Phone marketing leads with megapixels because it is one number that goes up. It is also, on its own, close to meaningless. A 200MP phone can and does lose to a 12MP one. Here is what to look at instead.

1. Sensor size — the spec nobody advertises

Written as a fraction: 1/1.3", 1/1.56", 1/2.0". Confusingly, a bigger sensor has a smaller denominator, so 1/1.3" is larger than 1/2.0". Sensor size determines how much light the camera collects, which drives almost everything about low-light quality. This is the single most predictive camera spec, and it is the one most often left off spec sheets.

2. Aperture

Written f/1.8, f/2.2 and so on. Lower is wider, and a wider aperture lets in more light. The difference between f/1.8 and f/2.2 is roughly one and a half times the light — meaningful indoors, irrelevant outside on a bright day.

3. Optical stabilisation (OIS)

OIS physically moves the lens or sensor to counter your hand shake, which lets the camera hold the shutter open longer without blur. In practice this is the difference between usable and unusable night shots. Electronic stabilisation (EIS) is not a substitute — it crops and smooths, it does not gather more light.

4. Pixel binning

This is where the megapixel number gets its revenge. A 108MP sensor usually combines groups of pixels into one larger "super pixel", outputting a 12MP image that behaves like it came from a bigger sensor. So high megapixel counts are not fake — they just do not mean what the advert implies. You get a 12MP photo either way.

5. Which lenses are real

A "quad camera" phone frequently means one good main sensor plus an ultrawide, a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth sensor. The last two contribute almost nothing. One excellent main camera beats four mediocre ones every time. Count the useful lenses: main, ultrawide, telephoto.

A quick sanity check

Compare the main sensor size and aperture, confirm OIS is present, then ignore the rest of the camera marketing. You can put two phones side by side on our comparison tool to see these specs lined up directly.