Best camera phones in 2024 - Which compact phone has the best camera?

[Redaktion]

You don't necessarily need a current high-end smartphone to get good photos. We tested out a few wieldy phones to check out the quality of their cameras. Read our article to find out whether Google Pixel 8, Samsung Galaxy S24, Xiaomi 14 or OnePlus 12 offers the best camera experience.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Best-camera-phones-in-2024-Which-compact-phone-has-the-best-camera.847093.0.html

[Eric]

It would have been better if you had captured the RAW files from each of these smartphones and applied the same post-processing to find out what is the real capability of the sensor + optical path.

[An0n]

Not sure why OnePlus 12 was included in these tests. I wouldn't call OnePlus 12 as a "compact" phone. It's almost 165mm in height.

[Agreed]

Not sure why OnePlus 12 was included in these tests. I wouldn't call OnePlus 12 as a "compact" phone. It's almost 165mm in height.

To my knowledge, OnePlus have never made any compact models, at least not in recent memory. The last one they made was the 5T, which was released over 6 years ago. For the last couple of years all their phones have been almost 7" (6.67"). Irrespective of budget -- no matter if high or low end. This isn't phone size category anymore. That's a mini tablet with sim modem capability. A phablet at best.

[Maxal]

It would have been better if you had captured the RAW files from each of these smartphones and applied the same post-processing to find out what is the real capability of the sensor + optical path.

Not worth. Ones going postprocessing route from RAW from smartphone would be within rounding error of smartphone user volume.
That's the same as comparing shots taken by world level pro with average Joe.
I would assume that for smartphone public, 98%+ photos are taken on auto.

[NikoB]

For ordinary people, this doesn't matter at all, because... The default settings for all manufacturers, even in the top lines, instantly lose out in jpeg quality to carefully configured camera software, even smartphones 7-9 years old, where jpeg file sizes are many times larger. Which is clearly visible even with the naked eye when comparing photos head-on with approximately the same resolution of 12-13 megapixels. "Plasticine" photos on top cameras 2023-2024 are exactly the same as on previous top cameras.

Less than 5% of users approach the topic of photo/video recording thoroughly and knowledgeably. The rest are lame people who shoot with disgusting quality and think that their $1,500 smartphone takes better pictures than a $200 smartphone, but where the camera saving software compresses raw data from the camera several times less. The typical difference in jpeg size on a configured smartphone and on default settings from the factory is 2-3 times, which immediately kills many details in the frame and the more complex the situation in the frame, the worse it is.

Moreover, the funny thing is, earlier 7-9 years ago, flash drives on smartphones were 16-64GB, and now the number is hundreds of gigabytes and there is no point in saving space, but stupid manufacturers still set 5-7MB while saving jpeg at 12 -13MP resolution, instead of 12-13MB, at least.

Look - after 7-9(!) years, most mainstream smartphones under $400 are still not capable of shooting in 4k@60fps with a bitrate of 80Gbps+. This is a disgrace to the entire smartphone industry. Today, even smartphones for $200 should be able to shoot such video without any problems, and top cameras should shoot in good lighting at 8k@60fps, and even more so with expensive cameras (which is also a complete shame), which allow post-processing at 4k@60fps without compromising quality.

Today you simply cannot consider buying a smartphone that does not have 4k@60fps with a bitrate of 80-200Mbps and mandatory multi-axis OIS. Just as one cannot be serious about buying a smartphone that destroys the quality of shooting in jpeg with a shamefully reduced file size of 2-3 times the normal size, moronicly saving space on the huge modern flash drives of smartphones.

But then what should we sell to stupid marketers if a $200 smartphone will record 4k@60fps in exactly the same quality in daylight as a $1500 smartphone, right?

Even cheap SoCs can now easily handle such video recording in hardware, but there it is intentionally disabled in hardware. Well, try to find such smartphones up to $400-500 with OIS...

[NikoB]

Haha, there are no "compact" smartphones today. All that is called "compact" today are shovels by the standards of even 5", which are already relatively difficult to operate with one finger.

I would love to buy a 4-4.7" smartphone, where everything can be easily controlled with one hand, but where there is a different photo/video part with the above requirements. But there are simply none.