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0 pointsjavajosh9y ago0 comments

Finally decent depth of field on the camera that's always in my pocket.

Recently I upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S7. It was about $400 and it has an incredible camera; far better than my old iPhone 5s, and it looks substantially better than the iPhone 6/6s photos I have seen. Plus, it has a headphone jack, microSD support (so nice to be able to upgrade), and a really beautiful screen. Yes, Samsung installed some bloatware but some of it is actually useful (their UI for toggling radios is quite good) Android Kit-Kat is solid. To me, this was Android's first reasonable phone.

0 comments

heartbreak9y ago

I had an S2, an S3, and an S4. After trying each one for a month, I reverted to the respective iPhone. Trust me I've tried. I'm sure the S7 is great, and maybe it is the first "reasonable" phone from Samsung, but I have yet to use an iPhone that I didn't like. I have used 3 Samsung phones that were laggy and loaded up with garbage apps.

Synaesthesia9y ago

The S6 and S7 have really good cameras, competitive with the iPhone absolutely.

javajoshOP9y ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that! That was really my entire point, that good cameras (with natural DoF) exist outside of Apple.

reitanqild9y ago

Let me guess you are an iPhone user ;-)

iPhone users will always prefer iPhones for something.

heartbreak9y ago

My first smartphone was a no-name LG model that ran Android. I upgraded from it to the iPhone and didn't like it. Tried the S2 and reverted and so on.

1 more reply

davidiach9y ago

That's weird, my work phone is a Samsung S7 Edge and my personal phone is an iPhone 6S. The photos on the iPhone look so much better. The photos on the S7 look like they have been edited with a filter, like on Instagram. The colors don't look like the colors I see when I'm looking at the thing I try to capture. The iPhone does a better job at that.

jonknee9y ago

Yes, your new phone has a better camera than your three year old phone.

exclusiv9y ago

I'd be all over the S7, but I don't like the bloatware and they have really slow Android updates don't they?

mcintyre19949y ago

If it actually came with Kitkat then that's 3 major versions behind.

ebbv9y ago

You know it's not very helpful to come into a thread about thing X and say "Well I bought thing Y and I like it a lot." This thread is about thing X. (This goes for people coming into an iPhone thread to endorse their Android phone as well as vice versa.)

javajoshOP9y ago

The grand-parent implied that DoF phone cameras aren't available, but they are. That was my main point. The other stuff was because, well, I was frankly surprised at how good the new Android phones are. I suspect that a lot of iPhone users might not care about Android hardware enough even to consider that it might be competitive. And yet, it is.

jonlucc9y ago

I think it is absolutely valuable to talk about products in the context of their environment. It happens all the time with software products here; someone will say "Slack makes this change" and people will say, "oh we use X because of Y feature".

ngrilly9y ago

Yes, but is it able to "simulate" depth of field like the software of the new iPhone by combining the image captured by the two lenses?

dchest9y ago

Xiaomi Redmi Pro, launched in July, can do this: http://www.mi.com/en/redmipro/

jra1019y ago

HTC One (M8), launched March 2014 can do this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7893/the-htc-one-m8-review/2

dingo_bat9y ago

It doesn't need to. The natural depth of field of its camera is more than enough. In fact it is too much sometimes.

ngrilly9y ago

Sorry, my comment was ambiguous. I meant "simulate a shallow depth of field". As you noticed, all smartphone cameras naturally have a very deep depth of field.

1 more reply

pritambaral9y ago

> Samsung Galaxy S7

> Android Kit-Kat is solid

The S7 doesn't ship with Kit-Kat, does it? I think it has always shipped with at least Marshmallow

tdkl9y ago

He meant it's solid as KitKat was, before they shipped shitty Lollipop which started a myriad of issues.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

heartbreak9y ago

Synaesthesia9y ago

The S6 and S7 have really good cameras, competitive with the iPhone absolutely.

javajoshOP9y ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks that! That was really my entire point, that good cameras (with natural DoF) exist outside of Apple.

reitanqild9y ago

Let me guess you are an iPhone user ;-)

iPhone users will always prefer iPhones for something.

heartbreak9y ago

My first smartphone was a no-name LG model that ran Android. I upgraded from it to the iPhone and didn't like it. Tried the S2 and reverted and so on.

1 more reply

davidiach9y ago

jonknee9y ago

Yes, your new phone has a better camera than your three year old phone.

exclusiv9y ago

I'd be all over the S7, but I don't like the bloatware and they have really slow Android updates don't they?

mcintyre19949y ago

If it actually came with Kitkat then that's 3 major versions behind.

ebbv9y ago

javajoshOP9y ago

jonlucc9y ago

ngrilly9y ago

Yes, but is it able to "simulate" depth of field like the software of the new iPhone by combining the image captured by the two lenses?

dchest9y ago

Xiaomi Redmi Pro, launched in July, can do this: http://www.mi.com/en/redmipro/

jra1019y ago

HTC One (M8), launched March 2014 can do this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7893/the-htc-one-m8-review/2

dingo_bat9y ago

It doesn't need to. The natural depth of field of its camera is more than enough. In fact it is too much sometimes.

ngrilly9y ago

Sorry, my comment was ambiguous. I meant "simulate a shallow depth of field". As you noticed, all smartphone cameras naturally have a very deep depth of field.

1 more reply

pritambaral9y ago

> Samsung Galaxy S7

> Android Kit-Kat is solid

The S7 doesn't ship with Kit-Kat, does it? I think it has always shipped with at least Marshmallow

tdkl9y ago

He meant it's solid as KitKat was, before they shipped shitty Lollipop which started a myriad of issues.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse