Cameras are an increasingly important part of smartphones, and as specs start to level out they’re one of the main ways that manufacturers try to make their handsets stand out.
That can mean more lenses, as with the quad-lens iPhone 12 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, higher megapixel counts, unusual features, and gimmicks, or just a focus on making the best single or dual-lens snapper possible, like has been done with the Google Pixel 5.
All of these phones and more can be found on our list below, highlighting the very best smartphone cameras available in 2020. And note also that while this guide focuses on their camera credentials, all of these handsets are great phones in other ways too.
The Google Pixel 5 isn’t a showy phone, from its upper mid-range chipset to its FHD+ screen and slick but stripped back ‘stock’ Android interface, and that lack of showiness extends to the camera, which is just a dual-lens one, with a 12.2MP f/1.7 main and 16MP f/2.2 ultra-wide sensor.
That makes it less versatile than some camera phones, and especially when it comes to optical zoom, as it lacks a telephoto lens, but for most shots – whether standard or wide – it excels.
That’s because what cameras it does have work very well, especially in good light, and with all sorts of easy-to-use image editing tools baked into the phone too it’s a breeze to alter and improve your shots. Like the rest of the phone, the camera and its editing tools are slick, simple, and easy to use, and you’ll generally get great results.
The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra has some serious numbers on its side. There are four rear lenses, headlined by a 108MP f/1.8 main one, which is joined by a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide, a 48MP f/3.5 periscope telephoto one capable of 4x optical zoom, and a Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensor for judging depth.
As such it can take incredibly detailed photos with the main sensor, while the periscope camera lets you zoom in closer than most phones – in fact with digital zoom it can go all the way to 100x, though photos at this zoom level are basically unusable.
The ultra-wide snapper performs well too and the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra is absolutely packed with shooting modes, along with having a 40MP selfie camera.
It’s a phone that more than most follows the philosophy that more is better, and for the most part it pays off, but as you can see it hasn’t quite topped our list, as while its photography skills are very impressive, when you get down to the actual photo quality its images tend to feel a bit over-processed.
Still, that’s only in comparison to the very best rivals. All in all this is an excellent camera phone.
On paper the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra might look like a step down from the S20 Ultra when it comes to photography – it has a similar setup, but without the depth sensor and with its zoom range reduced from 100x to 50x, but the depth sensor didn’t add much, and the actual quality of the zoom here is higher than on the S20 Ultra.
There’s a 12MP f/3.0 telephoto camera with 5x optical zoom which is an upgrade on the optical zooming length of the S20 Ultra. A wider aperture and larger pixel size here also helps with the quality of snaps.
Joining that there’s a 108MP f/1.8 main camera and a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one, similar to the S20 Ultra. These both perform just as well as on Samsung’s other flagship, meaning that you have three excellent cameras covering the three types of photography that people most commonly want to use on smartphones.
The iPhone 12 Pro Max has the best cameras of any phone, edging slightly ahead of the iPhone 12 Pro thanks to larger pixels on its main 12MP f/1.6 snapper and a slightly greater optical zoom range (of 2.5x) on its 12MP f/2.2 telephoto camera. Then there’s also a 12MP f/2.4 ultra-wide one, and a LiDAR scanner for judging depth.
So there are a lot of lenses here, and beyond being the best iPhone for photography, the iPhone 12 Pro Max is one of the very best phones for it full stop.
There are a few reasons for that, from its excellent Night Mode (allowing for class-leading low-light shots), to how easy it is to just point, shoot, and get great photos, thanks to Apple’s computational photography doing a lot of the hard work behind the scenes.
That’s helped by clever features like Smart HDR 3 and Deep Fusion, which intelligently alter images and combine multiple exposures to make for the best shot possible.
Thanks to its lack of access to the Google Play Store the Huawei Mate 40 Pro certainly isn’t for everyone, but as camera phones go it’s arguably the best – and there are alternative app stores you can use.
It has a 50MP f/1.9 main camera, a 12MP f/3.4 periscope camera with 5x optical zoom, and a 20MP f/1.8 ultra-wide camera, as well as a dual-lens camera on the front, with both a 13MP f/2.4 main lens and a depth sensor.
It can zoom in further than most phones – matching the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra with 5x optical and 50x digital zoom, and it’s also much better at taking photos in low light than most phones.
The ultra-wide camera also performs better than most, and does an excellent job of avoiding distortion at the edge of images – something that lesser ultra-wide snappers often struggle with.
With the Huawei Mate 40 Pro being packed full of shooting modes and options too, and excelling a similar amount for video, it really is a photographer’s dream, so if you like to take a lot of photos with your phone, this handset is well worth considering even with having slightly fewer apps available than most Android handsets.
The above phones are easily among the very best camera phones you can get at the time of writing. In our view, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro is the very best, but it has got some steep competition and it’s not the winner in every category.
The Pixel 5 and iPhone 12 Pro Max excel if you just want to point and shoot for example, and the latter is also great for taking night shots, while if you want super detailed shots with a ton of megapixels you’ll get better results from the Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra and Note 20 Ultra.
So consider what you want to use the camera for before picking one. But for its versatility and the core quality of what’s on offer, the Huawei Mate 40 Pro is our top pick.
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