How we choose the best Phone camera for Photography

It's no stretch to call photography one of the most important aspects of a flagship phone these days for a lot of people. The cameras on their phone are the only ones they own, making high-quality, versatile shooters. Here is a comparison between the best Android phones against each other and the iPhone 11 Pro. 

We were at a great point in mobile photography where just about any high-end phone offered at least one fantastic camera and many of them have a second or even third to fall back on during our testing. We used the Galaxy Note 10.1 Android phones on the market along with the Pixel 3 which is widely regarded as having the best singular camera experience. Of course, the iPhone 11 Pro and its larger sibling 11 Pro max share a similar triple camera system with wide ultra-wide and telephoto cameras.

We compared every phone in a variety of shooting conditions but let's start with the daytime shots where you get a sense of where every camera's quirk comes into play. Apple has always had an affinity for natural if not a bit overly warm colors and that's still the case with the iPhone 11. Everything from white balance to exposure and fine details is usually spot-on. But the same can be said of photos from other phones as well the Galaxy Note 10. 

For example, it tends to over-saturate at times but it can also often expose much more evenly than the iPhone. The Pixel 3 almost splits the difference between the two with great colors and dynamic range but a tendency to produce slightly darker shots than the others at least in its auto-shooting mode now admittedly. I have never cared much for the color science of the p30 Pro which shoots much cooler and aggressively lightened skin tones but the image quality is there with the 40-megapixel primary sensor. 

Huawei nail exposure and fine details will quickly breeze through portrait mode since it's never really great on any phone but what surprised me is that Samsung seems to give you the most natural-looking portrait shot by default with plenty of sharpness and decent separation. Here though it still cuts off glasses now the Pixel 4 is coming soon and it's been confirmed to have a secondary lens which is great news. But at the moment, Pixel 3 relies on a single camera. It means it doesn't offer true telephoto or wide-angle photography. 

The iPhone 11 Pro, Note 10 +, and P 30 Pro all have ultra-wide and telephoto lenses. Though the P 30 Pro offers 5 times more optical zoom than the others which offer only two times. It gives a major advantage to P30 Pro and also gets closer to your subject. You can zoom even further by adding in digital zoom the others don't match the P 30s distance or image quality but they both fare pretty well. 

Though the iPhone seems to have a sharper telephoto lens than the Note 10 plus. It also has the most consistent colors across lenses including its ultra-wide lens but there's also a bit more barrel distortion than on the Note 10 plus or the P 30 Pro. 

Now switching gears to low-light performance each phone takes a different approach. The iPhone 11 pro is Apple's first device to finally introduce a low-light photo mode taking dramatically better photos at night than the previous models but that's nothing new for Android. The Pixel 3 has long been our low-light champ with its night sight mode which still goes toe-to-toe against the iPhone. Both pull in similar amounts of light and take one to two seconds to capture most photos. The iPhone tends to lean much warmer than the Pixel sometimes to a fault. The truth is I had to edit the colors from either camera before posting to social media. The P 30 Pro cranks up saturation and brightness at night and retains a ton of detail even compared to the Pixel 3. 

iPhone 11 and the Galaxy Note 10 is the only phone that while capable of taking great night shots can be frustrating in practice. Its night mode is more of a long exposure mode taking as long as five - even 10 seconds at times to capture photos without giving any progress status. It can lead to a lot of blurry photos for a deeper dive into the various aspects of night photography on each phone. 

Check out Rene Ritchie's camera comparison over a vector I'm going to leave you to determine for yourself what the best overall phone for photography is. But I'll at least say this much when it comes to color science dynamic range and low-light performance I like shooting with the Pixel 3 and the iPhone 11 best. But the P 30 Pro has a ton of great unique aspects to its cameras. 

With Note 10 Plus, you have the added benefit of the S-pen for remote shutter operation. Each phone takes great photos under different circumstances. It's just up to you to decide which one best fits your particular needs. This article was written with plenty of help from Rene Richie and Michael Fisher.