Coming from a Pixel 4a to the 14 Pro I'm really impressed instead. Like it's the much needed upgrade that I felt I needed (I'm really passionate about photography). I'm seriously considering selling my DSLR now.
I think google computational might be better in some edge cases, but it comes at the cost that sometimes it over-processes things: some textures look painted on my pixel photos, some night shoot feel "cool" but do not capture what I'm looking with my eyes at all, no matter my settings. And with portraits I have this feeling sometimes that I capture a nice image only to see it somehow ruined when the processing ends, with the face that becomes too "beautified" (smooth skin, etc).
I feel the iPhone computation is overall better for the most common lightning situations and maybe less aggressive, but I would need to test it for way more time to form a more complete opinion.
you're comparing a phone from 3 years ago to one from today. The pixels continue to be far better at HDR and low light images. iphone is still better at video.
OP was comparing it to the Pixel 5, that's why I chimed in since it's not much different to the 4a. I can't imagine myself being disappointed by it like OP and between 4a and 5 there wasn't a huge leap in performance.
I think google computational might be better in some edge cases, but it comes at the cost that sometimes it over-processes things: some textures look painted on my pixel photos, some night shoot feel "cool" but do not capture what I'm looking with my eyes at all, no matter my settings. And with portraits I have this feeling sometimes that I capture a nice image only to see it somehow ruined when the processing ends, with the face that becomes too "beautified" (smooth skin, etc).
I feel the iPhone computation is overall better for the most common lightning situations and maybe less aggressive, but I would need to test it for way more time to form a more complete opinion.