(The good news is the DxO One can, apparently, withstand at least one drop of about 5 feet.) On my first day with the camera I was being a little too confident with it, and when I turned my phone the camera slipped right out and rattled around on the floor. It’s fine when you have both hands on, say, your phone and the camera, but shooting with the One by just gripping the camera is a dangerous act. The ability to work through the Lightning port makes the One a very convenient camera to use, but the physical connection feels a little loose.

(You do have to be on the home screen, though.) As you’re shooting, the camera gives you a live, high-definition feed of what it’s seeing, and will serve up the pictures you take in real time, just like any other digital camera. To start, the DxO One app will automatically open as soon as you plug in the camera. Using the Lightning port is a big part of the DxO One’s appeal because it saves you all the steps of transferring images from your camera to your device. It's a photographic powerhouse at this size And on the left side of the DxO One is a swiveling Lightning connector that flips out when you pull the lens cover down all the way to the bottom of the camera. On top of the camera is the two-stage shutter button. On the front there’s a sliding lens cover that, when pulled down, turns the camera on.

There’s a tiny OLED touchscreen on the back (for switching between shooting photos and videos), along with a trap door for charging and the microSD card. The One is a rounded-off rectangle that measures about 1 inch wide by just under 3 inches tall, and it weighs less than an average smartphone.

Dxo raw review