Phone cameras have outgrown phone editors — this year's mobile apps close the gap with selective masks, RAW support and genuinely useful batch tools. We tested eleven contenders on the same fifty street photographs to find the ones worth your home screen.
What actually matters on a small screen
Precision beats power. The winners all offer finger-friendly linear and radial masks, one-tap horizon correction and non-destructive history you can step through. Anything requiring a stylus to use comfortably failed our commute test.
Our shortlist
Pick one RAW-capable editor as your darkroom, one quick lab for social crops and captions, and one specialist for the look you sell — film grain, clean HDR or monochrome. Three apps cover ninety percent of professional mobile work; the rest is overlap that slows you down.
Whatever you choose, export full resolution and keep the originals. Phone storage is cheap; reshooting a moment is impossible.