The best camera phones for photos, video and zoom

The most complete camera phone you can buy. All three rear cameras are 48MP, so switching between wide, ultra wide and telephoto no longer means a drop in quality, and colour stays consistent across the set. The telephoto gives you 4x optical reach plus an 8x crop that still holds up on social and in normal-size prints.

Video is where it pulls clear: 4K at 120fps in Dolby Vision, ProRes RAW and Apple Log give you footage that grades properly, and handheld stabilisation is the best of this group. If your work goes anywhere near a timeline, this is the safe choice.

Samsung's 200MP main sensor gives you more cropping headroom than anything else here, and the two telephoto lenses — a 3x and a 5x periscope — cover both the indoor portrait and the distant subject. Expert RAW hands you DNG files with real latitude for editing, and the S Pen works as a remote shutter for long exposures and group shots.

It is a big, boxy phone, and Samsung's default processing can over-sharpen foliage and skin. Drop into Pro mode or shoot raw and those complaints largely disappear.

Pixel's strength is consistency. Point it at almost anything and the exposure, white balance and skin tones come out right first time, which is exactly what you want when you are photographing people rather than test charts. The 50MP main, 48MP ultra wide and 48MP 5x telephoto cover the useful range without any obvious weak lens.

Google's editing tools are the real differentiator: Best Take fixes blinkers in group shots, Add Me gets the photographer into the frame, and Magic Editor cleans up the background clutter you could not avoid. Seven years of Android and security updates make it a long-term buy.

The only phone here with a 1-inch main sensor, which means cleaner shadows, less noise at night and a shallower depth of field than any other camera phone on this list. The 200MP periscope covers 4.3x, and Leica's Authentic and Vibrant profiles give your JPEGs a look you would normally have to grade in yourself.

Add the optional Photography Kit grip and you get a proper shutter button and zoom dial, which turns the phone into something closer to a compact camera. The trade-offs are software and availability: HyperOS ships with more preinstalled apps than Pixel or iPhone, and the phone is harder to find on a UK contract.

Three 50MP cameras — main, ultra wide and a 3x periscope — for noticeably less than the flagships above. Hasselblad tuning keeps colour natural rather than sugary, and the large silicon-carbon battery means you can shoot all day without hunting for a charger, which matters on a day out with the camera app open constantly.

It will not out-resolve the Xiaomi in low light or reach as far as the Samsung, but nothing else at this price gives you a periscope telephoto and this level of battery life in one phone.