Poll results: You've noticed camera lens flare in your phone's photos

Resident Features Editor Rita El-Khoury noticed that her Pixel 7 Pro shoots photos with lens flare more often than other smartphones. That’s a bit of a downer given the Pixel line’s camera credentials.

Rita outlined the issue in an article last week, and we also used the article to ask whether you’ve suffered from this issue. Well, the results are in, and here’s what you said.

Have you noticed camera lens flare in your phone’s photos?

Results

Over 1,300 votes were cast in this poll, and 39.6% of respondents said they haven’t noticed lens flare on photos they shot on their phones. This suggests that the problem isn’t a given across the board.

Meanwhile, 38.6% of surveyed readers said they noticed this problem specifically on their Pixel phone. That hints at Google’s phones indeed suffering from this issue more than devices from other brands.

On the other hand, 11.4% of respondents said their phone suffered from this issue and that it wasn’t a Pixel handset. We asked these users to respond with their device in the comments, but none actually did. Finally, 10.3% of surveyed readers simply said they didn’t take that many snaps in the first place.

More reading: Tips and tricks for smartphone photographers

In other words, roughly 50% of surveyed readers said they noticed lens flare on their phones, be it a Pixel or other brand.

For what it’s worth, lens flare is almost inevitable in some situations, such as when you’re shooting directly into the sun. But this issue can also occur due to poor-quality lenses. Thankfully, brands like vivo and Samsung both offer improved lenses to reduce glare and lens flare.

Comments

• Kevin Wimberly: I don’t not get those flares, but having been a professional photographer for some time, I’ve learned how to angle shots with the influence of the sun. Even SLR cameras with $3000 lenses get the flares if you do not correct your angle of your shot.
• Wibbly: I get it from time to time on a p6. I think it’s all to to do with the quality of the coatings they use on the glass that covers the lens and on the lens itself. But even professional lenses on DSLRs can do this if the sun shines on them at the wrong angle if especially if they have even a very good UV filter covering them.
• Tomáš Wünsch: Mostly just fog whenever my glass is a bit oily or smudged by something. Google Pixel 4a & 4XL & 5
• mauricio chacon: This issue is ultra dumb on pixels, pixel 3 almost got rid of it, but then came the stupid huge camera visor on the p4 p5 and the p6 being the worst, the p7 should be a lot better than the p6 bit still those huge camera visors are useless