The best camera phones of 2023 reviewed - If the sleeping giant awakes, then...

Quickly the different approaches taken by the various manufacturers became quite noticeable in our test. Google and especially Apple over-sharpened their photos considerably, whereas the Leica software on the Xiaomi softened photos slightly. Interestingly enough, the Xiaomi 13 Pro managed to show a lot more detail in its photos despite its soft focus, which you can see in the green feather on the plant image - although this sometimes ended up looking a little artificial. The Chinese manufacturer's Leica phone did very well on the window photo, however, some areas were slightly overexposed. The iPhone 14 Pro Max did almost as well in our test photos - especially when it came to HDR optimization, the Apple software did a really good job. The Pixel 7 Pro did quite a bit worse than the two previously mentioned phones. The Google phone's pictures were somewhat lacking in detail and sharpness. However, it did a great job of calibrating colors in its photos. Compared to our reference photos, the Galaxy S23 Ultra performed disappointingly badly. Using the 12.5-MP-binning mode, there was a clear lack of sharpness in its photos.

However, the Korean manufacturer still has another trick up its sleeve - the new 50-MP mode, which, like its competitors, only combines 4 pixels together. To keep a certain level of fairness, we also included this mode in our test - which left varying impressions. In this mode, the Galaxy S23 Ultra showed much better image content and depth of field compared to its competitors, however, we found it to be missing some software optimizations. Especially the HDR effects worked much better using the 12.5-MP mode and the lighting was anything but perfect using the 50-MP mode. 

In darker conditions, Galaxy S23 Ultra users should probably refrain from taking a 50-MP photo. Here, the standard 16-in-1 binning showed clear advantages. Even though there was little light, we were missing no detail in the photos compared to the Xiaomi 13 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max and the dynamics in the photos were also very interesting. The Pixel 7 Pro also performed very well in our street photos, but we found the white balance to be far too cool. The Apple phone also struggled to capture the ambience of the street scene with the yellow street lights - the same goes for the plant image, which the iPhone 14 Pro showed as red instead of orange.

In bad lighting conditions, the Apple smartphone's test photo definitely captured the best vibe - at the same time, we could see quite a few exposure issues in the lighter parts of the photo. Even so, you could still identify the structure of the cobblestones well. The Xiaomi 13 Pro's house photo lacked sharpness and color accuracy. The Galaxy S23 Ultra and Pixel 7 Pro performed well considering the dark conditions.

Looking at the wide-angle photos, the Galaxy S23 Ultra surprised with its much lower sharpness levels compared to its competitors - this is definitely something that Samsung need to improve on, although the Galaxy S13 Ultra did already show some improvement in comparison to the Galaxy S22 Ultra. We found that the Xiaomi 13 Pro and the iPhone 14 Pro Max did much better than the current Samsung flagship. The Pixel 7 Pro also showed nice sharpness for an ultra-wide-angle camera, however, the colors were not always entirely accurate. In darker conditions, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra edged towards the camera elite, but the colors in the street photo weren't quite right. Our favorite contender here was the Xiaomi 13 Pro - it managed to accurately capture light and shade conditions. Compared to its competitors' lightened photos, the Xiaomi phone relied on heavy contrast, which looked great. However, the iPhone 14 Pro also performed well in this area - even though some lens flare was visible near the street lights. 

Aside from wide-angle photos, our test phones' ultra-wide-angle cameras can also be used to take macro shots - or at least almost all of them can. Xiaomi approach this in a slightly different way with the help of a telelens which uses their in-house liquid lens design - incorporating a group of swimming lenses. The lens is split into two groups that can be moved internally to create a focus range between 10 cm and a theoretically infinite distance. This works well enough in everyday use, but the objects have to be positioned considerably further away from the camera compared to the other phones. In our test, this left some of the objects in our photos slightly blurry, as the manufacturer doesn't state what distance is optimal for this function.

If we had to pick a winner for this category, it would definitely be the Galaxy S23 Ultra, which stood out thanks to its good levels of sharpness and detail.