The race to crown the best camera phone of 2026 is heating up.
Back in January, Samsung released the globally available Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, before Oppo and Xiaomi dropped the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, respectively, both of which were made available in the UK but not the US (Australian buyers, meanwhile, got the Xiaomi, but not the Oppo).
Google entered the race with the Google Pixel 11 Pro in August, and now Apple has released the iPhone 18 Pro, which is earning plaudits for its variable aperture feature and pro-level video capture capabilities.
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So, wherever you are in the world, you’ve likely got at least three compelling camera phones to consider at the time of writing, and I took two of them — the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra — on a recent trip to Hawaii to see how they stack up against one another.
Below, I’ve added examples of both phones’ wide, zoom, macro, ultra-wide, and selfie-taking capabilities to help you decide which model is right for you. Then, at the end, I’ve summarized my thoughts on how they compare.
Specs
Before we dig into the comparison, here’s a quick roundup of each phone’s key camera specs:
| Header Cell – Column 0 |
iPhone 18 Pro |
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra |
|---|---|---|
|
Wide camera: |
48MP, f/1.5-4.0, 24mm |
200MP, f/1.4, 23mm |
|
Ultra-wide camera: |
48MP, f/2.2, 13mm |
50MP, f/1.9, 13mm |
|
Telephoto camera(s): |
48MP, f/2.8, 100mm, 4x optical zoom |
10MP, f/2.4, 67mm, 3x optical zoom + 50MP, f/2.9, 111mm, 5x optical zoom |
|
Front camera: |
18MP, f/1.9, 20mm |
12MP, f/2.2, 23mm |
In addition to the optical zoom distances listed above, both phones offer an additional ‘optical-quality’ zoom (8x for the iPhone, 2x and 10x for the Samsung), but they do so via a sensor crop rather than fixed focal lengths, so I’ve prioritized their true optical zoom distances in the ‘zoom’ section below.
It’s also worth noting that, to save storage, both the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra capture images in smaller file sizes than their large sensors suggest by default. Specifically, the iPhone defaults to 24MP (using Apple’s ‘super-high-resolution’ imaging pipeline), while the Galaxy S26 Ultra defaults to 12MP (via pixel-binning).
I stuck with these out-of-the-box shooting settings for each of the comparisons below.
Wide
In this picture of a statue by the beach — “The Acrobats” by John Robinson — we can immediately see the difference between the two phones’ approaches to color science.
The iPhone’s image is the more natural of the two, with more pronounced shadows and muted colors, versus the Samsung’s brighter, more contrast-heavy image. This difference is particularly apparent on the statue’s torso and patch of grass to the right of the scene.
Here, again, the Samsung’s image has punchier, arguably more artificial-looking colors, but the difference isn’t quite so stark as in the first image. Both photos are equally detailed.
Again, only a subtle difference between the two images, but the leaves are certainly greener in the Galaxy’s shot (see the top right-hand side of the image)
The iPhone and Samsung take radically different approaches to capturing this shadowy pathway. The former’s image is more realistic, with strong detail maintained where the leaves meet the sky. The Galaxy’s image is impressively detailed, too, but its colors are much more stylistic than natural, which is emerging as a theme in this comparison.
This, for me, is the clearest example yet of the color science difference I’ve referenced below every image so far. Both of these shots are equally detailed, but the Samsung has definitely dialed up the saturation versus the iPhone’s more neutral shot.
Moving on to a sunset image, and the iPhone does a good job at maintaining the clarity of both the foreground and background, while the Galaxy goes full “Oh, so you want a sunset shot?” mode. I definitely don’t hate the Monet-style sky the Samsung has captured here — it’s certainly the more aesthetic of the two — but in doing so, the phone obscures almost everyone in the foreground. The iPhone’s shot is, again, more balanced, but much less stylistic.
This image, though, proves that the Galaxy S26 Ultra can effectively balance foreground and background in low light. I actually think it does a slightly better job than the iPhone here, but there’s not much in it.
Again, pretty similar results here, but the iPhone definitely chooses a warmer hue that fades from orange to red, while the Samsung goes from red to an almost pink color. This is, in fairness, a particularly tricky shot to capture.
Zoom
Back to that statue again, this time at 4x optical zoom for the iPhone and 5x optical zoom for the Samsung.
The level of detail captured is impressive in both cases, but the Galaxy’s image is, in my opinion, the sharper of the two, which makes sense given the phone’s optical advantage over the iPhone — the Galaxy essentially has more information for its processing algorithms to work with, resulting in a slightly more detailed image.
I also like the way the Galaxy dials down the color of the blurred clouds in the background to really bring the statue into focus, which isn’t something you’d expect given the phone’s gung-ho approach to colors we’ve observed so far.
Interestingly, in these photos — taken at the same optical distances as above — the Samsung has again dialed down the colors to produce a much grayer image than the iPhone, though I’m not sure that approach works for this particular scene.
The iPhone’s image is warmer and, in parts (see the cracks in the pavement), a touch more detailed.
This is an example of each phone’s maximum digital zoom capabilities — 40x for the iPhone, 100x for the Samsung. Yes, 100 is a bigger number than 40, but you can see why Apple doesn’t bother to offer anything beyond that figure. In both cases, the phone is guessing at details via processing trickery, rather than actually being able to capture them, which results in two pretty unusable images.
Still, the Samsung will produce iPhone-like results up until around the 50x mark, so it’s a more versatile zoom camera overall.
Macro and ultra-wide
Macro mode — where your phone automatically switches to its ultra-wide camera lens when you move close to a small subject — was my favorite test to carry out on both the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra, because macro photography is something Apple and Samsung phones have been good at for years.
In this example, as we’ve seen previously, the iPhone 18 Pro opts for more realistic, neutral colors, while the Galaxy’s shot has way more contrast. The greens in these two images are quite literally different shades.
Again, the level of detail here is comparable across both shots, but this is the first instance where I actually prefer the Galaxy’s deeper, more artistic-looking colors. The iPhone’s brighter image is closer to reality, though.
In this example, it’s the other way around; I prefer the iPhone’s colors to the Samsung’s. However, you’ll notice — if you zoom in on the vascular tissue of the leaves — that the Galaxy phone actually captures more detail.
As in my comparison between the iPhone 17 Pro and OnePlus 15’s cameras, I’ve only included one regular ultra-wide example here because I was so preoccupied with the phones’ wide and telephoto lenses while shooting in Hawaii that I forgot to take more with their respective ultra-wide lenses (perhaps my colleague was right in saying that phones don’t need ultra-wide lenses at all — but that’s a debate for another day).
In any case, everything I said about the first few photos in this comparison applies again here. Both phones capture excellent detail — I’d probably give the edge to the iPhone, since it captures the graininess of the sand slightly better than the Samsung — but their approaches to color science differ dramatically, which is evident in the sand, sky, and grass pictured above. The iPhone captures the scene as it is; the Samsung captures the scene as it thinks you want it to be.
Selfies
Both of these selfies are detailed and well-balanced in terms of color, but the iPhone’s image is the slightly sharper of the two, no doubt because the 18 Pro has a larger 18MP front-facing sensor than the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s 12MP sensor. It does a better job of maintaining the clarity of my flyaway hairs, for instance.
It’s worth mentioning, too, that the iPhone 18 Pro’s ‘Center Stage’ selfie camera uses subject tracking to automatically keep you in the frame, and also lets you switch between portrait and landscape modes, depending on how many subjects are in frame. I’ve used that particular feature a lot, so it’s definitely not a gimmick.
Verdict
There’s no doubt that both of these phones are among the best camera phones money can buy in 2026, but they do differ on several fronts.
For everyday shots in good lighting, both the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra — in their respective default shooting modes — capture plenty of detail, but you’ll get more natural-looking shots from the former, and more vibrant, stylized shots from the latter.
In low light, the iPhone takes slightly brighter pictures and, as a result, sometimes captures more of the scene than the Galaxy, but Samsung’s style-focused color science can similarly lead to better results than the iPhone. It all depends on what you’re shooting and which aesthetic you prefer.
When it comes to zoom, both phones perform well, though the Galaxy will get you closer to your subject than the iPhone without sacrificing detail (5x optical zoom vs 4x optical zoom). You also get an additional 3x optical zoom option on the Samsung, which you don’t get on the iPhone. If I wanted the most versatile zoom shooter, I’d choose the Samsung.
For selfies, though, the iPhone is the clear winner, with its larger 18MP sensor and genuinely useful framing tricks.
As mentioned, the iPhone 18 Pro also boasts a variable aperture feature. Since I wanted to compare both of these phones using their out-of-the-box shooting settings, I didn’t manually control the aperture on the iPhone in any of the above shots, but Apple does give you the option to do so, whereas Samsung does not.
Changing the aperture is useful for tweaking how much of a given background you want to keep in focus (as my colleague Lance demonstrates in a separate piece), and you can also achieve some nice lens flare effects in low light while doing so. But this is very much a pro-level feature that most users won’t play around with too much.
Overall, then, I’d say the Galaxy S26 Ultra is my preferred camera phone for zoom photography and stylized shots, but the iPhone 18 Pro is the more consistent wide shooter in both well-lit and low-light scenarios. It’s got a better selfie camera, too, and since Apple’s new pro-level controls unlock more possibilities for the iPhone, it’s the phone I’ll be sticking with until the next wave of camera-focused Chinese flagships rolls around.
Incidentally, I’ll be publishing separate Portrait mode and video comparisons shortly, so stick with TechRadar for more on these two top-end camera phones.
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axel.metz@futurenet.com (Axel Metz)
