The 3 camera phone trends that defined 2025 – and what might happen next in 2026

The past year has been very good for smartphones, from the ever-increasing capabilities of AI assistants to record-breaking batteries that can provide multiple days of power on a single charge – and smartphone photography certainly hasn’t lacked innovation.

This was the year where we saw camera phones sprout attachable teleconverters, 200MP sensors become almost routine on flagship handsets, and AI editing moved from a neat party trick to an everyday tool. These three trends have each reshaped the way smartphone photography works today – and will likely define where it goes next.

Attachable lenses are back – but this time they’re serious

Attachable smartphone lenses have been around for years. Clip-on lens kits from brands like ShiftCam and Moment – along with plenty of budget alternatives – have made it easy to give phones ultra-wide, macro or even anamorphic shooting options without needing a specialist camera.

However, the difference in 2025 is that attachable optics have gone from novelty accessories to something phone makers themselves are taking seriously.

Vivo kicked things off last year, with its Zeiss co-engineered adapter for the Vivo X200 Pro – an accessory that became a big part of its 2025 launches for the X200 Ultra and X300 Pro. And Oppo has also now joined the adapter club with its latest Find X9 Pro.

On top of its already stacked camera array, Oppo offers an optional Hasselblad co-engineered teleconverter lens that clips onto a dedicated case. It optically extends the 200MP telephoto camera from an already healthy 70mm equivalent to 230mm, with up to a huge 920mm using the phone’s lossless zoom.

These aren’t just fun toys; this is a genuine bridge camera alternative in something that still slides into a pocket. For distant wildlife or sports from the cheap seats, that extra magnification genuinely changes what you can shoot with a phone.

That said, the friction hasn’t gone away: you still need the right case, the right adapter and a pocket to spare. It remains a niche for now, but one that’s steadily gaining momentum.

Looking ahead to 2026, I’d expect more manufacturers to follow Vivo and Oppo with their own official lens systems. It may never be a mass-market accessory, but for enthusiasts, hybrid creators and travellers looking to pack light, attachable lenses could become a standard part of their kit.

High-megapixel sensors went from novelty to normal

There's no doubt that 2025 was the year that normalized the 200MP sensor. What would have been a spec sheet shock just a few years ago has become almost a standard expectation for a modern flagship. This year has seen flagships from Samsung, Vivo, Oppo, Realme, Honor and Xiaomi all call on 200MP sensors to push zoom performance.

The real benefit isn’t shooting in full 200MP mode (most people should never do that; the file sizes are huge and unwieldy to edit), but rather allowing the phone to use those extra pixels for a cleaner and more flexible zoom.

Cropping into a huge-resolution sensor produces sharper and more detailed images, especially in good light. And at night, pixels can be combined for cleaner shots with less noise.

In 2025, this led to a noticeable shift in camera zoom capabilities, with phones like the Oppo X9 Pro offering up to a claimed 13.2x “lossless zoom” from its 200MP sensor.

In 2026, I expect this trend to continue. Sony has just entered the 200MP race this year with its large-format Lytia LYT-901, a 1/1.12-inch sensor that aims to solve the usual trade-off between high resolution and good low-light performance.

But while larger 200MP sensors like Sony’s could become the new flagship standard, older 200MP sensors are likely to trickle further downmarket, becoming a mid-range feature – even if the surrounding optics and processing don’t always match flagship results.

AI stopped being optional

In 2025, AI is everywhere – but this is the year where smartphone photography has perhaps seen its biggest AI push yet.

It now underpins almost every stage of the smartphone photographic process, from analyzing a scene for HDR, white balance and natural skin tones to AI-assisted super-zooms with their generative detail enhancement and beautification tools.

This year, AI is even edging closer to taking our photos for us. The Google Pixel 10 has shown us a glimpse of the future of AI guidance with its Camera Coach. This offers a step-by-step analysis of subjects, angles, lighting and composition, with on-screen guidance for taking a “better” photo – in real-time, right in the camera app.

Apps have also made AI tools dramatically more accessible for editing. System-level photo apps on Android and iOS are now chock-full of AI editing tools, from one-tap sky replacement, background removal, portrait relighting and even generative fill to replace missing or unwanted elements of an image.

Google Photos even enables you to simply dictate your desired edits to the phone. What used to take desktop computing power, pro software and a lot of time and skill now happens in seconds.

Looking to 2026, it’s clear that AI is only going to continue to expand its capabilities and deepen its influence. And with growing concerns around authenticity, the line between truth and fabrication will become harder to see.

This is something that will matter not just for journalists, but for everyone to have faith in what we see online – especially on social media, and even for anyone just trying to preserve genuine memories without AI “improving” them.

Next year we’ll hopefully see more robust tools, from AI generators to watermark content, alongside better transparency controls from sites and social media companies, with clearer AI indicators displayed on images – although this won’t stop bad actors from attempting to circumvent these tools.

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For more, check out our guides to the best Android phones for photography or the best camera phones.