There’s no denying that iPhone X was the refresh Apple needed to make to the phone lineup. Introducing features like Face ID and wireless charging were definitely game changers, but it’s the camera that genuinely set iPhone X apart. And now that we’re a couple of years away from the initial launch is the iPhone X camera still all it was cracked up to be? Does it still hold up to the cameras in today’s phones?
We’re going to go in-depth on the specs of the iPhone X’s camera (both cameras, in fact), and see if it can still hold its own.
iPhone X: The rear camera
Like previous Plus models, the rear camera on the iPhone X is equipped with dual lenses — a wide angle and a telephoto to shoot at an impressive 12 megapixels. The camera has an improved aperture, f/1.8 and the f/2.4 on the wide and telephoto lenses respectively. All this being the technical way of saying, this camera does impressively well in low-light conditions.
But perhaps the biggest and most beneficial upgrade is with the camera sensor. Apple has reportedly built it larger and faster specifically for the iPhone X, which means it offers a better color balance and more vibrant textures and colors in your photos.
When you take photos with the iPhone X, whether it’s landscapes or portraits, your pictures are bright and crisp, loaded with depth and details. Even in low-light shots, you’ll be pleasantly surprised with how much detail this iPhone camera is able to maintain.
And while we’ve been talking about pictures, we can’t forget about the video upgrades that were made with this camera. While previous models were able to shoot 4K video at 60fps, Apple added an incredibly smooth slo-mo feature that shoots 1080p video at 240fps. Which again, these features haven’t changed even on the newest model of iPhones.
iPhone X: The front camera
Before the iPhone X, Apple relied on the home button and Touch ID to unlock the device. But when they got rid of that button and introducing Face ID in its place, that meant the front camera would be doing a lot more heavy lifting. Thanks to that, the front camera finally got the massive upgrade it had needed for too long.
Along with the ability to record videos at 1080p, the 7-megapixel camera introduced a pair of new features — True Depth and True Tone Flash. The former brought Apple’s famed portrait mode to the front camera, and the latter introduced a brighter and more color accurate flash to the front camera by utilizing the screen instead of LED light like in other phones.
Does the iPhone X camera still have good picture quality?
Even compared to the most recent iPhones, specs-wise the iPhone X camera looks almost identical. Where the iPhone X starts to show its age is with the camera sensor and the imaging processor. Both of those have been upgraded in newer models and enable the camera to take slightly wider pictures that are sharper and crisper than the photos taken with an iPhone X.
Does that mean the iPhone X takes bad pictures by today’s standards? Not by a long shot. Unless your iPhone's camera is not working properly, the casual iPhone photographer would be hard-pressed to decipher if a photo was taken by an iPhone X or a newer model, without having a side-by-side comparison. And don’t forget Apple ran an entire advertising campaign using only photos and videos shot on the iPhone X. That being said, yes, the iPhone X camera still takes amazing pictures, even by today’s standards.
So when all is said and done, if you’re comparing only the iPhone cameras, then you’ll have a tough time justifying some of the minor differences between the iPhone X and newer models. Do the newer iPhones take slightly better pictures? Sure. But if you’re looking for a more budget-friendly phone overall, then the iPhone X is definitely your best bet.
