Top 5 high-end camera smartphones for Christmas

    

Still on the lookout for the perfect Christmas tech gift? This week we’ve been honing our gadget senses to bring you some handy gift guides. This time we’re looking at the best smartphones with killer cameras on-board. We’ve picked out five of the best for taking photos. Amazing photos guaranteed. Right this way.
Megapixels aren’t the be-all and end-all when it comes to taking the best shots. Although they do help, we’ve gone for a broad spectrum of here, ranging from 12 to 8-megapixel camera phones from Nokia, Samsung, Apple and HTC. So even if you’re treating yourself, you’re likely to find one that’s right for you.

Samsung Galaxy SII

One of the latest and most advanced smartphones available. The Samsung Galaxy SII is adept at taking photos as it is everything else. An 8-megapixel camera with LED flash doesn’t skimp on the detail, even in low light conditions. A second two-megapixel front-facing camera lets you engage in video calls and take self-portraits. Video recording is also full 1080p high definition.
 


Nokia Lumia 800

The Nokia Lumia 800 is the first of two Nokia camera phones in our list. Nokia simply know how to make a great camera phone. The camera here is eight-megapixels. It comes with dual-LED flash, what Nokia likes to call exposure compensation and auto and manual white balance. Photos look great in almost all conditions, but as usual for Nokia phones, its the Carl Zeiss lens that gives photos a high quality sheen.


HTC Sensation XL
This beast of a phone also has one of the best cameras found on an Android smartphone. Pixel-wise, the HTC Sensation XL has as eight-megapixel sensor with dual LED flash and a sensor for better performance in low-light conditions. Should you feel the need to capture video, the Sensation XL will shoot high definition video at 720p resolution. That’s not quite full high definition, but still near enough to look of a high standard.

Nokia N8
While not the most current phone on our list of snappers, the Nokia N8 still possess one of the finest cameras ever seen on a phone. Its 12-megapixel and Carl Zeiss lens takes photos that will even rival digital SLR cameras. Picture-wise, it really is that good. Other photo specs include autofocus, face recognition, a still image editor and the ability to geo-tag photos with the location they were taken. 



Apple iPhone 4S
One of the big improvements that came in this iPhone upgrade was a new 8-megapixel camera. Apple claims that each megapixel is engineered to collect more light. The result is more detail in shots, while a larger aperture makes photos look brighter, not washed-out like you see on some camera phones. There’s also ability to edit photos on-the-go by cropping, rotating, and removing red-eye. A HDR mode takes three photos at different exposures to create a single perfect shot. Apple’s iCloud service will also let you stream and share photos taken to other Apple devices including Macs and iPads.