Get the Best Out of Your Phone Camera

Don't use digital zoom
Though all phone cams support some level of digital zoom, I strongly recommend you skip that and cover the distance up yourself. Digital zoom simply stretches the image to compensate for a real zoom functionality. This method is highly infamous for making the resultant image blurry and visibly lower quality; in fact stretching the image manually on your PC would give you a much better result than what most phone cams do.

Picture taken using digital zoom

Instead of using zoom, just walk a bit closer to your subject. In fact it is recommended to click subjects in close proximity for better results, not only in quality but also when you consider the overall composition.

Don't zoom, just move up close to your subject

Shooting from close range also helps cover up complex backgrounds and surroundings that the phone camera may unsatisfactorily capture.

Distant shots are not a phone cam speciality