OnePlus 5 vs iPhone 7 Plus Review: Dual-Lens Cameras Compared

By Jessica Ferrera, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The OnePlus 5 has recently been unveiled, and its dual-camera setup is actually giving the one offered by the iPhone 7 Plus a good fight.

While there have been other smartphones with a dual-lens camera before the iPhone 7 Plus was launched, Apple's adaptation of the said feature has somewhat made it more of a market trend.

OnePlus is one of the smartphone manufacturers known for offering equally competitive devices at a much lower price point, especially when compared to the iPhone's price tags.

The Chinese smartphone manufacturer finally unveiled its highly anticipated OnePlus 5 device about a week ago in New York. Easily, its specs have what it takes to tackle other bigger smartphone brands. However, its dual-lens camera is the most comparable to that of the iPhone 7 Plus' setup.

The earlier released iPhone 7 Plus has standard-angle and telephoto lenses, both with a 12-megapixel resolution. The standard-angle lens has an f/1.8 aperture while the latter has f/2.8.

On the other hand, the OnePlus 5 wins the lenses' resolution aspect as it is packed with a combination of a 16 MP (standard-angle) and 20 MP (telephoto) components. However, they are a tad lower in the aperture department with f/1.7 and f/2.6, respectively.

Meanwhile, the OnePlus 5 wins another point for sporting a 16 MP front-facing camera for selfies compared to the 7 MP shooter found on the iPhone 7 Plus.

However, recently, one detail about the OnePlus 5 camera has caused massive confusion and prompted some reports to call it a misrepresentation of OnePlus 5 camera's real capability.

Since the new smartphone's unveiling event, reviewers and the market had an impression that the OnePlus 5 had the 2x optical zoom feature — exactly the same with the iPhone 7 Plus. It was not long before technology reporters noticed that it was not the case.

OnePlus CEO Carl Pei addressed consumers through social media and said what they were actually claiming is a "2x lossless zoom, not optical." It turned out that the OnePlus 5 camera only had a 1.6x optical zoom capacity.

While specifications are decisive in comparing camera rigs on smartphones, results typically vary during the actual use of the devices.

CNet recently reported a comprehensive comparison of the dual-lens cameras on the iPhone 7 Plus and OnePlus 5 with photo results.

Evidently, the iPhone 7 Plus won in some areas as it produced more vivid photos on Portrait Mode with a human subject, has endless burst shots, and includes an optical image stabilization feature. However, the OnePlus 5 still gave the Apple smartphone a run for its money.

As can be seen in the report's sample photos, the OnePlus 5 provided a better contrast in landscape photos taken under bright sunlight. It also showed better focus, thus producing clearer macro shots. When brought in a low light environment, the photo taken with the OnePlus 5 simply stood out.

Now, if people were to compare its price, a 128 GB variant of the iPhone 7 Plus costs $869, while the OnePlus 5 gets another advantage as it is only priced $539 for a device with the same configuration.