promised that its xel phones would pack the best camera of any smartphone. The xel’s camera even has a DxO score of 89 to back up ‘s claim. So, now that we have the xel Xin h, we put it to the test against the best smartphone cameras on the market: the ione 7 us, Galaxy S7 ge, V20.

Our testing scenario is admittedly a bit limited. set up a specific scene with specific lighting, put each phone on a tripod to make sure we got the most apples-to-apples results possible. Camera shake never factored in, it’s possible the highest performing phones might yield different results in real-world scenarios. Nonetheless, we did our best to equalize the playing field, we think our test shots tell a very informative story.

Make sure you watch the entire video above. It illustrates our test results quite well, goes into more detail about the differences we found in the images. 

Fantastic clarity in low light

Our low light setup is a desk scene lit only by lamp light, with blueish simulated moonlight coming in through the window.

You can see that the xel Xkeyed in on the orange light of the lamp, pulled most of the blue hue out of the scene. The V20 went in the other direction, balancing the desk lamp as pure white, creating a very blue tone as a result. Overall, the Galaxy S7 ge delivered the most accurate color, followed by the ione 7 us.

But let’s take a closer look at detail. Below are 100 percent crops with no resizing.

The xel Xshows good detail. You can make out the words on the camera book.

The ione 7 us doesn’t fare as well. It’s a bit of a noisy blurry mess.

The GS7 ge can’t quite resolve details as well as the xel X

The V20 is the sharpest, delivers the most detail. It’s worth noting the V20’s rear camera is 16 megapixels, while the other three are 12 megapixels. must also share that we tested a “pre-production” version of the V20, but we’re confident ‘s camera hardware software in essentially final.

apping it all together: The V20 delivers the best clarity detail in low light, but also struggles with mixed lighting, giving the photo a very bluish cast. The xel comes in second thanks to its great clarity definition. nt more details on low light performance? tch the video attached to this article.

Bright studio lights

en we took pictures of the same scene under bright studio lights, we got somewhat different results. l of the cameras did a much better job under optimal lighting conditions, but there are still noticeable differences.

The xel Xdelivered the best combination of accurate color cast saturation. The ione 7 us is a bit on the yellow side, with slightly desaturated colors. The GS7 ge is sort of yellow-green, too.

Now let’s zoom in get a look at texture, detail, noise. Again, these are 100 percent crops with no resizing.

The xel Xdoes a great job preserving detail, at the cost of just a touch more noise. You can clearly see the fuzzy texture of the stuffed Android, even the roughness of the painted brick wall. l the strs of grass are well-preserved.

The ione 7 us is slightly brighter, but to a fault. The ione also loses much of the fuzzy texture of the stuffed Android even the texture on the monkey’s arm.

The Galaxy S7 ge goes so far to eliminate noise that it washed out all detail. The stuffed Android looks almost entirely smooth, as does the brick wall. The money statue has barely any relief to it.

Because these are non-resized 100% crops, the 16 megapixel V20 looks like it’s zoomed in further. It has the second-best detail of the bunch, but even with a lower-res sensor, the xel Xdoes a better job with the fuzz of the Android texture of the painted brick wall.

Overall winner: xel X/h2>

Again, this isn’t a complete camera test. simply examined the image quality of photos shot in a studio, with two very specific lighting setups. have more camera tests ahead, we’ll look at both still images in the field, video quality.

It’s also worth noting the V20 Galaxy S7 ge have manual camera modes, as well as the ability to shoot save RAimages. The xel can’t do this without using a third-party camera app. So, again, the “best camera” may vary from scenario to scenario, depending on how you plan to use your phone.

That said, for this test the xel delivered the best combination of detail, color, dynamic range. Overall, the xel preserves more details more information than the other phones. And the V20 came in a close second.