At Fotolia, we love when you take pictures with your smartphones! We've even create a special application for iPhone and Android smartphones, Fotolia Instant, which allows you to upload and sell your best photographs to our Instant Collection.
If you're planning to replace your smartphone soon here are some of the jewels of the moment. A non-exhaustive selection, certainly, but exemplify the 'creme de la creme' of new models to capture photos and videos to tempt you.
Among them, of course, the brand new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus. Apple, whose previous success, the iPhone 5S, was already being hailed by the press as one of the best camera phones of the last few years. If the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus are still 8-megapixel smartphones, the focus is now almost instantaneous, and the detection of faces faster.
On the video side, shooting at 240 frames per second (against 120 i / s above) promise some stunning sequences. Note that the iPhone 6 Plus is distinguished from the iPhone 6 with its bigger screen, 5.5 inches against 4.7 inches, but also by the presence of an optical image stabilizer that reduces tremors in low light conditions.
The new iPhone will fight with well known Android mobiles including the Galaxy S5 Samsung and its 16-megapixel sensor. The Galaxy S5 offers refinements such as very artistic background blur, or an HDR function to boost colors of photo and video when shooting in such situations against the light. And the high definition videos are really convincing.
With its 20.7-megapixel sensor, the Sony Xperia Z2 also plays in the big leagues. Pictures have a wealth of vivid details and, as the Galaxy S5, it is waterproof and takes 4K video, that is to say in an image definition, 4 times higher than that of the Full HD TV in your living room.
In your quest for a great camera phone, you will could fall elsewhere on the HTC One M8, also equipped with the Android system, which abandons the race to the number of pixels (its sensor is only 4 megapixels) for better focus on quality shooting with some success. But, you can see, the number of megapixels is less important than the quality of the optics.
And in the Windows Phone family? Enter the Nokia Lumia 930. Inside, a 20 megapixel sensor and a valuable optical stabilizer to achieve good results in almost every situation. Windows Phone 8.1 brings in many valuable manual settings to complement its automatic mode.
Take a quick glance on the quality of photo sensor on the front of the smartphone : your reputation is on the line for your next selfies! So look at the new Samsung Galaxy Note 4. This phablet (between a smartphone and tablet) 5.7 inch screen and stylus features a 16-megapixel camera sensor, stabilized to reduce blur. And, as a bonus, a front camera of 3.7 megapixels and shoot at 120° for almost panoramic selfies.
In any case, remember that the operating system (iOS, Android, Windows Phone) and apps for these devices are constantly evolving. It happens so that teething problems reported by the press, at the release of a smartphone, are erased by an update. If you want to be sure to find the latest news about a product, a hint: Google lets you filter by date the results it displays (button "Search Tools", "Any time" and choose for example "Last month").
Two final pieces of advice. If your next smartphone does not have a card reader to expand the memory (iPhone, Lumia 930 ...), make sure to choose a sufficient storage capacity to store many photos and videos, pick your music, load games, etc. The temptations are many - 32GB therefore is a minimum.
Finally, remember to check if your new smartphone requires a SIM card different from your current phone as you will need to order a new SIM from your mobile operator. Remember, there are Sim cards, Micro-SIM cards (smaller) and Nano-SIM cards (even smaller). You can still use your new smartphone even if it does not yet have the Sim card. You can try it, take pictures and even download games and apps taking advantage of free Wi-Fi.
And remember, we want to see your smartphone images! Upload the Instant App today and get snapping!