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Samsung has launched its latest flagship phone, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, and, as in years past, added a quartet of cameras to the back. Samsung is arguably the best camera phone you can buy in the US, but a recent trip to Mobile World Congress reminded me that there's more out there than just Samsung. 

Indeed, two of the best camera phones you can buy live outside the US.

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The Xiaomi 17 and the Oppo Find X9 Pro are two juggernauts in the camera industry. Each company has a partnership with a respected camera brand -- Xiaomi has been working with Leica, and Oppo has kept its Hasselblad cooperation rolling. 

So I wanted to take all three phones out and put the cameras through their paces to see what each could bring to the table.

Meet the contenders

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has a 200-megapixel main camera with a f/1.4 aperture, along with 50-megapixel telephoto and ultrawide cameras with a 5x optical zoom and 120-degree field of view, respectively. Also adding to the arsenal is a 10-megapixel 3x zoom camera.

Over on the Xiaomi 17, you get a triple 50-megapixel camera setup for the main (f/1.5 aperture), ultrawide (102-degree field of view), and 2.6x optical zoom telephoto. Finally, there's the Oppo Find X9 Pro, with a slightly different camera array. Oppo's flagship has a 200-megapixel sensor, but it powers the 3x optical zoom telephoto camera. 

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The main and ultrawide cameras are both 50-megapixel shooters with an f/1.5 aperture and 120-degree field of view, respectively. On the front, the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra has a 12-megapixel selfie camera, while both the Xiaomi and the Oppo have 50-megapixel sensors.

Test 1: Main cameras

As one would expect, during the day, in good light, all three main cameras are stellar. The S26 Ultra has the best color reproduction of all three, with true-to-life visuals and a noticeable amount of detail when pinching into photos, but it's not by a lot. The real measure of a camera will be how it performs at night and when zoomed in.

At night, both Chinese phones tend to lean toward warmer colors, while the Samsung maintains consistent lighting across all subjects. As a byproduct, those photos look a bit washed out. The Chinese phones both have a bit more "character" to them, and if you made me pick one, I'd go with the Oppo phone, but both shots are very similar.

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At 2x zoom, which is basically just cropping in on the sensor, the S26 Ultra excelled here, keeping much more detail and depth in the photos. This was especially true in the details of trees and branches captured from a distance. The same color scheme on the 2x lenses yields the same diagnosis on the cameras -- I prefer the character of the Chinese phones over their Korean competitor, but that's very subjective.

Test 2: Telephoto

A phone's zoom capabilities get muddy here because all three phones have different magnifications. The 2.6x zoom on the Xiaomi seems… silly, given that you're already getting 2x by cropping the sensor. The 3X Samsung zoom lens at 10-megapixels is becoming more laughable by the year -- just ditch it already, Samsung. 

Meanwhile, Oppo's 200-megapixel camera behind the telephoto lens is my preferred choice, as it offers much more zoom capability. So, let's break it down.

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Samsung's 5x telephoto gets a lot right, as seen above, with excellent detail and depth right out of the gate. The Oppo, in the meantime, had a bit of focus trouble for distant subjects. Whether it was a person's face or detailed architecture, it was always a bit blurrier than I would like. The Xiaomi 17, meanwhile, didn't offer much better a look at a subject than its 2x sensor crop on the main camera, as I suspected.

As for super zooms, the Xiaomi maxes out at 60x, the Samsung at 100x, and the Oppo at 120x. Samsung pioneered this field with the original Note series, but it got pretty well crushed by the Find X9 Pro's 200-megapixel sensor. 

Not only can the Find X9 Pro get "closer," but the shots are more detailed and far less blurry than you would expect at that resolution. This is not a surprise since the OnePlus 13 in particular had excellent zoom and, well, they're basically the same company.

Test 3: Ultrawide

All three phones have 50-megapixel ultrawide cameras, and among the three, the Oppo Find X9 Pro consistently produced the best results during the day. You get finer details in areas such as brickwork and intricate crenellations in London architecture. 

That said, the Find X9 Pro still showed a bit of fisheye around the edges, where the software didn't compensate for the lens's wide-angle. Some might call that artistic. If you want less of a fisheye effect, the Xiaomi 17 did a great job in that department.

At night, the Xiaomi 17 doesn't compete at all. I'm not even sure it's playing the same game. It takes very poor photos in low light with blotchy shadows and no detail. Of the two remaining competitors, I think I prefer the S26 Ultra. 

It has a bit more even exposure across bright and dark areas, though at a 100% crop, the Find X9 Pro does a better job of evening out banding when lighter and darker areas meet. The S26 Ultra is also a bit sharper in focus in the foreground.

Final verdict

Overall, all three cameras are great and can produce excellent results. On the whole, I think I was more consistently impressed by the Find X9 Pro than by the other two cameras. It's important to keep in mind that I was using the Xiaomi 17, and not the 17 Ultra, for this comparison. The Ultra has a whole different set of sensors, but I still felt that the 17 did a good job in keeping up with its competitors.

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This is all just a good reminder to Samsung and to us that there is a wide world of photography out there, so it's important to keep pushing the envelope. I, for one, would love to see Samsung move its 200MP sensor to the telephoto, allowing it to capture more detail at greater range. On the same thread, it's probably time to retire that 10MP 3x shooter. 

Regardless, you'll have a tough time shooting a bad photo with any of these phones. Even low-light performance is pretty good across all brands (except for that pesky Xiaomi ultrawide), but if you want shots with a little more flair, you might want to look overseas.