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Photographer Dustin Abbott takes a look at the most common kind of camera out there - the one that comes in a phone. Join Dustin as he reviews in the inexpensive Doogee S61 Pro - which claims to have a 48MP main camera. Does it? | For more information, click here: https://bit.ly/3ObFuc1 | Purchase the Doogee S61 Pro at Amazon https://amzn.to/3w2y6Jq | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3w3hSQw | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3JXgVPy | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3zTrluF | AliExpress https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_Dkvbf2n
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Table of Contents:
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0:00 - Intro and Concept
3:07 - Build and Design
4:00 - Things I Like
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you a review of a different kind of camera
0:16
and that is the one that has become pretty ubiquitous in modern usage, and that is what's found in a foam
0:23
Now, obviously, there is a lot of marketing hyperbole out there when it comes to the
0:29
performance of phones in cameras. And I do get, you know, as I've mentioned before, I get a variety of
0:36
different kinds of solicitations of doing different kinds of reviews. So I thought, you know what
0:40
I'm going to take a flyer on one of these relatively inexpensive cameras that, you know
0:47
tout high-end camera performance. And as a actual camera reviewer, I thought it'd be interesting to
0:53
kind of run it through a similar kind of test as what I do actual cameras. And so what I
0:59
found was interesting. So today I'm going to be reviewing the Doogie S61 Pro. Now this is a, as far as
1:08
the basic specifications, this is a phone that runs Android 12. It's kind of a world phone and that you
1:14
can get it, you know, here in North America, Europe, Asia, around the world. And it is flexible
1:20
in the sense that you can set it up to work with a variety of different bands and frequencies
1:26
around the world. And so in that sense, it has great flexibility. You know, it has the ability
1:29
to drop two different SIM cards in there. And so it makes it interesting for travel
1:35
But the thing that was kind of, you know, touted to me is that it's also touted as having a 48
1:39
megapixel main camera along with a additional 20 megapixel Sony night vision or infrared-type camera
1:48
And then, of course, you know, 16 megapixel front facing camera, you know, so on and so forth
1:53
all of those things. So, okay, 48 megapixels, that's really close to my Sony Alpha-1
2:00
with 50 megapixels. And so I thought, well, let's see how they compare. And so today we're going
2:05
to dive in and take a look at those kinds of things and also a basic review of this actual
2:11
phone when it comes to that performance. Because it turns out it does a lot of things other than
2:17
camera, a lot better than it does camera. More on that in just a moment. But again, going back to
2:23
the basics here for a phone that runs around 200 bucks. So I'll get that out of the way. This is a
2:28
really inexpensive phone, not anywhere near the thousand plus dollars you might be looking at for
2:33
the newest iPhone. This is a phone that can be gotten very inexpensively. So again, also makes it
2:39
intriguing in that sense to those of you that don't want to, you know, be paying a monthly payment
2:44
that looks a lot like a car payment for your phone. But it does have a lot of appealing specs on it
2:50
It's got six gig of RAM, which means it can run multiple applications. It's got 128 gig, this particular
2:57
model of built-in storage space, but it's also expandable with an inexpensive micro-sd type cards
3:04
where you can get them up to 512 gig. And so lots of storage built in and a lot more potential
3:10
storage. It is a USB-type-C charge port and runs off of a 5-volt or 2-amp charger system. And I
3:20
will note that unlike a lot of the recent iPhones that I have gotten, it also actually comes with a
3:25
charging brick, which has become an item that has been lost along the way in some recent
3:30
phones. So let's break down quickly some of the basic phone usage, stuff that stood out to me as
3:36
being positive and then stuff that wasn't so positive. So first of all, it's been a long time
3:42
since I've used anything Android. I've been using iPhone for years, and so I was actually really
3:47
really impressed by how far the process has come for how intuitive it is to transfer from one operating
3:53
system to another operating system, and that I was able to initiate a transfer by connecting cords
3:59
between the two phones from my current phone to transfer basically everything over, and it was
4:04
quite a seamless process. You know, you still have to set some things up within apps, you know
4:09
put in passwords, those kind of things. But I, it's not necessarily an S61 Pro specific thing
4:15
but I will say I'm impressed by how easy they've made the process to switch from one platform to another
4:21
and it gives me some hope just in case in the future, I want to switch to an Android on a permanent basis
4:27
This is a really a different approach to what I'm using. I actually, my phone right now is an iPhone SE Generation 2
4:36
So it's a, by modern standards, it's a very, it's a compact, slim body, and, you know, not as big of screen as what others
4:43
This is a different approach and that this is more similar to, for example, my son has, I believe, an iPhone 11
4:50
And it's much more similar in size to this in terms of the screen and the physical dimensions
4:55
Those physical dimensions are this phone is 81 millimeters wide 167 millimeters in length and about 14 millimeters deep and weighs in it 2066 grams
5:06
So this is obviously heavier than what an iPhone, comparatively sized iPhone, because it is thicker
5:12
But I will note that it also comes basically with a built-in case, essentially is how I look at it
5:19
It's much more protected when it comes to being waterproof and drop-proof
5:23
It can be submersible up to 1.5 meters and for up to 30 minutes
5:30
And so that's an IP 68 and IP 69K rating. So more waterproof
5:35
It is dustproof. I've been using it as a work foam. And it is really tough when it comes to resisting all of the work-related things
5:43
Doing lots of drywall right now. This thing has ended up covered in drywall dust fairly often and is none the worst to wear for it
5:50
It is also drop-proof from 1.5 meters. again making it a good tough work type phone
5:55
or if you're the kind of person that tends to drop their phone, well, this is a phone that actually seems to be up to handling that
6:01
The screen is nice and bright, I've noticed. It has a six-inch IPS screen with a native resolution of 1440 by 720 pixels resolution
6:12
and so not bad there. And then the big, big thing that I think is just the best thing about using this particular phone
6:20
is that the battery life is, incredible on it. And again, I'm coming from an iPhone kind of standard. And the battery life here
6:28
is just not even in the same ballpark. It has a 51, 5,180 MAH-sized battery. And it just goes and
6:38
goes and goes. And here's a chart that shows, you know, some of the typical usage, different
6:42
things you can do. But I'll just give you kind of real-world observations. I use this phone
6:47
lightly on one day. This is something that just kind of comes to mind. I use it lightly on one day
6:51
checking email, some of the typical basic browsing stuff. The next day I used it at work
6:58
We have a Bluetooth speaker system, and so we play music while we're working right now
7:02
on the construction site. And so I started streaming the music from this. This has been killing my iPhone to where I get
7:08
after five or six hours of streaming, I get to the end of the day, and I'm like limping home with 10 to 20% of battery life
7:16
And so I used it all day. It didn't hardly seem to phase it all that much
7:20
I used it the second day all day and I used it a third day and it continued to play on and it wasn't until the end of that fourth day, three full days of music streaming that I was finally getting towards low battery life. In fact, the first day that I used it, I'd already used it the previous day lightly. The second day I played music all day. It was at 64% battery life. My iPhone, which I didn't even use for music, was at 24% battery life at that point. And so it really, really
7:50
is impressive. And another thing I've noticed is just when it's in standby and I'm not really
7:54
using them much, the batter doesn't hardly drain at all. I mean, we're talking about a few percentage
7:59
points a day, which again, is really unusual coming from iPhone kind of perspective. The other thing
8:05
that's unique about this phone is that there are actually included four different rear plates that
8:10
you can put on there. The basic design is kind of a clear design that lets you see some of the
8:14
internal circuit boards. It's a cool look that I like. But you can also do a carbon fiber, a wood grain
8:19
kind of a blue, you know, kind of metal type look, but all of those are user-replaceable
8:24
And so in a sense, it kind of gives you some case options, different looks for the foam
8:28
built right into it. So those are some of the things that I really like. Now, some of the things that I don't like so much is that I did note relative to my iPhone
8:36
that the wireless is not as fast. And when I ran like a speed test, I always got higher rates
8:43
with my iPhone than what I got with this. I also noted that while it does have both a
8:49
On the side, the power button is also a fingerprint scanner ID, and it also has face recognition
8:56
The face recognition and the fingerprint scanner, more so the face recognition, to a lesser
9:00
degree, the fingerprint scanner is not really up to Apple success rate
9:05
And so it's kind of hit or miss whether or not the face recognition works. The fingerprint scanner does work more consistently, but there are certainly more situations where
9:13
I'm lifting my finger multiple times to get the result that I want
9:19
So that's not as good. The other thing is that, and something that really, really shocked me is that I was going when I got the phone and I was going through the settings
9:27
I was trying to increase the resolution for video. And I found that the maximum video option is only 1080p
9:35
And I thought that can't be right. So I looked it up and sure enough it was
9:39
So there's a complaint there. Now, let's get to the main heart of this review when it comes to the actual performance, particularly of that main camera that is touted as being a 48 megapixel camera
9:49
Let's dive in and take a look if that is really the case. So the first thing to deal with is when it comes to the resolution on the S61 Pro Unfortunately there is some serious marketing that is going on here So while if we look at this everything seems appropriate this is 48 megapixels of resolution in the JPEGs
10:07
But if I take a look at the JPEG on and actually zoom into it all
10:12
we can see that it is really low resolution and really oversharpened
10:18
And so obviously this is not a native 48 megapixels. So interestingly, if I take a look at the raw underneath there
10:25
and this raw file's had a minor bit of processing here to give it, you know, the look that I wanted
10:31
But if I go into a pixel level here, everything looks, you know, fairly good
10:35
There's a good detail there. It's not oversharpened. It looks more like it should
10:41
And so if I take a look at what the raw file is, it's actually at right around basically
10:47
4,000 by 3,000, which is a resolution of 12 megapixels. And so what you've actually got going on here is a scaling that is upscaling that is taking place in camera to where that base resolution of 12 megapixels is being upscaled to the 48 megapixels of resolution
11:07
So I took that JPEG file into Photoshop and here where you've got the TIF file on the left
11:14
I actually reduced the resolution down to the same resolution as what I showed you on the raw file
11:21
And what you can see here is that at that level of resolution, you're actually getting the appropriate, you know, there's nice sharpening in detail there, but it's not oversharpened. It looks appropriate, whereas this obviously has been upscaled somewhat disastrously when you're looking at it on a, you know, a high resolution monitor. In this case, we're looking at it on a 4K monitor
11:42
So that resolution is actually very similar to what I'm getting on my current phone, which is an iPhone SE second generation
11:51
And so that's a fairly recent phone within the last year and a half or so
11:56
But its camera is right around that same resolution, just a tiny bit higher
12:01
But if I look at the raw file that I'm able to get off of the S61 and I compare it to this JPEG
12:08
in many ways the file off of the S61 actually compares favorably
12:13
It has a little bit more detail there and a little bit more nuance to the image
12:17
But that's because we're dealing with the native resolution of the camera, which in this
12:21
case matches up fairly well. The iPhone is registering as just a hair over 12 megapixels, 4032 by 3024
12:30
Now, if I look at the JPEG file off of the, you know, the S61 Pro, it shows that higher resolution
12:38
But anyway, once again, going back to comparing these two, while that's, you know, a much
12:43
larger looking image, you can see that it's really just been upscaled and there's, there's
12:48
not enough resolution there to compare favorably at all to the iPhone's picture. But we can see that
12:53
at the base resolution, that raw file actually does quite well in comparison. So unfortunately
12:58
the marketing, you know, 12 megapixels doesn't market the way that 48 megapixels does. And frankly
13:05
I think that they could have probably even upscaled it to 24 megapixels and had a much more
13:10
reasonable end result. So with that in mind, if we look at my test chart at 100% magnification
13:15
you can see that it's basically a mess. Everything is smeared as far as the textures
13:22
But if I look at it and the raw format, while the resolution is obviously quite low here
13:28
you can see that we don't have any of that artificial sharpening. So we'll take a look at it at 200%, like I typically show
13:34
At 200% magnification, you can see that there is some usable resolution there
13:39
It's not up to the standard of what I would see typically. But you can see my test chart
13:43
You are able to make things out. and, you know, the camera performance is fairly consistent across the frame
13:49
There's some decent resolution that goes right over to the edge of the frame
13:53
Contrast, not off the charts here, but overall, there is a usable amount of information that is here
14:00
though not at a particularly high resolution. Now, when it comes to the raw files, you'll note that the color profile is fairly flat right out of the camera
14:08
Now, that's not a bad thing in that with a raw file you want some flexibility
14:13
but they are a little bit flatter than what I see coming off. of a modern camera. You can see the detail there is nice though and you could add a little bit more
14:21
sharpening if you so desired. In this case, I have processed the taste and you can see that, you know
14:26
I've been able to, you know, add some color pop to the image and make it a far more visually appealing
14:32
one than the, you know, rather flat raw file. So moving beyond the marketing into actually looking at
14:39
the reality, here these are some images that, raw images that I have edited out of the phone. And you can see
14:45
that when you're shooting in this raw, that I'm actually getting some nice looking images
14:50
Obviously, I have processed to taste here, but the fact that it's an actual raw file gives me
14:56
the ability to do that Here another here where you know I been able to process to taste as I kind of scan throughout the image It not super high resolution obviously but the detail there is nice
15:08
There is very workable resolution there for different applications. I mean, this is big enough
15:13
that it would print nicely for a lot of things. And so for me, I would always still shoot in
15:18
raw on this particular phone slash camera because while it's not high resolution, this is an
15:25
actual useful file with lots of detail. You know, as you can see, some decent dynamic range there
15:31
whereas the JPEG files, I would consider to be unusable because of all of that upscaling that's
15:37
already being done. And so if you start to down sample, you're just ending up with a compromised
15:45
image to begin with. So I prefer to start with the raw file where I can process to taste as I have
15:50
done in these images here. Now, a few of the other features there, which are kind of akin to
15:55
to, for example, this in portrait mode is much like what, you know, Apple has done recently
16:00
with iPhones and that it's basically creating an artificial bouquet. It's, you know, sampling what
16:06
it considers to be the subject, leaving them in focus while defocusing everything else to create
16:12
a, you know, an electronic bouquet. It works, you know, reasonably well if you're not really a
16:18
photographer, but, you know, in this case, I think it's a little cruder than what Apple has been
16:23
able to accomplish. The other thing that's being touted here is that there is a separate infrared
16:27
camera. And so it does have some useful application, though, you know, frankly, only if you're
16:34
really interested in this kind of thing. So in very low light situations, yes, you're going to be
16:38
able to use that infrared. For example, here, this was a completely dark room. And you can see that
16:45
the infrared has, you know, it's been able to pull up details. And so it does allow you to use this
16:49
is a little bit of like a night vision situation. But, you know, it may have limited real world applications
16:55
unless you're really in a situation where, you know, you need a photo that's, you know, frankly not all that high resolution
17:02
but I guess enough to allow you to see into a messy utility room in the dark
17:08
So as you can see, what we end up with is a bit of a mixed bag from a camera perspective
17:12
I'm really not a fan of that upscaling in camera. And I recognize why they're doing it because of the marketing potential
17:19
of that. But as an actual photographer, that really diminishes the end product and that I find the
17:24
JPEGs are less useful than those out of my iPhone, even though they both have basically the same
17:30
native resolution and the actual files that this is able to produce are actually can be quite good
17:37
But the problem is, is that because it's already been upscaled so much in camera, it means that
17:41
by the time you start to reverse that process in a JPEG, you're going to end up with a diminished
17:46
rather than an enhanced result. I really do. appreciate the fact that I can get at and use raw files here and have more manual controls
17:54
than what I can on an iPhone. So that's good. But I really, really wish that I could just rely on
18:00
the basic JPEGs more because the raw files do come out of the camera quite flat. And so they
18:06
definitely need processing to get them to look kind of the way that you might expect them to
18:10
even though I appreciate the fact that there is a lot of workability there. Bottom line is
18:15
is that I actually really, really enjoy the foam. There's things that I really love it for. I love
18:19
for music streaming. Same would be true for video streaming. I love it as a source to play my
18:24
audible books because that battery life, it just goes on and on and on. And I've used it in the
18:30
morning. I've been using it a lot for checking my email because it's intuitive. Things work nice
18:35
It has a nice size screen. And so I prefer for that task, for example, than I do my iPhone. And so there's
18:40
things about it as a phone that I actually really, really like. The camera is only so-so out of that
18:46
And I think that, unfortunately, in the interest of marketing, which is something that I think happens quite often, to be frank, in the camera phone world, is that in the pursuit of that, you know, marketing point, they've actually given you a less usable result than if they actually just worked with the native resolution of the camera
19:05
And so that's one mark certainly against his phone. At the end of the day, though, this is a lot of phone for $200
19:11
I really like the toughness of it. I think it'd be a great work phone. and if you're someone that does a lot of streaming and you want to use it for that
19:18
the battery life is truly amazing on this. The high amount of storage is great
19:23
So many things that I really like about it, but oddly enough, the camera is not particularly one of them
19:29
I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you're interested in learning more about the DoGs 61 Pro
19:32
you can take a look in the description down below where I've got links to where some places you can purchase it from
19:38
Also, link it's there to follow myself or Craig on social media to check out our collaborative channel at the Light and TV
19:44
You can get channel merchandise, you can become a patron. And of course, if you haven't already
19:48
please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in
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