Welcome back.

Okay, so it's the end of tech season,

which means it is the Full-Frame

that I know you've been looking for.

Today, we are taking, arguably the best camera systems

you can get in a smartphone,

and we're putting them head to head.

I took 1,000 photos with the Pixel 6 Pro,

and another 1,000 photos with the iPhone 13 Pro,

to figure out which one of these cameras

is actually the best.

And with a little help from you,

I think we've gotten to the bottom of it.

This is Full-Frame, buds, let's get into it.

The Pixel 6 Pro's main camera is a 50-megapixel sensor

with an optically stabilized F1.85 lens,

that is hard-coated to produce 12.5-megapixel images.

Which means you can't actually capture

50-megapixel images with this camera.

There's also a 12-megapixel ultra-wide at F2.2,

and a 48-megapixel telephoto at F3.5.

The iPhone 13 Pro rocks a 12-megapixel camera system

across the board, with an F2.8 telephoto,

an F1.5 main lens, and an F1.8 ultra-wide.

Enough of the numbers, let's get looking at photos.

And I want to start with the tele,

because there is almost no competition here.

Google's 48-megapixel tele provides 4X optical zoom,

and it is very sharp.

It flattens the image out

much like a larger telephoto lens would.

And its focused fall off is really sleek.

And when you put it side by side

with the iPhone's 12-megapixel 3X tele,

the iPhone photos begin to look muddled.

Especially when you punch in.

I was really surprised at just how much detail

the Pixel can capture.

And punching into this photo,

you can practically read the newspaper right here.

The next three photos were taken with night mode,

which on the Pixel, unfortunately,

can take up to five seconds.

On the iPhone, it maxes out at three seconds.

And some real bonus points go to the Pixel

for how it spreads these headlights.

This photo is digitally zoomed

as far as each camera would allow me.

On the Pixel that's 20X, and on iPhone that's 15X.

The clear winner of the telephoto competition is the Pixel.

I had such a good time taking photos

with this telephoto lens,

and I almost want to stop the entire review there.

But we have to talk about the ultra-wide on the Pixel.

At a 0.7 crop or 114 degree field of view,

the Pixel's ultra-wide is just barely wider

than the 82 degree main lens.

The iPhone's ultra-wide is a 0.5 crop

or 120 degree field of view.

And it's just a lot sharper.

Now, although the iPhone warps the image much more,

that effect makes for a much more dramatic image

that sells me on the grandiose nature of the buildings

or monument I was mostly shooting with it.

The ultra-wide is where you also see a little bit too much

of that HDR look that the Pixel loves.

Shadows are just completely brightened up,

and I much preferred the contrast that the iPhone provides.

Again, it adds to the epic nature of a wide-angle photo.

The iPhone wins the ultra-wide contest.

(gentle music)

On the front of the Pixel is an 11.1-megapixel camera.

And on the iPhone, there is a 12-megapixel TrueDepth camera.

Both are great in perfect lighting,

and capture a nice amount of detail.

Now, I'm gonna call this a tie,

because it was 50-50 on which images I liked more.

For example, I really like how I look

in this photo on the Pixel.

I like the color blue behind me,

and I like that my skin tone isn't as washed out.

Although in low-light, I found that the iPhone

held onto my skin tones just a bit better.

And when there was no light,

well, neither of these cameras performed well.

All right, so it looks like it comes down to the main lens.

And this is where things get a little tougher.

(chilled music)

I like the amount of contrast

that the iPhone has in this photo.

But then the focus fall off on objects

that are close to the camera, look much better on the Pixel.

Yeah, it gets a little funky in this back row of flowers,

but I prefer it over the iPhone,

keeping all of the flowers in focus.

And then there's photos like this,

where yes, you can barely see my hand,

but on the Pixel photo, it's just way too blue.

And I think that my hand looks much more the color

that it should be, on the iPhone.

The color of the sky in the iPhone here,

is much more realistic.

Pixel went way too magenta.

The street scene looks a lot better with a bit more magenta,

and those bluer tones in the Pixel,

than it does with the warm tones of the iPhone.

At night, the Pixel definitely takes longer to take photos.

And you can see that in the way that these people

are blurry, in the Pixel's photo.

But I do really enjoy the blue sky that the Pixel preserved,

whereas the iPhone made all of this just black.

And then of course, there are those light reflections

that the iPhone is famous for.

And yes, the Pixel has them too, but a lot less of them.

And again, this photo took a lot longer

to take on the Pixel, but I really appreciate

how much detail it kept in the buildings.

Whereas on the iPhone,

it just looks like a black and white mess back here.

This one drives the point home quite well.

The contrast that the Pixel

kept in the trees is really nice,

but I prefer the contrast that the iPhone kept

on the people and this ledge right in front.

Okay, I'm coming close

to who I think I'd pick as the winner,

but I wanted to give all of you a chance to choose as well.

So I made a poll, I posted on my Twitter.

And a whole lot of you took it,

and we'll get to those results in a bit.

But first, I want to talk about how it feels

to use these cameras,

because you can't talk about a camera system

without talking about its hardware and its UI.

Let's head outside for that.

(chilled music)

When people ask me if they should buy a Pixel 6 Pro,

I ask them what they think of big phones,

because this phone is absolutely massive.

The Pixel's incredibly slippery back,

also does it no favors.

It weighs 210 grams and has a 6.7-inch screen,

that makes the iPhone 13 Pro feel mini

at 204 grams with a 6.1-inch screen.

And to be clear, I used to think

that the 13 Pro was way too big.

But now that I've used the Pixel 6, this thing feels mini.

All right, but now let's talk about camera software,

because both of these phones are missing one large feature,

if you ask me.

Let's talk Apple first.

As Dieter noted in his iPhone 13 Pro review,

there is this horrible, small icon in the camera's UI.

- This is yet another button on Apple's camera app,

which is getting increasingly complicated

and has an almost fractally expanding set

of different kinds of shooting states.

- So what Dieter's referring to

is this little button right up here, the small arrow.

The arrow button brings a whole new set of controls

to the bottom panel, replacing existing controls.

And it actually took me a few days

to even realize this was a button at all.

Not to mention, you can bring up the same controls

by swiping on the screen.

On the Pixel, it also has a downward arrow up top,

but it has a little settings wheel right next to it.

So it brings up a box that covers the camera's screen.

And that's where most of your settings are housed.

Each of these phones also have some fun features built in.

So on the iPhone, you have a macro mode

that uses the ultra-wide lens, and is quite stunning.

Then there's a cinematic video mode

that is kind of hit-or-miss,

but it's really great when it hits.

And it provides a great deal of depth of field

and slower focus pulling, to emulate cinematic cameras.

Then there's also photographic styles

that allow you to tune your camera's color

and contrast settings to fit your style.

And then however you tune it,

it will stay on the main camera, and always shoot that way.

Now, Google's camera promises that no face will be blurry

with its Face Unblur feature, that uses machine learning

and multiple images so that no face is ever blurry,

no matter how quickly a photo is taken

or a subject is moving.

It works most of the time, although in low-light,

it kind of all goes out the window.

There's also a motion mode that can add motion to cars

or trains or fast moving objects,

for a more professional looking shot.

And a magic eraser tool that allows you

to erase unwanted distractions in the back of your photos.

I've used magic eraser as a bar trick

for the last two weeks, and it totally blows people away.

And when it works, it really works.

It's amazing that you can do this on a phone.

And as many reviewers have said, if an iPhone had this,

people would be going absolutely nuts.

Though I will say when it misses it, it does miss.

Now, what I think that both of these systems are missing

is a pro mode, where I can manually adjust aperture,

shutter speed, ISO,

without having to download another app to do so.

As someone who shoots film on my Galaxy S10,

I'm in pro mode often,

because I can preview the shot I'm about to take.

If you've got pro in the name,

it seems like you should have it in the camera system too.

Okay, but there is one more feature of the Pixel 6 camera

that I think is really important.

Google claims the Pixel 6 camera system

is better at exposing for diverse skin tones.

They call this feature Real Tone.

And Google did this by diversifying their image datasets,

and by working with a panel of photography experts

to better train its photo algorithms.

But to figure out if any of that is true,

I hit up someone here at The Verge

who takes a lot of photos.

This is Mariya Abdulkaf,

she's a senior video producer here at The Verge.

She's also our in-house paparazzi.

- Those are some facts.

So today, we took the iPhone 13 Pro and the Pixel 6 Pro

around the office and outside,

and tested them in different lighting situations

to see how well they would take a photo of me.

I just really do have a preference towards the Pixel,

because it is actually getting more detail in my face.

Yeah, the True Tone isn't like the true tone of my face.

However, it is more accurate than the iPhone overall.

(camera shutter clicking)

- This last shot of Mariya, oh my gosh.

But let's talk video.

Both of these devices can shoot at 4K 60 frames per second.

The iPhone holds on to that same video we have come to love,

with decent stabilization and balanced colors,

and the added bonus of being able to shoot in ProRes.

It's not afraid to blow out the highlights

or keep the shadows dark,