SMARTPHONES
We hunt down the best budget and mid-range smartphones you can buy right now, in terms of their camera performance
With the best budget camera phones, you can get a premium photography experience for a bargain price.While we’re all familiar with flagship phones and their high price tags, the truth is that you don’t need to spend a huge amount to get a respectable camera. Looking in the mid-range and budget ends of the market, you can find some real gems that still deliver top-notch photo and video quality.
Looking at the specs of the phones we’ve listed here, one thing that might surprise you is how often you see features that seem to belong on more expensive devices. Multicamera arrays, 200MP pixel counts, and phase-detection autofocus; all these things can be found for less than £500. Alongside manufacturers like Honor and Xiaomi that focus on the budget market, a good strategy is to look at older versions of popular flagships. Go back a few generations in Samsung’s Galaxy S series, for example, and you’ll still get a great phone, but for much less money than when it was released.
In this guide, we’ve included both new budget and mid-range models, and older flagships that represent a real bargain. We’ve reviewed them all, so you can be confident we’re only recommending those we have spent time with. One point to note is that all these phones are Android, not iPhones – this is simply a fact of life in the budget sector.
What to look for?
These days, even budget phones come with more than one camera, each with its own sensor. Normally, the main camera will have the best sensor and widest-aperture lens. You can also expect to get an ultra-wide camera; typically these have a lower resolution and won’t match the main camera for quality.
You may also get a ‘macro’ camera for closeups, but they often have very low resolution and are not worth having. What you tend not to get is a telephoto camera.
Instead, you have to rely on a digital zoom, which will be effective but won’t provide the same quality. It’s also worth checking out the front ‘selfie’ camera. If you film or photograph yourself a lot, one with a good sensor and autofocus is definitely worthwhile.
Don’t be too swayed by the headline resolution. While phones often have 50MP, 108MP or even 200MP sensors, this doesn’t really mean the same as it would in a regular camera. These resolutions are ‘pixel-binned’ down to around 12MP for actual shooting, and while there are modes that output the full resolution, the quality can be disappointing.
Otherwise, look out for such features as the screen size, whether the phone uses toughened ‘Gorilla Glass’ or plastic, and how much memory and/or storage you get. A
