Photo Comparison: Which High-End Smartphone Takes the Best Pics?

25.10.2023 - 19:01 / pcmag.com / Best

Camera functions are one of the big drivers of upgrading to a new phone these days, so I wondered: Of the high-end phones, which takes the best pictures? So for the past few weeks, I've been walking around with the top phones from three big US sellers—the Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max, Google Pixel 8 Pro, and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra—and using them to take pictures in a wide variety of situations.

Each had its pros and cons, with each doing better than the others in certain situations. What interested me was that different people I showed the pictures to had different reactions. I can only include a small sample of the photos below—but they should be enough to give a feel for the differences.

First, let's go over the specs of the cameras.

The iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 48MP main camera with ƒ/1.78 aperture that also allows for 12MP 2x zoom using the quad-pixel sensor; a 12MP ultrawide camera with ƒ/2.2 aperture; and a 12MP 5x optical telephoto with ƒ/2.8 aperture.

The Pixel 8 Pro has a 50 MP wide camera with ƒ/1.68 aperture; a 48 MP ultrawide camera with ƒ/1.95 aperture and a 125.5° field of view13; and a 48 MP 5X optical telephoto camera with ƒ/2.8 aperture. Google claims you can get up to 30X digital zoom.

The Galaxy S23 Ultra has what Samsung says is a 200 MP main camera with an aperture of f/1.7 (although it usually captures 12 MP images, which is how I had it set); a 12 MP ultrawide camera with ƒ/2.2 aperture; a 3X optical 10 MP camera with an aperture of f/2.4; and a 10x optical with an aperture of f/4.9). Samsung claims up to 100X digital "Space Zoom."

All talk about features like optical image stabilization and autofocus, and these have generally gotten better over the years. As usual, I take the "digital zoom" claims with a grain of salt. By cropping you can get closer, but I rarely find it works well at the maximum zoom.

So let's see how they worked in the real world. Note all the photos are as taken; I'm not trying out any of the fancy photo editing features that some of the vendors provide. Use the arrows below each set to cycle through for comparison.

This is a wide shot of the Empire State Building. I thought all the phones did a fine job capturing the street. The Galaxy seemed the brightest and the Pixel the least bright, but they all were good.

Here's a shot of the top of the Empire State Building. Here there's no question—the Galaxy won by a large margin. While some people have been skeptical of the periscope zoom lens, the 10X lens simply lets you get closer than the 5X zoom lens on the iPhone or the Pixel, and for similar levels of zoom, the Galaxy certainly looks better.

The same thing is true in this shot, of the clock in the center of Grand Central Terminal. The Galaxy is clearly the best