About Rs. 5,000 is the difference between a camera guide with one entry and a camera guide with an argument. Our companion page on the best camera phones under Rs. 20,000 found exactly one phone with optical stabilisation on its main camera, sold under 3 badges and now only one of them still inside that budget. Lift the ceiling to Rs. 25,000 and the count goes to three, and the best of them is also the phone on this page that will still be getting updates in 2031. This is the band where the question stops being rhetorical. Here is what it buys, what it still refuses to buy at any price under the ceiling, and which of the three is for you.
Three camera platforms under Rs. 25,000 have optical image stabilisation on the main camera, and they are three different budgets rather than 3 versions of the same recommendation. The Samsung Galaxy F36 5G is the pick: Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 24,000 buys a 1/1.96-inch stabilised main sensor, the largest behind a stabiliser on this page, plus 4K at 30fps from both cameras and 6 years of Android upgrades, and it is beaten on charging speed rather than on photographs. The Moto G67 Power has OIS, a 32MP front camera and a 7,000mAh cell behind an LCD panel, and does not publish its sensor size. The Galaxy F17 5G is the cheap way in and pays for it in video, which stops at 1080p. Three more phones in this band shoot perfectly decent daylight photographs and have no stabiliser at all. One phone has left this page since the last update, and it was the pick: the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion is not a Rs. 25,000 phone, the figure we printed for it was wrong, and the whole of that is set out below rather than quietly deleted.
What Rs. 25,000 actually buys a camera
Start with what changes between the 2 bands, because it is not what the marketing suggests. The megapixel count does not move. Every single phone on this page leads with a 50MP main camera, exactly as the sub-Rs.-20,000 phones do. What moves is everything underneath that number.
The sensor gets physically bigger, and this is the whole game. On this page alone, "50MP" describes sensors ranging from 1/2.88 inch to 1/1.95 inch. That is not a rounding difference. A 1/1.95-inch sensor has roughly twice the light-collecting area of a 1/2.88-inch one, and light is the raw material every other part of the pipeline is spending. Under Rs. 20,000 the typical figure is around 1/2.7 inch. Here you can buy a sensor with about twice that area. Brands still bury the number, so you will usually have to go looking for it, and a maker who will not publish it has told you something.
Optical stabilisation stops being a curiosity. Three of the 6 phones we could confirm here have it. Below Rs. 20,000, one did. OIS physically moves the lens or sensor to cancel your hand tremor, which lets the shutter stay open longer, which is the only honest way to collect more light in a dark room. Without it the phone shortens the exposure and pushes the ISO, and you get a bright photograph made mostly of noise. This remains our dividing line under Rs. 30,000 and we have not found a reason to move it.
4K arrives, on both sides of the phone. Nothing under Rs. 20,000 records 4K. One phone here records it at 30fps from the rear camera and the selfie camera, which is the spec that matters if you shoot yourself talking. Three others manage 4K on the back only, or on the back with no front figure published. One tops out at 1440p and one at 1080p. The spread is wide and nobody advertises the losing end of it.
The second lens can finally be a real lens. The useful question has never been how many cameras are on the back. It is how many of them see something the main camera cannot. An ultrawide qualifies. A 2MP macro or depth or monochrome unit does not, and this band still ships plenty of them.
The selfie camera stops being an afterthought, in one case. Front cameras here run from 8MP to 32MP, and the video ceiling runs from 1080p to 4K. If your phone spends its life pointed at your own face, that spread is the most expensive difference on this page and the one buried deepest in the spec sheet.
For a longer walk through what these terms mean and why they behave the way they do, we have a separate explainer on reading a camera spec sheet.
A telephoto lens. Not one phone we could confirm as orderable under Rs. 25,000 in India on 1 October 2026 has a dedicated zoom camera. Every "2x" and "3x" button in these camera apps crops the main sensor, which gives you a tighter frame of the same photograph with fewer pixels in it. If optical zoom is the reason you are shopping, this is not the page and this is not the budget.
Two myths this band will sell you
Every phone on this page leads with a 50MP main camera. They are therefore roughly comparable cameras, and the difference between them is software.
1/1.95 inch against 1/2.88 inch, on the same page, at the same money. The megapixel count is the one camera number that is identical across every phone here, which is precisely why it is the one they print largest.
Every phone here lists some form of stabilisation for video. Modern processing is good enough that the optical version is a legacy tick-box.
Electronic stabilisation crops into the frame and shifts it between video frames. It cannot hold a shutter open, so it does nothing at all for a still photograph in a dark room. That is the job OIS was built for, and no amount of processing substitutes for it.
Four things to check before you pay in this band:
- Is there OIS on the main camera? Three of the 6 phones we could confirm here have it and three do not, at overlapping prices, and the cheapest phone on this page is a stabilised one. This is the single question that separates the two halves of this page.
- What is the sensor fraction? Not the megapixels. The fraction. Anything at or under 1/1.6 inch is genuinely large for this money; 1/2.8 inch is what you would have got 2 bands down.
- Does the video ceiling apply to both cameras? "4K video" on a spec sheet usually means the rear camera. Check the front one separately, because five of the 6 phones here record 4K on one side and not the other, or on neither.
- Is the second sensor a lens or a line item? An ultrawide sees something new. A 2MP depth, macro or monochrome unit exists so the rear panel has something to put in the third hole.
The 3 phones with OIS
We took the phones we could confirm as orderable in India in this band on 1 October 2026 and checked every camera claim against the maker's own India specification and an independent specifications database, discarding anything the two did not agree on. Three of them stabilise the main camera optically. They are ranked here by what the camera hardware can do, not by price, and the honest summary is that they are 3 answers to three different questions. One thing has changed since we last priced this page and it changes the shape of the advice: the phone that used to sit at the top of it is not a Rs. 25,000 phone, and the note immediately below says why.
The Motorola Edge 60 Fusion led this page until this update. It has come off it, and the reason is the figure we printed rather than its camera. That figure came from a single automated reading that nothing else corroborated. Opened by hand on 1 October 2026, the listing shows Rs. 29,120 against a list price of Rs. 37,999, with eighteen further sellers starting at that same Rs. 29,120. That is more than Rs. 4,000 above this page's ceiling, so the phone is outside this guide whatever its sensor measures.
Two things are worth saying out loud rather than deleting quietly. The first is that the camera hardware was never the error and has not changed: a 50MP 1/1.56-inch sensor at f/1.88 with optical stabilisation, a 13MP ultrawide with autofocus, and 4K at 30fps from the rear and from a 32MP front camera. That is a larger main sensor than anything left on this page. It is attached to a phone that costs about Rs. 29,000, which is a different budget and a different guide. The second is that an earlier version of this page carried a warning that its listings crossed our ceiling, and that warning was taken down on the strength of the bad price. The warning was right. We have tightened the rule that let this through: one price reading is now enough to sort a phone into a band and not enough to recommend one.
Samsung Galaxy F36 5G
This is the best camera on this page and the phone most likely to still be running when your next one is due, which is not a pairing this band usually offers. The 50MP main camera is stabilised and measures 1/1.96 inch at f/1.8, the largest sensor we can confirm behind a stabiliser in this band and a clear step above the budget entry below. It records 4K at 30fps, and so does the 13MP front camera, which makes it the only phone here that reaches 4K on both sides. The second lens is a proper 8MP ultrawide at 123 degrees; the third is a 2MP macro, and we would rather it were not there. Behind the camera is the part that lasts: six Android upgrades and 6 years of security patches, on an Exynos 1380 with a 120Hz FHD+ Super AMOLED. Our full review of the F36 5G goes further into the non-camera half. Price it honestly, though. At Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 24,000 it is not the cheap way onto this page, and the place it is plainly beaten is charging: 25W into a 5,000mAh cell is the slowest pairing here by a distance, and the two Motos both carry far bigger cells.
The Galaxy F36 5G and the Galaxy M36 5G both measure 164.4 x 77.9 x 7.7 mm and both weigh 197 g. Two phones do not arrive at the same tenth of a millimetre by accident, and the rest of the sheet agrees with the tape measure: the same Exynos 1380, the same 50MP f/1.8 1/1.96-inch OIS sensor, the same 8MP ultrawide, the same 2MP macro, the same 13MP front camera, the same 4K at 30fps both ways, the same 5,000mAh at 25W. You would expect the 2 badges to cost the same, and rebadges routinely do not. We are quoting the F36 at Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 24,000 and no figure at all for the M36, because the only price reading we hold for that badge is a single uncorroborated one and this update is about not printing those. Check both names yourself before you pay for either, because on a rebadge the cheaper sticker is the only thing that separates them.
Moto G67 Power
This was not on the last version of this page, for the honest reason that it was a Rs. 16,990 phone in a different guide. It has climbed 38% since launch and landed here, and on camera hardware it earns the place: a stabilised 50MP main camera, a real 8MP ultrawide rather than a filler sensor, a 32MP front camera, which is the highest front resolution on this page, and 4K at 30fps on the rear. Motorola does not publish the main sensor's fraction, which is the one number that would settle where it sits against the Samsung above, so we have not guessed at it and you should treat its low-light ceiling as unknown rather than assumed. What is not in doubt is the rest of the phone: a 7,000mAh cell, which it shares with the two unstabilised Motorola and realme phones below and which nothing else with a stabiliser here comes close to, on a Snapdragon 7s Gen 2. The compromises are a 120Hz LCD where everything else here is AMOLED, 30W charging into that very large battery, which is a long wait, and a software commitment of one Android upgrade and 3 years of patches that is the weakest on the page by some distance. It is a camera recommendation with a stopwatch on it.
Samsung Galaxy F17 5G
This is the phone that carries our under-Rs.-20,000 page single-handed, and it is on this one because the cheapest route to a stabilised main camera belongs in a guide about stabilised main cameras. Note the badge: the identical phone is sold as the M17 and the A17, and on 7 October 2026 the M17 and the F17 both list below Rs. 20,000. The 50MP f/1.8 sensor measures 1/2.76 inch, which is the smallest here, and Samsung rates the stabiliser at plus or minus 1.5 degrees. Then the compromises arrive in a row: a 5MP ultrawide, a 2MP macro, and video that stops at 1080p at 30fps on both cameras, with no 4K anywhere. Against that, six Android upgrades and security patches dated to 2031. It is not the best camera on this page, and the argument for it is narrower than it looks: it saves you about Rs. 2,700 against the Samsung at the top of this page, and that Rs. 2,700 is buying you roughly half the sensor area, no 4K at all and a 5MP ultrawide instead of an 8MP one. If the Rs. 2,700 has another job, this is still a real answer. If it does not, spend it.
The F17 5G is also sold as the Galaxy M17 5G and the Galaxy A17 5G. Same hardware, same 164.4 x 77.9 x 7.5 mm, same 192 g, 3 stickers. Our review of it under the A17 badge is here, and every word of it applies to all three. On 7 October 2026 the M17 is the cheapest of the three to order again, at Rs. 18,500 to Rs. 22,000, with the F17 from Rs. 19,500 and the A17 at about Rs. 23,000.
The three without, and what they are actually for
These three are orderable in the same band and they are not camera recommendations. Two of them are good phones. We are listing them with their real camera specifications because the alternative is that you work out the gap after paying for it, and because one of them has a main sensor large enough to deserve an argument.
Three routes now, and they overlap less than the prices suggest. If your photographs happen indoors, after dark, at weddings or in motion, the Samsung Galaxy F36 5G has the largest stabilised sensor here, 4K on both cameras and 6 years of updates behind it, and what you give up for all of that is charging speed. If you want a stabilised camera attached to a battery that does not need thinking about, the Moto G67 Power is the one, with the shortest software life on the page and a sensor size the maker will not publish, which you should read as unknown rather than good. And if OIS is the only camera feature you actually need, the Galaxy F17 5G delivers it from Rs. 19,500 and leaves about Rs. 5,000 of this budget unspent. What has changed since we last priced this page is that the phone we had at the top of it is not a Rs. 25,000 phone at all, which is set out in full above.
Full specification comparison
| Phone | Main Camera | OIS | 2nd Camera | Selfie | Max Video (rear / front) | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Samsung Galaxy F36 5G | 50MP f/1.8, 1/1.96" | Yes | 8MP ultrawide | 13MP | 4K/30 / 4K/30 | Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 24,000 |
| Moto G67 Power | 50MP, size unpublished | Yes | 8MP ultrawide | 32MP | 4K/30 / not stated | Rs. 23,500 to Rs. 25,000 |
| Samsung Galaxy F17 5G | 50MP f/1.8, 1/2.76" | Yes | 5MP ultrawide | 13MP | 1080p/30 / 1080p/30 | Rs. 19,500 to Rs. 21,000 |
| Moto G57 Power | 50MP f/1.8, 1/1.95" | No | 8MP ultrawide | 8MP | 1440p/30 / 1440p/30 | Rs. 20,500 to Rs. 22,000 |
| POCO M8 | 50MP f/1.8, 1/2.88" | No | Auxiliary, unstated | 20MP | 4K/30 / 1080p | Rs. 21,500 to Rs. 24,500 |
| realme P4x 5G | 50MP f/1.8, size unpublished | No | 2MP monochrome | 8MP | 4K/30 / 1080p/30 | about Rs. 24,000 |
Prices are open-market listing ranges observed on 1 October 2026 and move week to week; several of these phones are sold in more than one memory configuration and the range reflects that. Camera figures are as published by the makers and corroborated against an independent specifications database; where the two disagreed or a figure was not published, we have said so in the row rather than filled it in. PublicBuy has not tested these devices and nothing here is a measured result.
Frequently asked questions
The Samsung Galaxy F36 5G, on published specification, at Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 24,000. Its 50MP main camera uses a 1/1.96-inch sensor at f/1.8 with optical stabilisation, which is the largest stabilised sensor we could confirm on any phone orderable under Rs. 25,000 in India, and it records 4K at 30fps from both the rear and the 13MP front camera, which nothing else in this band manages. It also carries six Android upgrades and 6 years of security patches, so the camera is attached to a phone that will still be supported in 2031. The Moto G67 Power is the alternative at Rs. 23,500 to Rs. 25,000 if a 7,000mAh battery matters more than update years. The Motorola Edge 60 Fusion has a larger sensor than either, and at about Rs. 29,000 it sits above this page's ceiling, which is explained in full above.
Three camera platforms, of the six we could confirm as orderable in India inside this ceiling on 1 October 2026: the Samsung Galaxy F36 5G, the Moto G67 Power and the Samsung Galaxy F17 5G. Count the rebadges separately and the number is higher: the Galaxy A17 5G is the F17 under a second sticker at about Rs. 23,000, and the Galaxy M36 is the F36 under another, though we quote no figure for that badge because the only price reading we hold for it is a single uncorroborated one. The Moto G57 Power, the POCO M8 and the realme P4x 5G have no optical stabilisation on the main camera, and in each case both the maker's own specification and an independent database agree on that. A fourth stabilised phone, the Motorola Edge 60 Fusion, used to lead this page and now sits above its ceiling at about Rs. 29,000.
For a camera, yes. Under Rs. 20,000 there is one stabilised main camera on sale and nothing records 4K. Under Rs. 25,000 there are three stabilised cameras, one phone records 4K at 30fps from both the front and rear, and the largest main sensor available has roughly twice the light-collecting area of the smallest. The useful number this month is not Rs. 5,000, it is about Rs. 2,700: that is what separates the Galaxy F17 5G from the Galaxy F36 5G today, and it buys about twice the sensor area, 4K on both cameras instead of none, and a real 8MP ultrawide in place of a 5MP one. If photography is not the reason you are buying, the extra money buys much less elsewhere.
The Samsung Galaxy F36 5G, because it is the only phone left on this page that combines optical stabilisation with 4K at 30fps on the rear camera and 4K at 30fps on the front. Everything else falls short somewhere: the Galaxy F17 5G caps at 1080p, the Moto G57 Power at 1440p, the Moto G67 Power reaches 4K on the rear but does not state a front-camera ceiling, and the POCO M8 and realme P4x 5G reach 4K on the back but only 1080p on the front. If a large front sensor matters more to you than its video ceiling, the Moto G67 Power fits a 32MP one.
Not among the phones we could confirm as orderable in India on 1 October 2026. All six run either a main plus ultrawide pair or a main camera plus an auxiliary sensor, and none has a dedicated zoom lens. Every zoom button in these camera apps crops the main sensor, which gives you a tighter version of the same frame with less detail in it. Optical zoom is a real feature and it is a much larger budget conversation.
It appears, it is not recommended, and the difference is the point of the section it sits in. Optical stabilisation is our dividing line under Rs. 30,000, so a phone without it needs a specific, sourced argument about sensor size or processing to be recommended as a camera. The Moto G57 Power comes closest, with a 1/1.95-inch main sensor that is effectively the same size as the Galaxy F36's. It still does not clear the bar, because it has no stabiliser and its video stops at 1440p, so the sensor advantage never reaches low light or handheld footage. Listing it with its real numbers is more useful than leaving it out.
Yes. Both measure 164.4 x 77.9 x 7.7 mm, both weigh 197 g, and both run an Exynos 1380 with the same 50MP f/1.8 1/1.96-inch stabilised main camera, the same 8MP ultrawide, the same 2MP macro, the same 13MP front camera, the same 4K at 30fps on both sides and the same 5,000mAh cell at 25W. The usual advice with a rebadge is to buy whichever costs less. We quote the F36 at Rs. 22,000 to Rs. 24,000 and no figure for the M36, because the only price reading we hold for that badge is a single uncorroborated one and we are no longer printing those. Price the M36 sticker yourself before you pay for an F36, because on an identical phone the sticker is the whole decision.
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