Your phone is the camera you always carry. If you haven't upgraded it in a few years, you should be pleasantly surprised by how much phone camera performance (particularly low-light image quality) has improved. In fact, we've pretty much reached the point where you can leave your old point-and-shoot at home as long as you've got a good camera phone in your pocket.

But not all phone cameras are equal. We put every phone we review through a rigorous series of camera evaluations to determine the best performers on the market and gathered our top picks here. You never have to worry about carrying a separate camera if you've got one of these in your pocket and each is a stellar smartphone, too.

Bottom line: Apple's iPhone 13 Pro Max is the ultimate mobile content creation machine, with the best camera and longest battery life of any iPhone.

The iPhone 13 Pro Max (starting at $1,099) is the ultimate professional content creator's phone. It combines Apple's excellent camera algorithms and software support with true two-day battery life for a massive phone that's always ready to realize your dreams. While the standard iPhone 13 (starting at $799) is our Editors' Choice and the best choice for most people, with a terrific balance of size, power, battery life, and price, the iPhone 13 Pro Max is a terrific alternative for heavy users and artists, with its killer cameras and beautiful buttress of a battery.

Bottom line: The S22 Ultra is the true successor to the Galaxy Note line, delivering all the excellent Samsung phone features while making no concessions for size, weight, or price.

The Galaxy Note is back in a big way, even if not by name. Samsung's Galaxy S22 Ultra (starting at $1,199.99) exhibits all the hallmark features of the Note lineup, with a big build, powerful hardware, long battery life, and, of course, a built-in S Pen stylus. The new model performs better than the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra from last year, as well as the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra (albeit slightly), and is an excellent choice if you want the most phone possible. That said, of the three Galaxy S22 models, the S22+ gets our top recommendation for delivering most of the same features as the Ultra at a lower price and in a more reasonably sized design.

Bottom line: With fast performance, all-day battery life, and an innovative camera, Google's affordable Pixel 6 is the midrange phone to beat.

Google's Pixel 6 is a sophisticated midrange phone that replaces the good, but uninspired Pixel 5. It takes a spot between the company's high-end flagship, the Pixel 6 Pro ($899), and the more affordable Pixel 5a With 5G ($449), and offers quite an impressive feature-to-value ratio for $599. With its combination of strong camera performance, long battery life, and unbeatable Android software, the Pixel 6 easily bests the competition and replaces the Pixel 5a as our Editors' Choice winner for midrange phones.

Bottom line: Powerful performance, an immersive OLED display, a large battery, and an incredible camera stack make the Google Pixel 5a with 5G the best midrange phone you can buy.

After months of a news vacuum that left us wondering whether Google had abandoned its midrange lineup, the company quietly announced the Pixel 5a with 5G ($449). (The launch comes just weeks after the tech giant announced a complete redesign, inside and out, for its upcoming Pixel 6.) Though the Pixel 5a with 5G doesn’t have a 90Hz display or wireless charging, and it comes with 6GB of RAM instead of 8GB, it’s otherwise nearly identical to last year’s Pixel 5 ($699). It has the same camera stack, same aluminum unibody frame, and same IP67 rating. The price drop brings the Pixel 5a's flagship-level features into the midrange realm, where it easily outshines the Samsung Galaxy A52 5G ($499.99), the Editors' Choice–winning Samsung Galaxy S20 FE 5G ($699.99) and every other midrange phone we've tested. It packs enough power for most tasks, has outstanding cameras, and finally has a battery that lasts a full day. That makes the Pixel 5a with 5G our new Editors' Choice in its class.

Bottom line: The Samsung Galaxy S22+ blends top-notch connectivity and performance with the best mix of features and size for the price, making it the flagship Android phone to beat.

Samsung's Galaxy S22+ ($999.99) is a crowd-pleaser. It has reliable reception, a bright screen, solid cameras, and good battery life. None of this is surprising; Samsung's Galaxy phones are the default choices for most Android users in the US, and certainly for existing Samsung device owners who want to upgrade. The S22+ is the middle child of the S22 lineup—it doesn’t have an S Pen like the Galaxy S22 Ultra, and isn’t as compact as the S22. In other years, that could make it forgettable, but this time around the S22+ strikes the best balance between performance, value, and portability of the three. At the high end of the Android phone market in the US, the S22+ competes only with the $899 Google Pixel 6 Pro. Google’s flagship is more affordable and has better cameras, but the S22+ offers a stronger processor and cellular radio, earning it our Editors' Choice award.

Bottom line: The iPhone 13 mini is Apple's most affordable and pocket-friendly flagship, but you'll probably want to spend an extra $100 on the larger iPhone 13 for better battery life.

The smallest and least expensive of Apple's 2021 smartphone lineup, the iPhone 13 mini (starting at $699) is basically an iPhone 13 in a smaller size, with a smaller battery. That latter part is what will likely prevent the mini from being a best-seller, although it's absolutely worth a look if you're shopping for a small phone. We recommend the standard iPhone 13 to most people, as it offers the most potent blend of performance and battery for the price, but if you're willing to trade a bit of battery life for size, the iPhone 13 mini is the most powerful small phone you can buy today.

Bottom line: Apple's iPhone 13 Pro offers all the same great features for content creators as the larger Pro Max, its battery just doesn't last as long.

There are a lot of iPhones on the market right now, and they're pretty much all good. Apple currently sells a stunning eight models, from the $399 iPhone SE to the $1,099 iPhone 13 Pro Max. We're not going to recommend every one, because we're here to help you make buying decisions, and that means cutting down the choices. So the admirable iPhone 13 Pro (starting at $999) doesn't quite earn top honors this year. It's a perfectly good phone, particularly for content creators looking for a top-notch photo and video experience. But for most people, we more highly recommend the standard iPhone 13 (starting at $799) for its balance of performance and price, while professional users are better off spending the extra $100 on the Pro Max for its longer battery life.

Bottom line: The Samsung Galaxy S22 fits comfortably in one hand and is as powerful as its larger siblings, but its small size makes for less battery life.

Samsung's Galaxy S22 ($799.99) offers all the power of the Galaxy S22+ in a much smaller package for $200 less. That would be a winning proposition, except for one critical trade-off: The S22 sits right at the edge of acceptable battery life. Because of this shortcoming, the S22+ ($999.99) is Editors’ Choice winner for Android phones out of the three S22 models, including the Note-like S22 Ultra ($1,199.99). We have much longer reviews of the Galaxy S22+ and the Galaxy S22 Ultra, but here we outline how the smaller S22 compares with those two models.

Bottom line: Google's Pixel 6 Pro is a class-leading flagship phone thanks to killer battery life, fast performance, excellent cameras, and unbeatable Android software.

The Google Pixel 6 Pro (starting at $899) is the company’s most ambitious smartphone to date, and a major improvement over last year’s Pixel 5. Now, the Pixel 5 was a fine phone, with an excellent camera, good performance, and a lot of value for the price, but it was also a bit boring. With the Pixel 6 Pro, Google overhauls everything inside and out. The phone sports a new Tensor chip that delivers superb performance, a vivid OLED panel, and a battery that lasts all day. It's the most expensive phone in Google’s lineup, which includes the Pixel 6 (starting at $599) and the wallet-friendly Pixel 5a With 5G ($449), but it stands out as the best high-end Android you can buy right now, earning our Editors' Choice award for Android flagships.

In general, Apple, Google, and Samsung have the best cameras. Higher-end phones tend to perform better, but the gap is closing, especially if you primarily take photos in good light. Sony phones also have good cameras, but their latest models can be very expensive or otherwise difficult.

Apple's latest cameras tend to be the benchmark in the creative industries. They're extremely simple to use, with excellent focus and balanced colors. The leap to more creative or whimsical photo modes is harder with Apple than with Samsung, though, because it usually involves learning a third-party app.

Google's Pixel cameras are like the Apple of Android: fast, simple, and balanced.

Samsung's phones have more lenses, modes, and options than Apple's or Google's. Samsung's top innovation right now is super-zoom: its "Ultra" models have a 10x optical zoom with decent resolution at up to 30x digital zoom. Neither Apple nor Google can match that feature. But, in our experience, Samsung phones don't focus as quickly or intelligently as those from Apple and Google. Samsung also tends to amp up colors more than Apple does, which causes some controversy.

The most important factor in any photo isn't the camera—it's the photographer. No matter what phone you have, following our camera expert Jim Fisher's tips and tricks for camera phone photos can make your images better.

A few years ago we saw a blossoming trend of phones with lots of lenses, and it's still in full bloom. Many phones now have a standard lens, a magnifying zoom lens, and a wide-angle lens. Monochrome or infrared time-of-flight sensors can help judge depth for bokeh. Less successful lenses and sensors we've seen include color filters (you can do this very well in software) and macro lenses (slowly improving).

Although super-high-megapixel camera phones are becoming more popular, the options are scant among most smartphones. The 108MP sensor on the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra is a notable exception. The advantage of very high megapixels is that you can zoom and crop images after the fact, or do lossless digital zooming in your camera app without having to use an extra magnifying lens. The disadvantage is that the individual pixels can sometimes be very small, creating problems for color capture or low-light photography.

Superzoom lenses are also popular. Phones are now combining zoomed-in high-megapixel images, optical zoom lenses, and software to give you 30x, 50x, or—in the case of the Galaxy S22 Ultra—100x zoom. In general, anything much higher than 10x shows heavy digital zoom artifacting. But a good 10x zoom, as you get on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, is still a big step forward from what we used to have.

Large sensors are separate from high megapixels. Unfortunately, most of the phones solid in the US fall behind their international competition. The Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra's 1/1.33-inch primary sensor and the Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max's 1/1.65-inch sensor are among the biggest you can buy in the States. Compare those with the Huawei P40 Pro's large 1/1.128-inch primary sensor and the Xiaomi Mi 11 Ultra's massive 1/1.112-inch primary sensor and you'll see we still have a ways to go. Larger sensors are arguably more important than a higher megapixel count because they capture more light in a shorter amount of time. That translates to less blur and sharper photos.

The most advanced night modes now combine nearly a dozen successively shot frames to brighten up photos and improve clarity. They appear to have long, multi-second exposures, but they use AI software to reduce blur by aligning the various images together. (You still don't want to use them for moving subjects.) Google's Pixel phones, Apple's iPhones, and Samsung Galaxy S phones all have excellent night modes.

Bring all of that together with a good Pro mode. Most phones have manual settings that allow you to tweak virtual exposure, aperture, and the focus point to get exactly the shot you want. If you're just getting into smartphone photography, take some time to learn how manually adjusting things like aperture, ISO, and shutter speed can improve your photos. If you need a fast shot, however, all the phones on our list use machine learning and other software tweaks to take incredible photos without any manual tweaks.

Although the iPhone 13 Pro takes good low-light photos automatically, you'll get the best photos with some tweaking in post, as Apple's HEIC container stores much more detail than your standard JPEG

Why do so many photographers rely on iPhones? The availability of third-party camera apps plays a big role. Some are available for Android, but apps used by professionals still tend to come out first and be more quickly updated on iOS.

In the era of TikTok and Instagram Stories, video is more important than ever. Here are some features to look for.

Optical image stabilization is always better than electronic or digital image stabilization, creating less jittery videos. Many high-end phones now use both, giving a Steadicam-like effect.

While 1080p video is still good enough for most people, many phones can record in 4K, and 8K recording is pretty common on Android flagships. 8K requires a massive amount of storage—about 600MB per minute—and right now, its primary use is for editing videos on a PC after the fact, especially if you want to be able to crop and zoom. If you're not sure how to do that, see our tips for how to get images off your phone.

Slow-motion video can make for some exciting effects; while most phones can now capture up to 240fps (1/8 speed), some can go up to 960fps (1/32 speed). Keep an eye on how long a phone can capture slow-mo for, though, because it can be tricky to grab a scene if you only have 0.2 seconds of recording time. Many phones also have other video tricks like time-lapse, hyper-lapse, and video bokeh modes.

For the ultimate in image quality, the best possible low-light performance, killer optical zoom, or a good macro shot, you'll still want a dedicated SLR or mirrorless camera. Our list of the best digital cameras is a great place to start. And be sure to check out our beyond-basic photography tips.

If you don't need to take professional shots, however, a top smartphone camera will suit you just fine, and you can't go wrong with any of our picks here.

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