We have two popular entry-level phones with us, and we want to know which is the best camera phone. So does Honor 8C camera outperforms Vivo Y91 in this battle? We will find it out soon through a neck-to-neck comparison.
Honor 8C comes with some of the latest industry trends at a very economical price tag of Rs. 26,499 in Pakistan. Vivo Y91, on the other hand also comes with some interesting offerings in the same category, with Rs. 28,000 price tag.
Both the devices carry 3GB RAM however, Vivo Y91 comes with 64GB internal storage, and the Honor 8C carries 32GB of space. Honor 8C is also the first phone to come with Snapdragon 632 whereas Vivo Y91 has a Meditek MTK6762 chipset.
Camera Specs
Moving on to the camera, both the device packs a dual camera on the back. Honor 8C has a 13MP main snapper with f/1.8 aperture and a 2Mp depth sensor with f/2.4 aperture.
Vivo Y91 also packs a 13MP main lens with f/2.2 aperture and a depth-sensing 2MP lens with the same aperture size as its rival. For the selfies, both phones sport an 8MP camera laced with beautification features.
Camera Result
Note that Honor 8C camera has a smaller f/1.8 aperture value of its main lens as compared to the f/2.2 in the Vivo Y91. This means that the aperture size is wider and that it can gather more light so the pictures from Honor 8C are expected to be brighter.
Earlier in our detailed review of the Honor 8C, we professed how the phone has a lot of room for improvement in the camera department whereas Vivo Y91 also leaves us unsatisfying so we decided to let these devices battle out to see which one is comparatively better than the other.
We mainly tested the pictures in point and shoot scenarios which means the images were taken mostly in an Auto mode without manually tweaking the settings. However, to give you a better idea we have also captured HDR mode and portraits as well so let’s get on with it.
Looking at the first picture taken in auto mode, the first thing you can notice is the difference in colors. Traces of purple can be seen in the sky in the Honor 8C picture while the one with Vivo Y91 has a more turquoise-looking sky. Personally, I would prefer the color somewhere between the two.
Honor and Huawei phones have a tendency of oversharpening their pictures and that’s exactly what Honor 8C did. Look at the building in both the picture and you’ll notice that while Vivo has maintained decent detail, Honor has gone overboard with sharpening the picture
The same story repeats in this picture. Look at the sky and you’ll notice that Honor 8C oversaturates the pictures. The building also gives out strong color handling in Honor 8C. The white building looks truly white on the Vivo Y91 while it clearly has a warmer hue on the Honor 8C.
The dynamic range is also much better on the Vivo Y91, though it loses some detail in the picture. You can see that the trees are more bright and natural on the Y91 while Honor 8C has high contrast in those areas, nonetheless, it has managed to capture better detail.
In indoor while facing the light source, Honor 8C tends to blow out the light while Y91 does a great job at containing it. If you look at the wall above the doorway, the colors also seem more artificial on the Honor 8C.
The same picture taken with the HDR mode really shows the true colors of the phones. Vivo Y91 keeps the pictures very natural and handles the light very well while Honor 8C just paints the whole image white.
Look at how both the devices handled the light bulbs and you can spot a clear difference. The trees outside the door can also be seen on Vivo Y91 but are blown out in the Honor 8C picture
Here is another picture in auto mode. As we earlier said, the dynamic range is better on Vivo. Even though focusing on the building, Vivo has managed to keep great colors in the sky while Honor 8C has blown it out and has also oversaturated the colors on the building. Although 8C’s image is a tad brighter, the colors are natural on Vivo Y91.
The HDR mode picture of the same place inverts the results of auto mode. Now Vivo has blown out the sky while attempting to get a brighter image and the Honor 8C has kept most colors and details both in the sky and on the building.
Honor 8C also has a dedicated AI switch that you can turn on and off within the camera viewfinder, while Vivo Y91 does not have any such mode. Here is a snap from the AI mode of Hono 8C.
The AI mode in other Honor phones like the Honor Play or the Honor 10 Lite might perform well but in Honor 8C it does not make any significant difference in the picture’s color or its contrast. Though it can recognize the scene after you turn on the AI, that doesn’t make any actual difference in the picture.
This picture in auto mode tells you how inconsistent the camera of Honor 8C is. Sometimes it blows the highlights and sometimes it produces a darker image. The color of the grass and the tree leaves is much better and natural on the Vivo Y91 and the overall image is brighter too.
When you zoom in, you can notice that the Honor 8C treats the picture very badly and loses a lot of details. The image comes out blurry while the one with Y91 comes crispy and detailed.
Honor 8C has a portrait as well as an aperture mode while Vivo Y91 has a toggle for bokeh effect that can be used for both portraits and object pictures.
The portrait mode in Honor 8C camera is amazing and clearly defines the outlines of the subject. The details are also well kept on the Honor 8C. Y91, on the other hand, produces poor results. The blur is very strong which looks unnatural and it was also unable to differentiate correctly between the subject and the background.
Here is another portrait shot from both the phones. While the picture from the Vivo Y91 may look more appealing, it has again failed to draw a clear line between the subject and the background. The details, however, are well kept in Vivo. Honor 8C has blown the details but managed to keep the blur natural and the lining great.
While the portraits are much better on the Honor 8C, for some reason if you take the picture of an object with the bokeh effect, it comes out better on the Vivo Y91, although it saturates the color a bit more. This shows that with non0living objects having a clear outline, Vivo does a better job but it also struggles when taking a portrait.
The selfie game is strong with the Honor 8C as it captures better details and better colors while the selfie from the Vivo Y91 looks very pale and washed out
However, if you turn on the beauty feature in the Vivo Y91, it also enables the background blur in the selfie, something that is missing on the Honor 8C. The selfie portrait is amazingly much better than the portraits with a rear camera and has a natural blur. Although it also doesn’t get the subject always right, we prefer it over the rear camera portrait.
Vivo Y91 has another very useful feature that Honor 8C lacks, the group selfie. You can take the shot, move your phone on either side of you. It takes different pictures and merges them together to give you a sort of wide-angle selfie which looks amazing and can really be useful if you want to fit more people in.
At night, Vivo Y91 takes amazing photos. The images taken with the Honor 8C looked washed out and too bright for my liking while Vivo maintains great contrast and gives out great pictures. Zooming into the picture reveals that the details are also better on the Vivo Y91.
Here you can understand how Honor oversaturates the picture and makes the colors look artificial. Though the building in the above picture seemed yellowish with warm lights, Honor 8C has made it even more so while Vivo has kept the natural colors of the place. The details on both are, however same.
The same picture with HDR mode reveals how cameras in Huawei and Honor phones generally treat the pictures very aggressively. Vivo y91 has slightly brightened the picture and kept its warmer tone but Honor 8C has spread a cold hue over the picture.
The AI mode is Honor 8C camera is just a gimmick, rather than being a useful option. Though in this picture the AI struggles to lower down the warmer tones and keep the picture natural it fails to do so and you can barely see any difference in the AI mode and the auto mode.
The selfies are also better on the Vivo Y91 thanks to the f/1.8 camera as compared to the f/2.0 on the front cam of Honor 8C. The latter takes yellow selfies in comparatively low light scenarios while Vivo Y91 struggles to take a batter colored picture and does a better job than the Honor 8C
Verdict
The camera is often a deciding factor for many users when buying a smartphone but in the budget category, you can’t ask for flagship-like camera performance. So, both the Honor 8C and the Vivo Y91 have their own shortcomings when it comes to snapping pics.
We really don’t like the oversaturation on the Honor 8C, whereas the loss of detail in the Vivo Y91 is also noticeable. The cameras in both phones perform inconsistently, taking good pictures and sometimes taking really regrettable shots.
Overall we can say that the detail capturing is better but inconsistent on the Honor 8C but the color-capturing is better as well as consistent on the Vivo Y91. However, the latter does not benefit from its dual camera in portrait and aperture modes like we have seen Honor 8C do it.
The HDR is also better on the Vivo Y91 but the contrast is sometimes better on the Honor 8C camera. So all in all its a mixed bag but the most important thing is the price. You cannot just expect any phone in this price range to be perfect in every aspect of the camera.
