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I have just bought a Moto X Play, which comes with the proprietary Motorola camera app. I am wondering, how much difference does the camera app make for the basic photo quality like:

  • automatic determining of exposure
  • automatic white balance
  • automatic ISO settings
  • noise correction for low-light shots

I understand that some 3rd party apps give the users a lot more manual control over the settings, apply some post-processing, make sharing of the photos easier, etc. I am, however, mostly interested in using the phone as a point-and-shoot simple camera, so I would like to get the best quality out of the box in different conditions (especially in low-light).

So the question is, how many of the aspects I listed above and controlled by the hardware/lower level drivers, and how much is controlled by the camera application?

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  • This article says they don't make much of a difference makeuseof.com/tag/…
    – beeshyams
    Jan 7 '16 at 13:25
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    @beeshyams well, some horrible app (devs might mess-up as well) might make a big difference #D Which works in both ways: if you have a good one and try a bad one, you'll see the difference, the other way around you see it as well. Some apps might have better white-balance, for example. So while it might be true it makes not much difference in most cases (especially one high-quality app compared to another high-quality app), it might well make a big difference in other cases.
    – Izzy ♦
    Jan 7 '16 at 13:49
  • True but for point and shoot, which OP is looking for,IMO don't really help much. Where they outshine is in image processing, effects etc. BTW, do you think this stands a better chance of being better answered in Photography SE?
    – beeshyams
    Jan 7 '16 at 13:56
  • @beeshyams I'm not active over there, so I cannot tell. But what I can tell is that for at least "automatic white balance" the app can make a huge difference (my own experiences). Same with the noise correction (which goes to the "image processing" part).
    – Izzy ♦
    Jan 7 '16 at 14:09
  • I wish the native Samsung camera app didn't crash so frequently. I've tried it on several brand new Samsung devices, and it often crashes just by zooming.
    – RockPaperLz- Mask it or Casket
    Sep 19 at 0:08
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Based on my experience with my Samsung Galaxy J7, the best camera app is the built-in camera app. You can adjust any parameter manually (except on Google Pixel phones). Then you can modify your photo by other apps like Photo wonder, etc..

Some selfie apps will take your photo with the small size (960x500), and you cannot adjust any setting.

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