The BEST Smartphones for 2024!

the smartphone market in 2023 has definitely had its lows and its highs there's the large proportion of companies who've just carried on doing their own thing making slight fairly unambitious improvements to what they know already works but then at the same time we've also had both a couple of pretty major flops and some of the biggest game changers we've seen in years new phones or emerging companies just coming in and dropping Bombshells that we never saw coming so with all of this in mind who makes the best phone for you and who's made straight up the best phone of the year and yes we did specifically get wooden spoon trophies made for the losers you'll see who's written here very surely okay let's start with fbls because this is one of those markets where I do genuinely believe we have just witnessed a game changer I mean Samsung has basically been the winner by default for the last 5 years being the only company to actually make a top tier foldable that's also globally available and yeah they are making good phones but you can also definitely sense the complacency with how quickly the company's foldables went from the future of computing with their first entry to here's a 4% better camera than the last foldable and also just how long it's taken them to fix some of the fundamental issues with foldables like the crease for the longest time Samsung has needed competition and just now I'd say they finally got it in the form the OnePlus open it has a more competitive price better cameras nicer construction it's got longer battery life and most importantly unique software that really makes the big screen useful it's the first ever foldable to actually compete with the Samsung and in my opinion genuinely just Straight Up come out on top and thanks to OnePlus also being part of the same company as Oppo they've managed to use both companies distribution networks to do that while also overcoming the hurdle that most foldables have failed at making it internationally available and that is why I'm giving it the award for best foldable of 2023 and if anyone from OnePlus is watching this just ping us if you want it because uh last year every single company collected theirs except for Apple the shakeups continue as we now go on to the best compact phone for a few years now I've been consistently giving this award to one company Asus they make this line of phones called the Zen phones which are basically Flagship specifications but bottled up into a body that's a good 25% smaller but this time round while the latest Zen phone 10 it is still a good phone it has had a price increase from 700 to €800 and very little has been upgraded for it it moves it to a tier where it's basically competing directly with the likes of Samsung's flagships and I just don't feel quite like the Camera Tuning or the software support is close to this level so what are your other options well I've actually played around quite a lot with this base Galaxy s23 I think this phone looks good I think it performs well it's a really great size and the cameras are a lot better than the specs make them seem thanks to Samsung's tuning so it's a very close second but then who takes it well I genuinely think the best compact phone of 2023 belongs to none other than Sony with the xeria 5 Mark 5 the thing is really high speec it's got cameras that so long as you're willing to put a bit of time into learning how to properly use have a really high ceiling what I particularly appreciate is that it battery life is way longer than the Samsung's like it will literally still be on 30% by the time the Samsung runs out and also the ratio the tall narrow ratio of this phone makes it feel way smaller than it actually is this is comfy what you won't get is four full years of software upgrades like you do with the Samsung but what you will get is a headphone jack plus top shelf audio quality a Micro SD card slot and even a physical camera button which is pretty fun and this leads on quite smoothly into the best battery category cuz to be honest it is so good here that you could well just call it the xeria 5 Mark 5 again and leave it at that but I'm instead going to hand it to a different Sony phone the xeria 10 Mark 5 simply because it keeps up one to one with the battery life of the 5 Mark 5 but instead of being a $1,000 phone it's a $400 phone now obviously other parts of the phone are scaled back because of that like the camera's a bit weaker and the screen's a bit weaker but it's just the fact that you can have this option for insane battery life both in the flagship configuration and also in the mid-range configuration that is something that I want to see more of and yes the naming convention is incredibly poor you should never have a situation where the 10 Mark 5 is lower end than the 5 Mark 5 and you really shouldn't be calling phones 5 Mark 5 in the first place but the products the products speak for themselves so good job Sony this one's yours and on the subject of less major companies who are managing to both keep up and sometimes even outdo the big players I think it's time we talk about the most improved phone of the year cuz it's not from Apple or Samsung the big players as a very general rule they're in a position where they're already making great phones that are selling in large quantities so they're in a position where they don't really need to or particularly want to mix things up very much but do you know who really did genuinely Motorola and I know it's kind of weird to treat Motorola like a small player given that they're the makers of still to this date one of the best selling phones of all time but that time is not now the companies felt like they were past their Peak and kind of ready to dip out of the market at any point for years now that's how I felt until I saw and used the Motorola Edge 30 Ultra it's got a 144 HZ refresh rate OLED screen it's got a 200 megapixel camera a high-end Snapdragon chip 125 watt turbocharging the list goes on but see this is what I would also call the company's first ever Ultra phone and that's normally red flags all around because truth be told it's very hard to compete with the software support and the Camera Tuning and the battery optimization that companies like Samsung offer at that Flagship price point but I think Motorola is well aware of this and what makes this such an interesting option is that they've priced the edge3 ultra accordingly while with most Flagship phones you'd be expected to pay $1,000 to $1,200 for this you can quite easily find it for 700 sometimes less and that very much brings it into the picture so the most improved award goes to this unexpected champ if Motorola can now just sort their camera image processing they could kill it all right so now just before we bring this together and we pick the best overall phones for Budget mid-range and Flagship let's talk best gaming phone best camera so I can definitely feel the Winds of Change when it comes to gaming on a smartphone it felt like the concept was massive in the early smartphone days fueled by nauy then it peted out for a long time cuz well mobile game companies realized they could earn more profit making games like this instead of making games like this but that feels like it's changing now that phones are reaching that critical mass of power to actually just be able to straight up play console games it all of a sudden becomes very easy to bring actually good quality titles to phones because those games have already been made for other platforms all of this is to say that there's a pretty strong case for gaming phones right now and if you're in the market for one I would say there's three top contenders the red magic 8s Pro which almost makes too much sense in a lot of ways because you're essentially getting the most densely speced phone possible for an upper mid-range price it's just missing a few quality of life features like water resistance and wireless charging but mostly this whole invisible selfie camera thing while it looks cool it really does look cool it performs absolutely terribly and so that leaves us with Asus Asus makes two gaming phones they make the Rog Phone 7 and the Rog Phone 7 Ultimate both with topshelf performance both with stupendous battery life and also both with a ecosystem of accessories that genuin makes them feel like a lot more than just a phone that can game and you would think well if you're going to go that extreme you might as well just go all in on the ultimate but this is one of the few cases where that's not the case the Ultima is over $200 more expensive than the Basse phone for little things like a little vent at the back that opens to let air inside the phone and a second OLED rear display it's very cool but it's just like the last thing that I'd want to be wasting my battery on which leads us to gaming phone of the year the Asus Rog Phone 7 but if I had to guess the single question that I get asked the most about phones these days it's not about gaming phones or compact phones or battery phones it's this which phone currently has the best camera it feels like that's become the platform on which all of these companies are competing now thanks Milo well the boring answer is it's subjective I know people who are really attached iPhone cameras I know people who swear by Samsung cameras I know people who are still using Hua alwayss because they insist that that takes photos in the way that they most like so me saying that one of them is just outright the best for you is a bit like me saying blue is better than orange as true as that may be but as for what's been the best for me it's got to be the iPhone 15 Pro Max and there's three reasons one is that Zoom has always felt like it's been lacking on iPhones and this well not the best zoom you can get it no longer makes me feel that way the new five time zoom camera has actually come in handy so much much more than I expected it to whether I'm on a bullet train in Japan and I want to get a closeup of Mount Fuji or I find a really interestingly lit Alleyway and the five times allows someone on the other side of it to get this really cinematic closeup of me in it the second thing is that it now shoots photos in 24 megap as opposed to the base 12 that most phones shoot at it doesn't make the photos twice as good and it is a bit of a bummer that social media programs like Twitter and insta they compress your shots to the point where it doesn't really matter when you're just posting the raw photo you've taken but the beauty comes with the ability to crop in to centralize the subject for example after having taken the shot without feeling like you're giving up quality to do it and then the third thing is this ability to convert any photo you've taken of a person into a portrait mode shot other phones can do this too like you can do it on a Samsung but for my experience is not as good as it is here and I use this so much now pretty much every photo I've taken of me that I'm proud of I'll test adding in the portrait effect and 80% of the time I keep it on and if you're enjoying this video then a lot of effort goes into testing every single phone on this table so a sub to the channel would be rewarding so when it comes to budget phones the things that I tend to look for are actually very different to those of more expensive offerings you know how we talk about this idea nowadays that specs don't matter that everything's a software battle and while that is very true at the upper end on the lower end specs are often the limiting factor you need a certain level of hardware for the software to just be able to run with it and so while with more expensive phones I tend to wait things like user experience and level of bloatware and Camera image processing on the cheaper end you basically just want to get as much good core Hardware in place as possible and there's one phone that I feel like has picked the best things to prioritize here the Poco X5 Pro things like the chipset the Snapdragon 778 G which is really good for both performance and battery life things like the screen which honestly for anyone but the most hardcore techies will most likely feel Flagship even the camera is a very respectable 108 map sensor that if someone handed to me and said use this instead of your iPhone 15 Pro or your Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra camera for a few weeks I would have no real issue with it because I know that with a very little bit of editing I can get very close to the best phones out there this is one thing that xiaomi and their spin-off Brands redmi and Poco they just they do it right but as you start to creep up to the mid-range category you can be a little fussier you can decide well you know what I want my camera to have really powerful image processing or I want my phone to have an aluminum frame instead of plastic or wireless charger and the fact that all phones in this category tend to have those luxuries it makes this one tougher I was very strongly considering the Galaxy s23 Fe Samsung's Fe Series in general it seems that the company's way of Shifting the extra parts inventory they have cuz there always a bit of a mishmash of Parts seen in previous phones and usually that's fine I mean in a lot of ways the s23 Fe is like the normal s23 but just with a much larger battery the problem though in this case is the chip instead of shipping the phone with something fairly current they've decided to ship it with the exos 2200 which is a nearly 2-year-old chip that was still not the fastest or most efficient chip even then and when you're charging $600 it doesn't feel like that instant recommend that some past Fe phones have been Galaxy a54 is really good too it's a tier below but it's arguably much better value for money because it is significantly cheaper well you know what I really liked the nothing phone 2 I was so close to giving the award to this phone cuz it's just a cool phone with really subtle thoughtful design choices like the beautiful animations the way the glyph interface allows you to tune out of your digital life for a bit the completely even screen borders all around all without sacrificing on the specs the only reason I didn't pick it is because I think the winner of this category is even better value this xiaomi's redmi note 13 Pro Plus which is actually just crazy I'll link the full video where we covered this down below but this one's out of the picture for now just because they haven't launched internationally yet and finally the base Google pixel flagships usually also have a space here but the price hike they've had this year has kind of pushed the base pixel 8 out of what I would call mid-range territory which leaves us with the winning phone the pixel 7 a and holding it like this reminds me how cool these crystallized trophies are cuz you can actually see both the home screen and through them to the back of the phone now sure there are a couple of slight caveats like the charging is a bit slow but largely speaking this phone when you're using it day to-day it feels like it has no weak link it takes awesome photos it has full access to the Google pixel editing Suite which is world class good stereo speakers up-to-date ports and connectivity and the best part is the price the phone launched at $500 at which point I'd probably just Veer towards the nothing phone but the thing with pixels which is usually a bad thing but in this case kind of has a silver lining is that the price Falls very quickly so I've seen these things now for closer to $400 with the pixel earphones included and closer to$ 350 without and at that price this this is just so much phone for the money and very deserving of mid-range phone of the year and now just before the winner we should talk losers so there's two phones that we're going to be handing out The Wooden Spoon Awards to the first is the iPhone SE this is not going to stand is it do you know [Music] what and while this phone wasn't technically launched this year the way Apple Works it's still very much part of their current lineup like it hasn't been replaced and it's still being sold for that full fat $429 price point that it launched at it's got an older chipset a weaker camera very poor screen and Battery do you know what I don't think there's a person on this planet for which this at its current price is actually the right phone for and then the second award is the Google pixel fold and I should be clear here I'm glad that Google entered this space and the pixel fold it also does do some really good useful Innovative things on the software end but the hardware it's just not it like when you pull up what Samsung's current foldables look like or the OnePlus open this genuinely looks like some shelv prototype from 5 years ago that got accidentally released like those bezels and that crease for this price is quite disappointing I think this phone exists more as a proof of concept a way to show other Android makers how to make foldable software as a osed to a consumer product that's actually competitive and viable it just doesn't sit quite right with me that for the price of one of these you can literally get yourself like 6 and a half Poco X5 Pros anyways this is what you've been waiting for what is the best flagship phone phone of the Year 2023 well there's a lot of good ones there's the Samsung s23 Series xiaomi 13 series there's the iPhone 15s the Via phones which always have awesome cameras the Oppo Find X6 the Sony phones the OnePlus flagships which while not the Trailblazers as they used to be have fallen into a nice niche of affordable quality Flagship the issue we're having though my goodness this is heavy is that so many of the Chinese companies they have struggled to break into the Western markets to the point where some of them now they're actively pulling out and actually trying to get one in a way that doesn't involve just ebaying it and potentially losing your warranty starting to become a bit of a chore like obviously there's the whole Huawei situation and for most people those phones are completely off the table but also now Vivo are really hard to get Oppo latest Flagship loved this phone I think it's so stylish and the camera was awesome they had unlike last year's no European launch this is China only and the other day I was even looking up shiai we covered their 13 Ultra earlier this year and I love that phone but does the UK store actually sell it no you can buy the 13 you can buy the 13 Pro you can't actually buy the ultra cuz I guess they just decided it wasn't worth it for them to release it here but then it gets even more difficult because as a tech person I'm fully aware that a couple of months ago this company announced their next Genet xiaomi 14 series of phones but because the Western markets have been such a challenge for them they've developed this sort of dual launch strategy where China gets it at one point and then the Western Market gets it 4 months later and so in the UK and many parts of the world xiaomi genuinely acts like this next gen 14 does not exist whereas me knowing the 14 exists and having seen the potential improvements it can bring would find it quite strange to now recommend you buy the 13 what I'm trying to get to is that in Western markets at least it kind of feels like the number of viable options are drying up and what you're left with if you actually want a full warranty and you want to buy a phone from a company that actually has a physical presence is Apple Samsung and in some places the Google pixel now while that is sad since I do think companies like xiaomi and Vivo and Huawei are driving a lot of the hardware Innovation right now it's also not like we're missing all the best options because honestly the Samsung Galaxy s23 Ultra is for the most part A masterclass it's probably the biggest biggest box ticker to ever exist you want lots of cameras and lots of good cameras check you want a top-of-the-line screen check you want continuous software support check you want to be able to customize it to your heart's content check honestly I've only just recently delved into the Samsung goodlock Suite of apps and the options it gives you are genuinely staggering my only complaint is the graininess that you can get in video as you start to get into lower light but even with that I do think the s23 ultra does enough right to earn itself the title of smartphone of the year but it doesn't sit there on its own there's one more phone it's the iPhone 15 Pro Max also deserves to share this position mostly for the camera improvements we talked about earlier I literally noticed them every single time I hit that shutter button but also the better battery versus the 14 and the USBC which gives me one less cable to worry about and before you think about switching phone I want to show you why I recommend you switch your browser to Opera now this is a sponsor but Opera has basically said to me we have no requirements just tell people what you legitimately think so here's the Crux of it every time I open the Opera browser I feel like I have a co-pilot working with me in a metaphorical sense in that it's got the tools to be able to make it work around you like for example it's got collapsible tab Islands if you want to be ultra organized but then even if you want to use none of that fanciness you can customize it to a level where you can make it the most beautiful streamlined browser there is but then this co-pilot exists in a very literal sense with Opera's own R AI baked inside you want a summary of the web page you're on that's like two clicks away you want to be able to ask it a quick question and not have to Google it and then scrub through articles it's right there and I know it can seem like a massive faf to shift over browsers but Opera can literally import your old browser settings in like a minute so Link in the description below to get it now

Channel: Mrwhosetheboss

Views: 5,815,000

Keywords: tech, phones, smartphones, best, top, awards, camera, battery, apple, samsung, google, iphone, pixel, galaxy

Id: _c1RvIU6WAE

Length: 19min 48sec (1188 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 30 2023