phone with the best camera
Smartphones

Best Smartphone Cameras

September 24, 2020

Whether you’re looking for the smartphone that’ll give you the best selfie, or a front camera for taking amazing landscape shots, these phones are our top recommendations. We’ll break down each one as the top rated phone depending on what kind of photos you’re looking to snap. Plus a 10% off discount code for your next purchase.

1. Apple iPhone 11 Pro

Apple iPhone 11 Pro

Best smartphone for portraits. Best overall for natural-looking photos. The three camera setup adds versatility and great dynamic range on your photos. It also has a 52mm telephoto camera lens (the regular iPhone 11 doesn’t have it), and the night mode is great for low-light photography. If you want to take pictures of stars, however, you should go for the Google Pixel phones and their astrophotography feature.

Website: Bestbuy.com/iphone11pro

2. Huawei P40 Pro

Huawei P40 Pro

The camera on this thing has a 50MP main lens, a 40MP ultrawide angle lens, & a 12MP telephoto lens. It also has a 3D basic depth sensor. The lenses have been tuned by Leica (a photography company). You can 5x zoom from the telephoto lens and 50x digital zoom.

What these all add up to is the ridiculous ability to take great photos in super low-light. Even better than the iPhone 11 Pro above. It can also record 4k video at 60 fps. This is the best camera phone on the market currently.

Website: consumer.huawei.com/en/phones/p40-pro/

3. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G

samsung galaxy s20 ultra

If megapixels are what you’re after, the Galaxy S20 is the champ: a 108MP main camera, 48MP telephoto, 12MP Ultra wide, and 40MP front-facing camera. The best parts are the videos shot in 8K (you read that right!). The single take mode takes shots and videos simultaneously. The integration with Google products means that snapping and sharing is seamless. The image processing is a little too much, as images look a little over-processed. The zoom is the best feature: combing a 5x optical zoom with digital zoom to give you seamless photos up to 10x zoom.

Website: samsung.com/us/mobile/galaxy-s20-5g/

4. Google Pixel 4 XL

Google Pixel 4 XL

While the triple camera has become standard, the Pixel 4 XL has a dual camera setup. The Astro mode is the big selling point. You can take pictures of the night sky and the astro mode will keep the shutter open for 4 minutes and, if the phone is perfectly still, you’ll get a beautiful picture of the stars…with your phone!

5. Apple iPhone 11

The more budget-friendly version of the iPhone 11 has an excellent camera as well, but it is missing the telephoto lens. So it’s another dual camera setup. It still has smart HDR, automatic night mode, and 4k video with 60 fps.

6. Samsung Galaxy S10 5G

Samsung Galaxy S10 5G

Released back in April 2019, the phone is the best budget camera phone available. The main camera sensor is just 12MP, but the images are terrific quality. It still has 5G, so it still is future proofed. It does have 4K video with digital image stabilization and HDR10+ support for excellent looking videos that still great on big screen televisions.

7. Sony Xperia 1 II

Moviemakers rejoice! While most smartphones enable you to shoot 4K or higher video, the Xperia 1 II allows you to shoot footage in 21:9 aspect ratio for truly cinematic feeling videos that you can process in professional video editors like iMovie or Premiere Pro (Sony would probably prefer you use the latter).

Other benfits include a fast processor and decent battery performance. The 128 GB storage could be an issue depending on how much you video you shoot.

Rear: 12pm (70mm f/2.4) + 12MP (16mm f/2.2) + 12pm (24mm f/1.7) Front: 8MP (f/2)

8. Xiaomi Mi Note 10

Xiaomi Mi Note 10

This phone has the most megapixels of any camera on this list. The 108MP sensor has more pixels than most DSLR cameras. The quad pixel technology combines 4 pixels into one in order to create amazingly detailed photos. You could take a picture of a cityscape and then have it blown up into a wall picture. It’s the only one on this list that comes with a 2MP macro camera as well.

The other cameras are on par with most contemporary smartphones. It’s the main camera that stands above the rest.

9. iPhone SE (2020)

It combines the body of the iPhone 8 with the camera capabilities of the iPhone 11. The result is the best camera phone you can get for under $500. Who would’ve thought that the most budget-friendly option would come from Apple?

10. Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Ultra

The best ‘phablet’ camera, this one comes with a stylus that works as a remote shutter. Plus Samsung’s usual fast processor and storage make for a great smartphone.

11. Google Pixel 3A

The 12MP sensor is small compared to others, but Google’s software means that these photos actually come out great, especially considering the cheap price of the Pixel 3A. The Night Sight allows for long exposure shots.