, HTC One, iPhone 5

Details:

True beauty hides in the details – whoever coined this quote was surely onto something. And yes, we must agree that it is nice when you zoom in on a photo in order to take a clearer, closer look, or when you have the freedom of cropping the image as you please. With its 16MP camera sensor, the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom seems like a potential winner in this category, but in reality, the Samsung Galaxy S4 beats it by a hair despite having three megapixels less to work with. The S4's photos are slightly more detailed in nearly all scenes and have less digital noise, which is surprising given the fact that the S4 Zoom is equipped with a physically larger sensor.

The iPhone 5 is, as always, capable of snapping very detailed photos that look nice even when viewed at their full size. Judging by the photo samples below we can't say that the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom captures any more detail than the iPhone 5, which is why these two devices share second place. As for the HTC One, having just four megapixels of resolution holds its back from being as potent as the other three handsets. Its photos look okay, of course, but they just aren't as detailed and are sharper than they should be.