Ireland day 1299. Saturday 19 April 2025- Pixel vs iPhone

Today’s summary	Another wet day. I walked up along the coast as far as the Swords business park then back along the Swords Road and through the Demesne. Tested iPhone vs Pixel cameras and found iPhone by far the best because of HDR. Val went on a run. After lunch and coffee, we went down to Dunnes (last week’s resolution already broken) to do the weekly shopping. Val made roast beef for dinner which we enjoyed with a beer and “Mad Men”
Today’s weather	Overnight rain followed by heavy cloud and more light rain all day until evening. Moderate to strong easterly wind. Appx 10c

Today’s overview location (The blue mark shows the location of my route)		Close-up location (The blue line shows where I walked) (Click button below to download GPX of today’s walk as recorded, or see interactive map at bottom with elevations corrected): Pixel vs iPhone camera trial walk

Commentary

I’ve been using the new Pixel 8 android phone that I got for my birthday last year very extensively. I got it mainly so I could try the Android-only Locus Maps navigation app – which has turned out to be excellent and which, for me, fully justified getting the phone.

But the Pixel has lots of other features too, and reviewers often comment on the high quality of the camera in particular. So I thought I would do a back to back trial today, Pixel vs iPhone. It was a dull, heavily overcast day, so ideal conditions for a challenging test. After all, any camera can take good photos on a bright sunny spring day, but it’s much harder when everything is a flat grey.

So once we’d had our cups of tea, I set out on a walk, with both phone cameras on hand. Val meanwhile went on a run and, being enthusiastic, covered significantly more distance than me. For my part, I just went down to the coast and walked along the estuary as far as the Swords business park. It was very wet underfoot, so I didn’t feel like going much further than that. So I headed back east from the Applegreen station, and returned to Malahide via the Swords Road and castle Demesne.

But what about the test? Well, to cut to the chase, the iPhone won hands down. Even with the “Ultra HDR” mode turned on, the pixel photos appeared drab and washed out compared to the iPhone’s. The only way I could get similar quality was by enhancing the Pixel photos to apply the “dynamic” edit, after I’d taken them. Even then, I thought the iPhone photos were better.

So that sealed it for me. Whilst the Pixel is brilliant as a navigation device when paired with the Locus Maps app, I’d never make it my main phone because the camera simply isn’t good enough. Maybe in a bright sunny country there wouldn’t be much to choose between them but for those of us living in Northern Europe, where grey weather is the norm not the exception, the brilliance of the iPhone photos is far superior to that of the Pixel.

Anyway, after this interesting experiment, we both returned to the flat from our respective expeditions then we changed and got dry, had something to eat, and prepared to go out again. Our cost saving resolution to go to Aldi in favour of Dunnes has lasted less than a week – so we duly pottered off in the Yaris to the Portmarnock branch to do our weekly shopping this afternoon. In my defence I did have a €10 discount voucher, which eased the pain a bit.

Once the shopping was done, Val made a delicious roast beef dinner and I pulled together the packed lunches for tomorrow. After all that, we settled down, predictably but enjoyably, to a couple of episodes of “Mad Men” before calling it a day and retiring to bed.

Today’s photos (click to enlarge)


Pixel, with Ultra-HDR camera function turned off	Pixel, with Ultra-HDR camera function turned on

Pixel, with Ultra-HDR camera function turned on then modified using the “Dynamic” edit (same photo as above right)	iPhone mini 12 with no changes to default camera settings and no photo edits

Start of the short woodland walk (iPhone)	Entering the Demesne at the Swords Road entrance (tree fern avenue straight ahead) (iPhone)

At the entrance to the playing fields that lead to the woodland section, opposite Centra at the end of Old Yellow Walls Road (iPhone, panorama)