Can you really see a difference?

With each passing year, the cameras on a smartphone become almost as important as your smartphone itself. People know that pretty much any phone can do the “phone” things they need but not just any device can be Best camera phone on the market. As such, in most cases, the reason why you pay is a certain price for a phone is strongly influenced by the camera machine you find there.

But really, how far does this go? Is a phone that costs $ 1,300 really so much better than one that costs less than $ 300? Is there a difference of $ 1000+ between the images you get on one versus the other?

I decided to test to find out. I have pitty two very different phones sold to very different scores against each other to see how you really feel about the flagship against budgetary phone camera debate.

The Galaxy S25 Ultra is one of the best camera phones you can currently buy. It has a massive camera system, including a 200MP primary sensor, two telephotooses (one 10MP 3x optical and one 50MP 5x optical), and a 50MP ultrawide. It also has a high-end 12MP selfie camera.

Meanwhile, CMF Phone 2 Pro has a much weaker hardware system. Its 50MP primary camera is smaller and lower resolution than the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s. Similarly, the small 8MP Ultrawide camera cannot compare on paper, and its 16MP selfie camera is undoubtedly a cheaper bit of hardware than the one on Samsung’s flagship. In particular, however, CMF Phone 2 Pro is a 50MP Teleoto lens (2x optical), which is rarely seen on a phone this cheap.

For the tests below, I tried to get each shot to match the other as close as possible. I used the out-of-box settings and focused on the default features between both devices. For example, I did not do a macroscood test because CMF Phone 2 prose software does not support this feature. I didn’t do much setup either. I held the phones in my hand (no tripod) and took each picture with minimal fine tuning. I did no shootings, either – the first picture from each setup is what I went with. I feel that this best reflects the use in the real world.

In each section, the two images are unmarked and in a different order. When you browse, choose which picture in each pair you think did the better job. When you get to the end of the article, I’ll tell you which phone produced each picture and you can see which phone you really prefer.

One last note: All the images here are compressed for on -site loading speed. If you want to see them in an uncompressed state, check out This station folder. Just don’t use it to cheat!

This is the most basic shot that can be imagined. The sun was behind me and I just took a quick snap of the park using the primary lens. Notice how different these are when it comes to exposure. The camera 2 shot also has much more pronounced grass, and shadows are much less clear. This is especially clear in the park bench behind the tree in the lower left. Gazebo (down to the right) also has a weird blue reef in the camera 2 shot that is not clear in real life, nor on the camera 1 image.

This is not a macro shot, but it gives an idea of ​​how each camera captures less details. Camera 2 did a much better job of stabilizing the image, reducing the blur you see around the letter in the camera 1 image. However, the Camera 2 image has some weird objects around the wooden grain, which is not clear in the camera 1 image.

This session gave the main difference between the two cameras. The coloring of camera 1 looks very washed, but the artificial bokeh seems quite realistic. Meanwhile, the Camera 2 picture has a bit of a nice coloring on the flowers, but Bokeh is flat-out terrible. I canned almost both of these and did a shooting, but I decided to stick to my rule and not.

Ultimately, it’s about the details of this selfie example. Camera 1 shows a lot more skin details than camera 2. But camera 1 also pressed the colors on the plants in the background too much. Still, the bright sunlight in my face was handled much better with camera 1 than the washed-out, off color produced with camera 2.

Camera 1 did a pretty good job here, especially with Bokeh on the right side of my face. You can see that Bokeh has some problems around my hair in the upper left, but it still looks pretty good. Meanwhile, Camera 2s Bokeh just looks like grain in the background, without blurry softness that you expect from a shot like this. The area around my hair in the upper left is also bizarre – it looks like it was just cropped out with photoshop or something.

We’re starting to see some trends here. The camera 1 image has some extremely pushed colors from the HDR effect, with shadows that are basically non-existent. Look at the difference in shade of the slide – it is as if the pictures were taken with two different times of the day (they were not). The sky looks much better in the camera 1 shot, but at least in my opinion.

This was a tough conversation to call because the two phones do not have the same zoom features. CMF Phone 2 Pro has a 2x optical zoom while the Galaxy S25 Ultra uses digital pruning for 2x shots. I could have squeezed CMF Phone 2 Pro to 3x – which would have it by using a digital crop – and seen the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s optical image, but I expected me to give this to CMF Phone 2 Pro since it is the budget phone. Anyway, one of these shots is 2x optical and the other is 2x digital – can you tell what is what?

This is the opposite of the latest, with the Galaxy S25 ultra that has a clear advantage since it uses a 5x optical zoom lens to create a 10x digital crop, while the CMF Phone 2 Pro creates a 10x digital crop based on a 2x lens. As such, this should be the easiest to suck out of the whole gang.

It is not in the shot, but the sun is right above the gazebo and shines strongly over the California town Novato. This would be a difficult shot for any telephone camera, because all that sunlight can make it tough for even the best sensor to balance exposure properly. There are some distinct, obvious differences between these two shots, but it is quite incredible that the CMF Phone 2 Pro did not tense under the pressure. Which one do you look best?

The most bright difference between these two images is that one has colors in real life, and the other looks like technical coloring of coloring. However, when you look at the grass on both sides of the camera 1 image, you will also see some blurry items there. The tree half in the left side frame is particularly poor in the camera 1 shot. Which of these comes from the $ 1,300 camera?

Like the Portrait Mode example, one of the Flat-Out cameras failed this test. This room was quite dark – not dark, but light was small. My attempt to get camera 1 to focus on something was impossible, but Camera 2 also faced focus problems. I think both pictures are bad, but one is obviously better than the other – but what phone made them?

Okay, I hope you have your target card ready, because you are about to ruin the answers even if you do not. Here are the cameras that shot each of the images above:

• 1x in daylight: Camera 1 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra; Camera 2 is phone 2 pro
• 1x texture Close -up: Camera 1 is phone 2 pro; Camera 2 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra
• Fashion portrait: Camera 1 is phone 2 pro; Camera 2 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra
• Standard Selfie: Camera 1 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra; Camera 2 is phone 2 pro
• Portrait Mode Selfie: Camera 1 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra; Camera 2 is phone 2 pro
• 1x showing color: Camera 1 is phone 2 pro; Camera 2 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra
• 2x in daylight: Camera 1 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra; Camera 2 is phone 2 pro
• 10x in daylight: Camera 1 is phone 2 pro; Camera 2 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra
• HDR example in direct sunlight: Camera 1 is phone 2 pro; Camera 2 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra
• 0.6xi Daylight: Camera 1 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra; Camera 2 is phone 2 pro
• Night mode: Camera 1 is phone 2 pro; Camera 2 is the Galaxy S25 Ultra

If you summarize all the best images – and with “best”, I mean those who are objectively superior in quality, coloring, focus, etc. – Galaxy S25 Ultra is the clear winner of my score card. However, that was not the case 100% of the time. The Galaxy S25 Ultra’s portrait mode error was particularly violent. Yes, I could have stood there and focused on the shot and tried to improve it, but that I had to do it with a $ 1,300 phone and not a $ 28 phone phone is pretty ridiculous.

What is also remarkable to me is that CMF Phone 2 Pro clearly cannot match the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but it still holds its own reasonably well. Yes, it failed in the Night mode shot, and I wouldn’t use the Ultrawide camera for anything ever, but everything else was more than okay. Just look at the HDR example. Yes, the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s image is better, but is it $ 1000 better? I don’t think so.

In other words, the Galaxy S25 Ultra wins, but the CMF Phone 2 Pro proves that you do not need to spend over $ 1000 to get a camera that can produce adequate results, at least in good lighting.

What do you think? Were you surprised by the result of any of these examples? Let me know your thoughts in the comments and remember to choose something in the vote above!