Battle of the Blur: Defocus camera showdown

New camera options bring a little extra to your pictures, but who does it the best?

The new rage in smartphone cameras these days is selective focus. Think of a really nice portrait you've seen of a friend or family member, where they were in focus and there was a lovely background that was slightly out of focus. It really makes the subject "pop" and photographers both professional and amatuer love the look. It's only natural that this made it's way onto our phones. It's not really something new, as there have been apps that do the same thing for a while now. But seeing the folks who make our phones get into the game means more adoption, and hopefully, better results.

Today's release of the new Google Camera app brings defocusing to an impressive list of devices (potentially, any KitKat device) so it's time we had a look at the results from a few. We pulled out the HTC One M8, the Samsung Galaxy S5 and the LG G Pro 2 which all have native defocusing built into the camera and the Nexus 5 using the new Google Camera app to compare them to each other.

This is going to be a bit different though. Below you'll see the four pictures, in random order, and no clue about which picture comes from which phone. Then you'll move down to the poll and pick which looks best. Later this evening, I'll come back with another post showing the vote and which picture came from which phone. Hopefully, this way we can look past the name on the back of the phone and decide which looks best based on just the image and not any brand loyalty.