After months of waiting, we finally have Apple iPhone 6 (and its big brother, the iPhone 6 Plus). It’s the 7th or 8th edition of the iPhone (depending on how you count the 5C) and with each passing year, the “phone” designation appears less and less on the nose. Isn’t it really the iCamera?

No matter what you call it, photography stands at or near the center of the iPhone 6’s key attributes. Considering where smartphone photography began, it’s a surprising turn of events.

Years ago I wrote an angry post begging consumers to stop using their puny, 1 megapixel flip phone cameras to capture precious moments. It was a futile effort and also quite wrongheaded. What I did not understand at the time is that consumers were not settling for bad smartphone photography, they were grabbing with both hands the ability to share instantly with friends and family visual news of the birth of their daughter or of their son graduating from college. Having any camera of any quality on always-connected devices was, quite simply, a revelation for consumers.

That connectivity has only gotten better and with it, smartphone photography and the myriad platforms for us to share our images has vastly grown and improved. Smart phone manufacturers such as Apple are not necessarily leading the trend, but are riding the wave and, the best of them are using the top technology our ultra-thin and light smartphones will support. With the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple continues to lead this charge.

It’s all about the photo

Apple upgraded the OS, components and design, but let’s stop and think about how many of those things have a direct impact on the iPhone 6’s photographic capabilities. The A8 chip includes an image signal processor that helps the iSight camera capture 240 frames per second movies and powers things like “Focus Pixels” that speed up autofocus through a more technical process called phase detection autofocus. So the 8 MP iSight is focusing on a pixel-by-pixel level.

The camera also has better facial and smile recognition (a feature often most noticeable in burst mode – it loves a good smile and open eyes). The M8 chip is all about motion sensing, but it lends a hand in telling the lens how to move so images stay smooth. Heck, Apple even described the larger displays on the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus as excellent "viewfinders" for the iSight camera.

Everyone thought Apple would finally deliver sapphire crystal covered screens, but the only place you’ll find sapphire on the iPhone 6 is, you guessed it, the iSight camera lens cover.

At a software level, iOS 8 now natively edits photos and Apple has spent a lot of time improving how we organize all our photos and videos based on time and place taken. Perhaps more tellingly, Apple now also organizes your media by kinds of imagery, including panorama, videos, slo-mo and timelapse.

Apple is not alone in realizing how crucially important image tools (hardware and software) have become in the smartphone market. Samsung typically puts photo and video advancements at the forefront of its Galaxy and Galaxy Note rollouts.

Be sensible

I’m all for a laser focus on more powerful smartphone cameras, but over the past few years, I’ve seen too many smartphone manufacturers try to one-up each other with increasingly gimmicky options.

When Samsung released the Galaxy S4 a year or so ago, it had nutty options like simultaneous use of the front and back cameras and vignettes that let you put your face inside a heart on top of another picture.

Other manufacturers keep trying to give you post-focusing tools. I blame this trend on Lytro, which created a whole product just for this single photo trick. At least companies such as LG and Samsung can make it just one of many useless gimmicks (I’ll do my artistic blurring in Instagram, thank you very much).

Apple, though, kind of stays above all this. It rarely, if ever, introduces photography gimmicks (Okay, okay, I do remember Photo Booth). I know, slow motion video may seem like a gimmick, but I think it’s a powerful artistic and research tool (What really does happen when you hit someone with a banana cream pie? How does that fire really move?). Time lapse is an awesome tool for project tracking and even pure entertainment.

However, all these features are not what makes Apple’s iSight camera special. It’s Apple’s approach to photography, which is both basic and essential.

Look at the interface for example. It’s spare. There’s the large view finder screen and the menu below it. Flash, HDR, Timer and flip cameras are above. Below are the shoot modes and below that is a thumbnail of your last photo (or the one you just took) and a link to pre-set filters you can apply as you shoot (I never use these as we have now entered the post-filter era).

It’s been this way for years. When I look at camera interfaces on Android phones, I usually see the manufacturer’s vision of what the right collection of photograph tools should be and whatever esoteric iconography they think makes the most sense. It can be quite jarring to switch between a Samsung Galaxy S5 and an Amazon Fire Phone or LG G3. Only in the last year or so have I noticed companies such as Samsung and Nokia (with the Windows Phone), paring back down to essentials. In smartphone photography, less often is more.

Looking good

Apple’s iSight 8 megapixel sensor and five-element lens is not necessarily the most sophisticated among smartphones. Of course, virtually all smartphones’ image capture capabilities pale in comparison to the run-of-the mill super zoom or prosumer camera. Most, including the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, only offer image-degrading digital zoom and it is notable that competitors get around this limitation by stuffing in the megapixels, so there’s more information that you can zoom in on after you’ve taken the photo. And while some of these smartphones have some exposure control, none offer a complete set of native manual camera settings, such as shutter speed, aperture and ISO.

Apple is no different. It’s doesn’t have a big lens or optical zoom. And, as I noted in my review, Samsung, LG and Nokia all beat the iPhone 6 on pure pixel count. Based on my tests, though, pixels only tell half the story.

Since photography plays such a crucial role in our smartphone experience, I decided to go back and take an even more comparative look at the iPhone 6 iSight camera versus more-megapixel-packing cameras on the Samsung Galaxy S5, Nokia Lumia Icon and Amazon’s Fire Phone, which have 16, 20 and 13 megapixels, respectively.

A few notes about the photos: Unless indicated, I didn’t use HDR and, wherever possible, tried to let the smartphone cameras set focus points and exposure levels. Since these photos were not taken under strictly controlled conditions and the images below are not actual size, the results should be considered anecdotal.

The model in all of my tests is Watercooler Reporter Laura Vitto.

Low light still life

Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

All the camera’s handled this shot fairly well. I used natural light and no flash. The Apple iPhone and Amazon Fire Phone did the best jobs of replicating the colors. While taking the photos, I noticed that the iPhone 6 was the only one to pick up faces in the photo in the background.

Winner: iPhone 6

Natural light portrait

Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

Of the four phones I tested, three produced good-looking portraits of Laura illuminated by natural light from the window. The Nokia Lumia Icon has an unaccountably green tinge. The Samsung Galaxy S5 and Apple iPhone 6 produced the truest portraits, with the most accurate skin tone and hair color.

Winners: iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5

Backlit with Not HDR

Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

Photos where the main illumination is behind your subject are the bane of all photography, but that doesn’t stop people from taking these kinds of photos. Smartphone cameras will almost invariably read the light behind the subject and even tapping on the subject in the viewfinder screen may not correct the final image.

None of the four phones did a particularly good job here, but the Samsung Galaxy S5 almost managed to produce a balanced photo. The Amazon Fire Phone also did well, although the background is totally blown out.

Winner: Samsung Galaxy S5 Honorable Mention: Amazon Fire Phone

Backlit with HDR

Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

How do you fix backlit photos? With High Dynamic Range photography, which actually shoots multiple images at different exposures in rapid succession and then squeezes them all into one properly exposed photo.

For this shot, I turned on HDR on all the cameras, but did not touch the screen to help them set exposure.

Three of the phones, the iPhone 6, Nokia Lumia Icon and Amazon Fire Phone, produced vastly better images. Oddly, the Samsung Galaxy S5 barely improved at all. In this case, the image is over-saturated compared to the rest. Part of the problem may be it tried too hard to properly expose and sharpen the background, almost at the expense of the subject.

As for the other three images, the iPhone 6 shot is the best exposed and rendered the truest colors.

Winner: iPhone 6

Action

Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

It’s not easy to catch action with smartphone, but new technology such as focus pixels or phase detection (on both the iPhone 6 and Samsung Galaxy S5) help these little camera focus and set exposure more quickly.

Without the use of a flash, though, all these cameras were at a disadvantage, The Nokia Lumia Icon’s shot was a blurry mess, but none of the phones, including the optical-image-stabilizing iPhone 6 Plus could completely stop the action. Of all of them, the iPhone 6 captured the sharpest shot, but that may have been dumb luck.

Winner: Inconclusive

Motion test

Image: Mashable, Lance Ulanoff

My last photo set was specifically designed to test the optical image stabilizing capabilities found in the IPhone 6 Plus. It’s a feature the iPhone 6 Plus shares with one other phone in this shootout: the Amazon Fire Phone.

The set-up for this shot was pretty simple. I walked along side Laura as she looked at me and then took a picture. The idea was to try and simulate a parent who might be trying to get a shot of her kid running down the soccer field. The two cameras with OIS did the best job of keeping Laura’s face in focus, though there’s a bit of image distortion in the Fire Phone shot.

Winner: iPhone 6 Plus.

Conclusions

It’s true, photos from the cameras with higher megapixels are considerably larger than what you’ll get from either iPhone 6. However, in my tests and day-to-day experience, those cameras do not always produce higher quality pictures.

All the manufacturers apply a wide variety of photographic technologies to deliver the best image results. Both the iPhone and Fire Phone have five-element lenses. The Nokia Lumia Ion has a Carl Zeiss lens. They’re all pushing the boundaries on aperture, with Fire Phone going down to a 2.0 F stop (the iPhone goes down to 2.2). They’re all backed by differing sensors, CPUs and software.

In the end, it’s a kind of alchemy that produces the best imagery and in many cases, Apple’s image magic leads the pack.