Best camera phones 2023: Top mobile phones photographers love
Best mobile phones: Smartphones with camera set-ups from Hasselblad, Leica and Zeiss are evolving every day. Check out best camera phones from Samsung, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi, OnePlus and iPhone.
Need to amp up your Instagram quotient? Now’s a good time. We’ve seen a flurry of flagship smartphones hit India over the last few months. From Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra’s superlative zoom lens, to high quality videos on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, smartphone cams have upped their game. We’ve also seen brands like OnePlus, Xiaomi and Vivo leverage their tie-ups with imaging brands like Hasselblad, Leica and Zeiss. We round up the best mobile shooters you can buy right now. Vivo X90 Pro: The Vivo X90 has our attention for the Vivo-Zeiss co-engineered camera system. The cam comes with a Zeiss 1-inch main camera with the IMX989 sensor. It brings increased light sensitivity to capture high-detail and clear images in extreme low light. This is one of the best smartphones for portrait photography with its large aperture of f.1/6 with OIS. The rear cam combines a 50MP primary lens, a 50MP Portrait cam and a 12MP ultra-wide lens. The X90 Pro also offers a cool astrophotography feature and a long exposure mode that’s great capture urban night scenes. (Price: Rs 84,999)
2/7
Apple iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max: These are the first iPhones to include a 48MP main camera featuring a quad pixel sensor and Photonic Engine, an enhanced image pipeline that dramatically improves low-light photos. For most photos, the quad-pixel sensor combines every four pixels into one large quad pixel equivalent to 2.44 µm, resulting in amazing low-light capture and keeping photo size at a practical 12MP. The iPhone probably does videos better than any other smartphone, the iPhone 14 devices ads an all-new action mode for blur-free captures of your action moments (Price: Rs 1,29,900 onwards)
3/7
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra: This is one of the best Android flagships out there with its vivid 6.8-inch Dynamic AMOLED 2X display (1440 x 3088 pixels / 501 PPI) with a 120Hz refresh rate. One of the biggest improvements over last year’s S22 Ultra is a 200MP sensor in the quad rear cam. It gives this device a major boost in low light scenarios. The S23 Ultra is also the mobile shooter to beat in the zoom department with its 10X optical zoom . And then there’s the Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS) that is even more robust this year; according to Samsung it corrects for 3 degrees of shake versus 1.5 that results in less image blur. (Price: Rs 1,24,999)
4/7
Xiaomi 13 Pro: Xiaomi would like us to believe that its association with Leica is a ground-up partnership where Leica has an active role in the development of a rear camera system. The 13 Pro is the first smartphone that rides on this partnership. The rear cam combines three 50MP lenses. Xiaomi plays up the large 1-inch lens that almost pushes it into DSLR territory. The rear cam also includes a 50MP telephoto camera with a 75mm floating lens and a ultra-wide lens with a 115-degree field of view. The 13 Pro is shines in the ‘photos’ department, an assortment of Leica filters add to its appeal. (Price: Rs 79,999)
OPPO Find N2 Flip: The Oppo Find N2 aims to break the perception that flip devices don’t deliver on the camera front. This device comes with a dual rear cam co-developed with Hasselblad that combines a 50MP Main cam and a 8MP ultra-wide lens. Flip phones offer the flexibility of shooting selfies with your rear cam and the N2 Flip is no exception. The 32MP front camera also shoots sharp selfie, while the large 3.26-inch cover display (that’s much larger than the competition) is a handy accessory while you use the camera. (Price: Rs 89,999)
6/7
OnePlus 11: OnePlus’ flagship for 2023 may not wear the pro badge like last year’s OnePlus 10 Pro but it comes with all the same Pro level features. It lives up to OnePlus’ reputation for speed with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and 16B RAM (top-end variant) under the hood. But it’s the rear cam that is one of highlights. OnePlus has co-designed this rear shooter with Hasselblad and it blends a 50MP Primary lens, a 48MP ultra-wide lens and 32MP telephoto lens. (Price: Rs 56,999 onwards)
7/7
Google Pixel 7 Pro: You have to go back to 2018 and the Google Pixel 3 for the last time that Google launched a Pixel flagship in India. The Pixel 7 Pro doesn’t just offer one of the best Android experiences, it’s also one of the best smartphone cams with a 5X optical zoom. Google has packed it with a bunch of camera tricks including Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser (you can also use this for images shot on other devices) aside from all the Google Smarts that we’ve come to expect in Pixel phones. (Price: Rs 84,999)
