Samsung has released its new Galaxy S9 to mixed reviews but general agreement the camera is seriously impressive.
Apple is said to be preparing to launch three new phones this year, including the largest iPhone ever.
The Galaxy 9 is said to be very similar to the Galaxy S8, which is now considerably cheaper.
Some reviews say the phone is too much like the S8 to bother with, while other reviewers are swooning over the camera.
New Zealand outlets are already offering an online ordering facility for the new Samsung phone, which seems likely to retail at either $1400 or $1600, depending on the features.
There are many things to be impressed with on Samsung's new flagship smartphone duo but there is absolutely no question that the new camera is the star of the show, some reviews say.
Samsung first introduced the Dual Pixel camera on the Galaxy S7 in 2016, and it was so good that it remained largely unchanged on the Galaxy Note 7, Galaxy S8, Galaxy S8+ and Galaxy Note 8. However, in 2018, the company decided it was time for an upgrade.
The new ''Super Speed Dual Pixel'' camera, as Samsung calls it, is by far the most impressive camera the world has ever seen on a smartphone, reviewers say.
''We've only spent a few hours with it at this point, but we're already comfortable making that bold statement. It's better than Google's camera on the Pixel 2, and it's better than Apple's camera on the iPhone X. It's the best. Full stop,'' reviewer Zach Epstein, from BGR, wrote.
Samsung introduced several enhancements on the Super Speed Dual Pixel camera. It was the first smartphone camera to include dual apertures, with one f/2.4 aperture for wonderfully crisp pictures of well-lit scenes, and a second f/1.5 aperture for shockingly clear low-light photos.
The new camera also had an embedded DRAM chip to process data right on the sensor rather than having to send it to the phone's main RAM.
''The result is photos with far less noise than anything we've seen on a smartphone,'' he wrote.
AR Emoji was also a feature of Samsung's new camera, and it was the South Korean company's take on Apple's Animoji feature that was introduced on the iPhone X.
There were a few different components of AR Emoji, and the first was basically a carbon copy of Animoji. A character could be selected from the Galaxy S9's stable and it would mimic expressions, head gestures and mouth movements as the user spoke.
Apple is reportedly preparing to release three new smartphones later this year, including the largest iPhone ever, a device that may have a bigger display than arch-rival Samsung's flagship phone.
The trio also includes an upgraded handset the same size as the current iPhone X and a less expensive model with some of the X's key features.
The new phones could revive the screen-size wars of years past at a time when smartphone makers were straining to come up with new features to lure buyers in a saturated market.
Global smartphone sales were down 0.1% last year, according to research firm IDC. Apple and Samsung expanded shipments only 1.9% and 0.2% respectively.
The iPhone maker was already running production tests with suppliers and was expected to announce the new phones in New Zealand's spring.
However, the plans could still change, the report said.
