Phone cameras stopped competing on megapixels. Computational taste did.

Most mid-range phones now take a usable night shot. The gap is no longer glass. It is how aggressive the stack is when it rebuilds a face, a sky, or a street.

That is a taste decision. Some people want the sidewalk they stood on. Some want the postcard the model thinks they meant.

If you buy a phone for photographs in 2026, read the processing, not the brochure megapixel line. The hardware is close. The look is not.