How we test phone cameras

By Abu Bakar Saadat · Publisher: Saadat Rafiq · Photos taken 24 October 2026

We take the same scenes with every phone we own, within minutes of each other, and publish the photos with the settings stored in each file. We do not score or rank phones: you look and decide.

Our first shoot: 24 October 2026

Place: Palmengarten, the botanical garden in Frankfurt am Main. Light: a sunny autumn afternoon with clouds, between 14:28 and 15:27. Six scenes, each taken with all 11 phones before moving on. Every phone was clamped to the same tripod and used its own camera app on its default auto settings.

Scene	What it shows	All 11 phones between
Fountain and pond	Bright sky, moving water and autumn trees in one wide view	14:28–14:39
Red sculpture	A strong red in sun and shade, against grass	14:45–14:50
Statue under ivy	White stone in shade with bright sky behind it	14:54–14:59
Roses at 2x	Every phone set to its 2x zoom	15:01–15:05
Bench and asters	Bright white paint next to purple flowers and deep shade	15:12–15:17
Pansy bed	Hundreds of small flowers: fine detail and many colours	15:22–15:26

The phones:

Lens and settings

Each phone's own camera app on its default auto settings: we did not switch on manual or pro modes.
Main rear camera at 1x for five scenes; every phone at its 2x setting for the roses. No ultra-wide, no telephoto beyond 2x.
Each photo shows the settings the phone stored in its own file: lens (as a 35 mm equivalent), aperture, ISO, shutter speed, file size in pixels and, where the phone records it, the software version.
Where a phone's 2x photo is a digital zoom, the file says so and we show it (for example the Galaxy phones and the Pixel 10a).

What we do to the photos

No colour, brightness or sharpness changes.
Location data and other file details are removed before publishing.
People in the background are blurred.
Whole photos are made smaller for the web: 1,400 pixels wide.
Centre crop: the middle quarter of the original photo (a quarter of its width and of its height), shown 1,000 pixels wide, so every phone shows the same part of its own frame.

Limits you should know

One afternoon, one kind of light. Night, indoor and portrait photos are not shot yet.
One copy of each phone.
Framing differs a little between phones: their lenses differ (23 to 26 mm equivalent at 1x) and each phone was clamped to the tripod in turn.
Phones change with software updates. Each photo lists the software the file recorded.
The iPhone 18 Pro's clock was set to a US time zone; we converted its times to Frankfurt time. It took two pansy-bed photos 3 seconds apart; we show the second.

Why there are no scores

A single number hides what matters to you: one person wants punchy colour, another wants natural shadows. Scores also suggest a precision one afternoon of photos cannot give. So we show the photos, the crops and the facts in the files, and tell you only what we can see.

Planned next

Planned, not done yet: night and indoor scenes, and the same scenes again after major camera updates, with the older set kept for comparison.

Open the Camera Lab