GoKawiilI used to love shooting photos on Pixels, but recently I’ve been feeling let down by the once high-flying series. While I have quite a few quibbles about Google’s latest entries, my biggest camera bugbear is undoubtedly the phone’s portrait mode — the results just don’t look good enough for me to ever want to frame my snaps.
Whether I’m grabbing pics of friends and family or trying to add some bokeh to a macro crop, there’s always some artifact or issue that sticks out like a sore thumb. In fairness, these complaints apply almost equally to Apple and Samsung, but as the Pixel 11 series is right around the corner, I’ve been jotting down my wish list for Google’s upcoming flagship. Number one: I really hope they can fix my lingering portrait grievances.
For a quick comparison, I’ve taken some sample shots on my Pixel 10 Pro XL, Fuji X-S10 mirrorless camera, and the OPPO Find X9 Ultra. I’ve stuck to 3x zoom, or about a 45mm focal length on my APS-C mirrorless, which all work out to about 70mm full-frame equivalent (the typical reference for smartphone focal lengths). Between the three, we have an ideal reference in my Fuji, what we’re dealing with for the Pixel, and the best of today’s hardware in the OPPO. Let’s dive in.
What do you dislike the most about the Pixel 10 Pro? 746 votes Unexciting cameras 16 % Poor gaming performance 12 % Slow charging 9 % Mediocre battery 30 % None, I love my Pixel 10 Pro 27 % Anything else 5 %
So much for natural bokeh
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
My complaints about Pixel portrait photography fall into two camps. The first is pretty obvious to anyone who has compared a smartphone portrait photo with a mirrorless shot; the bokeh is just all wrong.
Edge detection is an obvious issue that has dogged smartphones for years, even after Google spent years perfecting its computational photography algorithms. Even the best software algorithms struggle to precisely distinguish foreground from background, resulting in smudged hair, gaps in the bokeh, or objects outright floating if the scene is too cluttered. My Pixel is particularly egregious here, with rough edges where there should be smooth lines and regular gaps in the background blur.
You don’t even need to crop in on the shot below to see the issues. The Pixel 10 Pro XL produces horrendously jagged artifacts along virtually every edge of the snap. It also failed to put the wooden pole into the background correctly. I gave the phone five attempts at this picture, and this was the best one. OPPO’s blur might be far too strong (this was just at the default f/5.0 software setting), but its edges are very smooth, and there’s even a realistic depth roll-off along the bench. It’s not perfect, but it’s really not bad.
Fuji X-S10 OPPO Find X9 Ultra Pixel 10 Pro XL
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