The 8 Best Budget And Expensive Phones For Photographers In 2026 – BGR

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One of the big draws to new smartphones is the camera array: How well does the handset take a photo? Watch a commercial or tune into a launch event, and you’ll hear about high-megapixel-count sensors, different types of lenses, smart photo tuning, and useful extra modes to help you take the perfect snap. But with so many options, it can be hard to determine which are the best phones for photographers.

Let’s make things easy and boil it down to a list of eight choices, all top options as of the beginning of 2026. This list won’t just be a round-up of the best phone cameras you can buy, even though many of the same features will appear. In addition to expensive options, we include budget-friendly mobile phones. All prices are current as of the date of writing and are subject to market and pricing changes. 

There are plenty of Android phones that punch above their price bracket. This list also includes budget-friendly options in handsets that go for $600 or less. If you can’t afford to buy a top-end mobile, money shouldn’t stop you from picking up a feature-packed device.

Since this list is for photographers, we’ll be looking at a few factors, including camera hardware, software, shooting modes, and budget. 

The cheapest option on this list is the Samsung Galaxy A56, which sells for $364.50 on Amazon. This is part of the company’s Galaxy A series of handsets, which carry over some features from the Galaxy S series at a lower price.

The A56 doesn’t have a telephoto lens for zoom photography. Its camera array consists of a 50MP f/1.8 main, 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide, and 5MP f/2.4 macro camera, the latter of which is designed to take in-focus close-up shots. Smartphones generally use ultrawide cameras for this kind of picture, but a dedicated lens will naturally handle the job better.

Camera benchmark brand DXOMark gave the Galaxy a camera score of 114, and for context, 175 is the highest on any phone right now. That score makes it the 15th-highest phone of its price bracket, beaten mostly by a few older premium phones that have dipped in price, but by one Google rival shown later in this list.

Reviewers generally praise the phone’s performance for the price, especially the high-res main camera, although some say that the macro snapper doesn’t deliver on its promise. Some praise comes from Samsung’s range of bespoke Galaxy camera modes that add a bit of fun to photography. Namely, Fun mode can add filters to your shot, Food can help you capture a dish, and Single Take records from all cameras before hand-picking the best stills.

The most affordable premium phone on this list is the Google Pixel 10 Pro, which starts at $799 for the 128 GB model and climbs to $1,299 for the 1 TB model. A look at the hardware shows plenty of megapixels. The main camera is a 50MP f/1.7; it’s joined by a 48MP f/1.7 ultrawide and a 48MP f/2.8 periscope telephoto.

Hardware isn’t the main draw, though. As pointed out in our Google Pixel 10 Pro review, the company competes with AI software. Its tricks include AI image enhancement, particularly for digitally zoomed shots, and Camera Coach, which gives you hints to help you frame your photos perfectly. Because of features like these, it’s fantastic for amateur photographers who want a helping hand in improving, though purists who want to do things themselves might want to avoid it.

These tricks work, judging by the phone’s DXOMark score of 163 — that puts it as the joint-ninth best phone at the time of writing. Reviewers are just as impressed, praising how the various modes are easy to use and deliver a fantastic camera experience. One specialist brand praises it as the best phone for photography.

Our next budget phone is the Nothing Phone (3a) Pro, which sells for a reasonable $459, as a budget alternative to the Nothing Phone (3). It’s the cheapest phone on this list to offer a feature we’ll see on pricier photography phones: a telephoto lens.

The Nothing has a 50MP f/1.9 main camera, another 50MP sensor paired with an f/2.6 periscope lens, and an 8MP f/2.2 ultrawide module. This latter lets you shoot at a 120-degree angle.

The Nothing Phone (3a) Pro hasn’t received a DXOMark evaluation, with only the brand’s main-series phones being listed by the brand. But we praised its versatile camera system in our Nothing Phone (3a) Pro review, highlighting the 6x lossless zoom its periscope camera allows. Other testers concur, highlighting the phones as among the few budget mobiles that provide photographers an optical zoom.

If you’re on a limited budget, you could also try the Nothing Phone (3a), which is priced at $379. The camera specs are almost the same, except that the zoom lens is a 50mm telephoto instead of the Pro’s 70mm periscope. That means optical zoom reaches 2x, not 3x. It’s not a huge difference, though photographers might prefer the pricier model’s longer range.

Of course, we have to look for Apple’s best for a top photography phone — no list would be complete without an iPhone. The current top pick is the iPhone 17 Pro, which starts at $1,099. It offers the same camera specs as the Pro Max, but a smaller screen — if you want more display real estate, $100 more will get you the Max.

The iPhone 17 Pro has three 48MP rear cameras. The main one is f/1.8, 24mm, with a f/2.2 ultrawide with a 13mm lens, and a zoom shooter f/2.8 100mm that hits 4x optical zoom.

We mentioned in our iPhone 17 Pro review that the phone “performed incredibly well in all situations”, and that’s backed up by DXOMark. Of the phones on this list, the iPhone has the highest score of 168, with testers calling its video experience best-in-class and praising the consistency across modes and zoom ranges. Its popularity is proven: according to Counterpoint Research, the Pro Max was the best-selling member of its family.

Being so popular, there are also plenty of iPhone attachments sold by all manner of companies, which can elevate your photography even further with extra lenses or mounts — though not all are equal, so watch out for popular iPhone accessories that you should avoid.

The $549 Motorola Edge 2025 is the latest in Moto’s line of mid-range Androids. If you’re trying to buy it, make sure you pick the right model, as it’s easy to grab a previous year’s version. What might trip you up is the price: Amazon often sells it for between $300 and $400, but the above-mentioned cost is the MSRP.

The Moto’s main camera is a 50MP, with an ultrawide that shoots at a 122-degree angle, and a 10MP f/2.0 telephoto. As those specs show, it’s a good alternative to the Nothing phone if you’d rather the ultrawide camera take high-res photos than the zoom shooter.

Lots of the appeal of the Motorola Edge is similar to that of the Nothing. You’re getting three rear cameras, including a zoom one, for a relatively low price. Some reviewers pointed out the ergonomic design, highlighting how its light frame and curved display make it more pocketable. 

Reviewers testing the camera itself note that the hardware setup is good, but Motorola’s software isn’t necessarily competitive, so you may sometimes get uneven results. That’s no problem for people who don’t like on-phone optimization and prefer to edit their photos themselves.

One of the first names you’ll hear in any discussion about premium camera phones is Samsung, especially its most recent Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. This starts at about $1,000, so it’s not cheap, but you get a lot for the price.

On the surface, Samsung’s phone isn’t regarded as highly as some rivals. For example, DXOMark gives it a camera score of 151, which doesn’t match the iPhone’s score. The difference stems from image quality, which isn’t quite on par with alternatives. But what the cameras lack in quality, they make up for in versatility.

The Ultra has four rear cameras, more than its rivals on this list. There’s a 200MP f/1.7 24mm main camera, which can take incredibly high-resolution pictures. It’s joined by a 50MP f/1.9 120-degree ultra-wide snapper, and two zoom cameras: a 10MP f/2.4 67mm which supports 3x optical zoom and is mainly used for portrait photography, and a 50MP f/3.4 111mm periscope which goes up to 5x optical zoom. That’s right: two different zoom cameras.

That array of cameras means the Ultra is adaptable for different shooting settings. In our own Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra review, we called it “a versatile selection of cameras that should make for solid photos in all situations.” The S25 is for the jack of all trades photographer, who’ll be shooting wide vistas one minute and then close-ups of pets or food the next.

Just under the budget price cutoff is the Google Pixel 9a, which sells for $599. This is a more affordable spin on the Pixel 9, but due to Google’s phone release schedule, it’s the most recent A-series Pixel at the time of writing.

Unlike the other budget mobiles on this list, it only has two cameras. These are a 48MP f/1.7 main and 13MP f/2.2 ultrawide. No, there’s no zoom or macro camera. But the relative lack of hardware doesn’t rule it out as a budget photography powerhouse.

When we tested the phone for our Google Pixel 9a review, we noted that photos were vibrant and detailed, and this backs up what other testers say. For example, the handset has a DXOMark camera score of 128, which is the highest of any budget phone released in 2025 or 2026.

Many testers rank the Google Pixel 9a as the best budget camera phone, thanks to its software and post-processing that make photos look vibrant and detailed. For most, this more than makes up for the fewer rear cameras it wields. However, some reviewers mark the phone down for its lack of a zoom feature, given that the feature has been available on certain affordable mobile phones for years now.

The most expensive mobile on this list is the Sony Xperia 1 VII, which costs $1,399.99 at the time of writing. That’s a lot of money, but you’re buying a phone from a company that’s famed for its imaging hardware.

The Sony Xperia 1 VII comes with three rear cameras: a 48MP f/1.9 main, a 48MP f/2.0 ultra-wide, and a 12MP telephoto camera with continuous zoom. This latter reveals a neat hardware trick. You can get a range of optical zooms to adapt to different situations, from 85mm to 170mm.

Unlike many other top-end options on this list, the Xperia wasn’t rated by DXOMark, so we can’t see testing scores to compare it to the other mobiles.

Instead, we can look to reviewers’ feedback, and it’s not all positive. Some testers criticize the phone’s image processing as inferior to its rivals, also noting that the preview image in the app doesn’t always match the resulting picture.

So why is the Xperia 1 VII on this list? The phone has some features that might still make it invaluable to photographers. Some reviewers praise the presence of a manual video mode ported straight over from Sony’s cameras, and it also has Eye Autofocus like Sony’s cameras. 

For our list, budget handsets cost less than $600, a market segment that often doesn’t see the camera prioritized as an important feature. The premium handsets cost over $999, and phones at that price point all compete closely in camera performance.

Phones not sold in the US were ruled out; this means many popular camera phones from brands like Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo were excluded, as were older models that are no longer officially sold.

We used several metrics, including DXOMark scores, reviewers’ feedback, and personal experience with the brands, handsets, and modes in question.

And what counts as a good phone for photographers? Different buyers will have different definitions, which is why this list is ordered by price rather than value. But the phones need some combination of good hardware, smart optimization, or useful extra modes.