The Best Smartphones for 2023!

Best Smartphones for 2023:

Let's start with the most improved award which company has made the biggest jump from their last phone and it has to be Google look at this Beast of a trophy. I'm so proud of this when their pixel 6 launched last year it gave us this glimpse of something special a bit of never before seen software magic but it was kind of hard to appreciate it when the phone was plagued with reception issues bugs and glitches all round a wonky fingerprint scanner and some pretty grainy looking video recording I can see pixels in the pixel so considering all of that I am genuinely shocked that in one year they fixed all of those issues with the pixel 7s and that allows you to focus on what actually makes them so special things like the Lively animated software and the incredible photo processing this award is all yours Google so then we've got kind of the opposite award what's the most timeless phone or in other words which phone from last year still holds up the best this year for which the iPhone 13 feels like a bit of a no-brainer partly because it's still a solid phone it's fast it's got good battery and it's got four more years of full-on software support from now and it's partly the fact that it's replacement the iPhone 14 is almost the same phone now I am someone who would normally always side with paying a little bit more to get the latest but in this particular case for an extra hundred dollars you'd only be getting a camera that's very slightly better a chip that's basically the same and then a battery life that's actually slightly worse or leading the iPhone 13 to set as a prime disc counted sweet spot phone right now but what if you like it tiny. I got some good news for you that's right it's time for the best small phone award I've even got this mini trophy made just for it oh that's adorable and this one's actually been really easy for me because yeah you've got great small phones like the pixel 7 like the Samsung Galaxy s22. But the Asus Zenfone 9 is not just even smaller than all of them but it's also doing that while basically being a top of the line Flagship it's got the fastest chip you can get up to 16 gigs of RAM a really responsive screen and even a six axis gimbal stabilized camera which lets it take some of the smoothest Video available on a smartphone oh yeah and on top of everything else.

 It has a headphone jack now you're just showing off Asus but this trophy is rightfully yours the Samsung Z flip 4 is also one of my favorite small phones given that the thing can literally fold in half but you do have to pay about one and a half times the price for that luxury so it's not for everyone speaking of foldables though if you've already decided that this is the route that you want to go down then who do you pick given that Oppo is now making foldables Vivo is making foldables xiaomi's making foldables well I have to say I think that as of right now Oppo is the one who currently has the best foldable Hardware they're the only ones who currently have a shape that makes sense in both folded form where it's basically a slightly podgy but pretty normal feeling thrown and then unfolded where it's a tablet that's actually widescreen and you can watch videos on whilst almost eliminating the crease then you've got xiaomi who's got by far the thinnest foldable to the point where even when it's folded up the thing is barely thicker than a normal single layered phone but then Samsung is the one who has the best foldable software and really if you're going to spend over fifteen hundred dollars on Hardware then I would say that nothing is more important than software that lets you best take advantage of it like this taskbar at the bottom is an actual gamechanger. I'm flying through all of my most recent and most used apps and you can even save combinations that you'd normally want to open at the same time plus the thing that seals the deal for Samsung's foldables is the availability this is changing and I'm really excited about it but for now most other companies have only released their foldables in China more as a proof of concept before going full-on global mass production I can't wait to see what this table looks like when we've got all the trophies out I'm really excited about this next one this. The gaming awards for the last six months I've been absolutely addicted to this phone game called Bloons Tower Defense it looks simple but as you get further into the game the amount of particles on screen gets completely out of control to the point where it pushes your phone to its absolute limit and so I've been keeping an extra eye out for a phone that can actually handle it and there's any really three globally available contenders there's the iPhone 14 pro which is great because Apple's a16 chip is basically the most powerful thing you can get on any smartphone and that games on Apple tend to be a bit more optimized than games on Android but it doesn't quite win it for me the phone gets hot after a period of time it crashes when you really really push it and it's also just not the most comfortable thing to hold for hours at a time there's the red magic 7s Pro which is a really tempting package being one of the only gaming phones with a borderless display with also really powerful harware for the 800 you get it for there's definitely a place for this one but you also kind of get what you pay for what you gain in Hardware you lose in software support you'll only get most likely one year of major Android updates Plus in order to get this bezel's design they've had to use an under-display camera which is just not quite there yet you can actually see the pixel arrangement of the screen in front of the camera on the light behind me so the phone that I think really deserves the win here so heavy the Rog phone 6 Pro it's pretty much halfway in between red Magic's philosophy of let's just throw some stupidly high-end specs together and see what happens and the iPhone which is meticulously planned out and highly optimized and what that leads you to is really powerful hardware and great cooling that's also had some care put into it on the software front and that makes it one of the only gaming phones that doesn't feel like gaming is its sole purpose it's just a general multimedia Powerhouse with also the best speakers and the best battery of any mainstream device no biggie and if you're enjoying this video and this lovely little awards ceremony we've put together then a sub to the channel would be game changing what if you don't want to spend a thousand dollars though well the way that it tends to work in the phone market is that the lower down you go on the budget ladder the more dominated the market becomes by xiaomi and Oppo or more specifically the spin-off companies that they've created because these guys focus on a higher volume of sales as opposed to profit per unit they're the only companies who even consider it worth it to pack in genuinely strong Hardware into these sub 300 packages like this guy the OnePlus Nord ce2 cringes it sounds this is one of the first times that I think a phone has genuinely held up to its own tagline their page describes it as a little more than you'd expect and whether it's performance or charging speed or the screen you can feel it here you've also got real me   who I would say are even more militant were just cramming in every spec that they possibly can for prices that you didn't see coming and they tend to pair that with these incredibly bright bold designs that I personally find delightful but I could also see how you might think they look like toys the phone that just edits it out though and for me the winner of 2022 budget smartphone of the year is the Poco X4 Pro and we've even got a budget font to show for him it's got the spec X it's got the design and it also prioritizes battery life which is just one of those consumer friendly moves that I want to see more and more companies doing these trophies are so cool you've managed to get the separate elevation of each different part of the camera module and now just before we get to the best Flagship and the overall phone of the year we've got a really competitive lineup of mid-ranges this time around we talked about the pixel 7 that just goes above and beyond there's the 2022 iPhone SE the only phone at this price to actually give you full Flagship performance the Poco F4 which is a glowing example of how capable apocal phone can be when you give the company more budget to work with Samsung's mid-range phones which have felt like a bit of a return to form after a few years of some not so great offerings but I'm not giving the award to any of these phones this award is going to a new Contender a company who's just entered the smartphone market and considering that has hit a complete home run I'm talking about the nothing phone one it's got intriguing design Reliable Software and cameras and more noticeably a level of attention to detail that you only get from an ambitious company trying to prove themselves in an unforgiving Market I'm genuinely excited to see what is coming next from these guys alrighty it's Flagship time and what I've decided to do is to split this into best iPhone Flagship and their best Android Flagship because let's face it most people have already decided what platform they're going to go for so if your iPhone then the best iPhone Flagship this is going to blow your mind it's the latest iPhone the 14 pro and the 14 pro Max they've got fantastic cameras blindingly bright displays and even though I have turned off the new always on display feature and even though the battery has taken a slight hit from last year they are still undeniably the best iPhones ever made and then while we're at it if you are in the market for iPhones but don't want to spend that much money then here is my advice the iPhone 14 plus is a good unique option that gives you remarkable battery life for noticeably less money at 899 the normal sized iPhone 14 probably isn't worth it for 799 if you're considering that and I would instead get the incredibly similar iPhone 13 for 699 and if you want to spend less than that then my recommendation would be instead of going for the 429 iPhone SE which is a pretty compromised screen and Battery to just go used or refurbished and get an iPhone 12. There's a lot more options on the Android end  because while not every company wants to make budget phones everyone does want to make flagships  that's where you actually earn some sizable profit so you've got every brand competing together Samsung Vivo Sony Oppo xiaomi OnePlus and you know what this isn't a super popular opinion but I actually rate the OnePlus 10 Pro quite a lot it's not as groundbreaking as some of their earlier flagships but the smartphone market is quite an equalizing system meaning that when a phone is unpopular you'll find that it's priced very quickly tumbles to try and correct that and that results in situations like this where you have a near top spec Android phone and yet you can find this on the official store for 699 brand new which is a bargain obviously there's Samsung 2 which is the default option for a lot of Android users for a reason and while I would probably skip the standard s22 for its weaker battery life the s22 plus is a very reliable all-rounder and then the s22 ultra is kind of like the everything button every   222 smartphone feature insane camera zoom built-in stylus long lasting battery it just has all of it not to mention Vivo and xiaomi who are also both just killing it right now they have probably the two best phones for photography on the market but the lack of availability means that there's a decent chance you would have to import and so the smartphone that is actually taking home this trophy for the best Android phone of 2022 is the Google pixel 7 Pro it is the easiest Flagship to recommend for two reasons one that it's incredibly simple and simple to set up with a fast transfer adapter in the box simple to use with software that's both intuitive and filled with helpful tutorials and also simple to take incredible photos with with a camera that doesn't overload you with options but instead just does all the hard work without you even realizing and then two it's 899 which is 100 to 200 cheaper than most top-end Flagship phones if you're a company watching this by the way then please do ask for these trophies  they are all yours so who wins this then who has really thought about the user who has cut the things that perhaps didn't matter as much who is going above and beyond in terms of delivering value to the consumer well in my eyes the answer is again Google pixel 7 Pro and you have this trophy to show for it. I've seen a few people say that the 599 base pixel 7 is better value but I genuinely think that the pro has more than enough perks to justify the 300 difference so let's say that you do end up buying one of these best phones of the year the case defy bounce is one of the best cases to protect it with the company figured out that 70 of phones when they fall hit the ground on one of their corners and it's when all the force is concentrated into a small area like that that you're most likely to damage it so they've created specialized air cavities in these    bounce Corners they're inspired by Air Max sneaker culture and they're there to add rigidity and create structural support and it's kind of insane because this combined with the eco shock material makes this bounce case drop proof all the way up to 21.3 feet or in other words six times military grade protection at this point you'll be having to try to break your phone they've got over 2 000 designs to pick from support for straps so you don't drop it in the first place and the cherry on top is that this entire case is made from recycled older cases.