Google Pixel 6 Pro versus iPhone 13 Pro Max camera quality
Google spec’d a bigger sensor than what Apple uses in the latest iPhones and, therefore, should have been able to crush Apple in image quality. DxOMark says otherwise. In lab conditions, the Pixel 6 Pro scores 143 from the main camera:
The iPhone 13 Pro Max scores 144:
In real-world conditions, I would expect that the Apple camera software yields substantial practical advantages. The autofocus scores, above, already show that the iPhone is likely to be better at capturing kids running around.
As impartially measured by Google DEI employees, the Pixel 6 Pro scores higher in equity. “Image equity: Making image tools more fair for everyone” (blog.google):
As part of Google’s Product Inclusion efforts, our teams are building more equitable camera and imaging products for people of color.
Building better tools for a community works best when they’re built with the community. For the new Pixel 6 Camera, we partnered with a diverse range of renowned image makers who are celebrated for their beautiful and accurate depictions of communities of color—including Kira Kelly, Deun Ivory, Adrienne Raquel, Kristian Mercado, Zuly Garcia, Shayan Asgharnia, Natacha Ikoli and more—to help our teams understand where we needed to do better. With their help, we’ve significantly increased the number of portraits of people of color in the image datasets that train our camera models.
(the bad old days: “Google Photos Tags Two African-Americans As Gorillas Through Facial Recognition Software” (Forbes))
If having accessible “communities of color” is helpful in building a more equitable camera, shouldn’t Samsung have the most equitable camera of all? Nearly all South Koreans are “of color” by our current definition. (See “Michelle Wu is Boston’s first woman and first person of color elected mayor” from state-sponsored NPR, regarding a Chinese-American (apparently this person’s most important characteristics relative to the mayor job are current gender ID and skin color)).
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