It wasn't much of flagship. Nobody saw it as one. Sure it has Note in name as it certainly is a Note, but at that time many recommended getting Note 2. Then S3 was already quite old and I could get S4 for the same price. Anyway, in terms of price it was upper mid range phone and it was significantly worse than flagships. Considering price and how low inflation has been during those years, in newer Euros it might be worth not 300 Euros, but 350 Euros. A50 that I bought was 320 Euros and was often more expensive. So I don't think that they aren't comparable.
I'm not so sure. Fae smoothing has been there for ages at that point, also some other enhancements. HDR has been there even before Note. Galaxy A7 2018 was Samsung's first quad camera phone, so A50 was supposed to be more refined version of it. Also even today phones fail spectacularly at post processing. Basically, anything Motorola is super to have nasty oversharpening. With other manufacturers it's more random, but generally things get oversharpened, lacking dynamic range, overexposed, oversaturated. And you can look at flagship, things just don't really get better. Just like S10, S20 andS21 still have same ugly post processing. iPhones are still prone to oversaturating. Moto Edge oversharpened the heck out of everything. You can pay whatever you want, but you still get post-processing shoved to you.
I disagree, Note had harder time with that shell shot, as it was quite dark outside. GPU shot was also in dark environment. A50 wouldn't have pulled off GPU shot well at all. Tree shot is challenging, because half picture is dark and other half is very bright. A50 had an easy case with that bench picture as lighting intensity was even and bright. BTW landscape shot from A50 is touched up in Paint.net, meanwhile Note's pictures are the same as I took them. Without my own effort with editing it, it might not have looked as good as it is.
Anyway, top picture is original, bottom is edited:
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View attachment 219931
I know I'm totally biased as I edited it, but edited picture looks better to me. Less tint, more dynamic range, bench isn't too blown out, there is subtle sharpening suppression.
I just assumed that it was focused only on die. That was a difficult shot and as you can see most of that picture is blurry. Certainly, it's not the best job and Note took longer to absorb more light.
I only notice that lower left of that picture is smudged for some reason and that shell is somewhat too bright. You probably see better than me if you notice something more in it. To this day, I never noticed any noise reduction or sharpening from Note. Meanwhile in A50, it's too damn obvious. Take a look at this shot in fair conditions:
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It frankly sucks, wtf happened to snow, wtf happened to building... It's just one big disappointment. And this is the main camera of A50, which makes it less acceptable. Meanwhile, ultrawide produced an unspeakable garbage:
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I say, Note did way better job, many years earlier (this location looks nearly identical).
Perhaps Note 3 Neo had far better processing then. When it fails, you have to really look for that, meanwhile when A50 falls apart, it's just very clearly awful. Look at that snowy scene with ultrawaide cam and you will know what I'm talking about. I don't think that it's acceptable quality for mid range phone, let alone cheap phone.
The sad thing is that some Samsung's lower end phones of that same generation had far less processing done and their pictures can be really impressive. I think that was Galaxy A10.
I'm not so sure. I would say that Note is Pixel 3A tier at least. S10 was nothing more than upgraded A50, but below Pixel or Note. Perhaps, today there are better phone cameras, but at the same time there are so many shit cameras. Direct successor to A50, the A52 has some slight upgrades, but in 1080p it falls apart. S21 vanilla is unimpressive. Feels exactly like slightly higher resolution A52. iPhone 13 seems to fare better and is quite impressive, however many shots tend to have crushed blacks and you can see that it has similar processing to Samsung, but tamer. Still, it's good. Pixel 5 is adequate, clear flaw is that it heavily oversaturates some shots. I don't dislike that, but it's not really faithful. And it seems that it goes crazy sometimes when deciding how to expose different parts of picture. Usually that's a stellar job, but sometimes some parts look off. Still that's pretty good result overall and fair rival to iPhone. Mi 10 Pro tends to take okay pictures, but for some reason it smudges small elements, some odd smoothing is applied and sometimes there's a lack of detail in places where it would seem that it shouldn't have problems having detail. This one is just unrefined, just like Samsung, but overall I would say it's between iPhone and S21. Unfortunate for flagship, but not bad overall. Sony 1-III seems to let some graininess pass, but holy shit, I really like detailedness, right saturation, no tint and seemingly perfect exposure, on the other hand bokeh is really awful in plain pictures, not portrait mode. It's so far the best.
And from my quick overview here's a final list from best to worst:
Sony 1-III
iPhone 13
Pixel 5
Mi 10 Pro
S21
A52
I honestly feel like I likely talk out of my ass here, I haven't looked at either of their specs and am unsure if those phones (minus A52) are current flagships. I probably missed some fine details (your analysis of Note 3 Neo made me realize that it also processed pictures and I had no idea), but maybe that's the best way to compare. To tune out noise and just honestly look and evaluate results yourself.
). Hooking up fan headers may prove to be rather................interesting..........
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