Digit Zero1 Awards 2021 for best camera smartphone recognizes the phone with perfect photography experience.
2021 was a great year for smartphone photography where we saw many refinements across the board.
Here's is the winner, runner-up and best buy for the best camera phone of 2021.
2021 was a great year for smartphone photography where we saw many refinements across the board. Some new collaborations were inked this year (OnePlus x Hasselblad) while some were rekindled (Vivo x Zeiss) to give consumers a taste of the best possible combination of hardware and software for a versatile photography experience. While a 48MP resolution camera as the primary sensor was the most common, higher resolutions including 50MP, 64MP and 108MP sensors gained some footing. This year was also great in terms of fine-tuning the camera stack for better image and video quality where we saw a lot of improvements with custom features like filters and AI-based processing. The Digit Zero1 Awards 2021 for the best smartphone camera recognizes the phone which offers the perfect photography experience.
Winner: Apple iPhone 13 Pro (Buy here)
The Apple iPhone 13 Pro has the best smartphone cameras you can buy right now. This year, the iPhone 13 Pro received larger sensors that capture more light and brings in features like macro photography, 3x optical zoom, Cinematic mode recording with Dolby Vision HDR, focus racking and new photographic styles with preset tones. What’s more, is that the iPhone 13 Pro also gets the ability to record in ProRes with an end-to-end workflow that can be used to edit on the go. The iPhone 13 Pro can create some of the most natural-looking pictures possible from a camera phone with lots of details and accurate colours. The sensor-shift OIS has been improved from last year and remains a great solution for eliminating unwanted shakes and jitters while recording videos. All of this and more make the iPhone 13 Pro the best camera smartphone this year and really you can’t go wrong with it.
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Runner Up and Best Buy: OnePlus 9 Pro (Buy here)
For 2021, OnePlus tried to create a distinctive mark in the mobile photography space by collaborating with camera pioneer Hasselblad. Our runner up for the best camera phone is the OnePlus 9 Pro which also happens to be our best buy choice. The cameras on the OnePlus 9 Pro have been tuned by Hasselblad and there’s even the X-Pan mode as a tribute to the Hasselblad XPan. This time the phone uses an upgraded 50MP ultra-wide camera that reduces barrel distortion and gives a very wide field of view, which remains unparalleled as far as the Android side of things is concerned. The pictures from the OnePlus 9 Pro are colourful, vibrant and a juxtaposition of the iPhone 13 Pro’s natural-looking frames. There are several key areas where the OnePlus 9 Pro loses out to the iPhone 13 Pro such as the dynamic range and details on the ultra-wide camera and low-light photography. Fun fact: We conducted a blind test on our Instagram handle and asked our viewers/readers to vote for some images taken from the OnePlus 9 Pro and the iPhone 13. Most voters preferred the camera output from the OnePlus 9 Pro, which means that more and more people now prefer vibrant and colourful photos.
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About Digit Zero1 Awards 2021
With a legacy of 20 years, the Digit Zero 1 Awards is recognized as the Industry’s only performance-based awards. Digit rewards brands for putting in years of research in developing and introducing performance-driven products for their audience. All products are made to pass through a rigorous and scientific test process and compete with competitor brands in the same category. The Winner in each category is announced on the basis of their total score, post complete performance analysis done across an average of 56 tests, conducted for every category, across key performance parameters. The test process for the Zero1 Awards does not consider scores for features, price or design. The aim is to identify the very best products that money can buy, celebrate the innovations that push the industry forward, and reward the products that dare to disrupt the market.
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Siddharth Chauhan
Siddharth reports on gadgets, technology and you will occasionally find him testing the latest smartphones at Digit. However, his love affair with tech and futurism extends way beyond, at the intersection of technology and culture. View Full Profile
