OnePlus still wants you to care about the OnePlus 5's DxOMark score
OnePlus 5's DxOMark score is about to be revealed, but the phone maker is in a tough spot.
Back in May, before we knew what the OnePlus 5 looked like or whether its camera was a double, the company boasted of a partnership with DxOMark, a popular camera testing platform that companies like OnePlus (and HTC, Samsung, LG, and others) like to use as a way to promote their optical prowess.
Here's what OnePlus said about the partnership at the time:
We're happy to announce that we have teamed up with DxO to enhance your photography experience with our upcoming flagship, the OnePlus 5. DxO is perhaps most well-known for creating the defining photography benchmark, the DxOMark. They've got years of imaging experience and expertise, both for professional cameras and for smartphones.
Working alongside DxO, we're confident the OnePlus 5 will be capable of capturing some of the clearest photos around.
Well, the phone's June 20 announcement and release came and went, and nary a peep was heard from OnePlus or DxOMark about the so-called partnership. At the same time, we know a lot about the dual camera setup and have pitted the OnePlus 5 against incumbents like the Galaxy S8 and current DxO leader, the HTC U11, and it doesn't fare so well.
Still, OnePlus has two things to lean on: further improvements to the camera through software updates and a high score from DxOMark, which should be coming soon, according to the company's Facebook page.
There are two possible scenarios from this impending announcement: either OnePlus will score higher than the HTC U11's current score of 90 and top the charts, putting into question all of our subjective and objective remarks on the company's 16-megapixel shooter, or the phone will earn a decent-but-not-great score, likely 86 or 87, which would put it on the same level as the Huawei P10 or iPhone 7. The second result is more desirable, but it also wouldn't look great on OnePlus, since the company went out of its way to optimize its camera setup for DxOMark's test suite.
Of course, even the most stringent test suites have an element of subjectivity to them, since we all enjoy different visual aspects of camera sensors, lenses, and the software that powers them. But as with devices like the Google Pixel, it's fairly easy to assert that its low-light performance is objectively better than most, if not all other phones on the market and that the HTC U11 does a fantastic job taking photos in almost any lighting condition.
Unfortunately, at this point in the game, as good as the camera can be, it would be hard to assert the same thing about the OnePlus 5.
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