Best camera phones 2025 - buyer’s guide

The Xiaomi 14 Ultra is still one of the best cameraphones in 2025, although this will soon change with the upcoming Xiaomi 15 Ultra. A favorite cameraphone in the office, the 13 Ultra didn't leave a lot to ask for, yet Xiaomi did find a few areas to touch up for the 14. Close-focusing telephotos have become the latest trend, and the two ones here are possibly the finest at that, but also excel at a distance. The variable aperture on the main camera is also welcome if you'd like that much control over DoF, though we don't see that as quite the transformational development.

An unrivaled selling point of the 14 Ultra is the Photography kit. Realizing its appeal and its potential to drive Ultra sales, Xiaomi has continued to develop the contraption and add features to it. Indeed, it adds further cost to an already expensive phone, but the two combined will get you as close to a 'real' camera as a smartphone can in ergonomics and experience.

The new Ultra is a global phone, finally! It is also a nearly perfect flagship, one that's so easy to love. Its unique design is beautiful and we do appreciate the ingress protection. Then there is one of the best displays in the industry - a 1440p LTPO OLED with 12-bit color depth, dynamic 120Hz refresh, and Dolby Vision support.

Then there is the most current Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset with class-leading performance. The Xiaomi 14 Ultra also has excellent thermal handling and offers great sustained performance, We certainly cannot praise the battery life (it’s an average one), but we can praise the the charging speed. Kudos for including the 120W charger in the box, too, as this has become a rare thing lately. We also liked the speakers' loudness and quality.

In the end, the Xiaomi 14 Ultra is quite probably the finest camera with a phone attached to it that you can buy today.

Another installment in what's become one of our favorite lineups for camera greatness. The X200 Pro had big shoes to fill for us - it was meant to be the X100 Ultra we couldn't have in Western markets. For the most part, it delivers, but vivo does appear to have made sure to leave enough room to breathe for the next Ultra.

We admit it was the X100 Ultra camera setup we were after, only in a global firmware phone, and the new Pro doesn't quite get us there. The main camera is great, just not quite as great as we know they can make them, the ultrawide is average, and the selfie camera isn't Ultra-grade either.

But really, it was the X100 Ultra's telephoto that we've dubbed 'transformative' on more than one occasion, and the X200 Pro is bringing that to the world. Yes, we do like this camera. Immensely.

The X200 Pro brings a few other Ultra bits and the IP69 rating sounds like a nice bonus on top of the usual submersion-grade protection. The improved battery tech means the X200 Pro can last more than most without weighing more than them. The thoroughly excellent display is higher than most in the nits chart too, and the chipset is plenty powerful, if not quite Elite-grade.

All things considered, we're fine accepting the vivo X200 Pro's smallish imperfections, and we fully appreciate its virtues, of which it has plenty. And it easily passes as one of the greatest cameraphones right now.

You do not get the most premium iPhone for a single feature. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is worth getting for its well-rounded user experience. But we also believe that the iPhone 16 Pro Max is among the best phones for photography on the go right now. It delivers superb photo and video quality across the board, its 2x zoomed prowess is great and it has some neat features like Dolby Vision and Cinematic video capturing, ProRAW, cool automation like auto portraits and auto night mode.

One of its options targets videographers and will go under the radar for the masses. We are talking about capturing 4K60 ProRes videos straight onto an external SSD drive or memory card, which might open use cases and workflows that have never been possible before.

Also, this is the best iPhone ever made. It has a stunning design, an outstanding display, great performance, impressive speakers, pro-grade cameras with a consistently good photo and class-leading video quality, long battery life and likable if weird iOS.

Overall, the iPhone 16 Pro Max is one of the most versatile and consistently good and reliable smartphones for still and video photography out there. It is a point and shoot device, but it also allows for professional capturing and massive prost processing potential.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is not the perfect smartphone, this year we have a long cons section, and for that, unfortunately, we no longer consider it as the ultimate smartphone. But it is the one of the most versatile cameraphones on the market right now and introduces an updated ultrawide camera.

The camera system is mostly a source of satisfaction. Last year’s reimagined telephoto setup is here to stay, and it offers a lot of versatility, quite unmatched right now. The main camera stays the same as last year, but the ultrawide comes with a new 50MP sensor, improved lens, and, of course, autofocus capabilities. Samsung has managed to squeeze out mostly great performance out of this setup, which is awesome.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is certainly anything but a bad phone - quite the competent one, in fact. It manages to extract pretty great endurance (out of a small-ish battery), has a very good display (in most ways), charges reasonably fast (in the right context), has an improved build (but missing some extra sealing), and remains the only truly viable option on the market if you want a stylus (even though the stylus itself is a downgrade this year).

Yes, it is mostly the same as the S24 Ultra. And, yes, the S-Pen has been downgraded. And the battery life is worse. But In the end, Samsung's ultimate smart/camera/phone still comes easily recommended.

The Xperia 1 VI is the best Xperia yet. The standard aspect ratio, the lower resolution and the implementation of an LTPO OLED all play a big role in our assessment. The new display is probably the reason why the device got impeccable battery Active Use Score. We also liked the loud and nicely-tuned speakers, making this phone the ultimate multimedia device.

The cameras offer consistently great photo and video quality, with natural processing. And, of course, there are unmatched options for tuning if you know what you are doing. If you are a photography nerd, you will definitely appreciate the solid hardware at hand here coupled with excellent battery life and various Pro-oriented modes and settings for photos and, eventually, for videos.

It's not all great, though. The unremarkable video quality with the zoom camera, the uncompetitive charging speed and the underwhelming performance tuning of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 keep us from giving this phone an immediate reccomendation.

The Pixel 9 Pro XL brings relatively major stylistic changes plus some hardware upgrades that do make it a better phone than the previous generation. The brighter display is a welcome improvement, of course, and it's possibly the brightest in the business, though it's not like the 8 Pro was lacking in this respect. Battery life has been a blemish for Pixels in head-to-head comparisons, and the new model is a step up in this respect, though it remains in a trailing position among its peers.

The Pixel's biggest selling point lies in its AI capabilities, Google wants us to believe. A bunch of software features are at your disposal for both work and play and image editing tools can help save a photo that circumstances tried to ruin. Having a phone that's made by the OS maker has its benefits even if they're hard to quantify.

We're not quite as thrilled with the camera system as we would have hoped to be, though. The Pixel is lagging behind some of the trends and just because AI can enhance photos and even make up stuff that wasn't there, doesn't mean it can be used as a replacement for state of the art camera hardware. The brand new selfie camera is pretty great, the others fail to excite. This doesn’t mean the camera quality is not good, it’s just that we expected a bit more.

Of course, the Pixel 9 Pro XL is a well rounded and fully capable high-end smartphone - that's beyond debate. This generation prioritizes the phone's development as a vehicle for Google's AI pursuits - if you're into that and want to ride the AI wave, by all means go for it. There are also meaningful improvements on some of the fundamentals to appeal to the AI skeptics.

The Honor Magic7 RSR Porsche Design is great at everything important - screen, battery life, charging speed, speakers, performance, camera, and connectivity. It may not be as competitive as the industry darlings from Samsung and Apple, but if you value its premium market positioning and exclusive features, the Magic7 RSR is worth considering.

The Honor Magic7 Pro does a lot of things right - to the high standard you'd expect from a top-shelf model - and it also manages to stand out in a couple of ways worth mentioning. At least two of them can be found in the pill-shaped cutout in the display - the selfie camera and the 3D face scanning bits that you can't get on all that many Androids. The unusually loud speakers are also possibly a selling point.

The Magic7 Pro impresses with a large 6.8-inch LTPO OLED screen of high resolution, high dynamic refresh rate, 10-bit color depth, and support for HDR and Dolby Vision streaming. It is also powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip for top-notch performance. All these goodies coupled with the awesome speakers make for one excellent multimedia device.

Honor's camera system is one of the best in the class yet, and it delivers loveable quality across the board, front and rear, day and night.

If you are looking for a proper flagship with top-notch camera kit and all-round feature set, the Magic7 Pro RSR Porsche Design must be an instant addition to your shortlist.

The Find X series have returned with a properly impressive flagship smartphone – the Find X8 Pro. It offers a refreshed design with improved ingress protection, a top-notch Dolby Vision display, superb performance, an impressive camera system, and a large battery with nicely fast charging.

The Find X8 Pro's flaws are few, smallish, and of somewhat lesser importance than the things it's actually great at. Just because Oppo is choosing to stay away from a brightness competition, doesn't mean you'll be strapped for nits, and unless you absolutely must game above 60fps, you'll be perfectly fine with a Find. The camera system has a few imperfections in our experience, but you can expect that from the Pro when there's an Ultra on the way.

Those relatively minor things aside, the Find X8 Pro is a thoroughly competent all-round flagship smartphone. The super powerful chipset is about as good as they come, the battery life is towards the top of the class, the newly-standard next-level water sealing brings extra peace of mind, the camera key can't hurt. And there's the top-tier camera system that struck us as better than most at low-light video, while also being great in general.

In fact, that camera system easily puts the Find X8 Pro as one of the best cameraphones nowadays – it has an excellent main camera with 2x hybrid zoom, two very real and very adequate telephoto cameras for 3x and 6x zoom, and one superb ultrawide camera with autofocus.

The Find X8 Pro is available now and even if it is not available on every shelf, it is worth going through the hassle of getting it.

The Xiaomi 14T Pro is still among the best cameraphones you can get for about €600. It delivers on every single promise and has plenty of flagship-grade, class-leading features. It's among the fastest charging phones in the industry and it's got a 144Hz display, and that's in addition to a high-end chipset and a camera system that only falls short in one or two niche areas.

The Leica cooperation is paying off, as all rear cameras (50MP main, 50MP 2.6x tele, 12MP UW) deliver outstanding photo and video quality day and night.

Admittedly, if selfies are of utmost importance, one of the niche areas becomes more of a pressing issue. Similarly, if you're into closeups, you'll probably need to look elsewhere (or try to work with the main camera, because the ultrawide and the telephoto won't be of much use).

Long story short - the Xiaomi 14T Pro is a very competent offering with a compelling set of flagship-grade capabilities.

The Motorola Edge 50 Pro is another budget pick here for being the best cameraphone around the €500 mark. The Pro isn't the top model in the Motorola Edge lineup this time around, but it nicely slots somewhere below flagship territory. Even with the remarkably-specced Ultra, the Edge 50 Pro still manages to offer a very capable camera setup for stills - a champion at light gathering of a main camera is joined by a solid telephoto in a segment where dedicated zoom cameras are rare and an ultrawide that's got autofocus and puts it to good use. And then it tops it all off with some excellent selfies for good measure.

It doesn't quite tickle our fancy for video recording though, so it's worth keeping in mind that it's not quite the all-round cameraphone it could have been. Also somewhat annoying is the choice of chipset, which may be adequate for most things, but still doesn't look good next to similarly priced competitors in some markets.

The display is better than most in most metrics and it's also Pantone-validated - a first in the industry and a feat that's bound to attract crowds of buyers (or so thinks the marketing team). The back cover's color also comes from that company's catalog and it sure is nice, but we'd be equally happy with a generically named hue as long as it's that grippy and maintains the water-tightness - something that is still not universally found, even for Edge 50 Pro money.

Motorola says it's big on experiences and transcending the specs wars, which is convenient when the chipset isn't winning any. But the newly renamed Hello UI is a sizable chunk of the experience with an Edge 50 Pro and it's a nice blend of the visual simplicity of 'stock' Android and the personality and functionality that Motorola has built and continued to develop on top of it.

Overall, we do recommend the Motorola Edge 50 Pro as a cameraphone. Read full review