Gadgetory

technology scholars will probably define 2013 as the year of the great console wars or the unleashing of google glass but for me I think of 2013 as the Battle of the smartphone cameras now the phone wars used to be waged in number of processors or screen size but lately it's all been about megapixels and designer lenses Donal Bell and in this top 5 I'll be counting down the best smartphone cameras ranked by cnet senior editor Jessica dole court cameras so good you'll want to smudge them up just a little bit just to keep your selfies from frightening people starting off at number 5 the iphone 5 now Apple was one of the first companies to really put a lot of effort into photo quality and they didn't do it with a lot of BS about megapixels you know they let the photos do the talking for everyone else caught up to apples image processing you used to be able to pick out the photo taken by an iphone just by looking at it now the iphone still is a great camera but the phone itself is about a year old now it's one of the oldest ones on this list we have some catching up to do but if the rumors around the next iPhone or any indication camera improvements are at the top of the list at number four the HTC One one of my personal favorite phones of the year and definitely a phone that puts its camera features up front you want megapixels how about ultrapixels how about an image processor that drinks up light like David Hasselhoff drinks cheeseburgers plus they're a bunch of extra shooting modes you can stitch together action shots shooting a paparazzi burst mode and even shoot video and photos simultaneously great phone great camera and one of the only reasons anyone is still really talking about HTC next up at number 3 the samsung galaxy s4 now if we were just talking about the best overall smartphones the list would end here this is one of our favorite phones at the moment it's an editor's choice and it's an unqualified recommendation to anyone who just wants a great phone but it also happens to have a beautiful 13 megapixel camera on board along with the suite of photo features and modes that rival the HTC One and let's not forget about that screen one reason people like shooting on a smartphone so much these big screens make it so easy to show off pictures the 5-inch HD AMOLED screen on the s4 can add pop to even the most boring brunch photo so how do you improve on that well at number two the Nokia Lumia 1020 now here's a phone that is truly reaching out to stab the point and shoot camera in the back this is a beautiful freak of a phone with a giant sensor capable of shooting up to 41 megapixels now this isn't just another meaningless battle of pixels nokia is smart they take those extra pixels and use the information to intelligently process it down to a more manageable 5 megapixel image that will knock your socks off that i mention that it's a windows phone seriously if you want something that's as quirky as your tumblr blog the Nokia Lumia 1020 is your phone but our number one smartphone camera goes to the newest kid on the block the samsung galaxy s4 zoom not to be confused with the s4 mini or the s4 active or the s4 Google edition the s4 zoom slaps a real point and shoot camera system on the back of your phone with a 10 times optical zoom is it skinny no but you've got a 16 megapixel backside illuminated CMOS sensor on the back and the optics and the settings of a real camera the rest of it is an Android 4.2 lovefest you are looking at the successful mating of a phone and a camera it's not the prettiest thing in the world let us enough to keep it out of the Freak Show so there you go 5 smartphones that are spelling the end for the pocket camera for more information on any of these phones head over to phone cnet com and for more top 5 videos including my top five phones not to buy check out top 5 cnet com gamma Bell thanks for watching you