Android Authority compares portrait modes on iPhone, Pixel 11 Pro XL and Galaxy S26 Plus

On the Pixel, the reviewer wrote, the main viewfinder offers only a zoom control, defaulting to 2x and allowing either 1x or a crop into the 5x telephoto camera. With a 24mm main camera and a 105mm telephoto, neither is an ideal portrait focal length on paper; the reviewer preferred the default 2x to 5x, which can make faces look overly flat unless the shot is taken from a greater distance. Exposure, white balance and other adjustments sit in the bottom-right menu, a finer level of control than the two rivals offer before their Pro modes, and a Blur slider changes the amount of background bokeh. Camera Looks apply subtle color grading, while a bottom-left menu holds flash, timer and Face Retouching, which Google leaves off by default. The reviewer's main complaint was the layout: splitting controls between left and right menus makes them hard to remember.

Apple's portrait mode in iOS 27 also defaults to 2x, but crops into the 24mm main camera instead of using a dedicated lens. Users can switch to 1x or push in to 3x, both of which still rely on the main sensor and lose detail when cropped; the 100mm 4x periscope on Pro models is too long for many portraits and is not offered as a direct option. The most prominent feature is the lighting selection, which alters contrast and color processing, with Studio Light producing a softer look with less contrast and brighter backlights, and High-Key Mono removing the background entirely. A six-dot button opens night shooting, flash, timer and exposure controls, plus the Photography Styles filters carried over from Photo mode. The Depth control runs from f/1.4 to f/16, with f/16 effectively removing the software blur; the default is f/4.5, and anything much wider tends to blur edges and fine hairs too aggressively.

Samsung's Galaxy S26, S26 Plus and S26 Ultra all carry a dedicated 3x telephoto camera with a focal length of roughly 67 to 70mm, and it is the default in portrait mode. According to the review, that brings the photographer closer to the subject and gives more natural facial proportions and optical characteristics than a digitally cropped image, with the lens's own compression and depth of field producing convincing results without relying entirely on software. The trade-off is the telephoto camera's small 1/3.94-inch sensor, which can struggle in low light and with HDR in strongly backlit scenes; in those cases, switching to 2x crops from the larger main camera instead.

The comparison did not name a single winner, describing instead how each manufacturer's approach shapes the look of a portrait and where it runs into limits.