A week ago, we asked you to participate in a selfie video blind test. We lined up five phones, and we let you vote which one had the best selfie video quality. These five phones were not chosen randomly; we picked those specifically because their selfie videos had already surprised us during review time. And you will see what we mean when you see their names.
We collected our readers’ opinion on the quality of these videos across several platforms, including our TikTok channel, Instagram, YouTube and a poll on our homepage. The winner and the loser are quite clear now – and surprisingly, they come from the same brand. Let’s start by looking at the chart, displaying the vote distribution. If you want to see the high quality video go this way.
The Galaxy A37 took the first spot in our selfie video blind test as voted by GSMArena.com readers. It was the cheapest phone in this comparison with a street price under €300, but it received the most votes in its favor by a wide margin, scoring a victory over three Ultra-class flagships.
The term “flagship killer” has never been applied to a Galaxy A-series phone. Yet, when it comes to 4K selfie video taking, the Galaxy A37 clearly has what it takes to take on even the big boys. Its sibling – the Galaxy A57 – did very well too, taking the #2 spot in the blind vote. Samsung deserves credit for the job they’ve done with this year’s Galaxy A series selfie video quality – it’s really something.
What happened here? Defying all odds, the Galaxy A37 delivers outstanding 4K selfie videos that put even the best cameraphones to shame. After all, the phone has a modest selfie camera to work with – a 12MP 1/3.2” sensor and an Exynos 1480 chipset. And why the A37 specifically, and not the A57, which has the same front-facing camera and a newer Exynos 1680 chipset?
We don’t have insider information, but the A37 is the fourth phone to feature the Exynos 1480 since this chip made its debut with the Galaxy A55 back in 2024, and Samsung has had since then to polish the image processing. Meanwhile, the Exynos 1680 is brand new.
The Oppo Find X9 Ultra also deserves some applause as it secured the #3 position. However, as we will see in the next chart, the X9 Ultra video processing is a love-it-or-hate-it affair. The phone has a 50MP front-facing camera, though the sensor isn’t particularly big at 1/2.75”. And the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 may be powerful, but it’s also new, and it seems like image processing hasn’t been dialed in yet. The vivo X300 Ultra has very similar hardware – a 50MP 1/2.76” camera and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 – however, its selfie videos got more “hate it” than “love it” votes.
This brings us to the loser in this shootout – the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra received barely any votes in its favor, but a lot of people singled out its video as being the worst of the five phones. This should have been an easy win – Team Samsung clearly knows how to fine-tune selfie video quality and the S26 Ultra even has the advantage of Phase Detection Autofocus, while the A37 and A57 cameras have fixed focus lenses.
We won’t even hazard a guess at what went wrong – the 12MP ISOCELL 3LU (S5K3LU) sensor used in the S26 Ultra is hardly new, it was also used in the S25, S24 and even S23 series. And we don’t mean just the Ultras, the vanilla and plus models have had this same sensor for the last three years. The new chipset probably necessitated a rework of the image processing, but Samsung should have had the hang of it by now.
Before we wrap up, we want to congratulate the Galaxy A37 once again – as if winning the positive vote wasn’t enough, this model also had the fewest votes for the worst video quality. As we said, this is a flawless victory over Ultra flagships, some of which cost €2,000.
Selfie video stills: Oppo Find X9 Ultra • Galaxy A57 • Galaxy S26 Ultra • Galaxy A37 • vivo X300 Ultra
If you want to have another look, head this way for our TikTok channel, Instagram or YouTube. You can also view the stills above or download this high-quality video to avoid the usual streaming video compression.
Thank you for participating in our experiment!
Samsung Galaxy A37 5G
| 128GB 6GB RAM | € 296.00 |
$ 374.99 |
| 256GB 8GB RAM | € 348.31 |
$ 494.99 |
| Show all prices | ||
Samsung Galaxy A57 5G
| 128GB 8GB RAM | € 349.00 |
$ 549.99 |
| 256GB 12GB RAM | $ 6.09 |
₹ 54,760 |
| Show all prices | ||
vivo X300 Ultra 5G
| 512GB 16GB RAM | ₹ 159,999 |
|
| 1TB 16GB RAM | € 1,999.00 |
|
| Show all prices | ||
Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra 5G
| 256GB 12GB RAM | € 969.90 |
£ 899.00 |
| 512GB 12GB RAM | € 1,083.00 |
£ 1,096.00 |
| Show all prices | ||
