One of the most-hyped features in the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone is its "time-shifting" camera. When you take a photo of someone's face, the phone lets you pick the "best face" moment (within a few seconds of pressing the shutter), leaving the rest of the photo untouched.

The benefit of the time-shift is to eliminate group photos that are spoiled because one person blinked or had a goofy expression. Just zoom in on Owen's face, rewind a second to where his eyes are open and his tongue isn't hanging out, and you have the perfect family photo. In my review of the Z10, I found the feature, made possible by the phone's dual-core processor and BlackBerry 10 software, to work as promised.

It's also not entirely new. Similar time-shifting tied with face detection can be found in the Samsung Galaxy Note II (and a few other Samsung devices running Android 4.1 "Jelly Bean"). Samsung implements the function in setting called Best Face, and it works a little differently than in the Z10, but it's essentially the same concept: Taking several photos in rapid succession, then using face detection to do some Photoshopping on the fly.

SEE ALSO: Samsung Galaxy Note II: A Giant Phone That Grows on You [REVIEW]

The idea of time-shifting photos is definitely useful, but who does it better: BlackBerry or Samsung? I put the two cameras — er, phones — face to face against each other to find out who is the better time-shifter. I graded them on four criteria — how many faces it could detect, how much flexibility it gives the photographer, how good the photo editing was, and the overall quality of the final photo.

Detecting Faces

First, I lined up a dozen Mashable staff members for the test, asking each to rapidly change their facial expression — something they were all surprisingly good at. In three successive shots, the BlackBerry Z10 was able to offer the time-shifting effect no more than half the faces in the shot: first four, then six and then four. The Galaxy Note II, one the other hand, saw between 8 and 10 out of 12 faces in all three of the shots it took.

The two faces the Note II couldn't identify were the same each time, leading me to suspect that they were left out of Best Face for the simple fact that the chins of those people were obscured in our setup. The Z10, however, appears to have a hard limit on how many faces it can time-shift, and it's about a half-dozen. Big families, take Note.

Time Mastery

The experience of time-shifting photos is dramatically different between the two phones. When you tap on a person's face (one that the camera detected, that is) on the Z10, it zooms in and puts the face in a large circle on the screen. Press and hold the small circle on the rim, then rotate it along the circumference, and the person's face changes before your eyes. It feels quite magical, letting you zero in on the exact moment you want.

Samsung's Best Face is comparatively primitive. Tap on a face, and you get a maximum of five options (the number of pics the camera takes with the mode engaged), and sometimes not even that many. In the first group photo it took, the Note II detected 10 faces, but for some of them it only offered a single face to choose from — which makes the feature moot. Others had only two or three.

On subsequent shots, there were more options for the faces detected, so perhaps it just needed to "warm up." Samsung also offer a bonus: The camera will recommend what it believes is the "best face" for each person it detects. I don't know what criteria it's using for this, but I generally agreed with it about 90% of the time.

Photoshop Skills

After selecting the faces that looked best, both phones apply some fast image editing, constructing the perfect photo (well, as perfect as it'll get). But as any discerning eye knows, image editing is a skill — there are experts, and there are novices.

The Z10 has some serious chops in this department. The final images I created looked great — both from a distance and zoomed in. I couldn't detect any image artifacts at all, at least nothing beyond the usual cameraphone noise.

As for the Note II, it was not at the head of the class. In one of the images, there was a clear artifact created by the image editing — a jarring vertical line (see below). It may have detected the "best face," but it definitely didn't result in the best photo.

Overall Quality

For photo quality, it was no contest. The Z10 blew away the Note II in overall photo quality, producing a much sharper picture in the same well-lit indoor room conditions. I found this odd since both cameras have an 8-megapixel camera, but it goes to show that megapixels are just the tip of the imagery iceberg. Optics, sensor technology, image processing and software matter just as much if not more, and BlackBerry definitely did its homework here. (Check out both pics below — Samsung's is on top.)

Parting Shots

Kudos to Samsung for being first out of the gate with a time-shifting camera in the Galaxy Note II, and its face detection is definitely superior to the BlackBerry Z10. But in every other respect, the Z10 blows the Note II right out of the water. Photo quality and image editing count for a lot, but by far the strongest feature of the Z10's Time Shift is the overall experience. The first time you "dial" a good expression on someone's face to make a bad photo beautiful is a total wow moment.

Bottom line: the BlackBerry Z10 is a better time traveler than the Samsung Galaxy Note II. How much does the feature matter to you, though? Let us know in the comments.

Z10 time-shifting image by Emil Eifrem, Mashable

Images by Pete Pachal, Mashable

BONUS: BlackBerry Z10 Review