The best camera phone to buy in 2023

Apple’s iPhone 14 Pro may come with a steep asking price, but it meets almost every requirement you could want from a phone camera setup. Its main 48-megapixel sensor takes superb images, with sharp details and beautiful, natural colors, its wide-angle lens is one of the best, and it excels at night photography, delivering bright and clear photos in minimal light.

Its 3x zoom lens falls short of rivals like Samsung’s 10x zoom on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, but 3x is still enough to help you find interesting compositions in your landscape or get a slightly closer shot of a cute dog you’re found in the park.

Its video skills are also superb, with solid image stabilization, 4K resolutions and Apple ProRes support for those of you who want to get the absolute best-looking footage when editing in software like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve.

Read our Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max review.

Google’s Pixel 7 Pro impressed us in many ways, from its sleek new design to its extremely easy-to-use software. But the camera really stands out, with the Pixel 7 Pro delivering superb photos in a variety of conditions. Its main sensor captures photos with superior dynamic range and vivid colors, while its 5x optical zoom gives extra range than the iPhone 14 Pro can manage.

And while the night mode shots aren’t quite as good as the iPhone’s, overall it’s a great camera that will suit both photography enthusiasts – and those looking to take more artistic images – as well as a price that undercuts the competition.

Read our Google Pixel 7 Pro review.

Apple’s video capture has always been top-notch, and the iPhone 14 Pro Max lives up to that. The resolution can reach 4K – rather than the 6K or 8K seen on some Android phones – but its overall quality is unmatched. Exposure and dynamic range are beautiful, detail is superb, and image stabilization is vastly improved with the new Action mode. Then there’s Cinematic Mode, which provides deeper focus control for focusing between two characters in a scene.

But it also lets you shoot with Apple’s ProRes video codec. This generates huge video files, but gives more options for professionals to add color gradations in post-production software without sacrificing quality, meaning the iPhone 14 Pro Max can be a legitimate part of a professional filmmaker’s bag. And while the iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max differ only in size, the extra screen area on the Max model will not only help you monitor your shots more easily, but give you more to physically hold on to when you’re out and about which can help you keep it more stable while shooting.

Read our Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max review.

While Google’s latest Pixel 7 and 7 Pro may steal the headlines with their flashy new design and Tensor G2 processor, the Pixel 6A offers much of what Google’s latest Pixel phones boasted, but in a smaller and more affordable package. There are only two rear cameras (a standard zoom and an ultrawide), both of which take great-looking images that look better than almost any other phone at this price – including Samsung’s Galaxy A53.

If photography is critical to you and you want features like long zooms and crystal-clear images in night mode, then you’ll want to shell out a little more money for the latest Pixel 7 Pro. But for the money, few other camera phones come close.

Read our Google Pixel 6A review.

Sony’s Xperia Pro-I comes with a pretty hefty price tag, but it packs some serious photography skills for those of you who are really focused on your mobile imaging game. It has a huge 1-inch image sensor – the same size seen in Sony’s excellent RX100 line of compact cameras – which allows it to capture more light and achieve better dynamic range than many of its competitors.

It is equipped with a variety of manual controls to create your photos as you would with a regular DSLR or mirrorless camera. It’s a great phone to look at if you basically want a camera that can make phone calls, but its high price means it’s not the best choice for most people.

Read our Sony Xperia Pro-I hands-on.