My Camera Test: Comparing the $499 Pixel 10A With the Galaxy S25 FE, Motorola Edge

Google’s $499 Pixel 10A uses almost the same cameras as last year Pixel 9Abut I wanted to see how its photos directly match those of its mid-range Android rivals: the $650 Samsung Galaxy S25 FE and the $550 Motorola Edge.

I traveled with all three phones around St. Petersburg, Florida, testing everyone’s flexibility in different environments, from bright outdoor settings to an indoor cafe and evening brewery. All three environments can be tough on each phone’s small image sensors.

While I find the cameras on all three phones to have different strengths and weaknesses depending on the setting, I’m quite impressed with how the Pixel 10A keeps up. In my tests, the photos have a lot of detail, although some adjustments seem to require a lot of processing to improve them.

Watch this: Google Pixel 10A unboxing: Everything that comes with the $499 phone

00:48

Wide-angle and telephoto cameras

Starting with photos taken on the sidewalk in downtown St. Petersburg, I notice that all three phones handle sunlight slightly differently, particularly in how it is depicted on the street.

For the Pixel 10A, the sun creates a slight exposure mark on the Bay First panel at the top of the frame, but it remains curly enough to focus on the rest of the cityscape. Zooming in, you can see the location of Century 21, but the street is captured in the most detail, with the phone’s camera retaining its natural gray color.

For both the Galaxy S25 FE and the Motorola Edge, the sun has a more pronounced effect on the rest of the image. The color of the sidewalk is noticeably brighter. I also find that the S25 FE and Edge have a bit more clarity on the Bay First building’s commercial signs, including the aforementioned Century 21 logo.

Since the S25 FE and Edge each include a telephoto lens that supports 3x optical zoom, I took a photo at that zoom with each phone. The Pixel 10A uses digital zoom on the phone’s 48-megapixel wide camera, but many scene details remain preserved.

The Pixel’s zoom photo provides a clear view of the 7th St N sign, trees and plants. However, if you look further back, at the next intersection, you will notice that the 7th St S sign and the Colony Grill are much harder to see. It’s these small details that are captured by the S25 FE and the Edge, both aided by telephoto lenses, making them more visible.

Of the three sample zoom photos, I feel like the S25 FE offers the best color reproduction while retaining details like the panels further back. Even though the photo was taken with the S25 FE’s 8-megapixel telephoto lens rather than its 50-megapixel wide camera, the colors remain complementary when comparing 1x to 3x. Meanwhile, the Edge’s 10-megapixel telephoto camera is quite different from the 50-megapixel wide camera: the entire image has a more yellowish tint.

Ultra-wide cameras

Upon entering the Southern Grounds cafe, I decided to use the ultra-wide cameras to capture my sausage, eggs and cheese on toast. The three photos are very different.

The Pixel 10A’s 13-megapixel ultra-wide and the S25 FE’s 12-megapixel ultra-wide have a more balanced set of colors and details, in my opinion. The toast appears lighter in the Pixel’s photo than in the darker hues captured by the S25 FE and Edge.

However, when I zoomed in on my laptop, the Pixel and S25 FE captured more page markings, details that fade more in the photo Edge took. Although the Edge’s 50-megapixel ultra-wide camera is a higher spec number, I noticed that it had a harder time distinguishing between toast levels, making it look darker. If I hadn’t eaten it myself, I would have thought it was burnt from Edge’s photo.

Night photography

Moving to a nighttime environment, I used all three phones to take photos outside of 3 Daughters Brewing. I felt like all three did a decent job of producing the colors of the building, but they differ in how they handle the light sources.

Both the Pixel and S25 FE reduce the glare produced by different lighting fixtures. Meanwhile, photos from the Edge show visible streaks dominating the sky. Upon closer inspection of the photos, I see that the Galaxy captured a sharper view of the furniture, such as in the Connect 4 set next to the blue chairs in the center of the frame. The same details are visible in the Pixel and Edge’s depictions of the scene, but they look blotchy in comparison.

This type of scene needs to take advantage of a phone’s processing power in order to iron out visibility issues, and I find the Edge seems lacking here in this regard, with a lot of noticeable image noise.

Selfies

Each phone takes selfies with notable differences in style and color choices. For this testing example, I’m in a well-lit room during the day, with natural light coming from a window. The Google Pixel 10A’s 12-megapixel front camera lit up my face like there was a light in front of me and captured a decent amount of detail of my hair and face.

The Samsung Galaxy S25 FE’s front camera displays a noticeably darker color tone, but it still captures a similar shade of orange on the wall behind me. Of the three photos, I felt like the S25 captured the most detail, including strands of hair, and defaulted to a closer crop than the other two.

Photos taken by the Motorola Edge’s 50-megapixel selfie camera look a bit smoothed out. The orange color on the wall is noticeably different from the Pixel and S25 FE, although it captures many details of my face, from the strands of hair to the fabric textures of my shirt.

The $499 Pixel 10A camera tracks and, in some cases, exceeds the detail captured by the slightly more expensive $550 Motorola Edge and $650 Galaxy S25 FE. I’m quite impressed with how the Pixel camera handles colors and low-light environments, but the phone’s processing work sometimes makes scenes appear brighter than they are in real life.

The Galaxy S25 FE is no slouch either, with a third telephoto lens to capture more details further away. Although I found the Motorola Edge to struggle in low light, it’s one of the cheapest phone options currently available for someone who must have a 3x optical telephoto lens.

But if you can live without a telephoto lens, the Pixel 10A’s low cost and photographic capabilities will probably suit most people.