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2021 smartphone mega shootout: The year’s best camera phones tested
June 28, 2025
It’s that time of the year where we grab thebest camera phonesaround and take them out for a side-by-side shootout. We have six entrants we’ve been particularly impressed with throughout 2021. TheApple iPhone 13 Pro MaxandSamsung Galaxy S21 Ultrashowcase the best that the big two have to offer. We also liked theOnePlus 9 Profor its ultrawide setup, theGoogle Pixel 6 Proas a return to form, and theSony Xperia 1 IIIfor its novel telephoto technology. We also heard you loud and clear and picked up aXiaomi Mi 11 Ultraas the reader’s choice entry this time around.
First, a little housekeeping. We installed all the latest software patches before heading out for our shootout. Camera apps were left in their out-of-the-box settings, so using Apple’s Standard color profile for example, and there’s no post-editing on any of these images. All we’ve done is resize them to save on bandwidth in this article. Given that most of these phones have been on the market for many months now, this is likely as good as these cameras are ever going to look.
So go and grab a coffee and get comfortable, as there’s a serious amount of pictures to get through here. If you want to read along with your own analysis, be sure to check out the original-sized files over at thisGoogle Drive folder.
Last year:The best camera phones of 2020 tested
Camera specs recap
Color balance and exposure
To start our shootout, let’s look at how these phones handle a wide variety of typical shooting environments. We’ve hand-picked four scenarios to showcase how these phones adapt their image processing to blue skies, warm hues, cold color palletes, and vivid colors. I’ll say in advance, all six are perfectly fine here and more alike than different, but there are some minor yet not insignificant discrepancies.
First up, our random assortment of colorful objects. Here we’re checking to see the overall white balance, hue, and if any particular colors are oversaturated or undersaturated.
Next is our warm autumn woodland scene. Keep an eye out for over or undersaturation of the yellows and reds, as well as how well the blue breaks through the trees. I also think the dynamic range from the sunlight on the ground is interesting to observe.
Photography terms explained:ISO, aperture, shutter speed, and more
Now the opposite — a scene with overly cool tones to test the handset’s white balance and dynamic range when there’s less color available.
Finally, a scene with plenty of blue sky and water. The main thing we’re looking at is sky tone but pay attention to the color grading and dynamic range in the scene’s foreground and background too.
Color, exposure, and white balance rankings:
High Dynamic Range
Our first four images didn’t stress the phones too badly so let’s put them to the test in more demanding HDR environments. Here we’re paying attention to three key things — highlight clipping, shadow detail extraction, and color saturation. We definitely don’t want to see heavy clipping, completely black shadows, and washed-out colors when the going gets tough.
Our first shot isn’t too tricky, but we’re looking for phones that avoid background clipping and retain a realistic color balance with the indoor lighting.
Our next shot is a little more difficult, but not terribly so. Key things to watch out for are clipping in the clouds, punchy colors, or lack thereof, and whether the phone’s HDR technique makes the image look too flat.
Our third HDR sample is much tougher to get right. I think you’ll agree there’s a much more noticeable difference here and some HDR effects can be too strong and unrealistic.
This final shot offers a good balance of tricky conditions even without an overly bright backlight. Again, colors and shadow detail separate the leaders from the pack here.
High Dynamic Range rankings:
Cropping in on detail
Before moving on to detail, I should note that OnePlus, Samsung, and Xiaomi offer higher resolution shooting modes from their pixel binned sensors, but we’re not looking at those here as that would lead us down a whole other tangent we don’t have time for right now.
So with each camera handing in 12MP snaps, we’d expect very similar levels of detail in good outdoor lighting. While the first 100% crop pictures below look a little different, I think you’ll agree that detail in outdoor lighting is pretty good on all six handsets — although you might be able to spot some differences in grass sharpness and shadow noise.
Likewise, in our second crop, there are subtle differences between the phones but not a huge amount in it. Pay attention to the pop of the stone textures and the carved lines on the statues to spot which phones artificially sharpen their images.
To really separate these phones, let’s turn to some less ideal lighting conditions to stress-test the amount of noise these cameras suffer from. Can you read every word on this plinth when cropping in?
Believe it or not, the next set of shots was taken even later in the afternoon, so noise and detail extraction should be even trickier for these phones, although it wasn’t so dark as to rely on night shooting here. Keep an eye on the clockface and stone texturing to see which phone performs best here.
Detail rankings:
Low light and night mode
Continuing on detail in low light, let’s take a look at the phones’ more general performance in dim and night shooting environments. We’ll start off with a somewhat typical nighttime shot, with lots of darker areas illuminated by bright background lighting that’s bright enough to avoid the need for night mode. The key things to look for here are over or underexposure and color balance.
Here’s the same picture but cropped at 100%. Keep an eye on the noise levels, brickwork detail, color, and exposure of the light sources to see which phone offers the best dynamic range at night.
Next, a much more dimly lit example with night mode on and off. Here we’re looking at the differences night mode makes to color, exposure, and dynamic range. Detail is not such an issue here, as night mode often takes a long time to shoot.
Night shooting rankings:
Portrait mode and selfies
Let’s be honest, most of the pictures you take probably have people in them. While framing shots with six phones is a mammoth task, we’ve includes a selection of shots to take a look at how these phones handle skin tones, textures, and artificial bokeh blur. We’ll start with what should be a pretty easy outdoor shot using the phones’ portrait modes.
This second portrait image is a little more difficult, owing to the high contrast background and bright sunlight. Keep an eye on color saturation and exposure in this one.
Switching to selfies, again we’ll start with another quite easy outdoor shot followed by a slightly trickier indoor snap.
Portrait and selfie rankings:
Ultrawide angles and macro
Each of our flagship phones features a dedicated ultrawide camera for fitting more into the scene. So let’s start by seeing which handset offers the widest field with minimal distortion. It’s also worth taking a bit of a closer look at the detail and dynamic range of the highlights and shadows in this first shot.
If our first shot was a tricky test for these cameras’ dynamic range, this third image is the real deal. As ultrawide sensors are often smaller in size and have a narrower aperture, so they can struggle with light capture. The better implementations will be able to balance strong backlighting with foreground shadow detail.
Now, let’s take a step back and look at how these ultrawide lenses handle detail in the distance. Take a look at the full-res images to see how these phones apply sharpening, which can look rather ugly here.
Finally, any ultrawide cameras these days can be used for macro, so let’s test that too. Focus, fringing, and detail sharpening are the main things to look out for here.
Ultrawide rankings:
Medium- and long-range zoom
All six of our phones are equipped with zoom lenses too, although their arrangements range from simple telephoto to multi-camera periscope designs. Even though ultra-long-range is nice to have, phones should take great-looking snaps at all their possible zoom levels too. So that’s what we’re looking for here.
The second set of overcast zoom samples is much more of a stress test for these often small-sized and tiny aperture zoom cameras. Pay particular attention to noise and any heavy post-processing that will catch out the weaker handsets.
Zoom rankings:
Best camera phone 2021 edition: The verdict
I’m reluctant to crown an outright winner, as I’m sure you’ll agree that each of these phones has its own pros and cons. However, I do think a few of these handsets stand out above the rest, while others are rather disappointing given their price tags.
The Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra stands out for its sheer consistency and flexibilityacross all of our scenarios. From HDR and low light to portraits and selfies, the S21 Ultra hands in a good picture virtually every time. Its only notable weakness is intermediate zoom quality, and its wide-angle lens isn’t flawless. However, the handset has a serious rival in Xiaomi’s ultra-premium flagship.The Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra offers unrivaled soft natural details and ultra-competitive zoom capabilities.If Xiaomi can tone down its HDR strength and tweak its portraits/selfies, this would be close to the perfect camera phone.
Google’s Pixel 6 Pro is also a strong contender, especially for its comparatively cheap $899 price.I’m less sold on the handset’s ultrawide and portrait capabilities compared to its more expensive rivals, however. Still, the camera package hands in brilliant exposure, colors, and details, as well as zoom capabilities that rival much more expensive phones. Low light and HDR performance also show that Google hasn’t quite caught up in the hardware department yet either.
Apple’s latest flagship is similarly impressive for the most part but I’d argue it doesn’t quite justify its much higher price tag.The iPhone 13 Pro Max excels at portraits and selfies but its color accuracy and HDR capabilities leave a lot to be desired.I’d spend my money elsewhere unless you’re seriously into the phone’s excellent video capabilities. But that’s a discussion for another day.
This leaves us with OnePlus and Sony, two phones I felt severely underwhelmed in this shootout given their premium price tags. Despite the Hasselblad hype,the OnePlus 9 Pro’s can’t compete with portrait or zoom quality.That said, the phone is a very good low-light shooter and has one of the better ultrawide setups available.Sony’s Xperia 1 III has major flaws with portraits and selfiesthat really don’t cut it at a price tag that rivals the excellent Samsung and Xiaomi flagships. The phone can take some great pictures in the right hands and given the right conditions, but it’s not consistent enough to recommend outside of Sony’s fanbase.
That’s it forAndroid Authority’s2021 mega-camera shootout. Which phone do you think takes the best photos in this shootout? Vote in our poll or let us know in the comments below.
Overall, which smartphone takes the best pictures?
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