Photography is something that we all adore. Every one of us has a photographer inside who just wants to come out and go mad with the cameras, take pictures of everything, fascinating or boring, doesn’t matter. If you ask me, photography is just one thing that I am okay with spending a whole night just to get ‘a’ picture. Coming to camera advancements these days, our smartphones have gotten so advanced that they are now literally able to take pictures equivalent to pictures taken from a professional camera, at least visually if not technically. One of those advanced smartphones is the latest flagship iQOO 13. I got my hands on it ahead of its launch on December 3, and guess what? I went to the streets to test its camera!
So, the iQOO 13 is equipped with a triple camera setup, which holds a 50-megapixel Sony IMX921 main camera with OIS, a 50-megapixel ultrawide lens, and a 50-megapixel Sony IMX 816 telephoto sensor with 2x optical zoom. For those who don’t know, the iQOO 12 was equipped with a 64-megapixel periscope telephoto sensor with 3x optical zoom, and we were quite impressed with it.
Jump forward to iQOO 13, I must say that it is not an upgrade but it has its own charm.
I went to Dubai with iQOO to test iQOO 13’s camera and this device clicked some beautiful pictures. These pictures have the right amount of light, colours, and details, and the bokeh effect is also decent.
However, when I came back to Delhi, I realised one thing, even an affordable smartphone can capture great pictures in a good atmosphere and good light like I saw in Dubai. However, Delhi as we all know has become a gas chamber, and we constantly have this yellow hue in the atmosphere. The pictures I clicked in India look quite washed off, which I will be showing in my review on December 3.
Moving to portrait shots, if you have patience, you can click good portrait shots with the iQOO 13 or should I say it clicks easy portraits better for e.g. with a single subject. But, I expected more from this device.
Flagship phones these days are really good with edge detection, however, some shots I have taken from the iQOO 13 show the edge detection is a bit off, which is not a good thing keeping in mind that the iQOO 12 killed it last year.
Basically, when there are multiple subjects, the camera gets confused and focuses randomly. However, I have got a hack for this. After you click the picture, open it > tap on bokeh icon > tap where you want to focus > and adjust the bokeh, to me 8.0 aperture seems better than the default 2.7 aperture. This trick will fix portraits for you.
Low-light photography is something that I really enjoyed with the iQOO 13. It does boost colours, but the pictures look great to me. If you use portrait mode with 3x or 4x zoom, you will be able to capture sharp and right coloured pictures.
However, like every other smartphone, if you are clicking pictures in complete dark, it will smoothen them like anything. And that is not the case with just low-light photography, I have spoken about how some portraits look like I have clicked them with a Rs 12,000 smartphone. Here’s your reason for that. There’s smoothening, even with the portraits.
Lastly, the front camera is decent. It is a 32-megapixel sensor, which captures average pictures I should say. My face is generally not that pink, but okay I don’t mind it. This selfie shooter also captures the right amount of details.
Now, let’s talk about some camera features. I have noticed two really interesting features; Snapshot and Fisheye. Snapshot is basically for moving subjects but it doesn’t work like Pixel 9’s Action Pan mode, which captures the subject and blurs everything. However, Snapshot captures the whole frame. For example, if you are capturing a moving bike, the whole picture would be a still frame.
Second is Fisheye, as the name suggests, it puts the fisheye effect in pictures. This is how the Fisheye pictures from the iQOO 13 look like.
Lastly, you can also enable street mode on the iQOO 13 by swiping up, which will give you a complete access to your camera, basically a more enhanced version of Pro mode. Truely for professionals.
So, this is how I liked iQOO 13’s camera. My verdict says that colours are the major con of this camera, and details can also be improved. iQOO is promising an upcoming update and we can hope that these issues will get fixed with it. However, if you have a slight photography sense, you can take brilliant shots with this device. It just needs a little patience and the right frame.
One last tip for you – Portrait mode at 100mm focal length gives your pictures a professional, cinematic touch. Adios!
