Pixel 2 XL beats iPhone X, Galaxy Note8, HTC U11, and LG V30 as best camera, but iPhone X takes better selfies and Note8 is most versatile for video
iPhone X vs. Pixel 2 XL vs. Note 8 vs. HTC U11 vs. LG V30 — Smartphone cameras get better every year, but this year more than ever truly felt like a leap.
Context & Ripple Effects
This shootout is the December verdict on a fall lineup that had been building since September, when The Verge ran its flagship spec comparison across the iPhone X, Note8, U11, V30, and Pixel line. Weeks earlier, DxOMark had handed the iPhone 8 Plus a record 94 camera score, four points clear of the original Pixel and HTC U11 — so expectations were that Apple would sweep.
Instead, Google's single-lens Pixel 2 XL takes overall stills honors against dual-camera flagships from Apple and Samsung, while the wins split by discipline: iPhone X on selfies via its TrueDepth system, Note8 on video versatility. With Counterpoint crediting the iPhone X with 35% of worldwide smartphone profits that quarter, camera bragging rights carry real margin weight.
First-order effects
- Google gets the headline claim that computational processing can beat Apple's and Samsung's dual-camera hardware on stills, directly undercutting the DxOMark-record iPhone 8 Plus narrative Apple carried into the holiday season.
- Apple's TrueDepth front camera and Samsung's Note8 video stack each hold a category win, giving both a defensible marketing angle even in defeat.
Second-order effects
- Samsung and HTC face pressure to answer software-driven image quality with their own processing rather than sensor counts, since the single-lens Pixel 2 XL just beat every dual-camera rival in the field.
- Benchmark authorities like DxOMark gain importance as the tiebreaker when editorial shootouts split by category, pushing all five vendors to optimize for scored tests as well as real-world reviews.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the camera race shifts from lens hardware to image-processing pipelines — a trajectory that runs straight into the iPhone 11 Pro's Night mode finally beating the Pixel 3 in low light two years later.
- Category-split verdicts (stills vs. selfies vs. video) become the standard framing for flagship comparisons, fragmenting 'best camera' into per-discipline claims each vendor can advertise.
The trend: Flagship competition is moving from camera hardware specs to computational image processing, with Google's software-first approach forcing Apple and Samsung to follow.