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Our phones get better camera hardware and image-processing software with each passing year, but most of the time when we’re snapping photos we’re not doing anything other than pointing and shooting—and then moving on.
And clearly speed and convenience are benefits. Today’s best phones let you capture great images without worrying too much about lighting, framing, white balance, or any of the other considerations a professional photographer would think about.
At the same time, it’s worth knowing the features and tools on your phone that can elevate your pictures to the next level—often with just a few seconds of extra work. They can also help you capture images you might not have otherwise.
With that in mind, here are the best tools in the default camera apps on the flagship Pixel, Galaxy, and iPhone models on the market at the moment. You might find a trick or feature that you come to rely on a lot in the future to make your photos stand out from the crowd.
These tips apply to the latest software at the time of writing: Android 17 (Pixel), One UI 8.5 (Galaxy), and iOS 27 (iPhone). You might find the camera app on your handset varies in some details if you’re using an older software version or an older phone model.
Underneath the shutter button on the Pixel Camera app, you have a variety of modes to pick from: Just swipe left or right to see the full selection. One of the most useful is Night Sight, which captures and combines multiple frames to boost low-light photos (and can even be used for astrophotography); there’s also Portrait, which identifies the main subject of a photo and lets you apply a custom depth blur around it.
Whichever mode you’re using, you can tap the controls button (the sliders icon, lower right) to bring up a variety of adjustment tools including Shadows, Exposure, and White Balance. Any changes you make here are previewed in the capture window above, before you take the shot, so you can see the effect they’ll have.
There’s also Focus, which lets you tap on something in the frame to lock the focus on that object or person—and keep the focus there, even while you move the camera. ISO gives you manual control over how much light gets captured in the shot (useful for bespoke low-light shots), while Shutter speed lets you go from motion freezes (faster speeds) to motion blurs and light trails (slower speeds).
Tap the settings button (the cog icon, lower left) to customize the photo-taking process further. From here you can enable Top Shot, a Pixel trick where a short video is taken and AI picks the best still frame based on composition and lighting (though you are able to choose a different frame, if you prefer). There’s also Motion photo, which captures a still image and a few seconds of video for more immersive memories (and to create GIFs).
From the settings screen, tap the three dots (top right) to access more options. The next screen lets you turn on the Grid type to frame subjects more precisely, as well as the Framing Hints feature, which uses on-screen hints to make sure the focus and level of your image are the best they can be before you tap the shutter button. Ultra HDR can be enabled here, too, for shots that have brighter colors and more detail in darker areas than those in standard mode.
If you’re using a Samsung Galaxy phone to take photos, when you open up the Camera app you’ll see several modes along the bottom of the screen that you can swipe between. Immediately to the left of the Photo option is Portrait, which brings the main subject of your image into focus and lets you apply a custom blur level to the background (tap the icon on the left showing one circle inside another to set the blur).
Swipe to the More option, and you’ll find a host of shooting modes you may not have been aware of, including Panorama and Slow Motion. One of the most interesting ones here is Food, which is worth trying whenever you’re photographing meals and dishes in front of you: Samsung says it will “automatically adjust the coloring to make your dishes look even more delicious”.
Tap the Pro option on this screen and a host of extra options appear for you. You can adjust the white balance, tint, shutter speed (how long the shutter stays open), ISO (the camera’s light sensitivity), and exposure—just adjust the dials as needed. There’s also AF, or auto focus, which picks out a photo’s subject and keeps it in focus (you can also switch to manual focus mode to tap on a focus point yourself).
