Who has best camera: iPhone 5S vs iPhone SE vs iPhone 6S

One of the main questions that remained after the presentation of Apple on 21 March was the camera. What 12-megapixel photo module has new iPhone SE? The same as iPhone 6S, or it is a sensor with its own characteristics? We decided to find out.

It was decided to include three smartphones in our comparison: iPhone 5S, iPhone SE and iPhone 6S.

We considered three basic modes: daily landscape, night photo, macro, portrait and selfie.

Daily landscape

The first category came the most significant. Will you find differences between images taken on iPhone 6S and iPhone SE? We think that pictures are identical. Thus, we conclude that smartphones have the same 12-megapixel photo module.

Night photo

All models of iPhone have coped well with the test on the quality of photos in night mode. But iPhone SE and iPhone 6S have better detail than iPhone 5S. And again, we can see that the second and third photos are very similar to each other.

Macro

It seems to us that the quality of macro shot iPhone SE is a little better. However, note that auto focus cannot be the same settings on different smartphones. Apple iPhone 5S has a worse quality, both in detail and the number of noise.

Selfie

One of the main function of modern smartphone is self-portrait. The trouble is that iPhone SE and iPhone 5S has 1.2 megapixels modules, while iPhone 6S offers 5-MP front camera.  To ensure that the results were comparable, it had shot with the iPhone 6S greatly reduced.

Thus, photos iPhone 5S and iPhone SE lost a huge amount of detail, while selfie photos iPhone 6S have a very good quality. And doubly ironic that old iPhone 5S has the most accurate white balance.

Portrait

And again old iPhone 5S coped well with the white balance. However, the quality of 2.5-year-old smartphone much worse than new smartphones iPhone 6S and iPhone SE.

What result?

No doubt: iPhone SE and iPhone 6S have the same 12-megapixel camera. However, Apple decided not to improve the front-facing camera, which of course affected the quality selfie photos. In my opinion, front camera with a resolution of 1.2 megapixels in 2016 is not serious, and frankly embarrassing.