The Best Camera Phones We've Tested, Ranked

We don't score cameras in isolation — a camera section is one part of a broader verdict, weighed alongside battery life, performance, and display quality — but readers ask us constantly which of our reviewed phones actually takes the best photos. So here's a dedicated ranking, pulled from the same real-world testing behind every one of our verdicts: cloudy days, dim restaurants, kids that won't sit still, and the kind of unglamorous conditions most photos actually get taken in — not the bright, static, perfectly-lit demo scenes every manufacturer uses in their own marketing.

1. Google Pixel 8 Pro

This isn't close. The Pixel 8 Pro, which we scored 8.7 overall, remains the phone we hand to someone when they ask "which phone just takes good pictures without me thinking about it." Google's computational photography pipeline — years of Night Sight refinement, Magic Eraser that actually works more often than not, and a color science that leans natural rather than oversaturated — produces the most consistently reliable results in our entire lineup. Its telephoto performance at longer digital zoom ranges (helped by Super Res Zoom) also outperforms phones with objectively longer physical zoom lenses. If photography is your primary reason for buying a phone, this is our pick, full stop.

2. Sony Xperia 1 V

This ranking will surprise people who only glanced at our 7.0 overall score for the Xperia 1 V — that number reflects the whole phone, including a UI and price that hold it back, not the camera specifically. In isolation, Sony's camera system is genuinely excellent for anyone who wants manual control: a real physical shutter button, dedicated video color profiles borrowed from Sony's cinema cameras, and a variable telephoto lens that's unique in this lineup. It's a camera built by a company that also makes professional cinema equipment, and it shows. The catch is usability — Sony's camera app has a steeper learning curve than anything else here, and casual users may prefer a phone that does more of the thinking automatically.

3. Apple iPhone 15

The iPhone 15's jump to a 48MP main sensor was the single biggest camera upgrade in this year's iPhone lineup, and it shows in daylight detail retention and the new 2x "telephoto" crop mode, which is genuinely usable rather than a marketing checkbox. Apple's color science remains the most immediately pleasant of anything we tested — photos come out of the camera looking finished, with minimal need for editing. Its main weakness against the top two entries here is versatility: no true telephoto lens at this price point, and low-light performance that's very good but a clear step behind the Pixel 8 Pro's dedicated night processing.

4. Samsung Galaxy S24

The Galaxy S24, scored 8.5 overall, brings genuine flexibility to this list with a dedicated telephoto lens the iPhone 15 lacks at this price and a wide-angle lens that handles landscapes and architecture well. Samsung's processing has historically erred toward punchier, more saturated colors than what we'd call "accurate," and that's still somewhat true here, though less aggressively than in past generations. For anyone who wants one camera system that does a bit of everything competently rather than one thing exceptionally, this is a strong all-rounder.

5. Xiaomi 14

Xiaomi's Leica partnership is the headline camera story on the Xiaomi 14, which we scored 8.1 overall. Leica's color tuning gives photos a distinctive, slightly warmer, more film-like character that stands out from the neutral-to-cool tones most phones default to — some people will love this immediately, others will find it needs adjusting to taste. Hardware-wise it's genuinely capable, with a large 1-inch-type main sensor that gathers more light than most competitors. It ranks here mainly because software polish and processing consistency outside its home market lag slightly behind the four phones above it, not because the hardware is lacking.

A note on low light, specifically

Low-light performance deserves its own callout because it's where the gap between these phones widens the most compared to daylight shooting, where honestly most modern flagships look fairly similar. The Pixel 8 Pro's Night Sight mode is still the benchmark the rest of the industry gets measured against — it recovers detail in near-darkness without the smeared, over-processed look that plagued early computational night modes. The Galaxy S24 has closed much of that gap in the last two generations and is close behind. The iPhone 15 is very good but noticeably grainier once light levels drop below what a Pixel or Galaxy S24 can still handle cleanly. The Xiaomi 14's large sensor genuinely helps here — physics matters, and gathering more light optically means less denoising is needed afterward — putting it ahead of the iPhone in pure low-light detail, even if Google and Samsung's processing pipelines still edge it out on final presentation.

Honorable mentions

The remaining phones in our lineup — the iPhone 14, Galaxy A54 5G, Nothing Phone (2), HONOR Magic6 Pro, iPhone SE (3rd generation), and Galaxy Z Flip5 — all take perfectly good photos for their price points, but none of them is why you'd choose that specific phone over a rival. The Magic6 Pro in particular deserves a mention as the closest budget-flagship challenger to this top five; it doesn't quite match the processing consistency of the leaders, but the hardware underneath is closer than the price gap suggests.

How we'd actually spend the money

If camera quality is genuinely your top priority and budget isn't a major constraint, buy the Pixel 8 Pro — nothing else in our lineup gets photos right this consistently with this little effort from the person holding the phone. If you shoot video seriously or want manual control, the Xperia 1 V rewards the learning curve in a way no other phone here does. And if you want the best photos without leaving the Apple ecosystem, the iPhone 15 remains the right call — just don't expect true optical zoom at this price tier.