Comparison of low light photos from Galaxy S9+ and Pixel 2 XL: the Pixel produces the best images, but S9+ more reliably produces good first shots due to OIS
Vlad Savov / The Verge :
Context & Ripple Effects
This comparison lands a week after Android Police's Galaxy S9 review already conceded the S9's rear camera is great in low light yet still not better than the Pixel 2's. The Verge's head-to-head sharpens why: the Pixel 2 XL, which swept the December five-phone camera comparison against iPhone X, Note8, HTC U11 and LG V30, still owns peak image quality, while Samsung's optical image stabilization buys consistency shot-to-shot.
The framing matters because it splits the camera race into two strategies — Google's computational pipeline versus Samsung's lens-and-stabilizer hardware — a split the related coverage keeps revisiting, from Huawei's P30 Pro out-shooting a Pixel 3 with Night Sight in 2019 to the 2021 finding that testers preferred Samsung's rendering of darker skin tones even while calling Pixel's more accurate.
First-order effects
- Buyers choosing between the two flagships face a concrete trade-off rather than a clear winner: the Pixel 2 XL for the single best low-light frame, the Galaxy S9+ when the first tap has to land without retakes.
- Samsung's OIS advantage gives its marketing a defensible claim against the Pixel's quality crown — reliability, not resolution, becomes the counter-narrative to Google's camera dominance.
Second-order effects
- Google is pushed to make its computational results less dependent on user technique, since a rival can now win the everyday case (first-shot success) without matching its ceiling — the pressure that later shows up as Night Sight-style processing.
- Samsung is pushed to close the quality gap through optics rather than software, validating the dual-aperture hardware path its own S9 review coverage highlights.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, low-light performance becomes the decisive camera battleground, with each generation escalating the arms race — Huawei's P30 Pro subsequently beating a Pixel 3 with Night Sight shows hardware and computational camps converging on the same target.
- Camera verdicts fragment into multiple axes (peak quality, consistency, color accuracy across skin tones), making 'best camera phone' a contested, multi-category title instead of a single crown like the Pixel 2 XL's late-2017 sweep.
The trend: Smartphone camera competition is consolidating around low-light performance, where optical stabilization and computational photography are racing to erase each other's advantages.