iPhones not only capture great photos and videos, but also offer several unique camera features that you won’t find even on flagship Android phones. They help improve the overall shooting experience and offer better flexibility when framing a scene.
Look outside the frame
Like the best Android camera phones, iPhones also have dual or triple rear cameras. However, Apple is the only phone that uses the iPhone’s primary and ultrawide cameras together to provide a merged live preview in the camera viewfinder.
In the iPhone’s camera app, the preview extends beyond the camera grid to cover the entire screen. This is possible because of the “Look outside the frame” option, which is enabled by default.
The beauty of Apple’s implementation is that the camera app will only show the expanded preview when framing is required. It’s a neat little feature that debuted on the iPhone years ago, but you still won’t find it on any Android phone.
Academy Color Encoding System
Android phones may have better camera hardware, but the iPhone outdoes them in video recording. It can capture high-quality videos with more detail and less noise. Even better, the iPhone 15 Pro and newer models can shoot LOG videos in the Academy Color Encoding System (ACES), a standard used by the film industry to manage the color of movies and TV shows.
Recent flagship Android phones support HDR and even 8K video recording. Some also support shooting in LOG, but none of them can record RAW video in ACES. However, this feature only benefits professionals using their iPhones to record videos, as ACES-encoded footage will make their workflow easier.
Shoot photos in 24MP resolution
Starting with the iPhone 15 in 2023, Apple switched the default image resolution for the primary camera to 24MP. The higher resolution offers a noticeable improvement in sharpness without sacrificing overall image quality. It’s also a nice middle ground between the 12MP and 48MP resolutions these iPhones are capable of.
Once you’ve mastered a few key iPhone camera settings, you can take full advantage of the added feature of shooting 24MP images.
Flagship Android phones often have large, high-resolution 50MP or even 200MP camera sensors, paired with a powerful ISP. Still, none of them can shoot at 24MP resolution by default. They use pixel binning to output a more detailed 12MP picture. And while they look impressive, the lack of sharpness is perceptible compared to the iPhone’s 24MP picture.
If you have a Samsung Galaxy S24, you can use the ExpertRAW app to shoot photos at 24MP resolution. However, only power users will appreciate the added convenience that ExpertRAW offers over the stock Samsung Camera app.
Great image quality in third-party apps
Despite packing better camera hardware, photos taken on Android phones through popular social media apps like Instagram or Snapchat don’t look as good as those taken on iPhones. This is due to Apple’s better implementation of the built-in camera API, which enables third-party apps to capture high-quality photos like those shot with the stock camera app.
The same is true for videos, Android phones record noisy and less detailed videos through social media apps. Over the past few years, Google has promised several improvements on this front. Still, iPhones continue to outperform Android phones in this area.
Quickly record short videos in 4K resolution
On the iPhone and almost all Android phones, you can press and hold the shutter button in the Camera app to start recording a short video. This feature is useful when you want to quickly record a short video for social media or when there is not enough time to open the camera app and switch to video mode.
Although the feature has existed for years, only the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro are capable of recording such short videos in 4K/60FPS resolution with Dolby Vision. Android phones including the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra can only shoot such videos in FHD+ resolution at 30FPS.