Android camera apps in 2026: 2 apps with a dated record

Updated August 2026 · both records re-read, a decision table added, and five entries withdrawn

This page reports what two catalogues publish about two camera apps on one date. It does not describe how either app behaves, because nothing here rests on running them. Where a catalogue has no such field, the page says so instead of leaving a blank cell for a reader to fill in.

Best for a record you can check in full

Rating 4.6 from 13,316 ratings · Installs 1,000,000+ · Free to install, no in-app purchases · Developer Blackmagic Design Inc. · Category Photography · Listing updated 29 July 2026 · Data Safety: no data shared with third parties, and the app may collect some data types · Contains ads: No · checked 15 August 2026

Google Play listing · 4.6 (13,316) · read 15 August 2026

Blackmagic Camera's record can be read in full, and the blunt limit comes first: a store record is not a review. It states what the developer declares and what the store counts, and nothing at all about how the app behaves. What the listing does publish, read on 15 August 2026, is a rating of 4.6 from 13,316 ratings, an install band of 1,000,000+, a free install with no in-app purchases, and a Data Safety section whose middle line says the app may collect some data types.

Its Data Safety section carries three lines, quoted here as the listing states them: no data shared with third parties, this app may collect these data types, and data is encrypted in transit. The middle line matters. It is a declaration that collection may happen, and the word may is the listing's own wording, so it is not a statement that nothing is collected. The listing also links the developer's privacy policy at blackmagicdesign.com/privacy, which this page has not read. The rating and the count beside it are the aggregate figures in the listing's own structured data, which give 4.6 and 13,316 ratings. Skip this if published source code matters to you more than a published record: the other entry on this page is the one whose licence and repository are open to reading.

• Good: Free to install, and the listing shows no in-app purchases at all, so there is no purchase range to weigh up (read 15 August 2026)
• Good: Its Play listing carries no Contains ads label
• Good: The listing was updated on 29 July 2026, so the record behind every figure above is weeks old rather than years old
• Con: Its Data Safety section states that the app may collect some data types. That is the developer's own declaration rather than a measurement, and may is the listing's own word
• Con: The 13,316 ratings sit against an install band of 1,000,000+, so the rating rests on a small share of the people who installed it
• Con: The record read for this page came back with no version number and no minimum Android version, so whether it runs on an older phone is not answerable from what was read

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Best for published source code

Version 2.6.5, added to F-Droid on 10 August 2026 · Licence GNU General Public License v3.0 only, SPDX id GPL-3.0-only · Requires Android 12 or newer · No rating, no review count, no install count, no price and no Contains ads label are published, and there is no Data Safety section · Permissions listed for the build: approximate and precise location while the app is in use, take pictures and videos, record audio, and one permission the app defines for itself · The record read for this page lists no Anti-Features · F-Droid page, read 15 August 2026

F-Droid page · no rating is published there to quote · read 15 August 2026

MA Camera is the open source entry here, and the honest state of it is that F-Droid publishes almost none of what a store record would give you. Its page, read on 15 August 2026, gives the licence, the current version, 2.6.5, added to the repository on 10 August 2026, the developer's own description, the permissions each build requests, the minimum Android version, and a link to the source code at github.com/vayun-mathur/Modern-Apps. What it does not give is a rating, a review count, an install count, a price or a Contains ads label, because F-Droid publishes none of those for any app.

Its F-Droid page sums the app up, in the developer's own words, as The most featureful open-source Camera app, quoted from that page, read 15 August 2026. That is the project's claim about itself, and this page cannot confirm it. Being open source is not a privacy guarantee, an ad-free guarantee or a quality guarantee either. The licence is a fact; what a reader reads into it is not. Skip this if you want a published rating, price or ads label before you install anything: the other entry on this page is the one with a full store record.

• Good: Published under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only, with the source repository linked from the F-Droid page itself, so the build can be read by someone other than its developer
• Good: The current version reached the repository on 10 August 2026, so what F-Droid offers today is days old rather than years old
• Good: The record read on 15 August 2026 lists no Anti-Features. Those are F-Droid's own warning flags, and one of them, Ads, marks an app the repository has found to carry advertising. No flag is the absence of a warning rather than a statement that this app shows no advertising or collects nothing
• Con: Every build its page lists carries the line that the version requires Android 12 or newer, so older phones are excluded outright
• Con: The permissions its page lists for the current build are approximate and precise location while the app is in use, taking pictures and videos, recording audio, and one the app defines for itself. A permissions list is what an app can reach, not a declaration of what it collects or sends, and F-Droid has no Data Safety section to set beside it
• Con: F-Droid publishes no rating, no review count and no install count for any app, so there is no published measure of how many people run this one or what they make of it, and its page shows only the three most recent builds, so the release history visible there is short

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The two entries are documented to different depths, and that difference belongs to the catalogues rather than to the apps.

Google Play publishes a rating and a review count, an install band, a price, an in-app purchase range where the app has one, a Contains ads label where the app carries advertising, and a Data Safety section. Its answers for Blackmagic Camera are in the section above, each with the date it was read. F-Droid publishes none of those fields, for any app it carries. What its page for the other entry does carry, read on 15 August 2026, is the app name, the developer's summary and description, the author, the licence, the three most recent versions with the date each was added, the minimum Android version, the permissions each build requests, the download with its size, signature and build log, a donation link, the one screenshot the project published, and links to the source code and the issue tracker. That is what this page compared, not an inventory of everything on the site.

One of those flags does answer an advertising question, though not the way a store label does. Ads is an Anti-Feature, applied to an app the repository has found to carry advertising, and no Anti-Feature is listed for the entry here. That is the absence of a warning, not a finding that the app shows none. So the second row of the table is not hiding anything, and its merged cell is not a bad score: where nobody publishes a number there is no number to quote, and a rating nobody publishes is not a poor one. The same goes for the licence. Being open source is not a privacy guarantee, an ad-free guarantee or a quality guarantee, and anything read into it beyond the licence text is inference rather than fact.

One freshness rule applies to both, stated once: a record that has not been updated for more than eighteen months is called out on this site as stale. Neither entry is near that line. Blackmagic Camera has a Play listing updated on 29 July 2026, and MA Camera has a current version that reached F-Droid on 10 August 2026. Those two dates are not the same measurement, and this page does not put them in one column: one is when a developer last pushed a change to a store listing, the other is when a build entered a repository.

It comes down to which kind of evidence you want before installing anything.

Take Blackmagic Camera if you want a record you can check in full. Its Play listing answers the price, ads label, rating and Data Safety questions above, each dated in its section, though not the version or the minimum Android version. Accept in exchange that a Data Safety section is a declaration by the developer rather than a measurement, and that its middle line says the app may collect some data types.

Take MA Camera if published source code matters to you more than published paperwork. It is under the GNU General Public License v3.0 only and its F-Droid page links the repository, so the code can be read by anyone who wants to. Accept in exchange that F-Droid publishes no rating, no price and no Contains ads label for it, so there is nothing of that kind to check, that its current build requires Android 12 or newer, and that the line selling it is the developer's own summary.

Neither choice is a recommendation about image quality, and this page does not make one: nothing here rests on running either app. For a wider shortlist of camera apps, see our best camera apps for Android roundup.

This page used to carry five write ups and a closing section on what stayed quiet. It now carries two entries, and that is worth explaining rather than papering over.

An entry here needs a first party record: the app's own listing or catalogue page, re-read on the day of writing, with the date printed beside every figure. Two of the entries on this page have one, and those two are the only store links in the version of the page read today. The others rested on news coverage, a download mirror, a developer changelog with no store page beside it and, in one case the page itself admitted to, a version string from a search snippet. None of that could be re-opened at its own source in this pass, so none of it is left standing here with a fresh date on it. Every entry that went is named in the changelog at the foot of this page, with the reason it went.

Two entries is a thin year for a category this size. Saying so is more useful than filling the gap with apps the version read today did not link at all.

Checked 15 August 2026: Blackmagic Camera was re-read from its own Play listing, which the live page linked without printing a rating, a rating count, an install band or an ads label from it: all of those are new to the page today, alongside the Data Safety section, and the free price the page did state now carries the date it was read. Its version number, printed here as 3.4, is withdrawn: on the live page it rested on trade coverage and a download mirror rather than on the listing, and the record read from the listing today carries no version at all. MA Camera was re-read from its F-Droid page, which now gives version 2.6.5, added on 10 August 2026, in place of the 2.6.1 this page printed as current; the page now states plainly that F-Droid publishes no rating, no review count, no install count, no price, no Contains ads label and no Data Safety section, instead of leaving that gap for a reader to take as a clean bill of health. What it does publish is set out too: the permissions each build requests, the minimum Android version, and F-Droid's own Anti-Feature warning flags, one of which marks advertising and none of which is listed for this app. Retracted for MA Camera: it has no press coverage at all. That was an absolute, and its F-Droid page says nothing either way about press coverage. Withdrawn entirely, because this pass had no first party record for any of them and the version of the page read today carries no store link for one either: Snapseed, VWFNDR MBL, Samsung Expert RAW, and the two entries the page carried as quiet, Google Camera ports and Open Camera. Their figures came from news coverage, a download mirror, a developer changelog and, in one case, a search snippet. The opening claim that Five things genuinely shipped goes with them. Also added: one decision table, since the page carried none at all, and a dated How we verify box naming both sources and stating what F-Droid does not publish. The verdict capsule was rewritten rather than added: the page already carried one naming five entries, three of which are withdrawn here while the other two are the entries this page keeps. The FAQ was rewritten in full: four of its five questions were about entries that have gone, the fifth asked about method, which the How we verify box now answers, and two of the five carried first person wording. The screenshot strip for the F-Droid entry is kept unchanged, still in the section of the app it shows, with the caption naming who published it. The six Play marketing images the page carried for the other entry are dropped: the standard here allows no Play marketing graphics.