The best smartphones of 2024, tried and tested – but are they worth the upgrade? – The Telegraph

From Samsung Galaxy to Apple iPhone, which of this year's best smartphones is worth the extra cost? Here's our pick of the crop
Which is the best smartphone to buy in 2024? The race has seriously heated up in the past few months, with the big names unveiling smartphones turbo-charged by artificial intelligence, which can do everything from inserting backgrounds into images to translating from one language to another in real time. 
But old-school smartphone prowess still counts, which is why Apple’s iPhone 16 has retaken its place at the top of our rankings, by delivering something that was going out of fashion – buttons. Armed with an SLR-style touch-sensitive camera button, the iPhone 16 feels more like a ‘real’ camera than ever before and delivers hugely impressive battery life, alongside Apple’s (yet to launch) Apple Intelligence. 
Both Samsung and Google remain very close behind, with ambitious AI features already deployed on their flagships the S24 Ultra and the Pixel 9 Pro.  Google’s device offers a particularly futuristic take with its Gemini Ultra AI voice assistant, which can perform tricks like suggesting the next move in a board game based on a photo. 
There’s now a huge range of folding phones, too, which have hit a ‘sweet spot’ of being more durable with bigger, better-performing outer screens. But they remain very expensive. 
So it time to upgrade? Not necessarily. Some annual updates offer barely noticeable improvements. Phones can perform well for several years and many older devices can still offer a full app store, good camera and enough storage for photos and videos.
Below are Rob Waugh and Jack Rear’s reviews of the best smartphones in 2024, followed by an FAQ section and a guide to some of the jargon you’ll come across when phone shopping. If you’re in a hurry, here’s a quick look at our current top five:
Smartphone buying is not getting cheaper: the Google Pixel Fold reviewed below is nearly £1,800. Although most come cheaper than that, they’re all a significant investment, so getting the right model is more important than ever.
There are some good mobile phone deals allowing you to buy your phone through a network on a two- or three-year payment plan, but in our opinion you’re best buying a phone outright and taking on a sim-only deal. The prices we give below are based on this. Buying the phone outright gives you more choice when it comes to data plans and the ability to jump between providers when they offer cut-price deals.
Our thorough, real-world tests will always help you find the best product at the best price. No manufacturer ever sees copy before publication and we do not accept payment in exchange for favourable reviews. Visit our Who We Are page to learn more.
We tested all the latest phones for at least a month, focusing each time on the improvements over the preceding generation. The quality of the cameras and the software behind them is always an important factor, closely followed by battery life, charging time and the speed of the processor: can it smoothly handle the demands of high-definition video and the latest AI-driven software?
Screen size and resolution are important when assessing phones as video and gaming platforms, but we also take into account how they feel in the hand and how resistant they are to knocks and scratches. We tend not to compare operating systems – all are either Android or iOS, each of which is updated regularly – but we do pay attention to how well they work with headphones and other Bluetooth and Wi-Fi peripherals.
Most phones are available with a choice of storage from 128GB to 256GB, 512GB and sometimes 1TB. We test the ones that we believe represent the best value.
 
£999, Very
Best overall, 9/10
We like: Gorgeous photos and a very welcome new touch-sensitive camera button
Worth upgrading from iPhone 15? This offers far better battery life than last year’s model and a bigger screen
The latest iPhone 16 Pro does not yet have Apple’s promised ‘Apple Intelligence’ features (they’re coming towards the end of 2024), but it’s already a powerful performer, aided by a welcome return of physical buttons, with a new touch-sensitive camera button alongside the customisable Action Button. After more than a decade of slowly disappearing ports and buttons on most smartphones, this is a welcome reversal of the trend. 
As a result, it feels more ‘camera-like’ than anything on the market, and the camera button is a delight to use. It’s far faster and easier to take shots, with the touch-sensitive control allowing photographers to adjust images on the fly. Whether shooting macros or portraits, it’s superb, backed up with impressive extras to allow users to adjust photos after the shot, directly in the Photos app. The ability to record 4K video in 120 frames per second is great fun, allowing Hollywood-style slow-mo effects. 
The most important upgrade over last year’s 15 Pro is much-improved battery life (this lasts 27 hours on video playback, four more than the 15 Pro). The screen’s also bigger, with an impressively large 6.3-inch screen boosted by almost entirely getting rid of the bezels. 
This is easily one of the best iPhones Apple has ever made, a gorgeous looking, powerful device, with the physical buttons elevating it over the competition. The arrival of Apple Intelligence later this year and early next will doubtless make this better still. 
Read my full iPhone 16 Pro review for more detail on its features and specifications. You can also learn about the new Apple AirPods 4.
Currently £999 for both 128GB and 256GB models, John Lewis, also available at Very 
Best overall, 10/10
We like: Astounding AI based picture-enhancing abilities
Worth upgrading from Pixel 8? Yes for the AI, but you’ll get a shorter battery life 
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Google say the Pixel 9 is their first phone to be built ‘from the ground up’ for AI. In theory, so was the iPhone 16, but its AI features will not be coming to the UK until later this year. The Pixel 9’s standout AI feature is Gemini, an assistant which talks just like a human. You can ask it to operate everything from the camera to the calendar and interrupt and correct it while it talks. 
AI also powers a suite of new picture-editing features. The biggest is ‘Add Me’, allowing you to take a group picture, then have someone else take a snap of you which the AI seamlessly adds to the group shot. ‘Reimagine’ is similarly mind-boggling, allowing you to add backgrounds and objects into pictures. I was able to take a picture of my children in front of a forest of gigantic toadstools – something that would have been unimaginable even 18 months ago.
I was testing the Pixel 9 Pro, which has the same dimensions as the £799 Pixel 9 but a better screen, more RAM and a telephoto camera. It’s worth the extra outlay. The better camera enables features such as zoom enhance, night sight video and macro focus video. Other extras include upscaling to 8K resolution and an ‘Auto Frame’ mode, which reframes your shots for artistic effect, using generative AI to fill in the blanks. 
Bottom line: this is the undisputed champion of low-effort photography. If you’re a less confident photographer, or just want a phone that does the work for you, the Pixel 9 Pro very hard to beat. 
Read my full Pixel 9 Pro review for more detail on its features and performance.
£1,249 for 256GB model, Samsung, also available at Selfridges
Best camera phone, 9/10
We like: the ultimate Android camera phone, now with added AI goodies
Worth upgrading from S23? At launch yes, maybe not now that S23 is over £500 cheaper
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Compared to last year’s S23 Ultra, the S24 Ultra a significant upgrade, with a new titanium frame making it feel gorgeous in the hand and a new flat display with Gorilla Glass Armor. Naturally, there’s a price to match (£1,249 for the base model), but Samsung has almost gone overboard loading this phone with functionality so that buyers don’t need to worry that the investment isn’t worthwhile. 
Everything from the camera array to the battery life will outperform just about anything on the market, in a package that is absolutely gorgeous. This being 2024, it’s also liberally salted with genuinely useful AI features (some of which will come to the older S23 Ultra as an update). 
There’s AI-generated wallpaper similar to that found on the Pixel 8 pro, a voice recorder app which can transcribe directly to text, an app that can re-write text in different styles and a browser feature that can summarise longer articles automatically.
The most talked-about AI feature is real-time voice translation. Early users’ attempts to hold phone conversations with non-English speakers produced some alarming results, but the AI will no doubt learn and improve. All in all, it’s great fun, very 2024, and the features are neatly integrated. 
The S24’s performance is absolutely magnificent, up there with Apple’s most expensive handsets and comfortably outperforming any other Android out there. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset is insanely fast, allowing you to hop between different highly demanding apps without a hint of slowdown. Samsung boasts that it’s 20% faster and has 26% faster graphics that last year’s Gen 2 chip.  It’s incredibly good for games, with users able to hop straight to the highest graphics settings on anything you can download from Play Store. 
The huge 6.8-inch* QHD+ Dynamic AMOLED screen is also a marvel: Samsung claims it’s the brightest Galaxy screen ever, and it’s insanely sharp with films and games. 
Four of the cameras remain the same but there’s a new 50-megapixel 5x telephoto camera, along with the same incredibly detailed and functional software from last year’s S23. That makes this phone the best for photography out there (with an honourable mention for Google’s AI-boosted Pixel handsets). 
The battery life is utterly insane. Samsung claims you can get 30 hours of solid video watching off the 5,000mAh battery. What we found in our tests is that it reliably lasts a full day of extremely heavy use, and when left on and alone for a week, it still had more than 50 per cent battery life left.
Overall this is a gobsmackingly gorgeous and impressive device, albeit a device for the very small subsection of the phone market that is willing to spend three times the price of an entry-level laptop for a phone. 
£1,149, Very
Best smartphone for professional photography, 8/10
We like: Stylish, with some very clever tricks up its sleeve
Worth the upgrade from Xperia 1 V? Not if you already have one, but for new-to-Sony buyers this is a better package
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Sony’s Xperia handsets have always ploughed their own slightly eccentric furrow in the mobile phone market, with a marked emphasis on ‘serious’ photography and a very distinctive look. The latest Xperia I VI has actually shed some of the eccentricity, but retains the photo-focus and the elegant looks. With some very decent silicon inside and killer battery life it’s a refined, elegant choice if you want to get slightly more serious about your smartphone photography. 
Compared to its predecessor the Sony Xperia I V, it’s very different indeed: this phone abandons the 21:9 aspect ratio which allowed users to watch films exactly as they are filmed, and gave the handsets a distinctive ‘long’ look. Here, we’ve got a standard screen ratio and the phone no longer does 4K resolution on screen (although only certain apps took advantage of the resolution anyway, so it’s not an enormous loss). 
The screen is far brighter than the one on its predecessor, and the top-of-the-range Qualcomm chipset means this is the equal of anything else on the market in terms of speed and performance. But it still maintains that ‘different’ Sony touch: the sides are ribbed, the back micro-dot textured, and the restrained camera casing for the Zeiss lens gives this a sophisticated look not much in this category can match. 
The old-school approach also extends to some welcome extras that used to be standard on phones: you can add your own microSD expandable storage, and there’s the sadly now-exotic luxury of an actual headphone jack, tuned up this time round for better sound, plus really great forward-facing speakers. Sony’s expertise in TVs shines through a lot in this handset. 
Performance-wise, the new 120HZ panel is far brighter than its predecessor. Sony showed it off next to a high-end OLED Bravia television and the image looks to be tuned exactly the same. It really is like having a little television in your pocket.
The new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset means this blasts through any app you can throw at it from video to gaming. While it has the same battery as the predecessor, the new chipset and OLED are much less power-hungry, so the battery life is truly insane. You can leave it in standby for days and it barely drops and in day-to-day use, it comfortably lasts more than a day. 
The camera is the star here, although it’s not for everyone. Sony has made a few nods to the world of point-and-shoot beginners with the addition of some AI assistance, but you’ll be missing out if you don’t explore the pro-grade extras on offer here. (Thankfully they’re all in one app this time, rather than having a camera app for stupid people and one for clever people). 
There’s a lot of tech and ideas from Sony’s Bravia cameras, inclucing an excellent macro mode where objects flash yellow to show they’re in focus and a great Bokeh mode. The Pro menu offers plenty more to fiddle with.
It’s a lovely phone, and Sony’s concessions to the mass market here are welcome, but the price (£1,299, SIM-free) means it’s likely to remain a connoisseur’s choice: great for serious photographers, but a little too refined for the point-and-shoot masses.
£799, OnePlus
Best affordable smartphone, 8/10
We like: Top-end features for several hundred pounds less than rivals
Worth upgrading from OnePlus 11? It’s more expensive, but the camera, screen, processor and battery are all better 
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Chinese smartphone maker OnePlus has been on a roll in recent years, with a return to its roots as a brand that delivers high performance for far less than rivals such as Apple and Samsung. The good news with the OnePlus 12 is that the winning streak is still continuing. This is a unique, desirable device with its own visual language and a lot of tech extras, for a very decent price. It’s £100 less than any other device offering this level of performance and there are very few drawbacks to be found, with a lot of features offering a significant gloat factor.
In an age where physical buttons are becoming an endangered species, OnePlus bucks the trend with an incredibly useful slider that switches between ring, vibrate and do-not-disturb, meaning you can silence your phone without having to dip rudely into the menus when you’re around people.
At £879 the OnePlus 12 costs far less than Apple and Samsung’s high-end handsets. But under the bonnet lurks much of the same stuff that you can easily fork out with the bigger brands – most importantly, the top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip found in Samsung’s S24, plus 16GB of RAM. That makes this a serious performer for the money and it’s notably zippy whatever apps you are using.  
The screen is flat-out gorgeous, a 6.8-inch Quad HD+ AMOLED display which OnePlus says is the brightest on the market, with 1-120Hz variable refresh rate. It’s got neat extras including Aqua Touch, which keeps the touchscreen responsive even in rain (a godsend for British phone users about ten months of the year) and looks absolutely gorgeous with both films and games. 
Another excellent practical benefit from this phone is the charging, which is typically bonkers from OnePlus. You can charge the phone to full in 26 minutes on the supplied 100W charger, and it also lasts more than a day comfortably, every time, thanks to a high capacity 5,400mAh battery. 
The cameras are highly capable, too, with a new 32-megapixel selfie camera and some clever ‘auto’ modes such as night mode automatically switching on. You’re missing the digital ‘helping hand’ you get with Google’s Pixel handsets, but this is a highly capable and versatile performer for the money, with the option to record video in ultra-sharp 8K. 
So what corners have been cut to keep the price down? It’s lacking the AI extras offered by rivals from Google and Samsung – AI being this year’s favoured flavour of technological pixie dust – but it’s easy to live without these. Perhaps more importantly, it’s only IP65 rated for water resistance, so it will withstand splashing, but not prolonged immersion in water.
But these are minor quibbles: this is a great-value device with several distinct ‘special powers’ which mark it out from the competition, and a great device full stop. 
£429 for 64GB model, Apple, also available at John Lewis and Currys
Best cheap iPhone, 8/10
We like: smaller, lighter and easy to use than any of the phones above
Worth saving money over iPhone 16? Only if you don’t mind constantly recharging
Reviewed by Jack Rear
A few years Apple made the courageous decision to admit to itself that some of its would-be customers aren’t CEOs with bulging wallets and created the iPhone SE line for those with a slightly tighter budget. Starting from £449, the iPhone SE is not exactly bargain-basement, but does come with Apple’s luxury cachet. It’s also smaller and lighter than most modern phones, which is an underrated virtue. 
Unlike the iPhone 14, the SE comes with a fingerprint scanner rather than a face scanner, which personally I prefer. The 12MP main camera is outgunned by the similarly-priced Google Pixel and there is only one, so Apple’s prodigious image optimisation software has less to work with than on two-camera and three-camera phones. 
One huge difference between this and the iPhone 14 is the feeble battery. A day’s charge is the absolute maximum you’re going to get. Even with moderate usage, I was down to the low 20% range by 6pm. The blame lies with Apple’s powerful A15 bionic chip, the same one as used in the iPhone 14 above. It makes the phone’s software running very quick and smooth, but unfortunately the smaller battery is simply unable to cope. 
For those who don’t use their phone very often or work in an office with access to chargers nearby, the iPhone SE will do the job. Otherwise, I’d be tempted to spend a bit more and plump for a mainline iPhone. 
£238.49, Amazon also available at AO
Best cheap Samsung phone, 8/10
We like: Lots of bang for not much buck
Worth saving money over S24? The only real sacrifice is in camera quality and gaming power
Reviewed by Rob Waugh 
One of the big surprises with good mid-range phones is how much you actually get for a phone half the price (or even less) of a flagship. Stepping down from the plateau of flagship phones into the midrange world, you might expect to lose a huge amount of functionality, or end up with an unreliable device. But no: with smartphones such as Samsung’s A series of midrangers, you really get almost everything you get with a flagship, at less than half the price. 
The Galaxy A54 5G is another solid, high-performing handset from Samsung’s A series, which has delivered reliable mid-rangers for many years. This one looks like a modern Samsung with a triple-lens camera on the back, and has a 6.4-inch full HD screen which is bright and gorgeous to look at, with a very decent battery life of up to 13 hours. 
The phone’s frame doesn’t feel cheap, either (often a calling card of mid-range devices) with Gorilla Glass on both sides, and a pleasant metallic finish. Performance-wise, this will meet the demands of almost any phone user barring obsessive gamers who simply must have the latest silicon, with an octa-core Exynos chip delivering rapid responses and lag-free operation. 
So what’s missing? Well, there’s no wireless charging, and the camera’s good but not as sensational as Google’s mid-range rival the Pixel 7a, which offers Google’s trademark AI pizzazz and great low-light performance. The GPU isn’t the highest performer out there so if you’re using this to play highly demanding games, you might have to turn down your graphics settings. It’s also marginally less ‘fun’ than some newer mid-range rivals like Google’s Pixel 7a and the LED-equipped Nothing Phone 2, although still a very solid choice. 
£419 for 128GB model, John Lewis also available at Carphone Warehouse
Best cheap Android phone, 9/10
We like: It’s the best camera on a cheap phone 
Worth saving money over Pixel 8 Pro? If you can live with the smaller screen, definitely
Reviewed by Jack Rear
Though Google’s cheaper line of phones, identified by the ‘a’ in the name, have crept up in price since their inception, the Pixel 8a is still a decent bargain. In a lot of the ways that count, it is very similar to its big brother, the Pixel 8 Pro. 
You still get all of the handy AI features which you can use to edit your pictures like a pro, whether that’s snipping out random passers-by from the back of your selfies to resizing elements within. It’s all very helpful. The camera, although not as powerful as the one on the 8 Pro, is still backed up by Google’s AI upscaling system, making it punch well above its weight in terms of picture quality. 
In terms of what you lose with the cheaper model, your mileage may vary. The screen is a fair bit smaller, the battery is a bit smaller (though to be fair, with all that AI hoovering up computational power Pixel batteries have always been rubbish), and the cameras are slightly less technically powerful. That shouldn’t matter if you’re just posting your pictures to social media though, it’s only if you plan to print them off and blow them up that things might be trickier. 
£580, Amazon, also available at Currys and Carphone Warehouse
Best looking smartphone, 7/10
We like: very cool ‘glyph’ lights on the back
We don’t like: the camera tech isn’t quite first rate
Reviewed by Jack Rear
I was quite taken with the Nothing Phone (2)’s predecessor, the Nothing Phone (1). Just when it seemed as if all smartphone design had coalesced around the same basic form, along came this spunky British challenger (designed by a former Apple designer), with a clear chassis exposing the phone’s inner workings and light-up ‘glyphs’ whenever you got a text. 
You can set these glyphs so that different apps light them up in different ways. You could choose for a call from your partner to light up everything, while a call from your boss only lights up one glyph, for example. 
This second generation has more lights, allowing you to customise the glyphs a bit further. There are also more apps to use them with. You can now use the glyphs as a light to help with night shooting, which is helpful. 
Another big upgrade is the selfie camera, whose resolution has been doubled to 32MP, complementing the returning 50MP main and ultrawide angle cameras. Images are sharp, detailed and bright. However, given that most of the ‘quality’ of modern smartphone camera pictures come from algorithmic tweaks between pressing the button and the image appearing in your gallery, Nothing still doesn’t quite rival the big names in the image quality department. 
With a jumbo 4,700mAh battery, the Nothing comfortably lasted me all day with a good 40 percent to spare, in contrast to my Pixel which normally needs recharging by 5pm. Plus, a full charge takes just an hour. 
The final thing to say is that the price is roughly £200 more than what it was for the original Nothing Phone (1). The new phone is an upgrade, but not a huge one. If you see the older model at a discount, I say go for it.
£329 for 256GB model, Nothing
Best budget British phone, 7/10
We like: Biggest screen on a budget phone 
We don’t like: Some of the fun glyphs have been sacrificed
Reviewed by Jack Rear
Costing £200 less than the cheapest Nothing Phone (2) – these brackets are getting really annoying to type – the Nothing Phone (2a) stands out for being no smaller in its budget form, unlike the iPhone SE and Pixel 8a. Its 6.7 inch screen is one of the biggest screens you can get on a budget phone. So, for those who do a lot of work or watch a lot of Netflix on their phone, this might be the way to go. 
However, in order to power that big screen, there are some drawbacks of the (2a) compared to its flagship big brother. The processor is a bit weaker and that leads to a few drawbacks, chiefly to the camera’s image processing. The photos you take, while perfectly nice, don’t pop quite as much as on the main model. 
There’s no wireless charging on the (2a), but that’s no great loss. Wireless charging has always been a bit of a gimmick. The biggest disappointment is that a lot of the fun glyphs which are Nothing’s trademark have been pared back here. 
While the Nothing Phone (2) has six glyphs to display notifications, alarms, timers, and more, the Nothing Phone (2a) has just three. That means they’re less customisable and less useful. It’s a small thing, maybe most people won’t even notice them, but given it’s Nothing’s thing, it does feel sadly missed. 
£606.21 for 256GB model, Amazon
Best smartphone camera, 7/10
We like: exceptional camera lenses by Hasselblad
We don’t like: not everyone wants their pictures to look this pure and natural
Reviewed by Jack Rear
There are dozens of things to recommend about Chinese manufacturer Oppo’s Find X5, including the blazingly fast charging: 0-100 percent in 47 minutes. iPhones can take two hours to charge. If you’re the type of person who uses their phone and battery-draining apps a lot, this should be a huge-selling point. 
The cameras are the biggest draw, however: two swanky 50MP main and ultra-wide-angle cameras on the back and a 32MP front camera. Oppo and its sister-company OnePlus have been working with Swedish camera manufacturer Hasselblad. The partnership has been a huge success, elevating their camera technology from just okay to genuinely great. In pure hardware terms, I’d say that Oppo and OnePlus phones have the best cameras on the market. Their wide-angle lens is jaw-dropping.
However, I still say Google’s Pixel phones are the go-to for snappers. It all comes back to that image optimisation. Oppo’s cameras are based on Hasselblad’s ‘Natural Colour Calibration’ to use more natural and accurate colours. I’m sure it’s more professional, but compared to the ones I took on my Pixel 6 Pro, they just felt ever so slightly washed out and dull. I can’t help favouring the Pixel. 
Oppo also make a standard model Find X5 which currently goes for £340 and a budget Find X5 Lite at £260. The Lite doesn’t have the swanky camera but, for my money, it’s still better than pretty much anything else in the same price bracket. For the average customer it’s a strong choice.
There is a more recent Oppo Find X6, by the way, but it’s only available in China.
 
£1,049 for 256MB model, Samsung
Best folding phone, 9/10
We like: fast performance and improved battery life
We don’t like: pricey and not many apps can be used on the outer screen
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Samsung finally hit the ‘sweet spot’ for folding phones with last year’s Z Flip 5, after almost a decade of showing off foldable screens at tech shows followed by four generations of handsets – and the new Flip 6 builds on the considerable strengths of its predecessor, rather than breaking the mould. 
Like its predecessor, the Z Flip 6 is a gorgeous-looking and well-engineered handset with a great screen (in fact, if you don’t examine them closely, you’d be hard-pressed to tell them apart). Under the bonnet, there’s a few welcome changes including a better chipset for faster performance, and much-improved battery life. 
Overall though, there’s not a huge amount to differentiate it from the last one: the 6.7-inch screen is slightly brighter and folds with a less noticeable ‘crinkle’ in the middle, and the ‘outer’ screen is crisp and gorgeous (although there’s still not that many apps you can use with it). 
The camera’s considerably better, using the same excellent sensors and lenses found in Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S24, so it’s a no-compromise choice on the photography front, turning out excellent photographs both during the day and at night. 
There’s the latest, greatest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip (the same that’s found in a lot of top Android handsets) so it performs very briskly with everyday tasks and even demanding apps like games. The battery’s also had a significant bump up to 4,000mAh, meaning you can last more than a day with everyday use. 
There’s also a whole suite of AI features including on-screen instant translation and the ability to alter images using AI. They’re fun (as with all the other phones that have majored on AI features this year), but won’t vastly alter the way you use the phone, although voice transcription and summarisation can be useful. 
The phone’s main drawback remains exactly the same as last year: the price. This has, sadly, nosed upwards rather than downwards and the handset will cost you  £1,049 for the basic model. This is about as good as flip phones get, but this is a relatively new technology, and as with anything new, it costs. 
Currently £649 for 256GB model, Very, also available at Carphone Warehouse
Best flip phone, 9/10
We like: perfectly balanced folding phone
We don’t like: high price compared to non-folding varieties
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Motorola’s RAZR phones ruled the world back in the early 2000s, with the phone perfecting the flip phone aesthetic with its ultra-slim form, becoming an iconic device which sold 130 million units. Paris Hilton was rarely to be seen without her pink RAZR back in its heyday. 
Now the RAZR brand has returned as a 2024-style flip phone (opening into a vertical touchscreen, as opposed to folding phones like Google’s Pixel Fold, whose interior screens are horizontal). It’s a serious performer too, thanks to a 3.6 inch, 1,44Hz second screen which lets you interact with apps, see notifications and check basic information such as weather and time. It’s the biggest on a ‘flip’ phone  and it makes the device far more usable and a far more attractive choice. 
The interior 6.9-inch screen is gorgeous, and the phone has a fast Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 processor. The camera, as with many folding phones, is fairly mediocre given the price, but there’s some nice extras. For instance, you can use the exterior display as a ‘mirror’ for your subjects to see themselves in. 
Aesthetically, it’s a winner. It’s gloriously thin (what else would you expect from a RAZR handset?) and folds into a neat, thin square when not in use. 
As with many folding phones, the issue here is the price tag: this costs as much as Google and Apple’s flagship handsets but can’t compete on most functions.
£1,749, Google, also available at Mobiles.co.uk
Best foldable phone, 10/10
We like: Gorgeous premium finish and great camera
We don’t like: very expensive indeed
Reviewed by Rob Waugh
Google’s Pixel Fold is a different take on the folding phone idea. It folds out into a huge square, pretty much a full-fledged tablet, with a 7.6-inch screen which is great for watching videos or doing work. What’s more, it’s got a full-blown screen on the front, which you can interact with just like you would a normal phone. This means you can (for example) fire off a reply to an email without having to unfurl the full width of the screen.
The fly in the ointment here is that the Fold comes in at an eye-watering £1,749 compared with just £799 for Google’s own non-folding Pixel 9. Is it more than twice as good?  
Well, it is an incredibly fun device to use. It feels great in the hand: it’s extremely thin, closing without a gap, and to be fair to the phone, it feels more premium than others in this category with a pleasingly posh aluminium, glass and stainless steel finish. 
As always with Google Pixel devices, the camera is sterling (something that’s not guaranteed in the folding market), and the 7.6-inch screen here is crisp and gorgeous. 
As with anything that’s relatively ground-breaking (there are similar Samsung devices, but nothing with this square-ish shape of screen) there are occasional apps which refuse to play ball, but it feels fresh, innovative, and delightful to use. As always with Pixel devices, it’s not loaded with weird bloatware apps that no one wants, so it’s simple enough even for iPhone fans to switch to. Expensive, but gorgeous. 
 
Your smartphone questions answered, by Jack Rear
Most current smartphones will take great pictures and high-end models compete to offer the best cameras. Camera resolution is measured in megapixels (MP). Pixels are the tiny dots on your screen which make up images. There are a million of them in a megapixel. A camera with more megapixels can take bigger and higher quality photos and show more detail. 
Resolutions these days range from around 12MP to 50MP. However, megapixels aren’t everything. Increasingly, phones use AI to enhance and improve the images. Many people would choose a phone with superior AI (such as the Google Pixel) over one with a superior camera.
Expect a minimum of 128GB (gigabytes) of storage; 256GB is becoming the standard. 1TB (one terabyte) is available on some phones, but you will only need that much storage if you want a lot of music, games or videos available on your phone at all times (rather than stored in the cloud).
Measured diagonally from the top corner to the bottom corner, current screen sizes range from just under five inches to close to seven inches. Larger screens can be uncomfortable to hold in the hand or fit in the pocket, but are better for reading and watching video.
Any phone with significantly more than 24 hours is considered very good. Many manufacturers will judge battery on “talk time”, but the phones will actually last days if left on standby.
A phone’s battery capacity is measured in milli-Ampere hours: the higher the mAh rating, the more charge the battery can hold. There is no direct way to calculate from this how long the phone will last between charges, however, because it depends on the phone’s processor (more powerful processors use more power) and your usage. Playing games will drain the battery far faster than reading texts, for example. Variables like screen brightness and refresh-rate also affect battery life, as do Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.
In our reviews we give estimates for moderate usage, where the phone is on standby through the night and actively used for about four hours a day (the global average) for calls, social media, playing music, watching videos and gaming.
Sometimes known as the Central Processing Unit or CPU, this is the bit of the phone which decides how fast the phone will load. That’s everything from loading apps to loading video. It’s also about how many apps the phone can have running at once. A better processor means a faster phone, basically.
Measured in Hertz (Hz), this is how many times per second the image on your screen changes, as you scroll or watch content. A 60Hz refresh rate was once the standard, but we’ve started to see phones with 90Hz or even 120Hz refresh rates coming out. In short, it just makes the things you watch smoother, and scrolling through long articles glide more easily. You’d probably notice the difference going from a 60Hz screen to a 120Hz screen or vice versa, but it’s shouldn’t be a deal-breaker for most people. 
RAM (Random Access Memory) is the space in which your phone will store all the information it needs right now. Essentially, this is how many apps you can have running at once before they slow their phone down. Most phones come with 6GB or 8GB of RAM.
iOS is Apple’s operating system, used on all iPhones. Android OS is Google’s operating system, now used on almost all non-Apple devices including phones from Samsung, Sony and OnePlus. Android can be customised by the manufacturer so that a Samsung Android will likely work a bit differently to a OnePlus Android.
Android has the benefit of Google’s immense algorithmic brain power and seamless interaction with the overarching Google suite of products. On the downside, most Android phones effectively double-up on apps, so you might have a Samsung music player and Google Play Music, or a standard gallery and Google Photos. This can cause Android devices to feel somewhat cluttered. In addition, Android updates have to be rolled out across dozens of different devices from different manufacturers, meaning that they take a long time to prepare. 
Some users prefer the choice you get with Android, and there has probably never been a better time to buy an Android phone due to the choice and variety available. That said, the more reliable security updates from Apple have kept it popular, despite some battery troubles on older devices.
It’s worth reading our guide to the best anti-virus software to protect your smartphone from cybercrime and the best VPNs to keep your details safe from prying eyes when using a smartphone on public Wi-Fi. 
Or you could go the safe route and avoid the ‘smart’ part of smartphone altogether. Read our guides to the best dumbphones and the best cordless home phones to find the best one for you.) 
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