I didn’t care about my phone’s camera specs, but 5 things changed that

There are certain smartphone features I never compromise on, and one of these is specific camera criteria. However, things weren’t always this way, and there was a time when I focused more on other aspects — such as whether I liked the phone’s design or the brand itself.

So what changed? Here are a few of the things that made me start caring more about my smartphone camera than I used to.

I wasn’t always a technology journalist — in fact, my first beat outside of hard news was actually travel and tourism. As a result, in 2015, I started traveling for work.

This was the first time I had to share pictures that weren’t just for personal memories. Things that I usually wouldn’t take pictures of, such as hotel rooms and food, became suddenly important.

Over time, even as I stopped covering the travel beat, I grew to appreciate the benefit of recording images of my travels with a high-quality device. For example, during my 2024 trip to Ireland to visit my brother’s family, I made sure to use my Galaxy S23 Ultra to take pictures of the castles, ruins, and forests I visited.

I didn’t share any of these pictures on social media, but I’m glad I captured them on a capable device, so I can revisit them for years without worrying about clarity or whether the pictures include the colors I wanted to capture.

You might argue that if I want to capture high-quality memories, a standalone camera is the best way to do so. And you’d be right — as good as smartphone cameras are, they can’t achieve the sensor sizes of dedicated cameras and lenses, which means that their quality is limited.

When I first started traveling, I would bring my DSLR camera along. It was a few years old by then, but even with a conservative resolution, it captured images that outpaced even the best camera phones at the time.

At the same time, though, my chronic pain from fibromyalgia was worsening due to my desk job. I started feeling the weight of carrying extra items more. My camera bag was no longer just an inconvenience; it worsened my pain. Even carrying my camera around my neck with just the lens started hurting more.

Eventually, my pain reached a point where it was no longer feasible to carry a camera around. So my phone became the most viable option for taking photos for me.

Even if you don’t deal with chronic pain, it’s difficult to argue against the convenience that a smartphone camera provides. There’s also a cost benefit, since plenty of budget camera phones offer great quality and surprisingly low prices.

When I review smartphones, I often perform what I call the “black cat test.” It essentially checks whether the phone’s camera can capture a detailed image of my own black cat, Black Velvet (BV), inside my poorly lit apartment.

Not only does it test how well a smartphone can balance low light performance with sharpness and noise correction, but it also helps me figure out whether it’s a phone I would use myself. This is because the vast majority of my own photos are of my pets.

I can’t emphasize how much these pictures bring me joy. I have an album dedicated to my cat Loxi staring at me from various rooms, sometimes even using a mirror to make eye contact when he’s not facing me. Meanwhile, I have various snaps of BV on a spectrum of impossibly regal to adorably goofy.

But the ability to capture these images with any detail requires decent zoom capabilities and low-light performance. There have been moments when I’ve wanted to capture an image of BV, but poor lighting and her dark coat make it impossible to see anything. This is why the lack of zoom or poor low-light performance has dissuaded me from investing in some cheaper flagships.

I started writing about technology in 2016, with a focus on smartphones and consumer devices. Over the years, I’ve seen what the best camera phones are capable of.

This has made me more discerning about picture quality, as I’ve been able to compare devices with each other. At the same time, I’m still a stickler for the concept of value for money — meaning I still want to balance camera performance with price.

There is probably no such thing as the perfect camera phone, as what you look for will depend on how you use it. For example, I don’t know of anyone else who needs their phone to pass a black cat test.

However, being aware of what other brands are doing and the types of cameras available at different price points has made me more discerning about which smartphones I buy and what camera specs I’ll accept. The downgraded optical zoom on the Galaxy S24 and S25 Ultra, for example, is a major point of contention for me.

Even when I stopped traveling as part of my job, this didn’t mean the end of taking pictures for work. Nowadays, instead of taking photos of destinations, I take pictures of gadgets I’m testing.

Again, a standalone camera would be the best option for this, especially considering the challenging lighting conditions in my apartment. But using a good camera phone has made more financial sense than investing in a mirrorless camera for the time being.

This is primarily due to the cost of consumer technology in South Africa. Both phones and cameras are expensive, but there’s considerably more competition in the smartphone market. This means that there are frequent sales and lots of options to choose from.

When I made my last phone purchase, the need to take pictures for work and record unboxing videos for social media was why I chose a premium camera smartphone. I still wanted a phone that could take good photos of my pets and my travels, without exacerbating my chronic pain, so it was more cost-effective than buying a standalone camera that I would only use in specific scenarios.

I do eventually want to reach a point where I have a dedicated camera for specific work scenarios and a good smartphone camera for general usage. Right now, though, having a smartphone with a great camera has become an essential requirement for me, even though it didn’t matter to me nearly as much before.