Home » Which smartphone dual camera setup do you like?

Which smartphone dual camera setup do you like?

Written By Abe Olandres
Published • March 11th, 2017
CamerasMobile
3 Comments

Quite a number of smartphone brands have gone dual cam since a year ago with each one offering a different take on how the second camera should work to offer a better user experience. There are roughly 4 types of approach that we’ve seen in the market today.

Table of Contents

Depth of Field

HTC was among the very first one’s to use a secondary rear camera with the HTC One (M8) back in 2014. The purpose of the lower-resolution second camera was to provide a better “depth of field” into the subject. Other brands followed this same approach like the Huawei Honor 6 Plus which allows the user to adjust the aperture even after the photo has been taken, Xiaomi Redmi Pro, Huawei GR5 (2017), and the Honor 8. Huawei seems to be the dominant player in this category.

Secondary Zoom Camera

Apple introduced a secondary rear camera on the iPhone 7 Plus. It’s the first time they did a dual-camera setup and they chose to pack it with a zoom lens to allow the user to zoom in on the subject at 2x optical zoom. It also allowed it to do that heavy bokeh effect in post. Asus also introduced their own Zenfone 3 Zoom with a dual 12-megapixel sensor that can do up to 2.3x zoom. OPPO also recently announced a dual camera technology with capability of doing up to 5x zoom. There’s no phone yet to speak of but we’ll soon see one later this month.

Monochrome + RGB Sensor

This approach was initiated by Huawei when they introduced the Huawei P9 and the P9 Plus. The approach involves an primary monochrome sensor to get all the details and a secondary RGB sensor to get the color details and then combine the image. It’s the most unique combination we’ve seen so far in dual camera setups. Huawei is pushing thru with this as it’s been incorporated in the Mate 9 and the recently announced P10 and P10 Plus. Xiaomi actually copied this setup with the Xiaomi Mi 5s Plus.

Secondary Wide Angle CameraLG’s approach for a dual-camera setup is offer a secondary wide angle camera, first introduced in the LG G5. This offers the user a completely different field of wide that no other smartphone camera is capable of. It’s like completely replacing it with a wide-angle lens that you’d only normally do in dSLRs. This was continued in the LG V20 and the newly announced LG G6.

Each one of these dual camera setup offers a compelling approach. In the end, it’s up to the users which feature or approach they like best. So which one do you prefer? Do leave a comment below to share your thoughts (or submit your vote in our poll here).

dual camera phones

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

5 Winning Features of the ASUS Zenfone 3 Zoom

Video: Vivo V5 Lite Review

3 Comments

migs says:

8 years ago

Secondary Wide Angle Camera of LG, landscape or cityscapes no problem :)
- Reply
Manny_Cavalier says:

8 years ago

Monochrome + RGB Sensor for me.
- Reply
Den Michael says:

8 years ago

Well for me, according to some reviews, all I can is say is the Huawei with Leica Technology got it right. But physically the Zenfone 3 Zoom played well. I want the secondary cam to be focused on the depth for more creative bookeh.
- Reply