The OnePlus 13 has dethroned the iPhone 16 Professional as my go-to live performance cam

It takes rather a lot for me to drag out my telephone throughout a live performance. As a lot as I prefer to doc my day-to-day life, I don’t wish to be that man holding up his telephone at some stage in his favourite track. Apart from, I’m not often that impressed with the photographs I get in difficult live performance lighting, anyway. However, once I began reviewing the OnePlus 13 and dug deeper into its digital camera options, I started to vary my tune.

All of a sudden, I had a smartphone digital camera adequate to belief whether or not I used to be within the entrance row of a bar or the again half of a a lot bigger venue, and I began reaching for the OnePlus 13 over my trusty iPhone 16 Professional and Pixel 9 Professional. Right here’s what made me change my thoughts.

What makes the OnePlus 13 such a succesful live performance digital camera — or digital camera usually — isn’t simply its {hardware}. Certain, it’s utilizing Sony’s new 50MP LYT-808 as its highly effective main sensor, and sure, the tri-prism 50MP LYT-600 telephoto sensor is an fascinating strategy to preserve the telephone slim, however they’re not massively completely different from sensors you’d discover on equally priced flagships. As an alternative, what I believe places the OnePlus 13 forward of its rivals is its digital camera software program — or reasonably, a superb replace to a capturing mode from the previous.

A number of years in the past, OnePlus flagships and mid-rangers provided a function referred to as Good Content material Detection and, later, Good Scene Recognition. Though its title was a mouthful, the concept was easy: Level your digital camera at a topic, and your telephone would determine the scene for optimum digital camera settings or pick a QR code to scan. Primarily, Good Content material Detection would enable you to stability your publicity earlier than you press the shutter button, saving your telephone a while with post-processing. Then abruptly, it was changed by a devoted Google Lens button with out a lot as a farewell.

Now, the tables have turned once more, with Google Lens making its approach out the door thanks, partly, to Circle to Search. With that gone, I suppose it felt like the proper time for OnePlus to take one other have a look at computerized content material detection. That and the brand new Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset in all probability sped the method alongside. Both approach, OnePlus determined to convey scene detection again to the OnePlus 13 and gave it a slick new title: Good Scenes. I don’t find out about you, however I’d say Good Scenes rolls off the tongue — or the keyboard — higher than Good Content material Detection.

New title apart, I believe Good Scenes additionally works higher than the earlier Good Content material Detection. It’s nonetheless basically the identical function — level your digital camera at one thing and watch for OnePlus to suggest a capturing mode — however it’s sooner and extra dependable in my expertise. Good Scenes helps simply three profiles (Stage, Fireworks, and Silhouette), which feels just like the magic quantity for low-light situations. Too many extra, and I believe the OnePlus 13 would second-guess itself extra, and I believe it might battle to distinguish topics.

Discover something about all six photographs above? Hopefully, the reply is sure as a result of I’ve two issues in thoughts. First, I believe the OnePlus 13 did a outstanding job of dealing with the background noise in every scenario. Normally, when capturing in low gentle, you need to crank up the ISO in your picture to seize as a lot gentle as attainable. Sadly, that comes with elevated grain (or noise), making your background look a bit fuzzy or smooth, like an outdated TV. Typically, you possibly can course of that noise after the very fact to recapture a few of the darkish live performance lighting, however it’s simpler mentioned than accomplished.

With Good Scenes, although, the OnePlus 13 actively processes for that noise, capturing as a lot gentle as attainable however mechanically denoising the picture in order that your topic nonetheless seems to be crisp and well-lit, however the background stays largely darkish. It does this by taking one brief, quick publicity for element and an extended, slower one for lighting — the identical course of that the majority low-light images makes use of, with a lot better and sooner processing. The result’s that someplace, there’s a shiny, noisy model of your picture, however by the point you see the completed product, OnePlus has largely cleaned it up.

The second factor I had in thoughts is that regardless of how crisp your topic is, OnePlus’s Good Scenes all the time have a little bit of movement blur. Don’t get me fallacious — it’s miles higher than how Samsung often handles movement, however it’s simple to pick little quirks just like the arms of the backup dancer within the prime center picture or Lil Jon’s arms as he dances with the microphone. To me, they’re minor flaws in in any other case impressively sharp pictures, however I can see how a perfectionist would possibly complain {that a} mirrorless digital camera with a sooner shutter would possibly deal with them higher.

Many individuals would possibly have a look at an iPhone 16 Professional’s video chops and suppose it might be a superb live performance companion. Actually, I don’t blame them. Nonetheless, if I’m not the sort to drag up my telephone to seize nonetheless pictures throughout most of a live performance, I’m definitely not going to take full-length movies of songs that I’ll realistically by no means watch once more. So, after we sit down and evaluate photographs from the 2, the variations grow to be evening and day.

I carried my OnePlus 13 and iPhone 16 Professional to 2 of the exhibits shot above — Lil Jon and Low Minimize Connie — and have some head-to-head photographs price taking a look at. Though the framing gained’t be equivalent, the lighting can be comparable sufficient for me to level out a number of key variations that make me wish to choose the OnePlus 13 time and time once more. As talked about above, I’ll level out the variations in every comparability, after which I’ve a bonus comparability to indicate on the very finish — as soon as once more favoring OnePlus’s scene detection.

I gained’t lie — each of those pictures do a number of issues fairly nicely. The iPhone, for instance, really does a a lot better job of freezing Lil Jon in place. There’s no blur to both of his arms, whereas each are blurry in OnePlus’s remaining picture. There’s additionally somewhat bit much less shade bleeding from the purple line of promoting within the background, which I didn’t discover till I pulled each pictures onto my laptop computer display screen.

Nonetheless, the iPhone falls aside considerably with the noise (excessive ISO) that I discussed above. Nearly all the things within the shot, from the gang to Lil Jon himself to the rafters of Allegiant Stadium, has a degree of fuzziness. It’s not fairly dangerous sufficient that you may’t inform the place one object ends and one other begins, however it does give a flatness to the heads within the foreground, the DJ within the background, and the amplifier off to the facet of the stage. OnePlus, against this, exhibits a barely too-smooth Lil Jon and darkened followers within the foreground, which, to my eye, makes Lil Jon pop a bit higher.

As soon as once more, each pictures seize issues fairly nicely, however this time, I believe the OnePlus comes out additional forward. From prime to backside, I favor how the OnePlus 13 dealt with the lighting contained in the bar, letting the area beneath the piano seem actually darkish and protecting constant shadows throughout your entire picture. It handles the background singer impressively, too, protecting stable distinction throughout her face with out making an attempt to artificially brighten her. I’d additionally like to attract your consideration to the piano keys to the singer’s left — within the iPhone picture, they bleed collectively a bit, however the OnePlus 13 retains them properly shadowed and separated.

And now, for the Good Scene that actually leaves the iPhone within the mud, let’s have a look at some New 12 months’s Eve fireworks.

I don’t find out about you, however I might have been simply as pleased by no means to share the ultimate picture from the iPhone 16 Professional. There’s an excessive amount of movement blur all through the shot, making the fireworks show and the rooftop within the foreground look a bit blurry. You’ll be able to’t come shut to creating out the logos lit up on the perimeters of the buildings, and but your entire sky has a brightened haze to it.

The OnePlus 13, however, retains all the things a lot darker, permitting the lights of the fireworks to talk for themselves. You’ll be able to barely make out the darkish rooftop within the foreground, which implies it’s not distracting you from the present, and the town lights don’t draw your eye downward.

After all, I’ll proceed to place the OnePlus 13 up towards the finest Android digital camera telephones that I’ve — together with the Pixel 9 Professional and the just-announced Galaxy S25 sequence — to see if OnePlus actually earned its place on the rostrum. Thus far, although, it’s impressed me at nearly each flip.