Smartphone cameras have advanced a lot, and can now match some of the best portable cameras out there. In fact, many users now prefer to use their phone camera more than any portable camera. Smartphones also make it easier to share and edit your pictures on the go. Therefore, many base their smartphone purchase decisions based on the strength of the phone camera.

However, if you want to get the best out of your Android camera, you will want to install a third-party app, and that is where this list of the best Android camera apps comes in handy. All the apps in the list are free and work well with modern Android smartphones.

1. Camera MX

Camera MX is one of the oldest free camera apps for Android that still receives steady updates and features. It comes with plenty of photo effects, and you can apply and previews of photo effects in real-time while taking a photo or video. The camera interface features tap-to-focus, zoom, a timer and an FX menu loaded with filters, overlays, and frames.

It boasts a bunch of features, including a Live Shot mode, scene modes, support for 16:9 aspect ratios. It also has a variety of photo and video editing tools that let you adjust things like brightness, rotation, contrast, saturation, temperature, white balance, straightening, and others. You can unlock more features like HDR, tilt shift and the little planet.

Camera MX does not have the manual controls that more serious photographers look for, but it is more than good enough for non-pros looking to get a good shot. However, it makes up for it with editing tools.

The app allows you to shoot videos of any length and has many features including a quick start, self-timer, geo-tagging, sharing on the social network, and album view.

2. Camera360- Selfie Photo Editor

Camera360- Selfie Photo Editor is a free Android camera app that offers most features that paid camera apps to offer and is hugely popular in the Google Play Store. Camera360 ultimate has 6 shooting modes, plenty of effects and filters, puzzle mode for photos, scenes.

It uses a lens filter system that can be applied before a picture is taken, meaning you do not have to wait until later to see whether your picture is fixable by adding a cheeky filter. It has a wide variety of options and effects, even to the point whether you might wonder if some of them are truly a lot of use.

In addition, Camera 360 has features like stickers and cartoon effects, which are more often found in messenger apps like Line or WhatsApp. You can easily apply these to your photos easily enough before sharing or saving them.

You can save all your photos with free cloud service by Camera360, fast and secure. Easy share option allows you to share your pics on Facebook, Twitter, and other social accounts.

What is particularly good is that it is easy to use and does not bury all the options away in individual menus. This is something which other cameras lack, but it is really useful to have everything in one place instead of going through several screens.

Camera360 – Photo Editor Includes:

• Dynamic Photo – Make Your Photos Alive
• A Global Community of Creative Photography
• Selfie Camera & Beauty Camera
• Photo Editor Pro
• Customizable Filters and Cartoon Effects — Anime Sky, Visual Portrait Filters, Magic Sky, Starry Night
• Motion Stickers & Funny Stickers
• Poster Camera
• Photo Collage & Photo Grid

3. Open Camera

Open Camera is a fully featured free camera app that is also an Open Source app and does not even have advertisements. It offers many of the features as premium apps including auto-stabilization, manual camera controls, white balance, ISO, exposure, voice control for taking a photo, countdown timers, and various camera modes to take specialized shots. It even has support for some external microphones if you are looking for something more professional.

The app even offers up a handy home screen widget that lets you take a photo with a single press. Using that widget is not going to get you the best visual results from your camera, but when that is not a priority, it is a handy button to have. Otherwise, the multitude of options offered in the app will help you get your pictures looking just the way you want.

The open source nature and continuing development also mean that the app’s features will continue to grow and will always stay free.

4. VSCO Cam

VSCO Cam is another popular Android camera app with a surprisingly versatile package of tools and presets to tweak their photos and apply special effects. While the app is not user-friendly, it is trusted by an awful lot of people and has been around for a long time. This app focuses on providing an experience similar to Instagram-like capturing and sharing.

The app’s actual camera functions are on the spartan side, but the real magic lies in the photo editing features. The app is a terrific way to snap pictures, edit them and share them. VSCO uses its own processing technology, which is said bring great pictures.

You can apply a variety of preset filters with adjustable strength sliders. And if that filter presets do not cut it, there are some rather unintuitive menus to dig your way through, where you can adjust image settings manually. You can tweak image saturation, temperature, apply film grain, shadows, highlights and more, with additional filter preset packs available as in-app purchases.

VSCO Cam also allows you to share images across a variety of social media services such as Instagram and Google+, as well as VSCO Grid, their own minimalist photo publishing platform. The app is free on the Google Play Store and there are in-app purchases for preset packs.

The company killed the photo edit syncing feature it used to offer, but VSCO Cam still has some worthwhile skills.

5. Retrica – Selfie, Sticker, GIF

Retrica is a simple, easy to use Android camera app for selfie lovers. With over 300 million selfie lovers, the app’s main claim to fame is the ability to apply its effects in real-time to your viewfinder. The app features more than 100 filters grouped together into convenient categories with customizable intensity.

With Retrica, you can create beautiful and natural looking selfie and video. You can take collage shots, apply vignette borders and a blur effect, and easily share your creations with people through social media.

According to the app’s description page, it offers:

Powerful Camera

• Perfect Filters for every occasion: Take a selfie with real-time filters. Focus on capturing your beauty and spend less time editing!
• Fun Instant Collage: More is merrier! Take multiple selfies and turn them into a beautiful collage instantly! You can turn your phone into a retro photo booth with a touch of a button.
• Video and GIF: Video speaks more words than a photo! Long press to capture the live video. You can also turn your collage shots or video into GIF.
• Professional Settings: For serious selfie takers, we offer various functions such as blur, vignette, and timers to make your selfies look professional.

Decorate & Photo Editor

• Fun Stickers: Retrica offers over 100 stickers for you to decorate and edit your selfie and video. Make your selfie pop in SNS!
• Doodle & Text: Embed your personal message into your Selfie. Turn your selfie into a message!
• Stamp: Decorate your selfies and videos with Retrica’ s original Stamp.

Social

• Share: Upload your beautiful selfies to social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.
• Private Album: Make your own album with your friends to share selfies and videos together.

6. Cymera

Cymera is another popular android photography app that has been around for a while and now boasts over 200 million downloads. Popularity aside, the app has powerful camera features and some decent editing features including a ton of filters, and stickers. You can even brush or draw on images that you take. It comes with a photo editor that includes some unique features, including editing tools for skin, hair, eyes, and more to make selfies really pop.

The camera interface of the Cymera includes several powerful lenses like Focus, Anti-shake, Convex and more. The app also brings the ability to create collages along with various filters. There are a ton of editing features like retouching options, beautification and more. However, it does not have manual camera control which is a bit of a shame, but everything else works very well. Cymera is a must try if you want a simple yet powerful camera app.

7. Pixlr – Free Photo Editor

Pixlr (formerly Pixlr Express) is a free photo editor and camera app for Android that boasts over 2 million combinations of free effects, overlays, and filters. It is an excellent choice if you need a good balance of tools alongside a set of really useful and impressive visual effects. There is even a perfectly functional gallery built inside the app that lets you show file size alongside the thumbnails.

The app offers automatic image correction, and adjustments such as heal, focus, and splash, it feels like a near-Photoshop level experience. Some of the effects and features are more useful than others. You can also add text to your photos with a number of different font styles or choose to pixelate or blur other parts.

Pixlr is an excellent all-rounder to pick and is also free to download. Some filters and features need an in-app purchase, but even without those, it is worth a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_sLsxLI2DY

8. Cardboard Camera

Google’s Cardboard Camera is a fun app and also the only competent 360-degree photo camera app available right now for Android. It allows you to easily take a 360-degree panorama, which you can view in VR using Google Cardboard.

The app itself will help you take the photos and allows you to record audio while taking the photo, which makes it feel like a living moment when you view it later.

It comes with a gallery that lets you find and view your 360-degree image content. It is completely free to use and while VR photography is a tad niche, it is really nice that there is a decent app to take those kinds of photos.

See Also: Top 12 Awesome Augmented Reality (AR) Apps For Android