When you spend more than $1,000 on a smartphone, you expect great cameras as part of the package. It's not enough to offer a decent point-and-shoot experience at this level.
To truly stand out, today's smartphones have to pack pro-level camera performance into impossibly small bodies, leveraging dedicated image-processing hardware and software to make even rookie photographers look competent.
No two rivals represent this arms race better than Apple's iPhone 17 Pro and Google's Pixel 10 Pro XL. These flagship models represent not just the high end of each line but also the role models for other companies to follow, particularly the Pixel 10 Pro XL, since Google makes Android. (For a look at how the iPhone compares against another leading camera phone, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, see CNET Editor at Large Andrew Lanxon's photo shootout.)
I've been carrying both phones around Seattle and took them on a trip to the Columbia River Gorge, separating Washington and Oregon, to see how their cameras compare. Image quality has been excellent on both, but they each surprised me at times. For example, when I thought one would overcompensate in color, it would be the other that went overboard. But which one? You might also be surprised.
Read more: Best Camera Phone of 2025
All photos were captured with the default automatic settings, though some of them were captured in raw format for more editing options later; however, none of these images have been corrected. All were exported as JPEGs so CNET's publishing system can read them (versus Apple's HEIF format, for instance).
Both cameras also capture in high dynamic range mode, which increases brightness in certain areas, but only on displays that support HDR viewing. What you see on this page may not match exactly what you'd see on the iPhone or Pixel screen. That's a general issue with HDR images on the web right now, until the technology is more widely adopted.
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iPhone 17 Pro vs. Pixel 10 Pro XL: Main camera
The main camera in each phone has to pull a lot of weight. It's the one that gets the best light-gathering ability (an aperture of f/1.78 for the iPhone and f/1.68 for the Pixel) and a wide, but not ultrawide, field of view to capture most scenes.
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