Since its creation, the mobile phone has undergone many changes. The first devices were huge and heavy devices, but with the development of technologies that turned an ordinary “mobile phone” on a smartphone, today we have the opportunity not only to make calls, but also to create high-quality photos and videos, play mobile games that are not inferior in their technical implementations to analogues on various consoles and computers.
A modern smartphone user, choosing a new device, can consider the gadget from different angles of individual preferences: compactness, performance, photography capabilities, mobile games, price range, foldable form factor, display and speakers for viewing video content, and much, much more.
The idea of writing this post was to determine the best Android smartphone in each of the popular areas of device selection.
1. The best compact smartphone
At the moment, modern smartphones running on the Android operating system with a display smaller than 5.5 inches (approximately 14 cm) no longer exist. Most of the options offered for compact devices range from 6 inches (a little more than 15 cm). However, not only the diagonal size of the display determines the compactness of the smartphone. Do not forget about the folding form factor. Below are the most compact and, at the same time, the most versatile Android smartphone models in terms of their technical parameters.
Asus Zenfone 10 – a compact smartphone in a classic design.
Until 2023, Asus was famous for its performance smartphones in a compact body, until it released the huge Zenfone 11 Ultra. So, it so happened that Zenfone 10 became the last compact smartphone of the famous brand.
A powerful OLED display with a diagonal of 5.9 inches and a high refresh rate of 144 Hz (only during gameplay, with normal use – a maximum of 120 Hz), as well as an interesting design of the body made of textured plastic, – represent the most striking characteristics of this device.
In practice, the Asus Zenfone 10 proved to be a great smartphone with a good set of specifications. Its hardware is headed by the most powerful processor from Qualcomm – Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which is last year's flagship chipset of the company, has not lost its high performance power today. The smartphone has amazing battery life, high performance, a headphone jack and the most customizable software, – and all this in a compact device.
Since nothing is perfect, the Zenfone 10 has only a few downsides. First, for this device, Asus promised only two years of operating system updates, while other manufacturers offer at least three years of support. Secondly, its cameras are clearly inferior to the flagship ones – on the back panel, they are represented by the main Sony IMX766 sensor with a resolution of 50 MP and an aperture of f/1.9 and a 13 MP ultra-wide-angle lens. The cameras are capable of creating great photos in daylight, however, I would like to see much more possibilities in photography, which, for example, are achieved due to the use of telephoto lenses.
Motorola Razr 40 Ultra – compact smartphone with complex form factor.
Razr 40 Ultra from the long-known Motorola brand has turned into an excellent all-rounder, having received, in addition to a complex form factor, a set of specifications of a real flagship. This wonderful folding smartphone of a small size is ready to offer its user two displays at once, external and internal. The diagonal of its external display is only 3.6 inches, and the foldable internal display has a diagonal of 6.9 inches (almost 17.5 cm), which surpasses even such huge flagships as the Galaxy S24 Ultra with a 6.8-inch display.
In addition to the display, the Razr 40 Ultra is distinguished by high reliability, which meets the IP52 protection standard against water and dust, as well as a long battery life.
The hardware part of the smartphone is based on the flagship chipset of 2022 – Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1, but despite this, the performance of the device is still very good and is not inferior to some modern flagships.
The weak points of this gadget can be called the camera module and the two-year update of the operating system.
2. Nubia REDMAGIC 9 Pro – the best productive smartphone.
The productivity of a smartphone directly depends on its hardware, which includes: the central and graphics processors combined in the device's chipset, the availability of high-speed RAM, as well as the reading and writing speed of the built-in memory.
To evaluate each aspect of the hardware, synthetic tests have been developed, among which AnTuTu tests are considered the most famous. The results of the AnTuTu test best evaluate the performance of the smartphone as a whole. Once a month, the benchmark AnTuTu publishes ten smartphones that received the highest score according to the test results on its web resource.
At the time of writing, the best performing smartphone according to AnTuTu is the Nubia REDMAGIC 9 Pro smartphone, which scored 2.094. 323 points and left behind such well-known flagships as iQOO 12 (2,027,324 points), OnePlus 12 (1,916,019 points) and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra (1,834,040 points).
This gaming-specific smartphone turned out to be the owner of not only a productive hardware part, based on the latest flagship Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, which works in a pair with 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of built-in memory. The smartphone is also equipped with a bright, high-quality AMOLED display with a diagonal of 6.8 inches, a Full HD+ resolution and a refresh rate of 120 Hz and, which has not been seen in gaming smartphones until now, a high-quality set of sensors for both the main and front cameras.
3. The best cameraphone
Vivo X100 Pro – the best camera phone with a classic look.
No matter how famous Android giants like the Pixel 8 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra are for their post-processing of the photos and videos they create, the Vivo X100 Pro smartphone is their clear heavyweight competitor for shooting in all scenarios. And although the design of this gadget personally seems to me to be not as refined as the devices of the Galaxy S24 or Pixel 8 series, rather the opposite – very bulky and heavy, but it is almost impossible to appeal against the performance of the X100 Pro cameras.
The rear camera module, which consists of a huge 1-inch IMX989 50MP main lens, a ZEISS APPO 50MP floating periscope lens, and a 50MP ultra-wide-angle lens, has begun to work wonders, supported by a special developed V3 post-processing chip, which is combined with the flagship MediaTek Dimensity 9300 chipset. By the way, as the test results showed, the latter is not inferior in its performance to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, and even surpasses it in some aspects.
The main camera of the device , not to mention the virtuoso quality of photos and videos created in daylight, works perfectly in low light conditions and creates almost no visible noise.
OnePlus Open – the best folding camera phone.
In general, the cameras of sophisticated smartphones – it is not the most preferred option. However, the photography capabilities of the OnePlus Open – the best among those implemented on complex devices.
OnePlus Open has a total of five camera lenses in three different places: on the internal display, on the external display and on the back panel in the main camera module. Of greatest interest is the main camera module containing three lenses developed in collaboration with Hasselblad.
Heading this module is the Sony LYT-T808 main sensor with a resolution of 48 MP, which allows you to create consistently great pictures in good lighting. The detailing and dynamic range of the main lens are excellent, and it also copes very well with exposure.
The ultra-wide-angle lens, also at 48 MP, is not far behind in terms of creating high-quality photos. Unlike many camera phones, the image quality here is only a small step lower compared to the main lens, and the angle of capture is 114° often turns out to be useful when shooting monumental architectural objects.
But the telephoto lens with a resolution of 64 MP is probably the most impressive of all the sensors of the module. It supports optical zoom up to 3x, and digital – up to 120 However, this hybrid of optical and digital zoom with 6x zoom provides some of the best photos, bringing a lot of fine details of subjects into the picture.
In everything else, this smartphone is more of a mediocre device than a flagship. Its short battery life and some third-party applications not optimized for the complex screen slightly overshadow the high performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset and a good set of camera lenses, where the main, ultra-wide-angle and telephoto lenses are ready to please the user in a wide variety of shooting scenarios.
4. Samsung Galaxy A55 5G – the best balanced smartphone in terms of technical characteristics.
The Galaxy A55 5G is a good and inexpensive option for those looking for a smartphone with the premium appearance of the flagship Galaxy S24 line and well-balanced specifications that are universally suitable for viewing multimedia, running games, taking photos with one click. and with a fairly long battery life.
In addition, the smartphone has increased software reliability in the form of the OneUI 5.1 user interface based on the Android 14 OS
It is important to note that the company Samsung has promised four years of software updates and five years of security updates for its smartphone.
Personally, I separately liked that the hardware part of the Galaxy A55 5G is headed by a processor of its own development – Exynos 1480. In my opinion, the use of self-developed processors in smartphones is best combined with “sharpened” under them hardware, than it happens in Qualcomm and MediaTek chipsets, which should be universal to use any software with any combination of memory and other hardware elements.
Keep up with the general picture and the camera of the device, demonstrating the excellent quality of the created images in various shooting scenarios.
5. Infinix Hot 40i – the best offer of the budget segment.
Recently, the segment of inexpensive smartphones is literally oversaturated with offers from almost all well-known brands. At the same time, some manufacturers seek to release not one, but several offers at once, creating competition not only for other market players, but even for their own products.
Smartphones of the budget segment are endowed with basic performance, a small volume of not the fastest memory, low-level chipsets, and their cameras are present only for the sake of being – “for a tick”.
What was my surprise when Hot 40i from Infinix appeared in the budget segment of devices. In my opinion, with this device, the manufacturer has decided to turn the approach to creating inexpensive smartphones in general. Here, the design is perfectly developed, a high-quality display is installed, and, which clearly does not fit into the budget segment, a high-quality camera is implemented. The long battery life completes the picture.
The hardware part of the Infinix Hot 40i is headed by the UNISOC T606 processor. And even if it is not the most productive processor, during operation, no slowdowns or freezes were noticed when switching between running applications. The smartphone even ran the resource-demanding games Pub G, Asphalt 9: Legends and NBA 2K Mobile.
The front camera here is represented by a 32 MP sensor, which was previously unheard of in the budget segment. The high-resolution front camera allows you to create detailed pictures, and in low light it is helped by the front flash.
The main camera is represented by an even more productive 50 MP lens with the ability to create high-quality photos in various lighting conditions.< /p>
Of course, it was not without savings. A 6.56-inch IPS display with HD+ resolution (1612 x 720 pixels) was chosen as the front panel, but with a refresh rate of 90 Hz, which ensures smooth animations and excellent gameplay, not to mention multimedia playback.
There are, of course, also disadvantages. For example, a low display brightness of 480 nits. For indoor use, this is more than enough, but not for outdoor use in sunny weather – there may be problems with the readability of the displayed information on the screen.
But judging as a budget device – in everything else, I have not yet found equals for Hot 40i.
Conclusion
Taking into account the above and summing up, it can be noted that nowadays the smartphone market meets any user requests, offering great options in all price, technical and functional categories. Looking at the endless names and modifications of smartphones, I tried to highlight the best of the devices running on the basis of the Android OS, conditionally dividing the gadgets by the type of functionality. I really hope that the publication will be useful to you when choosing your smartphone.