[Galaxy S6 General] Timbukto:
I think its tone curve manipulation and the way sensors react to colors is also not the same so its color profiling as well. IMO the Sony has just as bad SMUDGYNESS at high ISO but it doensn't go full pink on us at times like the Samsung. Sony is showing 'bleeds' and amp glow at the edges too but they aren't highlighted pink for you! But then again even at ISO 200 the samsung exposure tone curve is *significantly* different...shadows are pulled up a LOT more. This is actually a very good thing at lower ISOs, but at higher ISOs can become a disadvantage...just like pulling shadows on any high ISO shot from pro cameras can produce lousy results. It is also very possible the Sony sensor has a tendency to have green chroma noise at high ISO while the ISOCELL veers red. Both on *paper* are just as bad in terms of engineering and SNR, but *subjectively* green noise is so often masked by the scene itself compared to red!

Also to correct vincent on his findings of multiple exposures vs single HDR mode...multiple exposures can give you more true RAW DR latitude in an image but a single exposure in 'HDR' mode is never giving you *more* DR, it is only giving you subjectively better tone curves more fitting to the scene. But honestly the iPhone 6 will give you terrific tone curves without multiple exposures or *with* multiple exposures so its not a mutually exclusive thing! The single shot HDR is somewhat disappointing to me as it is basically saying, hey use this mode if you want better tone curve manipulation...but you should *have* that by default really! Samsung's HDR mode is really DR COMPRESSION, while multiple exposure modes actually *do* try to capture more real dynamic range at the cost of ghosting. But folks that have a good understanding of photography understand that HDR should be done carefully stabilized without much subject movement. And folks that have a good understanding also know that a single shot HDR mode is just a 'lighting' optimization or tone curve manipulation...bumping up ISO to get more shadows at the expense of highlights is actually a reduction of DR! And applying NR to the image is basically *cheating* in terms of DR (since DR is measured often by a noise threshold at minimum signal levels).

Eventually smartphone cameras will get to the point that multiple exposure blending is going to be the norm and de-ghosting is going to be done via very intelligent algorithms, etc...and you will get very high SNR out of tiny sensors, and portions of the frame that have subject movement will look like they are shot at higher ISO...but this is really best you can get. It is very important that either Samsung/Google really keep on top of the multiple exposure processing game for cameras.

Either way when we get RAW capability you should be able to at least do some of this stuff by hand...but really I think smartphone users demand a bit of instant gratification.

Also I pixel peeped the images and the best most comparable image is the church scene. The scene with the car the ISOCELL version misfired on AF. My ISOCELL misfires on AF in low light all the time, I would wonder if the hit rate on the Sony version is any better. That would really give some clues as to true low light performance (including video low light, etc). Basically if one sensor is noticably worse than the other in AF at low light, its possible its cause the SNR ratio makes CDAF algorithms trip up! But some Sony sensor users have mentioned their AF to be lousy at times, but from what I've seen which is only anecdotal, the ISOCELL has the lesser hit rate.

Another random thought I have is...are these tone curves being applied to some jpeg output from the sensor, or RAW output. Many filtering/effects are done on *jpeg* in mobile apps, etc. Applying post processing and tone curve manipulation to jpeg can also explain why things get icky real fast, etc...I wonder we need true RAW capability in Android before Samsung's camera app produces better results?