Which phone has the best camera this year?

With this in mind, let’s get started, shall we?

#3: Google Pixel 4 series

The Pixel remains the king of night-time photography, but lacks an ultra-wide camera, 4K60 video and has some strange issues with white balance during the day

Not only this, but Google has arrogantly decided to not include an ultra-wide angle camera in its Pixel 4. Ultra-wide cameras can be super helpful and they are present on iPhones, Galaxies, and really, many other phones these days, so it’s really strange not to have this useful feature.

All things combines, the Pixel 4 is an extremely capable camera that can sometimes create incredible shots and is clearly the low-light photo king right now, but looking at the bigger picture, it is missing a few features and that’s why it gets the third place in this ranking.

#2: Samsung Galaxy S10 / Note 10 series

Jack of all trades, the Galaxy does well in various conditions and has both a telephoto and an ultra-wide camera, but it falls a bit short in terms of detail and night time performance

Samsung phones have had excellent cameras for years, but the S10 series for the first time made them truly versatile, providing the three essential lenses for smartphone photography: the main one, the ultra-wide one and the telephoto one. Couple this with ample 128 gigs of on board storage, so you can capture a ton of photos and videos without worrying you might run out of space, and the Galaxy cameras look strong.

The thing that Galaxy cameras stand out for is their beautiful color rendition. They capture very pleasing colors that are a bit more saturated than reality, but nice nonetheless. The camera experience is well refined, everything works without glitches, switching between the cameras is effortless and you can use all three cameras for video recording too.

While the Galaxies don’t quite match the Pixel in low-light quality, they are more consistent with their daylight shots and do a very good in video too, and deserve the second place on this list.

#1: iPhone 11 series

The iPhone has pleasing colors during the day, the best video on a smartphone, rich editing tools, and the easiest-to-use Night Mode, but it has a few issues too

The iPhone 11 series are an important moment for Apple. The company seemed to be falling behind in terms of camera features, and that became more and more apparent in 2019 as Android phone makers kept introducing more cameras that could do many things, but the iPhone 11 were the comeback Apple hoped for.

The biggest new feature for iPhones this year is probably the Night Mode that finally does something to salvage the basically unusable photos that iPhones captured in low light in previous years. Not only does the iPhone catch up in this regard, its implementation of Night Mode is automatic, fast and stress-free, unlike on most Android phones where you have to remember to manually turn it on every time and it takes a long time shooting and processing a single photo.

But that is not the only new thing that the iPhone brings to the table. On the video side, the iPhone remains the best phone out there: video shot on it is detailed, good looking and well-stabilized, plus it has the beautiful colors and wide dynamic range that other phones might be missing. The thing that impresses me most about iPhone shots is the beautiful color science that takes away the need to edit and tinker with photos after you’ve taken them. Sure, you can do that, but images mostly turn out good enough right out of the box.

All of this is what makes iPhones the best overall camera in our opinion. It was a close call with the other two contestants, and each phone and platform has niches where it beats the others, but we tried looking at the big picture and give you the nitty-gritty.