The best camera phones of 2023 reviewed – Middle Kingdom smartphones strike back?

This year, the best phone camera’s performances remain very similar – although, the Sony IMX 989 and the Samsung ISOCELL HP2 both take different approaches. We aren’t able to determine one perfect camera smartphone, as each individual phone of 2023 has different weaknesses and there isn’t a single one that triumphs in all disciplines.

In the fight to become camera king, Oppo’s flagship smartphone simply cannot keep up with the rest due to its main camera’s inconsistent image sharpness and lack of detail at higher levels of zoom. If you take lots of photos using your smartphone, you are likely to have a lot of fun with its sister model, the OnePlus 11 – even if it is a lot cheaper than the Find X6 Pro. 

Every flagship phone has different weaknesses. Thus, we are unable to identify a clear allrounder when it comes to cameras. 

The Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra and Xiaomi 13 Ultra clearly offer the most comprehensive camera package in total – even though both phones can’t entirely shield themselves from critique. Both show nice levels of sharpness and detailing in daylight. While the Xiaomi phone suffers from some slight deficits in color depiction when taking selfies, the Samsung phone often fights with grainy structures and the image information could be a little more pronounced in daylight as well.

Unfortunately, the new 50-MP mode during daylight is still nowhere near as good as 16-to-1 binning – although, the very small sensor pixels’ deficits shouldn’t prove to be too big an issue. We will see how well the classic 4-to-1 fusion works with the new 200-MPix sensor at the latest with the release of the Galaxy S24 Ultra. If Samsung don’t manage to improve their HDR and lighting deficits in order to keep up with the 1.5-MPix JPEG processing results, then that might just be enough for the South Korean flagship to miss out on winning the battle.

Haven’t found your perfect smartphone? Still on the hunt for a good camera phone? Then you should take a closer look at our list of the best photo smartphones – here, you can find a regularly updated list of the 10 best camera phones taken from our reviews.