Sure, I may notneedOIS, but I've seen the image quality in camera shots with it and without it, in all sorts of various lighting situations and the non-OIS images look noticeably worse every time. The motion blur/general blurriness on non-OIS images versus OIS is off the charts. If I want to snap 40 fucking pictures of the same shot, sure, I can get a non-OIS image to look similar/the same as an OIS, but why should I have to? It isn't like this technology is new or doesn't exist, yet phone manufacturers keep leaving out that feature on their camera's.
I'm really curious to see if google does solve most of the issues with non-OIS on the 5X and 6P. I'd really like to grab either phone, but if the camera situation is at all similar to my Moto X, forget it. Maybe I just got spoiled by my 920, but I can't stand having an average phone camera now.
If you think OIS helps make photos look better across the board I don't think you quite understand how OIS works. About the only time OIS is helpful for photography is in situations where the shutter speed is slowed down and you are shooting a non-moving object. Here are some examples shot from my N4, which does NOT have OIS and is pretty universally accepted as being a subpar camera phone:
First shot is a panorama I took. Because, when you are taking a panorama shot you are moving the phone the entire time you'd think OIS would be helpful but as you can see, I got the shot just fine without it.
Next is a shot inside a dimly-lit bar. You can see, because of the lack of lighting, my shutter speed was slow enough that there was significant motion blur on the waitress who was walking by, but my focus point (which was the beer list) was still in focus. There is significant noise in the photo, but that is a product of the sensor, not a lack of OIS. Yes, the beer glass is out of focus, but that is due to the shallow depth-of-field which is a result of the lens and it's F/2.0 aperture.
Here are two shots, one where OIS would have possibly helped, and the next one that shows I got the shot anyways. Again, significant noise but that is not related to a lack of OIS.
Finally one more where my shutter speed was slower than normal. You can see motion blur on my daughters left hand, but the rest of the shot is sharp and in focus, OIS was not needed.
Now if you were shooting on a DSLR what OIS allows you to do is drop the shutter speed a little bit more than normal while still getting the shot. The reason you'd do this is if you were closing the aperture to increase the depth of field, which is an artistic choice and not an option on the vast majority of cell-phone cameras since they have fixed apertures. Now why they aren't including OIS, I'm not sure. Maybe it is just to keep costs down, maybe it requires a bigger lense bump which affects form factor, I don't know. But people (not just you Kirun, it has pretty much been all over the reader comments) are acting like lack OIS is a deal-breaker when in reality it has a very limited scope of usefulness in photography, and that usefulness on a cell phone camera
SHOULDbe more than compensated for with better sensors.
There is one situation where I wonder if the lack of OIS will be very noticeable, and that is for video. For the Nexus line, Google has claimed to solve that via software (and EIS on the 6P). I'm a little more skeptical on their claim the video will be fine without it, we will see. For me personally, I don't care about video that much.
