Conclusion

Congratulations, you’ve manage to the through 18 pages of photo and video testing! In my opinion all devices did an overall good job but there are some repeatable patterns that I noticed which I summarised below. It is also worth noting that am not surprised that PowerShot SX220 HS producing worst results in most cases even though it is a dedicated camera device. Shooting in auto mode in all scenarios the smartphones are at advantage as they have more sensor and processing power to auto detect and correct image on the fly. If I were to conduct a manual shooting mode test I am pretty confident that PowerShot would probably do better then most of the smartphones that I tested.

Colour balance

iPhone 6 produced most natural looking colour and white balance of the tested devices. Robin does a good job, with the exception of indoor shots in which it was the worst. Galaxy S5 and Lumia 930 do tend to saturate the colours a bit in most cases so if you prefer this over natural (and sometimes dull natural looking colours) then you would probably prefer these two. PowerShot SX220 HS’s image colour balance often came out as washed out.

Exposure

Overall there is not clear-cut winner in exposure across the board. Maybe worth pointing out that iPhone tended to under expose images slightly to preserve the highlights in the brighter sky and cloud images. Robin and PowerShot SX220 HS did over expose images in certain scenarios. With Lumia 930 and Galaxy S5 falling somewhere between the others.

Detail

In terms of preserving the level of detail Lumia 930 was clearly the winner in my mind. Robin did a very good job too, sans the indoor shots. iPhone 6 showed preference in keeping the level of detail but allowing the noise to creep in a bit too much. Galaxy S5 showed the most aggressive noise reduction with sacrificing the level of detail in return. PowerShot struggled in many cases to produce a sharp image all together.

Video recording

This is where NextBit needs to most work in future software updates as Robin’s shots were shaky, although not as bad as Galaxy S5. More worrying, the sound recorded just sound horrible! iPhone was most consistent with producing steady shots even when panning on a windy day. Lumia 930 did best in recording sound and PowerShot did best job in keeping a steady shot in low light conditions.

Final thoughts

My test confirms what reviewers have been saying about Robin’s camera performance. It struggles in low light as suggested, however in my night shot it came out on top. In some day light/indoor shots it did better than most of the devices I tested as well. Therefore it is not as black and white as initial reviewers suggested. Robin was also the slowest to take photos, needing a second or so take a shot after pressing the shutter button. This left unsure a couple of times if it registered my tap or not, with Galaxy S5 being the fastest in taking shots.

Hopefully my test showed strengths and weaknesses of each device when used in auto mode. Which one is best for you it really depends on what kind of image processing you prefer. For me personally, I will still keep using my PowerShot SX220 HS as I use it in full manual mode in which it produces much better results that were shown in the auto mode test. But I am more than satisfied with Robin to be used as a quick point and shoot when I don’t have my camera with me. That’s something that I couldn’t have said about my previous smartphone – HTC One X.