A recent post from YouTuber Jonathan Morrison on Instagram has created some buzz. After posting a selfie with the caption mentioning that it was taken on Google’s Pixel 2 which received hundreds of comments and opinions, he later revealed that it was actually taken on an iPhone XS.
iPhone XS users have complained about exaggerated face smoothing with the front facing camera compared to the iPhone X.
While the issue quickly became known as beautygate, we learned that it’s not specific to selfies and is happening due to a change in how the iPhone XS processes noise reduction and merges multiple photos and exposures to get a shot.
Looking to spice things up with a little Portrait mode selfie trick to offer some perspective, Jonathan Morrison posted this on Instagram over the weekend:
Pixel 2 Portrait mode 👀 rocking the smalls hat 😂 thoughts?
A post shared by Jonathan Morrison (@tldtoday) on Oct 5, 2018 at 2:04pm PDT
After the post received hundreds of comments, he shared in a video yesterday that the photo was actually shot on an iPhone XS.
Both iPhone and Pixel fans were tricked into thinking it confirmed their preference of smartphone had the better camera, with the whole experiment showing how we all can fall into confirmation bias.
Some of the pro-Pixel comments included:
While fooled iPhone fans chimed in with their opinions:
“Best camera in the game”
“#nobeautygate”
“better than the iFail”
Some commenters shared that they would have just preferred a traditional side-by-side blind photo test versus the way Morrison approached this little trick. However, as noted by MKBHD, it’s good to take a step back and realize how great all the technology available today has become.
“Good photo, but i prefer xsmax camera!”
The moral of the story is if you’re super passionate about good tech (like most of us here are), there’s almost no way to love one thing without at least appreciating the greatness of the others too.
— Marques Brownlee (@MKBHD) October 8, 2018
Check out the video below for more from Morrison:
