All the gear and no idea – my new phone camera is wasted on me, but Google might have already found a solution

If you have a current-gen flagship – an iPhone 17 Pro, Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, a Google Pixel 10 Pro, or one of the many other alternatives out there – you’ll know how hard it is now to take a terrible photo. Heck, even with the non-Ultra/Pro models, a terrible snap is more and more difficult to find.

Yes, it can still happen, but with fantastic camera hardware, excellent AI software helping to fix minor and even some major photo blunders, and remembering to take a few extra photos ‘for safety’ you can walk away from anything with at least one beautiful photo – if not several.

For me, that’s never more true than when I’ve tested the Oppo Find X9 Pro, which I got to put through its paces on a press trip to Mexico with the brand to celebrate the device’s launch.

Simply put, its triple snapper setup of a 50MP main, 50MP ultra-wide, and a 200MP telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom puts my daily driver – a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 – to shame, and I think the Samsung already took some pretty great photos.

Tack on the Oppo’s detachable zoom lens developed in partnership with Hasselblad – which brings your 3x telephoto snapper up to 10x optical zoom, perfect for long-distance shots and street photography – and it feels like there’s nothing you can’t do photographically speaking.

Well, unless you’re as much of a novice as I am, then you might feel like a superb camera is utterly wasted on you.

I’m very much a point-and-shoot-style photographer. I see something I like, and I take a picture to document my latest adventure.

The Oppo Find X9 Pro is excellent for this kind of photography, don’t get me wrong, but having seen how the other members of the media on my trip handled this tool, I know the camera phone is capable of so much more artistically.

I did my best to mimic some of the shots my fellow travellers took – either asking for photography tips or peering over shoulders to get a sense of what I should be attempting to capture – but one week of tutoring won’t make me a master.

And these ‘lessons’ focused mostly on framing and lighting. I still have no clue what all the Pro mode settings mean – what’s ISO?

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All this is to say, the best camera phone hardware is already amazing, and significant hardware advances don’t feel like they’ll land soon unless more brands turn to external camera attachments. Though while these can be awesome, they can also be kinda clunky – as you’ll need to find somewhere to store the lenses when they aren’t in use.

Instead, I think we will and should see more advances like Camera Coach – a Google Pixel 10 upgrade, which has the phone’s AI direct you to take better photos.

Right now, the tool is admittedly quite basic (offering those simple framing pointers novices can grasp quickly), but I would love to see the Coach evolve over time, perhaps even respond like Gemini Live to real-time questions on how to make your shot look like your desired end goal.

This would feel like a much more genuine and still useful alternative to the AI phone camera editing tools we already rely on.

Phone cameras are already pretty superb to the point that they can be used on film sets or other major productions without people noticing a quality change. The limiting factor now is us, but hopefully that can change.

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