When the iPhone 13 Pro launched earlier this fall, we said it had the “best camera” in a smartphone. The larger sensor behind the main wide-angle lens coupled with a wider f/1.5 aperture left us saying, “Whoa, look at this photo,” more often than we were used to. But a few weeks later, Google’s Pixel 6 Pro, with its 50-megapixel sensor that is hard-coded to produce 12.5-megapixel images, was finally released, proving a worthy competitor for the iPhone 13 Pro’s 12-megapixel camera.
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So this year, in order to settle the score, I set out to take 1,000 photos on each device. I carried them everywhere, annoyed all of my friends by stopping to take photos every other minute, and was ultimately left with a vast range of situations and lighting conditions to compare the photos from these two cameras. Initially, I thought a winner would become obvious around the 200-photo mark, but I quickly realized using these devices was about far more than their end products.
Tune in to my video above, from my camera series Full Frame, to see what phone ultimately took the gold. Or visit the iPhone 13 Pro’s or Google Pixel 6 Pro’s 100 best photos gallery to decide a winner for yourself.