The results of this blind smartphone camera shootout might surprise you

If you’re into tech, there’s a very good chance that you’re familiar with tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee. For the past few years, he has been putting out a video at the end of the year which takes all of the phones released in that year and does a blind camera test, where he lets his followers on social media pick which they think are the “best” photos.

More often than not, there are usually quite a few surprises where some phones that you thought would do well actually get knocked out really early, and this year is no exception. For starters, it seems that Apple’s extremely expensive and top-of-the-line iPhone 12 Pro Max actually got knocked out in the first round, losing to the OnePlus 8T, a phone which honestly was never really known for its camera.

It also seems that as far as the public is concerned, the Motorola Edge+ actually takes better-looking photos than the iPhone SE. What’s even more surprising is that devices that are supposed to be known for their cameras, like the Huawei Mate 40 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra actually lost to devices like the ASUS Zenfone 7 Pro and Xiaomi Mi 10 Ultra, with the former actually winning the shootout.

Now there are some things to note with this test. Just because the Zenfone 7 Pro won doesn’t mean that the other phones are trash. If you have about 20 minutes to spare, then check out the full video above where Brownlee breaks down the test and explains why some phones seemed to perform better than others.