Best budget smartphone cameras

Samsung and Xiaomi offer the widest ranges of budget smartphones with the best camera systems in South Africa.

The capabilities of smartphone cameras have improved immensely in the past few years, particularly with regard to zoomed-in quality and night-time photography.

In addition to advancements in lens hardware, processors have become more powerful and feature better software capable of further enhancing imagery.

For top-of-the range photography, you will have to fork out well over R20,000 for a flagship iPhone 15 Pro, Galaxy S24 Ultra, or Pixel 8 Pro.

However, a smartphone at the third of that price will still be able to deliver high-resolution photos and videos with colour reproduction that will be more than satisfactory for most casual users.

MyBroadband compiled a list of smartphones with great photo and video quality at more affordable prices than mid-rangers and flagships.

We initially wanted to focus only on models selling for under R5,000 but quickly realised there were some very decent options that offered incredibly good value for money just over that mark.

Therefore, we capped the prices of phones considered in our list to R6,000.

We used DXOMARK’s smartphone camera scores and rankings to identify some of the best photographic performers.

At the time of publication, the website had reviewed 33 smartphones with prices below $400 (R7,440), which were released from 2023 onwards.

Many of these models were not officially available in South Africa, although some were offered by specialist importers.

Samsung and Xiaomi dominate

Samsung had the top three best models and tied with Xiaomi for the widest range of models.

Each brand had four offerings, while Honor completed the set of nine phones with a single entry.

Tied for the top spot were the Galaxy A25 5G and Galaxy A34 5G, each scoring 92 points.

In the overall rankings — including far more expensive and older phones released from 2013 — they place 132nd.

These sibling phones feature similar rear and front camera setups.

On the rear, the Galaxy A25 boasts a triple array comprising a 50MP primary camera, 8MP ultrawide, and 2MP macro lens.

The Galaxy A34 also has an 8MP ultrawide lens, although it has a slightly wider viewing angle. Its other rear sensors are a 48MP main lens and a 5MP macro.

Both camera systems support optical image stabilisation and have pretty decent low-light performance.

One particularly interesting finding from our analysis was that the camera performance of LTE-only and 5G models often differed.

For example, the Galaxy A15 5G offered better camera performance than the Galaxy A15 LTE.

This was often also the case for LTE-only and 5G-capable Xiaomi models.

Below are the top 10 best budget smartphones under R6,000 for those focused on camera performance, based on tests by DXOMARK.