Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

Pixel phones have been my primary camera for the past nine years. Ever since I picked up the Pixel 2 XL, I’ve fallen in love with the camera and everything it allowed me to shoot in an instant, no matter where I was or what I was doing. I didn’t have to plan ahead and carry my mirrorless cam and long-range zoom with me anymore, nor did I have to spend hours editing, stacking, and coloring photos to get the effect I wanted.

In 2024, I shot over 5000+ photos with my Pixel 8 and 9, and shared with you the best ones. I’m back in 2025, having carried my Pixel 9 Pro XL and 10 Pro XL through Paris, Budapest, Avignon, Rotterdam, Delft, The Hague, Mulhouse, Colmar, Bruges, Oostende, Athens, and beyond. I shot another 5000+ photos this year, and sifting through them was, once again, the most grueling end-of-year task. But I managed to pull through at the last minute and pick my absolute favorite snaps for this year.

So here are the 25 best photos I snapped in 2025. All of these were captured on my Pixel 9 Pro XL or Pixel 10 Pro XL, and none of them were altered in any way to edit colors, sharpness, or detail. No AI edits whatsoever, either. The only thing I’ve allowed myself to do is to rotate or crop a bit in order to better frame some shots since a lot of my photos are taken with the 2x, 5x, and 10x zoom, and it’s almost impossible to perfectly frame them when zooming in handheld mode. Enjoy!

If you want to see higher-resolution versions of all photos in this article (and more), you can find them in this Google Drive folder.

The 25 best Pixel photos I shot in 2025

There’s always that one snap every year that I can’t forget, and in 2025, it’s this large panorama of Hadrian’s Library taken from the rooftop of Anglais Athens. I know it’s not perfect — there are garbage bins and cars on top, an abandoned skip on the right, and some framing issues and distortions that I would’ve fixed if I’d shot each frame and stitched it myself. But there’s something so… so “2000s website header” about this panorama, and the peppered bright green contrasting with the light stone everywhere makes me not want to take my eyes away. This is also a perfect example of the power of using the Pixel 10 Pro’s new panorama mode while zoomed in. I’ve shot some excellent 5x panos in 2025, and this comes on top.

Rita El Khoury / Android Authority

Pixel 10 Pro XL panorama, 5x

The next two shots are all about perspective. One is snapped from the top of the Palais des Papes in Avignon, where I noticed that a small opening between the stones gave me a perfect view of the city hall bell tower. The impeccable alignment is what makes this shot sing, as do the subdued pastel colors. Next to it is a bit of a mind-bender — until you rotate your phone. I was walking from the Oostende train station towards the city center when I noticed that these two tall buildings were throwing a complete but very wavy reflection onto the water. I turned my Pixel, snapped the shot, and got this very sci-fi’esque skyscraper effect.

Every time I look at the photo of the stairs on the Roussillon’s Ochres trail below, I feel like someone ripped the photo in two halves and created a pixelation effect around the torn parts. It’s a bit uncanny. But that’s not the only thing I love about this. I found out about this quarry by mistake when I was nearby in Avignon, and joined a last-minute tour there. I’d never expected to see such a yellow-orange pigment quarry in France; it’s the kind of scenery I associate with the landscapes of Colorado, Arizona, or Australia. But what do you know? Southern France has some, too. As for the second photo, it’s from one of Bruges’ most famous bridges and canals. The bright, colorful flowers add to the quaint charm of the town, and make it into a gorgeous postal card-like shot.

Remember that last-minute tour to Roussillon? It also included a few stops in the lavender fields of the Luberon region, an opportunity I couldn’t pass up because we were there in mid-June, right when the flowers are all purple, and my husband absolutely adores lavender. What were the odds of us being again in France’s capital of lavender right during the bloom period? Close to none. So off we went. My entire photo album from that day is all purple, but there’s something about these two photos in particular that just clicks. The left one has that old-camera-film effect that I can’t explain, even though I didn’t apply any filter to it. The right one, with those perfect rows of lavender bushes, the Senanque Abbey in the background, and those muted colors with a hint of green and purple, speaks to my soul.

Moving on to a neon theme, the next two shots are pure pops of color amid the darkness. I spent a good 20 minutes taking snaps of the Ferris wheel in Oostende after finding the perfect water puddle and angle to create the reflection effect. This is one of the best ones, but I have similar snaps with various colors and animation effects. Next to it, the Good Vibes sign from the Neverland bar in Budapest sometimes feels inviting to me, and sometimes ominous, especially with that single light and dark table. Again, there were many neon signs and tables in the bar, but this one sticks out from the rest.

Moving back to nature and scenery, the next two shots are from a hike around the gorgeous Lac Blanc in the Vosges department of France. The entire landscape was breathtaking, and I could’ve almost picked 30 photos from that hike alone, but if I had to pick two that struck me, it would be these. I love the foreground-background play in the left shot as well as the simplicity of the right one.

Next up are two shots that are all about scale, and the contrast between the tininess of living creatures versus the immensity of nature. One cow with the best view in the world in the Vosges, and a woman lost in the marram grass of the dunes of De Haan’s beach.

Let’s switch up moods and go for something brighter and more colorful. These two shots are all about timing. I spent a good 10-20 minutes waiting for the tram to pass by in Budapest without anything obstructing my shot, and a good five or so minutes trying to capture the bees on that artichoke flower. Wait, did you know that artichokes had purple flowers? This was my first time seeing this!

My husband and I have a saying that, “there’s green, there’s blue, there’s water, so Rita is happy,” and my 2025 photos tell that story, too. I’m starting to think that my year had a general theme of muted greens and blues, as perhaps I was seeking more calm and inner peace? But I digress. Behold the most gorgeous town in France, voted many times over, Gordes, with its beautiful hill, stone houses, and charming winding streets. Next to it are the massive, imposing, perfectly aligned windmills of Kinderdijk.

Sunsets and night shots are either a sure-fire win or a challenge for smartphones, and even the best Pixels usually struggle with colors, noise, and shadows. But the next three shots are good examples of what happens when a smartphone’s camera comes out victorious. From left to right, there’s the illuminated Hungarian Parliament Building in Budapest, seen from the other side of the river at night, the windfarms seen from the jetty in The Hague around sunset that seem like they’re coming from a doom scene in a movie, and finally a gorgeous orange and black sunset from Rotterdam featuring the stunning Erasmusbrug.

Back to some calm blue scenery — I promise, these are the last ones! First up is the somewhat surreal, brutalist, and retro-futuristic Grand Ballon radar dome, overlooking the Vosges mountains and Rhine valley. It looks almost Death Star-esque. Next to it is the Klein Strand (or small beach) in Oostende, where I discovered that there’s a seal protection zone. They would rarely pop out during the day, often staying in the water and only letting their heads come out every now and then, but come sunset time, six or seven seals would make their way to the sandy beach to rest. That was one of the most surprising and breathtaking scenes I saw in 2025, but even with Night Sight in Video Boost and the best zoom, I couldn’t get a really clear photo or video of those seals. Their shadows on the beach in the dying light will forever remain in my memory, but on my Pixel, I have the perfect little beach where I know they spend their day, mostly hidden away.

The two penultimate shots below are all about shadows. It was June 21, the summer solstice, World Music Day, and the longest day of the year. Sunset time was after 10:00 PM in The Hague, and the fishermen were still around the jetty. I caught many photos of them, but only one with that perfect extension of the rod before it snaps out to the sea. As for the second photo, it’s one of the many, many church and cathedral shots I’ve snapped in 2025. This one was taken in Notre Dame de Paris, when I took my parents to visit it and fulfill a lifelong dream. I absolutely love the blue stained glass here and the effect it gives to the entire photo. The contrast between light and shadows is stunning, and one of the many times auto-HDR came in clutch on my Pixel during 2025.

And the final photo of my top 25 is actually a series of three shots (I cheated) snapped at different moments during the sunset/golden hour of the Temple of Poseidon in Sounion. I would’ve loved it if I could’ve aligned each shot perfectly to capture the change, but the crowds (of which I was one) were all over the site, and I had to find the right angles to snap my shot without getting too many people in. I still love each of these photos individually for their colors and hues, but I also love what they tell together, as a story.

Moaaaaar 2025 photos from the Pixel 9 Pro XL and 10 Pro XL

Once again, I’ve lied to you. I couldn’t just pick 25 photos out of 5000+, right? I had to whittle down the selection, bit by bit. From 5000+ to 800, then 500, then 200, and so on. There are hundreds of those selected photos in this Google Drive folder, but here are 200, give or take, that I most cherish. Every photo below has a story, but I don’t have the time to explain why, where, or how, or else I’d be here all through 2026. So, I’ll let you look through some of these and interpret them in your own way. I hope you enjoy them, or at least find something in them that appeals to you.

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