I’ve tried the best phone cameras in 2025 – here's what the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra needs to bring to the table in 2026

I’ve been writing about phones for almost 20 years, and 2025 will remain in the memory for years to come as the year that most phone makers delivered their very best camera phones.

Over the past 12 months, I’ve used every major smartphone camera, starting with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which launched back in January. Samsung was the second phone brand to make zoom a key part of its cameras – Huawei did so first on its P-series – but while it once had a significant advantage over its key competitors, that advantage has mostly eroded.

This year saw Apple and Google both make significant improvements to the zoom capabilities of the iPhone 17 Pro and Google Pixel 10 Pro series, respectively. And outside the US, companies like Oppo, Vivo, Xiaomi, and Honor all reinforced that the US market has far fewer great camera phones ...