Introduction
You can imagine we have a ton of phones lying around at the office. You'd think then it would be easy enough to pick up just the right one for any given task at any given time. Ah, but selfie videos? Has anybody looked into which phone is the best for vlogging? We are not quite sure, but we're sure we haven't. Well, about time we fix this.
We ended 2017 with a few top ten lists where we tried to pick the 10 best phones in several categories: battery life, display quality, and camera performance. The latter we split further into three: rear camera stills, rear camera videos, and selfie stills. Plenty obvious what's been missing then, and we'll be addressing it now - front camera videos.
There are probably more than a few ways to look at it. For an aspiring vlogger making their first steps in the field, a smartphone is the obvious device to test if the glamorous YouTube vlogger life is worth pursuing.
That's a very specific use case, however, and one that comes with more or less strict peripheral hardware requirements - tripod/handle/gimbal, mic, lighting, the lot. All of which is extensively covered, precisely on YouTube.
And it's not like vlogging is the sole use of the front-facing video camera. Moments must be recorded for personal use and not just for the world to see - perhaps even more so.
Plus, around GSMArena we're not vlogging people, we're phones people. Hence, we're more inclined towards looking into what a smartphone is capable of all on its own - that is, for video capture of yourself with the screen as a viewfinder.
We figured it wouldn't be much too complicated of a task until we actually got round to doing it. One by one, the list of criteria grew pretty long. If we only knew what we were getting into.
How we tested
The parameters we examined started with detail and resolution. Most phones have their selfie cameras capped at 1080p, but there are outliers - Samsung Galaxy flagships have had front-facing video cams recording up to 1440p since their displays hit that resolution, and the Nokia 8 can even capture 4K selfie videos.
Focus is mightily important too. If it's fixed focus, how well does it cover a range of distances from your arm fully stretched to up-your-nose close? If there's autofocus, how accurate does it lock on to your face, and does it stay there or does it hunt?
Exposure is another major component of perceptible video quality, and in the case of selfie cameras with their usually tiny sensors and limited dynamic range you'll want the phone to bias towards having your face properly exposed even if that means sacrificing background imagery. The best will manage to keep both but that usually requires some sort of HDR trickery.
Obviously, colors are crucial as well. You probably know best what your face looks like and you'd prefer to be captured with some degree of semblance. If not, some phones will offer a beautification feature in videos as well (goes without saying for selfie stills these days).
We'd say audio quality is vastly more important for selfie videos than it is for rear camera footage - after all, if you're recording yourself on video, you're very likely to have something to say for the camera. And it's not like you'll be rushing to add a dedicated audio track on top of it in post-production. Post what? Exactly.
In low light things get trickier still. To fit 30 frames in every second you can't drop shutter speed below 1/33s, so sensor size, high ISO performance, and noise suppression algorithms become key. A front facing flash could save the day, but you generally don't want the harsh contrast between your face and the background.
Angle of view is an interesting topic too. On the one hand, ultra-wide cameras distort the subject and typically aren't too flattering on faces. But then that exaggerated perspective may be just the thing you're looking for, and you can also fit a ton of friends with you in the frame. Ideally, you'd have both an ultra-wide and a more regular-ish cam - it's not unheard of and we've seen those too.
Anyways, we rounded up about two dozen phones we had accessible - the ones with promising selfie video credentials, that is. To examine the phones against the criteria above, we came up with a couple of simple test scenes. The first one is a walk around the office and it serves well to test exposure, stabilization, focus and detail. For the second one, we went into our studio to see how low light affects these and we used to opportunity to do a little talking on camera. Well, Angie did.
Finally, there's the matter of price. If Phone A captures the most amazing of selfie videos, but costs twice as much as Phone B whose footage will do, is it worth it? Well, it's your money, but some deals are objectively better than others.
We were aiming for a Top 5, but as it turned out, it wasn't that simple and we ended up with a list of seven phones. We'll be presenting them on the following pages.
Our 7 top pics for selfie videos are...
Daylight is when most of your video capture will take place. Right? Well, at least that's how we see it and that's what we tested for. Our Compound daylight torture test scene, a.k.a. Scene 1, is great for examining a number of things all at once. Sort of. The six different positions in it present different challenges, so we've grabbed 6 screenshots from each phone's footage for a side-by-side appraisal.
In the first and second position Angie is well lit and it's a nice opportunity to judge detail and color rendition. The Nokia obviously rules when it comes to the former - it's got 4 times the resolution, duh. It does, however, tend to overexpose Angie's face, losing detail there, though the hair is super well defined. Colors are generally the coldest of this bunch, and skin tones have a yellowish cast.
It's nothing like the iPhone X's overly artificial warmth and general dreamy look. We admit, even if it's technically not accurate, we find it subjectively quite pleasing - for us Caucasians a warm skin tone simply looks better and you'd probably prefer not to look at each and every blemish. Or wrinkles - there are some old men around the office too. Not that we're referring to our text editor, not at all!
The Galaxy S8 (or S8+, or Note8, they're all the same) can record 1440p, so it comes in second behind the Nokia in resolution. It captures plenty of detail too, and the 1440p mode comes with the added bonus of a more natural look compared to the slightly overprocessed 1080p videos. Samsungs paint skin tones with just an extra bit of added yellow, be it rear or front cameras, and the Galaxy S8 is no different.
Position 1: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
The Huawei Mate 10 Pro's footage is nice and detailed though there's some of that iPhone haziness. Exposure is handled well, and colors have a slight pinkish tint.
The vivo V7+ tends to expose brighter than most, a bit like the Nokia in this scene, with both the good and bad consequences. Skin tones are quite pleasing, though.
The Pixel 2s (either size) has some of the best skin tones in our book, but detail is just about average and it has been known to wipe out the occasional skin details. Okay, most of them.
Position 2: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
Position 3 is one of the most difficult and many phones failed here. Exposure bias on your face is a must in this strongly backlit situation and we'd expect most phones to prioritize on that. The best ones could even engage some sort of dynamic range optimization algorithm and potentially save some of the highlights, but that's bonus points.
The majority just end up with clipped highlights, and the vivo and the Mate figure that they might as well at least have the face well exposed - those two have the brightest exposures and the best skin tone preservation in this scene. Meanwhile the iPhone is struggling with focus, and the Nokia does matrix exposure metering which leaves the face completely dark. The Pixel 2 is the second darkest sample here - we were expecting more from #teampixel.
Position 3: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
It gets a little easier as we move into Position 4, where the bright backlight isn't as dominant. Still most phones are struggling to find a balance between noise and noise reduction, with most leaning towards the latter and losing fine detail. The Mate opts for a little more noise, and it's not looking all that bad. But what's that about, Nokia?
Position 4: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
Position 5 should supposedly ease up on the contrast, with the column providing some shade from the outside light, though things do remain mightily challenging.
Position 5: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
Which brings us back close to our starting point, so we can examine how quickly the phones adapt back to improved lighting.
Position 6: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
Moving into our studio for our second scene, where we tested the phones in low light. The setup includes a light meter on the desk where Angie is sitting. We set the lights for the start of each video so that the meter reads exactly 20lux and midway through the clip we increased the light to full blast, or around 1200lux, for comparison.
As you can imagine, none of these videos was ever going to be amazing, but we figured we'd push the limits anyway.
The Nokia's footage is severely underexposed and particularly noisy - high video resolution is one thing, but low-light performance is quite different.
The Pixel 2 doesn't fare too well here either. Its footage may be practically chroma noise free, but is very soft and has a weird processed look to it. The iPhone X is especially bad as well, and so is the OnePlus 5T.
The vivo V7+ decreases shutter speed below that 1/33s threshold we mentioned. While this makes the videos brighter and the screenshots appear clearer, in fact the frame rate ends up anywhere between 15 and 20fps and the footage looks quite choppy.
The least bad low light selfie video has to be the one out of the Galaxies. Some way to put it, but that's how it is.
Low light: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
For comparison, check out screenshots of the same scene with the lights on at full blast.
Same scene, bright light: Pixel 2 • Galaxy S8 • iPhone X • OnePlus 5T • Mate 10 Pro • vivo V7+ • Nokia 8
The things the screenshots don't reveal include stabilization, focus, and audio quality. We were most impressed with the OnePlus 5T's and the Galaxy S8's stabilization algorithms, while the Pixel felt almost as good, but still a notch behind. The Mate 10 Pro did an okay job of smoothing handheld videos too, while the iPhone X wasn't at the level we expected. The vivo and the Nokia were the shakiest of the bunch.
Obviously, we've put up the samples on YouTube, so you can examine the actual videos yourselves.
When it comes to focus, the phones with autofocus generally struggled badly in low light, which is to be expected. There was also the occasional hunting we observed even in good light on both the Galaxy S8 and the Nokia 8. With fixed focus phones on the other hand, you need to be careful to stay in their sweet spot.
As for audio quality, the iPhone X and the Pixel 2 record mono audio at 96kbps. That looks worse on paper than it sounds in reality, but we still feel that whatever savings are achieved in file size and what... processing power?... are unjustified and these two should immediately switch to stereo recording and bump up the bit rate. The mics are there and if the makers are not that stubborn it could probably even happen in a software update.
The Galaxy S8 and the Nokia 8 record in stereo and devote 256kbps to that so it's no surprise they sound the best here. Both are clean with no background noise, but the Galaxy still has the upper hand in our view.
The OnePlus 5T's stereo track gets a lowly 96kbps, but does well within those bits. The Mate 10 Pro and the vivo V7+ have pretty bad audio with the Mate having a constant noise behind your voice, while the vivo sounds hollow and exhibits odd left-right volume pulsations.
Random thoughts
We laid out what we were looking for in a selfie video camera in the beginning, but as the testing progressed it turned out that we may have been a little overly optimistic. Or demanding. That leads to disappointment, usually. Selfie cameras are just not there yet.
Anyway, we won't go so far as to say we were entirely let down by all phones here, but common flaws became evident. One is that selfie cameras typically have limited dynamic range and generally poor low-light performance. There's only so much a tiny sensor can do in challenging lighting, and that really applies to even the best of selfie cameras.
Thing is, some deal with the issue by boosting exposure to at least capture the subject (yours truly) with the background entirely blown out, while others aim for an averaged exposure that preserves the background but leads to dark faces. We tend to favor the first approach, while Nokia, for example, goes with the second for the 8's selfie video algorithms. So does the HTC U11+ - the end results look pretty bad.
There are outliers when it comes to skin tone reproduction. While most stay true to life, the iPhone, for example, goes overboard on warmth and saturation - not really a bad thing and we actually like that. It just stands out. The HTC U11+ is quite the opposite - it has the most muted colors in the bunch we tested, and as it turns out, that's the wrong side to err on.
We don't want to single out phones like that, but it's hard to believe that a $900 top-of-the-line phone in 2018 can't record half-decent selfie videos. Especially with all that rear camera video prowess on board. Yes, V30, we're looking at you. LG really needs to up its selfie game, both for stills and video.
Stabilization is another thing we'd like to see more often in selfie cameras. Both kinds of it too - more optically stabilized front cameras, and then more effective software deshaking. Obviously, for more serious applications a gimbal will do a better job, but a gimbal costs extra, and not every casual user would be willing to invest in one. The added cost to fit a stabilized camera lens couldn't be all that much, right?
Conclusion
A few things became abundantly clear in our testing of the phones' selfie video cameras. For one, as a general rule, the front cameras on current smartphones, flagship or otherwise, aren't as good as we'd like them to be. Not for video capture at least. Average, decent, okay - call them whatever makes you feel better, but they just come with way too many compromises.
Hence someone looking to vlog on a smartphone should plan on having plenty of light, a tripod, gimbal or especially steady hands, and potentially some form of an external recorder to capture the audio with better quality. And only then they should examine the color and detail to pick a phone that suits their taste.
Having established we're no vloggers, there are still smartphones that will do just fine for the occasional fun clip - it won't be production quality, but memories don't need to be. For those particular instances, you'd be lucky to have a Galaxy S8 to pull out of your pocket - or the S8+, or Note8, they all have the same cameras. When the light is right, they'll give you more detail than most thanks to the QHD resolution, plus colors that strike a good balance between reality and making you look better. They have top-notch stabilization, autofocus that works most of the time, audio that's more than an afterthought, and half-decent low-light performance. The closest to a complete package, so to speak.
We feel that the vivo V7+ deserves a mention. Its capabilities for capturing selfies extend beyond the stills and are more than just marketing hype. And it's the most affordable phone of this select group of flagships... that some flagships didn't even make it into. Anyways.
In the end, we'll make a wish - the ones among us who aren't backwards grumpy old dudes, at least. We wish to have selfie cameras as good as the main ones. And, as a side note, it would never hurt if those got even better. Just saying.
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