Best mid range phones in 2026 for gaming and camera, what are you guys running?

So i've been in the market for a new phone for a while now and i don't want to spend flagship money. my two main things are gaming performance and camera quality. i play Free Fire daily and i shoot a lot of photos so i need something that handles both without cooking itself after 20 minutes of gameplay.

been doing a lot of research lately and the mid range market in 2026 is genuinely interesting. the Motorola Edge 60 Pro keeps coming up as one of the more complete packages, good display, solid chip, decent camera system. the Nothing Phone 4a Pro is another one i keep seeing, 144Hz AMOLED and Snapdragon 7 Gen 4 which should handle mobile gaming fine. Samsung Galaxy S25 FE is also on my list purely because of the software support and camera processing.

what i care about most is sustained performance during longer gaming sessions, i hate phones that throttle hard after 10 minutes. and for camera i shoot a lot in low light so night mode matters more to me than megapixel count honestly.

anyone here daily driving something in the $300 to $500 range that genuinely handles both well? would love real world opinions over spec sheets because those never tell the full story. what chip are you on and how does it hold up during extended sessions?