These days, you can count on smartphones to have high-resolution sensors (12 megapixels or more) to produce sharp cropped or enlarged prints. They have optical image stabilizers to help minimize blurriness from a shaky hand. And they can capture spur-of-the-moment video with high-definition clarity, too.

One new trend is for phones to include two rear-mounted cameras (in addition to the selfie camera on the front). One camera handles most shots while the other works either as a zoom or a wide-angle lens. Some phones use both cameras working together to produce stylish effects such as a blurred background (what photographers call a bokeh effect).

This seems like a very promising development. So far, however, our testing indicates that secondary cameras don’t do much to improve image or video quality overall. That’s why, for now, we only score the performance of the phones’ main cameras. 

The images and videos the best smartphone cameras take are relatively large, up to 5 megabytes per still image and several hundred megabytes per minute for videos. If the smartphone you fancy accepts microSD memory cards, you’ve got it made. Cards with 64GB of storage are easy to install and cost as little as $20 at most retailers. If you’re thinking of buying a phone that lacks this advantage, consider a model with at least 64GB of internal storage.