If there’s one question we’re often asked, it is which smartphone has the best camera? In the Android space, we’ve got the reigning king from Best of Android 2015, Google’s Nexus 6P, along with new flagship challengers from Samsung (Galaxy S7 Edge), LG (G5), HTC (10) and Huawei (P9).

Of course, the smartphone industry is bigger than just Android and we all know that Apple’s flagship, the iPhone 6S Plus, can take some incredible photos but does its six-month-old camera still stand up to the Android competition. And if there’s one area where Microsoft’s Lumia range does stand out, it’s in the camera, so how does the Lumia 950 XL stand up to the best that Android and Apple have to offer?

To answer this, we could have conducted some laboratory-based testing but as we’ve found out before, a killer score in the labs doesn’t always translate to real-world perfection. Instead, armed with these seven phones, we descended upon the banks of the River Thames in London to conduct a real world test that aims to challenge today’s smartphone cameras to capture scenes that you’re like to share.

Which smartphone is truly the current smartphone camera king and which one falls flat? Does the Galaxy S7 Edge’s dual pixel technology deliver the best overall? Is the Lumia 950 XL’s PureView lens and Carl Zeiss optics the envy of all? What about HTC’s new UltraPixel camera, the iPhone’s iSight camera or the Nexus 6P’s impressive snapper? Finally, how does the dual lens battle pan out with the LG G5’s dual lens array (of which we’ve only used the standard camera lens for this comparison) going up against the Huawei P9’s Leica-branded dual camera sensor setup.

Let’s find out and we want your help to decide the winner! Hit up the first gallery below, vote for your favourite in the poll below and then scroll through the pages. We’ll close the voting in around a week’s time and then reveal which smartphone we’re saying is the current crop’s Smartphone Camera King.

Gallery 1

Full resolution gallery: Google Photos

It wouldn’t be a camera shootout on the banks of the River Thames without a shot that epitomises the ever changing city. Shooting from the Golden Jubilee bridge, this shot encapsulates icons such as St Pauls Cathedral, Embankment Pier and to the right, the Shard.

In this shot, the focal point is the two tall buildings to the left of the Shard but also look out for how each smartphone handles the sky, the cloud trails and the detail in the river in the foreground. To see how large the depth of field of each camera is, also look at the detail in the Festival Pier signage directly beneath the focal point.