What phone camera features are best for you?
Whether you are a selfie lover or a movie director, find the best smartphone camera for you.
How to choose the right camera phone for you
When it comes to choosing the best camera phone for you, ask yourself how you use your phone camera. This will help you work out which features matter to you the most.
Selfies galore
If you’re an avid selfie-taker, and these are the main photos and videos you take, you’ll want to look at a phone with the best selfie camera. For example, the Galaxy S23 Ultra has a front-facing camera with a whopping 40 megapixels, which adapts to capture high-quality images even in low-light conditions.
Landscape & cityscape
If your phone is filled with photos and videos of cities and landscapes, a smartphone with a telephoto and/or wide-angle lens can provide additional versatility. While your primary lens can sufficiently capture these, having a zoom lens can get that extra-sharp image of a distant skyscraper or landmark, while your wide or ultrawide lens can capture the breadth of an open landscape or city skyline.
Portrait mode
While portrait photography used to be limited to professional cameras, multi-camera setups allow you to achieve the “portrait” effect straight from your smartphone. If you take a lot of portrait shots, look for a phone with a multi-camera setup. While the blurred background effect (bokeh) can be mimicked with software alone, you can achieve more reliable results with hardware. Some phones may also have a telephoto lens which provides additional information from the zoom.
Next level video capturing
If you’re a professional videographer or just tend to take more videos than photos, there are a few things you may want to consider before choosing your phone:
Image stabilisation
Image stabilisation can make handheld videos buttery smooth. Stabilising videos is possible on phones with large image sensors, optical image stabilisation (OIS) or with the help of AI (artificial intelligence). While phones can stabilise videos with the use of AI software, optical image stabilisation is more reliable and yields superior results. Optical image stabilisation is available on our newer Samsung Galaxy Z, Samsung Galaxy S and Z series such as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold5 and Z Flip5.
Extra stability
For added stability, look for phones with Dual OIS, such as the Galaxy S23 range and the Galaxy Z Flip5 - which also come with Flex Mode due to foldable screens, helping you to take stable photos hands-free. Dual OIS is when the primary and wide-angle cameras have optical image stabilisation so you don’t always have to rely on your primary lens for stable video.
Upgrading your video quality
Video quality has a huge impact not only on how your videos appear, but the amount of flexibility you have while editing. For pro-grade videos, look for smartphones with at least 4K video. Some of the latest smartphones such as the S23 series even have 8K video. To put that into perspective, that’s 4 times the resolution of 4K and 16 times the resolution of Full HD!
Explore our best camera phones
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