It's now understandable why the Xiaomi 12S Ultra didn't go to the DXOMark camera test before the launch and sales. Because it underperforms even their phone from last year! It only came in 5th place in the tests, beaten by 2 Huawei and 1 Honor.
The list The Honor Magic4 Ultimate is in first place, with the Huawei P50 Pro in second and the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra at the bottom of the podium.Still in fourth place is the Huawei Mate 40 Pro+ and now for the surprise, came in 5th place the Xiaomi 12S Ultra. Well, that's not too shabby... and they were so confident and praised the Xiaomi+Leica innovations. But as a Xiaomi fan, it's nice to see that it's better than the more expensive iPhone phones.
DXOMark found the following problems when testing the phone's camera:
Some noticeable exposure and HDR rendering instability in different scenes
No zero shutter lag in HDR conditions or low light with a systematic delay of more than 0.3 seconds
Focus and exposure instability when using a telephoto camera
Noise visible in high contrast scenes even in good lighting conditions
Occasional low contrast and halo effects in backlit scenes, especially with deep or olive skin tones
No HDR in the preview image, which does not match the captured image
Does not capture the moment in low light and high contrast scenes compared to other ultra-premium flagships
Lack of image consistency, resulting in differences between images, even sometimes between consecutive shots
The preview is not exactly what is recorded: the preview does not match the final image
But there are advantages, such as:
Excellent overall image quality in most cases
Particularly good performance in terms of colour, exposure and detail
Powerful night shooting performance with a very wide dynamic range, making it ideal for night-time urban photography
Excellent ultra-wide and zoom performance at all distances, especially long range thanks to the dedicated telephoto lens
High video quality: extended dynamic range, natural texture reproduction and good exposure
Versatile camera that offers 2 different watermarks for each user to choose from, providing similar image quality
Good exposure for landscape, cityscape and portrait, from bright light to very low light
Accurate photo autofocus in all lighting conditions
An excellent compromise between texture retention and image noise
Interesting colour reproduction of photos; the two Leica modes provide different colour reproduction for photos, but overall they are similar in terms of image quality
Good image quality with long-range telescopic zoom
Compare
On the left is the new Xiaomi 12S Ultra and on the right is last year's Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra. There is a stark difference.
1 a 2
Xiaomi 12S Ultra - Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max - Honor Magic4 Ultimate
Well, the iPhone has failed badly here, which is why they are not in the top 5. Honor is the phone with the best camera at the moment, and it shows. The Xiaomi isn't that bad either, although the zoomed in picture focused on the hand rather than the face and it got a bit blurry.
Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max
Xiaomi 12S Ultra
At night, the tests show Xiaomi beats the iPhone in rounds, so it doesn't take much explanation.
It also lags behind the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra in video. The 12S Ultra has a wide dynamic range and good exposure on the face, but exposure is gradual and unstable. On the right, unlike the Mi 11 Ultra, the exposure is stable on video.
The competition
Compared to other phones with a better camera, it's almost incomprehensible that Xiaomi can't take better pictures and videos. In order, the camera features of the better phones:
Honor Magic4 Ultimate
50 MP 1/1.12-inch sensor, 1.4 μm pixel, 23 mm equivalent focal length, f/1.6 aperture, OIS, PDAF, laser AF
It's quite interesting, then, to see together how the Xiaomi 12S Ultra performed in the DXOMark tests. If you just look at the cold numbers, it's inexplicable that it's not on the podium. In fact, a lot depends on the data processing, the algorithms, which Xiaomi seems to be lacking even now...
