The OnePlus 10 Pro is the best photo phone in the company's history, but it still lags behind its main competitors from Apple, Google, and Samsung. So what does the iPhone 13 Pro Max, Galaxy S22 Ultra, and Pixel 6 Pro do that the OnePlus 10 Pro does not?

Being a big fan of the OnePlus 10 Pro (aside from the flickering always-on display), I looked into how its camera is doing; after looking through various camera comparisons featuring the OnePlus 10 Pro, I narrowed down the photo issues to three points, I also found one area where the 10 Pro already does a good job.

The OnePlus 10 Pro marks the second year that OnePlus has collaborated with Swedish camera maker Hasselblad on cameras for its flagship phones. It has certainly succeeded in bringing OnePlus' top smartphone up to the point where it is on par with the top smartphones in photography, but it has not yet crossed that threshold.

So if OnePlus engineers happen to be reading, take note. Maybe these suggestions will prompt changes that will put the next OnePlus flagship at the top of the best camera phone list.

The OnePlus 10 Pro uses the Hasselblad Natural Color Solution for Mobile for image processing, which, as the name suggests, is designed to reproduce colors as close to reality as possible. However, the average smartphone user wants images that look as attractive as possible with minimal effort, so images with paler colors will have no teeth against images that automatically dial up brightness and saturation. It could also be argued that the OnePlus 10 Pro's photos appear more washed out than reality.

A photo of the apple section of a grocery store taken in the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra vs. OnePlus 10 Pro showdown really illustrates this issue. Perhaps these apples really do look like this under the store's harsh artificial lighting, but they don't look as delicious as they do through Samsung's lens.

The main camera can be quite badly overexposed, as in this close-up comparison of flowers taken for the OnePlus 10 Pro vs. the Google Pixel 6 Pro. It's still reasonably clean, but it won't beat the Pixel's much richer images.

This ultrawide comparison with the S22 Ultra also shows that color issues persist. Samsung phones sometimes oversaturate their images, and here it works, making the shot of the lake shoreline look more vibrant. The OnePlus image in comparison looks more washed out.

In addition to color, a more subtle problem with the OnePlus 10 Pro's image is that it sometimes loses detail in subjects that its competitors still capture. This problem can be seen in the ultra-wide angle shot of the waterfront taken to compare the OnePlus 10 Pro and the iPhone 13 Pro Max.

In the OnePlus shot, the rough stones of the water feature are rendered much flatter than in the iPhone shot, and if you look into the puddle in the iPhone image, you can see many splashes and ripples not shown in the OnePlus.

You can also see this in low-light shots; against the Pixel 6 Pro, the OnePlus fails to provide the detail needed to appreciate the shot. Compare how the large "K" on the rim of the bottle and on the label is less obvious on the OnePlus version.

The worst camera on the 10 Pro is the 3.3x telephoto camera. It uses a relatively low-resolution 8MP sensor, so detail is lost when zooming. In extreme cases, the image becomes incredibly grainy, as in this 20x shot of a goose taken with the Pixel 6 Pro.

Even this 3.3x shot taken against the iPhone 13 Pro Max shows a similar effect, plus the entire image has a strange sepia tone. The phone's hardware is more likely the issue here than the software; if OnePlus added a Samsung or Google-style periscope lens to increase the magnification, or increased the resolution or size of the sensor, this weakness would disappear.

The OnePlus 10 Pro is generally a turnaround when it comes to selfies and portrait photography. Perhaps this is because the natural colors pursued by OnePlus and Hasselblad are most effective on people, while more artificial colors are more noticeable and often less attractive in landscape shots.

In any case, comparing these shots taken with the 10 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max (above) and the Pixel 6 Pro (below) shows that OnePlus comes closest to its competitors.

OnePlus said when it announced in 2021 that its partnership with Hasselblad would last three years, so the back of the OnePlus 11, if not the OnePlus 12, should have the Hasselblad logo on it. That means OnePlus has one or two attempts left to leverage the expertise of its partners and get the camera right. And if they could adjust the smoothing on the portrait shots, that would be great too.

The OnePlus 10 Pro remains an excellent phone overall, especially thanks to its significantly lower price compared to the OnePlus 9 Pro at launch. But if you want the best photos for the money, choose the iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel, or come back next year and see if another year of improvements can elevate the OnePlus' photos to one of the great ones.