Point and shoot cameras

[wesimmo]

My daughter and I are going to Thailand soon, is there any point in buying a budget camera to take with us these days?

I've currently got a Samsung S21 and she's got an iPhone 15.

I'm due a new phone, but only really because the battery life is becoming an issue. I'm really not bothered about having the latest and greatest, typically I'll spend about ~£300 on whatever Android phone I can get from Backmarket or similar.

If I had a budget of ~£500 to replace my phone and get a point and shoot camera, is it worth getting 2 devices or am I better off spending all of that money on a newer phone with a decent camera?

I'm obviously not into photography, I just want to have a reasonably decent set of photos to look back on, she's 15 so there's not going to be many more years we'll be doing these sorts of things together and we're packing a lot of stuff in to 'make memories', it'd be nice to have a record of them of some sort.

 

[radderfire]

A better phone will be just as good if not better than a point and shoot.

There is an advantage of having multiple devices in case one gets lost or damaged, but you will have your daughter's phone as a backup.

 

[Raymond Lin]

My advice is you stick with a modern phone

1 - you don’t need to buy storage…have you checked a 256G SD card or SSD drives these days?
2 - you don’t need to edit, all filters built in
3 - you don’t need to carry another thing
4 - you need to transfer it to your computer or phone to share

These days a phone is so good that I only really advice people to buy a camera because they want to learn photography, if they just want to take pictures, it is a waste of money because they will go back to their phone very quickly.

 

[wesimmo]

Thanks is there a particular phone I should look at from a camera perspective. It looks like the s23/s24 are the Samsung options in that budget range.

Is it worth moving from Samsung?

 

[radderfire]

Thanks is there a particular phone I should look at from a camera perspective. It looks like the s23/s24 are the Samsung options in that budget range.

Is it worth moving from Samsung?

It's not necessary in terms of camera quality, as Samsung are good.

There are cheaper Chinese phones available with cameras if you want a newer phone for the money, from the likes of Honor, Huawei, Lenovo, Motorola, Oppo, Poco and Xiaomi.

Xiaomi and Motorola phones are excellent value for money.

 

[Raymond Lin]

Thanks is there a particular phone I should look at from a camera perspective. It looks like the s23/s24 are the Samsung options in that budget range.

Is it worth moving from Samsung?

For photos of “memories”, a S24 ultra is as good as any. Most of them are much of muchness differs mostly in the AI processing in terms of the fake bokeh. There are some phone with slightly better lenses like some Chinese ones partner with Leica or Zeiss. Personally I just stick with Samsung because it’s a phone first, camera 2nd.