Technologies

Your Old Phone Can Still Take Excellent Photos With These Pro Tips

Don’t count out the camera on your older phone. It can still take fantastic photos.

The iPhone 14 Pro, Google Pixel 7 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra are among the best camera phones you can buy in 2023. Packed with multiple lenses and amazing AI software, these phones can take shots that rival professional mirrorless cameras.

However, these top phones come with huge price tags that make them out of reach for many of us. Worry not. Even if you’ve got an older iPhone or Android phone or a budget-focused model without all the bells and whistles, there’s a lot you can do to still take beautiful images. After all, as any photographer will tell you, it’s not just the best camera that takes the best photos.

Still, you’ll need to put in some effort yourself to elevate your shots from simple «ho hum» snaps to «oh, wow!» pieces of art.

Here, then, are my top tips for how to get the best images from an older iPhone, Galaxy phone or any older Android phone.

In this shot, taken on the iPhone X, the road snaking its way into the frame helps to add a leading line that guides the eye up toward the cloudy mountains.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Nail your composition

You can take a photo using the most advanced camera system on the planet, but if you’ve messed up your framing, you’ll still get a bad photo. After all, if you’re taking a photo of a lovely church and you manage to chop off the spire, no amount of editing will bring it back.

Don’t just snap away wildly at your photo location. Instead, slow down, walk around and consider the scene in front of you and how you want it to appear in your shot. Taking a landscape shot? Look for leading lines such as pathways or old stone walls that snake their way into the scene. Or perhaps there’s some interesting rocks or flowers that could add some interest in the foreground.

20190620-161930 — Taken on the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. I used the curving rock face as foreground interest, shooting through the gap that points toward the reservoir in the distance.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

You can also turn on a «rule of thirds» grid overlay in the settings to help line up the different elements in your scene in a visually pleasing way — or simply to help keep your horizons straight.

If you’ve got multiple rear cameras that offer a zoomed-in or wide-angle view, experiment with these different options. Maybe zooming in can help eliminate distracting elements, or perhaps that wider view can capture more of the beautiful scene in front of you.

With no wide-angle lens on the iPhone 11 Pro, I used the panorama mode to capture a much wider scene here.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

If you don’t have a wide-angle view, try using the panorama mode to get a wider shot than the standard camera can achieve — or use clip-on lenses, as I discuss below.

Tell a story

The most impactful, iconic images through the years aren’t simply the ones taken with the best camera, but the ones that tell a particular story or capture a moment in time. And sure, maybe you’re not trying to win a photojournalism prize on your summer vacation, but thinking like a photojournalist can help you take images that you’ll want to look back on in years to come.

Perhaps you’re heading to the beautiful Italian coast this year. Of course, you’ll get a nice snap of the ocean from your hotel terrace, but keep in mind what else has made your trip so memorable; the plates of delicious food, the old, dusty streets, the musician playing in the square or the vibrant colors of the fruits and flower stands at the local market. All these elements will make for great photos that capture the heart of the location and tell a great visual story when you look back through them.

This beautiful, shaggy Highland cow wasn’t the reason I visited Scotland, but this was a great opportunity to capture an image of an iconic animal. And the shot really adds to the story told by the images I took on that trip. Taken on the iPhone 11 Pro.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

And it doesn’t have to be something you do only on a big family vacation. A weekend walk downtown to the street-food market will offer up great storytelling opportunities, from the graffiti art you see along the way to the plates of vibrant cuisine you choose on arrival. And none of these things require the latest camera hardware to capture beautifully.

Use the light to your advantage

Though today’s top phones can take great nighttime images, older models likely won’t have night modes. As a result, darkness won’t be your friend when you’re trying to get great images. If you’re heading to a viewpoint overlooking the city, try to get there during the day, perhaps when there’s a lovely blue sky sprinkled with fluffy clouds.

Though the middle of the day isn’t always a great time for landscape photos, you might capture moments of peace like this. Taken on the iPhone X.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Middle-of-the-day photography is often avoided by landscape photographers because of its harsh quality, but if you’re exploring city streets, it can offer some great opportunities to look for contrast caused by shadows, which could make for dramatic images.

No multi-camera iPhone? Use clip-on lenses

Older iPhones might lack the multiple lenses found on the most recent models, but you don’t just have to make do. Companies like Moment and Olloclip make lenses that attach to your phone, providing wide-angle, telephoto and even macro views.

img-2269-copy — Using its standard lens (left) the iPhone X can only fit so much in frame. But with the Moment wide angle adapter (right) we get a much wider view.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Sure, you have to carry an extra little item in your bag or pocket as you explore, but adding a clip-on lens is a great way to get a superwide view for those sweeping cityscapes without having to splash the cash in upgrading your phone.

Shoot in DNG raw, even on old phones

Apple’s ProRaw image format, introduced on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, uses computational imaging techniques like HDR but still provides you with a DNG raw file that’s much easier to edit in apps like Adobe Lightroom. It isn’t a function found on older iPhones, but those of you on older phones can still shoot in regular raw if you’re keen to do your own edits.

You can’t shoot in DNG raw in the standard camera mode, so you’ll need to use a third-party camera app that offers raw shooting. I usually use Lightroom itself, as its camera shoots in raw and automatically imports the images into your library. But I’ve also had good results with the Moment app.

img-2026-2-copy — By shooting in DNG raw, I had even more flexibility in Adobe Lightroom to make this portrait of my sweet bundle of beautiful wonder look even more heartacheingly gorgeous.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Shooting in raw allows you more flexibility to adjust white balance and color tones while generally making it easier to tone down bright highlights or lighten up shadowy areas. Those of you looking to squeeze every ounce of quality from your phone camera should consider using raw — as long as you’re willing to spend the time editing.

Keep in mind, though, that raw files are larger than their JPEG counterparts, so you’ll quickly fill up your phone’s storage if you shoot everything you see in raw.

Get creative with editing apps

Taking your photo is only part of the process, and a keen eye in the editing stage can make all the difference in creating beautiful photographic art. If you want to maintain a more natural looking photograph, look toward apps like Lightroom or Google’s Snapseed. These raw image editors give you control over colors, exposure and contrast and let you fine-tune your images to suit your taste.

prisma-edit-app — Edited in Prisma, the abstract art style means it doesn’t matter if the original image isn’t amazing quality.

Andrew Lanxon/CNET

Or you can take your creativity to a whole other level with apps like Prisma, which transforms your shots into often psychedelic-looking scenes, or Bazaart, which lets you easily create wild photo collages that can look really cool. You can check out my roundup of my favorite image editing apps for more inspiration.

The great thing with editing is that there’s no right or wrong way to do things, and you can always go back to your original image if you don’t like the changes you made. But using some of these techniques can turn an otherwise forgettable shot into something that really stands out. My advice is to make a cup of tea, settle into a comfy chair and play around with the sliders in your app of choice and see what you can come up with.

Technologies

TikTok to Let Apple Music Users Stream Full Songs Without Ever Leaving the App

TikTok and Apple Music come together to introduce two new features to the music listening experience.

If you’ve ever scrolled TikTok, caught a snippet of a tune, and thought, «I wish I could play this song all the way through,» this is for you. TikTok and Apple Music announced on Wednesday that they have partnered on two new features, Play Full Song and Listening Party. The goal is to offer listeners a seamless music listening experience without ever leaving the social media app.

Apple Music subscribers who discover a song on their TikTok For You Page or on the Sound Detail Page will be able to click Play Full Song to open the Apple Music player and listen to the track in its entirety. From there, subscribers to the music streaming service will be able to save the song as a favorite, add it to a playlist on Apple Music and listen to a customized stream of recommended songs.

When a full-length song is played, the stream will pay artists through Apple Music.

«Tapping into the music you love should feel effortless,» Ole Obermann, co-head of Apple Music, said in a statement. «With Play Full Song, Apple Music subscribers can move easily from discovering a track on TikTok to listening to it in full instantly, without breaking the flow. This integration not only makes it easier for fans to discover, listen to, and engage with the artists they love, but also creates a powerful new pathway for artists — turning moments of discovery into deeper connection and sustained engagement in one simple, seamless experience.»

Listening Party sounds somewhat like Spotify‘s feature of the same name. Fans join a shared, real-time session where they listen to the same tracks together and interact live, with the songs streamed through Apple Music inside TikTok. Musicians can also join and chat with their fans.

«TikTok is where music discovery and culture move at the speed of the community,» Tracy Gardner, global head of music business development at TikTok, said in a statement. «Thanks to Apple Music, Play Full Song gives fans a seamless way to go from discovery to full-length listening, and Listening Party provides a shared place to experience music together in real time. It’s all about bringing artists and fans closer, and turning shared moments into lasting connections.»

Play Full Song and Listening Party will launch globally on TikTok over the next few weeks.

Technologies

AI Chatbots Are Making People All Think the Same, Study Says

A new paper argues that humans are losing varied ways of thinking due to the use of chatbots, and that’s concerning.

Part of what makes us human is the unique ways we think and solve problems. But using large language models like ChatGPT might be eroding this uniqueness and leading humans to think and communicate the same way, according to a group of scientists and psychologists who have co-authored a new opinion paper.

«Individuals differ in how they write, reason, and view the world,» Zhivar Sourati, a computer scientist of the University of Southern California and first author for the paper, said in a statement.

«When these differences are mediated by the same LLMs, their distinct linguistic style, perspective and reasoning strategies become homogenized, producing standardized expressions and thoughts across users,» Sourati continued.

The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, examines how hundreds of millions of people worldwide use the same handful of chatbots and what that means for our individuality.

Thinking inside the box

Pew Research found that one-third of all Americans used ChatGPT last year, double the 2023 figure. And chatbot use is much more common among teens: Two-thirds say they use chatbots, and almost a third use them daily.

Businesses are also going all in on artificial intelligence. Stanford found that 78% of organizations reported using AI in 2024, up from 55% in 2023.

So we’re using AI a lot. But the danger is that we could lose the diversity in the ways we think. The team points out that LLMs generate writing that varies less than what people come up with on their own.

Part of the reason LLMs may be pushing homogenized thought, according to the paper’s authors, is the data used to train them.

«Because LLMs are trained to capture and reproduce statistical regularities in their training data, which often overrepresent dominant languages and ideologies, their outputs often mirror a narrow and skewed slice of human experience,» Sourati says.

Why diverse thinking matters

There’s a good reason why the authors warn against this trend. Homogenized thought reduces pluralism, which is essentially the idea that multiple perspectives are good for society as a whole.

«This value of pluralism is rooted in the long-held principle that sound judgment requires exposure to varied thought,» the authors write in the paper. «Unchecked, this homogenization risks flattening the cognitive landscapes that drive collective intelligence and adaptability,»

So we use different ways of thinking to figure out more solutions to a problem. If we lose the ability to think and communicate differently, it could affect how we adapt to new situations.

«The concern is not just that LLMs shape how people write or speak, but that they subtly redefine what counts as credible speech, correct perspective, or even good reasoning,» Sourati says.

The authors also say that this trend even impacts people who don’t use chatbots.

«If a lot of people around me are thinking and speaking in a certain way, and I do things differently, I would feel a pressure to align with them, because it would seem like a more credible or socially acceptable way of expressing my ideas,» Sourati says.