[Galaxy Note 4 General] BarryH_GEG:
Still and video capture are both important smartphone features. How important varies by user. Nokia's produced some incredible smartphone cameras. The most avid photographers in my little mobile ecosystem wouldn't consider giving up Android or iOS and moving to Windows Phone even if the pictures were universally 50% better from a Lumia.

This was an incredibly funny and effective at making its point commercial for the Lumia 1020's camera. Sadly, it didn't sell more phones.

[YOUTUBE]E2oai7fU_V8[/YOUTUBE]

The 4MP camera on the HTC One(M7/8) is universally panned. It's a one trick pony (low light performance) that produces pictures fit only for social use (displaying a pic taken with a One on the Note 4's display won't allow zoom because it's displayed at full resolution). People knew that and bought the phone anyway because they liked its other unique features (Boom Sound, aluminum build and design). The only phone I've owned whose camera I really didn't like was the HTC One X (noise, compression artifacts) but that's not the reason I'm not interested in their current products.

The Note 3's camera is fine for my use and I've gotten some incredible content from it along with missing shots I shouldn't have because of focus or lighting. I'm sure the Note 4's won't be any worse and with OIS it'll probably be significantly better. I'd buy a Note 4 even if the camera was no better than the N3's or even a bit worse. The camera's just one of my selection criteria. Would any of you buy a car with a gorgeous interior if the exterior was ugly, it got bad gas mileage, had poor reliability, or handled poorly? Choosing a smartphone typically involves multiple selection criteria borne from differing individual priorities. On that note (no pun intended), how many people here buy a smartphone with camera performance being their highest priority and singular biggest decision criteria? And for those that respond, what smartphone camera are you using now?

So Sony, LG, HTC (they have a camera announcement upcoming), The Chinese, or Apple could release a device with the ultimate camera. If it didn't have a stylus, active digitizer, multiview, and other stuff I use I wouldn't be moved. My Note 4 will be my sixth Samsung device (I only strayed once with the Teg 3 HTC One X). While they haven't been perfect and some h/w and s/w choices could be considered questionable they all served me incredibly well. Knowing what I'm getting next and what I can expect is worth something. In that regard, at least for me, Samsung's a safe choice. After all, I'm buying a phone with a camera, not a camera that does calls, MMS, and data. As always, YMMV. ;)

BTW, the iP6+ camera that keeps being brought up as a reference device has got its own issues to contend with. Here's a professional photographers take...

If you don’t feel like reading a 3,000 word review of the camera in the iPhone 6 Plus and just want to have something to say at the water cooler, then here you go.

The iPhone 6 Plus camera has two significant improvements: improved focus and optical image stabilization (the 6 only has digital image stabilization). *The focus was better than I expected and I was rarely able to trick it into missing focus even when I pushed it hard in a very dark testing environment.

The image stabilization provides a nice improvement in sharpness in low light, but Apple used it in a very smart way to also reduce the noise in the photo (slower shutter speed and capping the max ISO lower). *This produced much better images in very dim environments.

However, it’s not all roses and balloons. For some reason that I cannot understand, Apple has changed the JPG processing engine and dramatically reduced the contrast in the photos. This produces blotchy, ugly skin tones and dull, lifeless landscapes. *It’s not a subtle difference at all.

I also picked up on a number of bugs in the system. *One of which is a dramatically reduced frame rate when shooting in dark or high dynamic range environments. *In fact, despite the faster processor on the iPhone 6 Plus, I found the iPhone 5s could shoot twice as many frames in a given amount of time.

In short, the iPhone 6 Plus improves on two of the most important aspects of the camera quality that give it better results in low light, but at the same time make missteps that hurt contrast and add bugs to the system.

http://improvephotography.com/30019/iphone-6-camera-depth-review/​