I'm sticking with the iPhone 17 Pro, since this Android champion is great by day but bad at night

I'm stunned by what both the best Android phones and iOS devices can accomplish in terms of camera performance in 2026.

Great photographers can take great photos even with a potato in their hands, but for better or worse, 99.9% of us aren't Herb Ritts or Garry Winogrand, to quote a few names.

We, the mere mortals, need something extra to compensate for our photography shortcomings and this "something" usually is great cameras. High dynamic range, pin-sharp details, millions of pixels worth of resolution, rich tones and, above all, Auto exposure, Auto settings, Auto profiles, Auto HDR.

You know what? The Auto mode can be great, too. There's something about the whole point-and-shoot experience that captivates old and young, left and right all over the world.

Setting up your lights in a studio, having a professional makeup artist and model, working with backgrounds and super expensive interchangeable lenses and cameras… that's great. But being able to capture a fleeting moment with the candy bar-sized gadget in your pocket is super satisfying, too.

Otherwise, brands wouldn't try so desperately to offer us better and better cameras every year – one of the few smartphone fronts that still hasn't totally plateaued and we see real innovation.

Thankfully, these brands have mostly succeeded in their attempt to push the mobile camera envelope.

I like the taste of Chinese cameras

I'm no slave to any particular phone brand, as there is no such thing as "the perfect camera phone". I'm a fan of Samsung's consistent Galaxy S Ultra results with its main sensor in daylight; I bow before Apple's selfie game on the iPhones… but I also experiment with what the vast majority of people would call "obscure brands".

Of course, PhoneArena readers know these brands very well – I'm talking about Xiaomi, Vivo, Oppo, Huawei, Honor, OnePlus.



While Apple and Samsung rely on software tricks more often than not, the aforementioned OEMs tend to bet on the hardware side of things. Their flagships almost always come with ~1-inch massive sensors, with two dedicated zoom cameras, with bright apertures (to let in more light) and even offer external add-ons like grips and teleconverters.

The new Xiaomi

That's why I'm always interested in what Xiaomi, for example, has to offer. Even if it's a China-exclusive phone: I don't care, if it grabs my attention, I'm ordering one.

The most recent flagship killer by Xiaomi is the Xiaomi 17T Pro: a potent and serious premium device without the eye-watering price of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra (~$1,000 vs ~$1,700, converted directly from their EU prices).

My colleague Vic was lucky enough to spin it for a quick shooting session (both in the day and at night). While the full in-depth review is cooking, he put the Xiaomi 17T Pro versus the iPhone 17 Pro and got us several photo samples.

It looks like I'll be sticking with the iPhone 17 Pro, and I'm not even an iPhone user.

But why?

While the Xiaomi 17T Pro's cameras seem to excel in daylight, there's something that bugs me when they're used at night.

In a nutshell, the new phone comes* with:

As I said, in the daytime, things look amazing:

Both phones are under $1,100. The Xiaomi has a 7,000 mAh battery with 100W charging speeds. This, plus its cameras and solid display, are its most notable features. The iPhone 17 Pro has probably been the most beloved flagship in the world for the past eight months, and it needs no introduction.

I remain firmly on team Android once again, but for a camera phone, I'd go with the iPhone 17 Pro because of those night time shots. I realize I'll be giving up those glorious daytime tones by Xiaomi, but I often shoot after sunset and I would rather not make a compromise.