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.

I’ll take almost any excuse to get out in the fall leaves this time of year. This scene has it all: fallen leaves, long shadows, clear crisp weather and even a man in a red shirt to draw attention. Both photos are great representations of the moment, though the iPhone’s colors are a little more punchy without being oversaturated. Oddly, the foreground branch in the Pixel’s image is slightly out of focus, though it’s only noticeable if you zoom in. We’ll come back to this scene with the telephoto cameras later.

When testing cameras, I tend to look for spots where people are likely to take photos. I also like to find ones that might challenge a smartphone camera: dark shadows in the foreground, a bright light source in the middle and lots of little details like leaves and sailboat masts that can be tricky for any camera. 

Both cameras have done well here, too. The colors in the iPhone shot seem more natural to my eye, while the Pixel is ever so slightly muted. But really, they’re both lovely.

Did I mention challenging? Let’s fire into the sun on a foggy morning. Again, I’m happy with both photos. There’s plenty of softness around the sun as the light blends outward, and the white balance is under control in each one. If you pixel-peep, you’ll notice the Pixel 10 Pro XL is a touch sharper — look at the street lamp attached to the telephone pole at the right edge — but also more noisy in the dark areas, like the fence at left.

Not every pair of shots was similar, and this scene was a surprise. Initially, the color was way off with the iPhone: very blue and unexpectedly saturated. After some investigating, I realized the iPhone was set to capture with the Bright photographic style by default, a new feature in iOS 26. I’ve had that selected since I got the iPhone 17 Pro, and in most cases, it does create a punchy, engaging photo. But here it went overboard.

Switching to the Standard style brought the tones and colors back in line, even though they’re still too cool blue for my taste. The Pixel 10 Pro XL has done a great job rendering a more faithful version of the scene with the warm fall hues.

Looking at the sculpture from a few feet back, the iPhone is still obsessed with making everything blue. Even after setting the photographic style to Standard, the sky still looks unnaturally saturated. The Pixel 10 Pro XL, again, nails the color.

In this photo, I’m not just looking to see how the cameras rendered the subject in shade with bright sunlight in the background, but also how each phone handles its Portrait mode. That’s the soft background effect (bokeh) created in software because at the main cameras’ focal lengths, the look is difficult to achieve naturally.

I’m happy to report that both cameras have improved the modes over time — the Pixel 10 Pro XL can apply Portrait mode when shooting in the 50-megapixel high-res mode — with natural-looking bokeh and minimal artifacts around the subject. In this case, I prefer the Pixel 10 Pro XL image because of the look on her face, but the lighting and color of the iPhone 17 Pro photo is better overall (I should have kept snapping photos with the iPhone until I got a better expression).

This set of photos reveals another surprise that turned out to be consistent throughout my experience. They’re both similar, but the Pixel tends to be more restrained in tone, color and saturation. Not necessarily flat, but it’s almost as if Google is trying to atone for the over-processed sins of past smartphone cameras.

The iPhone photo is a little warmer, brighter and more contrasty; look at the cement walkway at the bottom-left corner. I’m not saying either photo is bad; it was a bright, cloudless day. But like Andrew Lanxon did in his iPhone 17 Pro/Samsung S25 Ultra shootout, I prefer more natural, less contrasty images in general. In that comparison, the iPhone was the model of restraint, but here, it’s the one providing more pop overall.

This guy gets included because that vest and those glasses just make him look cool.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Pixel 10 Pro XL: Ultrawide camera

The ultrawide cameras in each phone remain largely unchanged from their previous models.

What’s notable about the ultrawide cameras is something you don’t see: distortion. Apple and Google have done well to automatically correct for warped edges. The top railing in both photos doesn’t bend back toward the viewer as one would expect with an extremely wide lens. In terms of color and tone, the iPhone looks better to me with its more vibrant greens and brighter exposure.

In this tight bend in the road, the iPhone is brighter and warmer than the Pixel 10 Pro XL.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Pixel 10 Pro XL: Zoom quality

One reason to buy a Pro phone is to shoot with a telephoto camera that reaches farther than you can move your feet. The telephoto on the iPhone 17 Pro now finally has a 48-megapixel sensor and offers a 4x optical zoom, while the Pixel 10 Pro XL’s 48-megapixel camera has a 5x optical zoom.

But we also have to consider the 2x (both), 8x (iPhone) and 10x (Pixel) ranges, which each company calls “optical image quality,” because those use a crop of the main camera and the telephoto camera, respectively.

I promised we’d get back to this scene for a good reason. From the same spot as the main camera image earlier, these use the 4x and 5x zoom levels of each camera. For a fall-color photo, I’m partial to the brighter, more saturated iPhone photo. The Pixel shot is also good, but slightly muted in comparison to tamp down the highlights on the leaves. In each photo, the headline of the sign affixed to the bench is clearly readable — a sign so far away that I didn’t even notice it from the vantage point where the photos were taken.

Here I go again, taking photos directly into the sun. But this time it’s with the iPhone’s 8x zoom and the Pixel’s 10x zoom. They’ve both handled the brightness and color of the last moments before sunset well, but the iPhone has captured the sun’s glow better and has better managed the light fringing on the clouds. Notably, though, the notorious lens flare from the iPhone is a big distraction, whereas the Pixel has avoided it.

One surprise about photographing with these two phones is that I’m reaching for the 2x zoom level more often, which is a crop of the main camera’s sensor, and not the telephoto camera. In this pair, the iPhone’s white balance lighting up the fog in gold hues grabs my eye right away. The Pixel looks like it wants to give a “correct” temperature, not one that reflects the conditions. That said, the light streaks are more dramatic in the Pixel’s photo, and it’s sharper overall. Still, I prefer the iPhone’s version.

Also worth mentioning: Google’s processing has delivered a 50-megapixel image, so even though it’s recording just the middle portion of the sensor, the final shot is upscaled well. The iPhone at 2x records a 12-megapixel photo, regardless of which resolution mode you’ve selected.

Another photo shot using the 2x zoom levels in each camera. The Pixel 10 Pro XL’s main camera has a slightly narrower field of view compared to the iPhone, so when cropped in the framing is a little tighter. And here we see the iPhone photo being brighter and more saturated, though not by a lot. Still, the Pixel image comes across as muted — I’d want to punch up the color and brightness in editing later if this were the only camera I had with me.

Here are two examples of why a long telephoto option is great to have in a phone. I’m all for “zooming with your feet,” but a mountain that’s miles away isn’t going to be much bigger in the frame without a whole lot of walking. With a telephoto, however, it’s like the mountain comes to me.

The iPhone 17 Pro photo of Mount Adams at 4x zoom captures lots of detail in the grass, the trees and the mountain itself, all at 48-megapixel resolution. However, it does feel underexposed to me on the gray, cloudy day.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL image at 5x is also full of detail and resolution, but has better color and exposure. Straight out of the camera, the Pixel takes this one.

With an 8x and 10x zoom, the compression of the mountain, cloud and trees creates an even more dramatic photo. Again, the Pixel’s exposure and color have created a better image. The Pixel image has been scaled up to 50 megapixels from the telephoto sensor’s crop, so credit to the processing here. The iPhone’s 8x zoom creates 12-megapixel images; it’s more true to what the sensor is recording, but you don’t get as many pixels overall. That said, resolution isn’t everything, and the 8x photos have been consistently good.

After the two Mount Adams photos in which the Pixel 10 Pro XL ran counter to its trend, in this 2x zoom example, it’s back to being more muted and less vibrant. The iPhone 17 Pro renders the yellow leaves, green moss and a more pleasing overall exposure. It’s not that the Pixel rendered a bad image, but for this scene, the iPhone better matches what I saw.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Pixel 10 Pro XL: Night modes

We’re used to phone cameras like the Pixel and iPhone handling low-light and night photos almost effortlessly, but it’s still one of the more difficult tasks a smartphone camera takes on.

Technically, these photos don’t count as Night mode images because, although it was dusk and rapidly getting dark, both cameras had enough light to shoot the scene with their main cameras at full 48- and 50-megapixel resolutions. Here I would favor the iPhone’s slightly warmer tones, but they’re both acceptable images.

Let’s pile on the darkness: Nighttime outside, taking a picture through the window of a dark bar with a full spectrum of lighting. The colors are great in both, and the Pixel 10 Pro XL image is high-resolution enough to read the poster inside and even some recognizable bottle labels. The iPhone 17 Pro’s image is 12 megapixels, but it also looks good. There are a few areas of motion blur in both pointing to longer shutter speeds, but that’s not a surprise in a dimly lit environment like this.

Is it too early for holiday lights? Not here. Although the photos are similar, zooming in reveals more resolution and detail in the Pixel 10 Pro XL photo. It’s a little soft in details like the brick pattern on the bell tower. Both photos were captured using the main cameras, not the ultrawide, as you might think from the angle of the tower.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Pixel 10 Pro XL: Selfie

Who would have guessed that a selfie camera would get some of the biggest improvements this year? The iPhone 17 Pro now includes an 18-megapixel camera with a square sensor that can capture vertical or horizontal selfies without turning the physical phone. The Pixel 10 Pro XL’s front camera is the same 42-megapixel sensor from the previous year’s model, but it outputs only 10-megapixel images.

Not to be repetitive, but the results from the selfie cameras mostly match what we’ve seen with the rear cameras: The iPhone’s image is brighter and more saturated, though in direct sunlight, the light on my face comes close to getting blown out to white. The Pixel’s image is again muted, presumably correcting for the bright sunlight.

After I stepped back into the shadow of the tree, the photos were more similar in tone and color. The iPhone may have a slight edge here in terms of the saturation in the leaves, but as for the distracted guy in the middle, there’s plenty of detail in both the facial hair and the patterned sweater.

iPhone 17 Pro vs. Pixel 10 Pro XL: Which has the better camera?

Neither camera offers the type of breakthrough that would compel someone to jump ecosystems just for camera performance. An iPhone owner is far more likely to upgrade to the iPhone 17 Pro from an older iPhone, for example. Both are top quality, and the strengths of each come down mostly to your preference for the operating system. In the case of the iPhone 17 Pro versus the Pixel 10 Pro XL, the differences turn out not to be drastic. (If you’re an Android owner looking to move up based on photo quality, I recommend revisiting my look at the Pixel 10 Pro XL vs. the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.)

That said, I was surprised to find the Pixel’s performance to be more muted and naturalistic in general; often it’s the Android phone that pushes the saturation and contrast too high (or maybe that’s just the Galaxy S25 Ultra). There are other factors beyond sensor and image quality that might compel you to pick the Pixel, such as the Gemini integration that enables photo editing via voice commands, or the ability to capture images at 100x and then use generative AI to reconstruct details that would otherwise be fuzzy.

However, although both phones have great cameras, I prefer the iPhone 17 Pro’s overall performance.