Main camera quality terrible

[GMxz1]

Hi,

I've just bought an xz1 compact today and I find the rear camera picture quality to be terrible. The photos are really soft and blurry and look very grainy with textures impossible to render. I noticed the same problem with the M2 a few years ago - has anyone else noticed this? Will I need to return the phone for a different model to try? I've attached two photos for comparison below. The left hand photos are taken in auto mode with xz1c and on the right is the photo taken with my 4 year old xperia L. The xz1c has terrible pixelation and no discernible texture (car for example does not look metallic).

xz1c on left, L on rightxz1 on left, L on right

[GMxz1]

Anyone else think this isn't right? Has anyone else got any 100% scans to compare? It just doesn't seem right, given all the good reviews the camera is getting (other than low light) yet the photos I'm getting from it are so blurry and grainy. 

[Profyler1]

thats odd

except for the distortion of the photos thanks to the horrible wide lenses, the quality is pretty good.

Sounds like a defect unit may be? 

[Lord_viridis]

Have you taken the film off the back of the device?

[OffQuality]

Sam here, very processed looking XZ1c photos. Almost feels like a filter has been left on but I can't figure out where. Cropped portion of an image attached.

[GMxz1]

The film on the back only covers the bottom half of the phone and there is no film on the camera.

[GMxz1]

Your photos look just like mine. Very soft, fuzzy and grainy with no real sharpness to them. Edges seem very pixelated and rough, not nice and smooth/sharp. It's so disappointing given the good reviews the camera has been getting.

[Caisha]

Those shots look like you turned on some impressionist filter

Anyway what resolution and shooting mode did you use? On Z5C I notice actual improvement of detail when lowering the resolution from 20MP to just 8MP.

[donnyjoe]

I'm no camera expert, but I'm not sure you can compare photos from two different camera sensors of differing resolutions (not to mention different lenses) by zooming in to "100%" size. If you stand in the same spot, focus on the same spot, have the same lighting conditions and then compare a given portion of those photos of the same "real world" area, and the XZ1c's picture still looks worse, then I'd believe there might be a problem. My pictures so far look fine at any reasonable zoom level, and the pictures from my previous iPhone 7 look terrible like that as well if I zoom in to "actual size" on any part of the photo.

[lundan]

Was "HDR on" in any of the images? Image samples from some reviews looked a bit painterly with this setting. Perhaps it's also worth checking if the iso the phone chose for the exposure seems unnecessarily high? In both samples you seem to be looking at the extreme right of the frame. Many mobile cameras are not so sharp towards the edges. Does things look better closer to the center of the frame?