Quick camera shootout: Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs OPPO Find X2 Pro

The OPPO Find X2 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra have some of the biggest, baddest camera sensors on the market. Both are much larger than other mobile camera sensors from the past couple of years, and they both bin down to 12MP to create larger pixels. The 48MP Sony IMX 689 in the Find X2 Pro is a 1/1.43-inch 48MP sensor, while the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra’s 108MP ISOCELL is a slightly larger 1/1.33-inches.

Read: Samsung Galaxy S20 Buyers Guide – Everything You Need to Know

While we’re likely to see more phones use these sensors in the coming months, these are the only phones to use them right now. Because of that, we thought we’d do a short photo comparison of the images coming out of these devices.

Note that the RAW images you could potentially get from these sensors would probably look much different, and there is quite a bit of processing happening here, dictated by each manufacturer. But if you wanted to see how two $1,400 phones compete in image quality in a quick shootout, you’ve come to the right place.

Related: Camera shootout: Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra vs Google Pixel 4 XL

OPPO Find X2 Pro vs Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra camera comparison

Undoubtedly, color and contrast are the two aspects where these phones veer off from one another. The Galaxy S20 Ultra is much more saturated, and also adds more color to shadows and highlights of an image. The green in the image above pops much more in the Galaxy S20 Ultra’s interpretation of the photo. But the Find X2 Pro has much better white balance overall. There is almost no color in the whites of the image in the Find X2 Pro, and it handles shadows very well. This does result in a slightly flatter image, but I quite like it.

In the images above, it is blatantly clear how different the color is from these two cameras. The X2 Pro turns the brown of the desk a sort of orange-brown, where the Ultra stays a more natural color. The blue of the candle is more saturated on the Galaxy S20 Ultra as well, and there is much more contrast here.

In this photo of me, the same remains true. There is better white balance in the Find X2 Pro image, and it has good dynamic range as well. In comparison, the Galaxy S20 Ultra adds more contrast but doesn’t get color quite right. The whites are a little dark and it saturates the TV in the background a lot. Overall, I’d give the win the Find X2 Pro on this one.

In the image above, white balance is much better on the OPPO Find X2 Pro. The clouds are more naturally white, whereas the Galaxy S20 Ultra likes to add blue to the white areas of the picture. The bricks are also more saturated. If you want something more dramatic the S20 Ultra wins, but the OPPO Find X2 Pro is much more true to life.

The images above show low-light output from both devices. The first image was straight out of the camera in auto mode. In this image, the Galaxy S20 ultra is darker but retains detail much better than the OPPO Find X2 Pro. With night mode, the Ultra gets much brighter but still doesn’t look amazing. For some reason, the OPPO Find X2 Pro adds a strange pink color cast, probably having a difficult time processing the white balance of the image.

Finally, this last image is a great example of how both devices saturate colors. The Galaxy S20 Ultra pushes the yellows of the floor to some pretty extreme levels, where the OPPO Find X2 Pro retains the color much better. OPPO’s color science is much more true to life, and the shadows are raised a lot more to show more detail.

Which phone do you think produced a better image? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below!