The 20 Best Smartphones In The World

The gap between good and great smartphones is getting smaller and smaller, and ranking smartphones is becoming harder and harder.

There's a lot to consider here, such as specs, features, design, and price. Thankfully, most of these smartphones come with more than enough power, great designs, and tons of features.

The biggest thing to watch out for in the next month is price. Phones like the OnePlus 5T and Essential Phone cost as little as $500, and there isn't a huge difference between them and the $800-plus phones on this list. Prices of big-name smartphones are increasing, but the moderately priced premium Android phone is clearly making a comeback, and it's better than ever.

Check out the top 20 smartphones you can buy.

20. BlackBerry Classic

BlackBerry

If you're still a BlackBerry fan, you'll love the Classic. It looks like older BlackBerry models but features a sharp touchscreen and an excellent physical keyboard.

Price: $240

19. Sony XZ Premium

Jeff Dunn/BI

On the one hand, this a good phone. The screen is great, the software is clean, and the whole thing is superfast.

But on the other, with its underwhelming battery and slippery, sometimes uncomfortable design, it's not the device that should reverse Sony's fortunes.

Previously priced at $800, the XZ Premium is now available for less than $600 on Amazon, which makes it easier to live with its shortcomings.

Price: $570

18. BlackBerry KeyOne

BI

The KeyOne is BlackBerry's successor to the Priv. Both run Android and feature physical keyboards. But while the Priv's keyboard slid out from behind its screen, the KeyOne's is permanently located just below its display.

The KeyOne is a great device for those who want a physical keyboard and access to Google's apps and services, which aren't available on other BlackBerry devices.

Price: $500

17. Motorola Moto G5 Plus

Business Insider

The Moto G5 Plus continues to be our favorite budget-friendly Android smartphone. It demonstrates that "good-but-not-great hardware can become strong value at the right price," as Dunn said in his review on BI.

With the G5 Plus, you get a 5.2-inch 1080p screen, a fingerprint scanner, great battery life, a 12-megapixel camera that beats those of other phones in its price range, a nearly pristine version of Android, and a sleek design. All for a mere $230.

It doesn't have as many features as premium phones. For example, it doesn't have an NFC antenna, so it can't be used for mobile payments. And to charge the G5 Plus, you'll have to use a microUSB cable — it doesn't support USB-C, the newer, faster phone-charging standard.

Price: $230

16. Motorola Moto G5S Plus


The Moto G5S Plus is an upgrade from the G5 Plus.

The newer phone features an all-metal design, whereas the previous one has a half-metal, half-plastic case. And the new phone has a bigger screen — a 5.5-inch display versus 5.2-inch one.

But one of the biggest improvements is in the camera. The G5S Plus has a 13-megapixel dual-lens camera system.

Price: $280

15. Motorola Moto Z2 Force

Motorola/Lenovo

The new Moto Z2 Force comes with everything you'd expect from a premium smartphone. As Dunn noted in his review, it's "very fast, its screen looks good, its cameras are capable of taking nice photos, and it has a razor-thin frame." And its 5.5-inch Amoled display is more resistant to cracking than most other smartphones' screens.

However, the Z2 Force is a little too reliant on Motorola's Mods — the company's line of snap-on accessories, including external speakers and bigger batteries, designed for its Z-series phones. Without such Mods, the Z2 Force doesn't feel like a complete-enough device to push it higher on this list.

Price: $539 - $999

14. Apple iPhone SE/6S/6S Plus

Apple

These three devices have similar specs, and are still available from Apple. They're also still amazing smartphones.

Apple recently released iOS 11, the latest version of its mobile operating system, and my iPhone 6S Plus still runs great with it.

The SE, 6S, and 6S Plus all feature great cameras and Apple's Touch ID fingerprint sensor, which allows you to quickly unlock your phone. Another bonus: These are the last iPhones that still have headphone jacks.

These phones are even better if you buy them refurbished at a deep discount from Apple.

iPhone SE price: $181 - $399

iPhone 6S price: $324 - $565

iPhone 6S Plus price: $372 - $429

13. HTC U11

BI

The U11 has an excellent camera, an eye-catching reflective back, and speedy performance. And it has a fun feature that allows you to squeeze its edges to open any app you want, including Google Assistant.

In most respects, it's a great Android smartphone. But it has two notable shortcomings — it lacks a headphone jack, and the borders around its display are relatively large, which is something that now looks old-fashioned in design.

Price: $650

12. LG G6

BI

The G6 is LG's best smartphone. With it, LG is finally offering a phone with a premium design and water-resistance — features that put the G6 in the same league as Samsung's and Apple's flagship devices.

The G6 has a good dual-lens camera and a slightly longer-than-average screen that's great for viewing and using apps because it shows more of them than a standard display.

But the G6 has one notable downside: an older processor. Its Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 chip was superseded by the Snapdragon 835 two months after the G6 launched. Unlike the G6, Samsung's Galaxy S8, one of its chief rivals, has the newer chip.

While the Snapdragon 821 is still a great processor, its likely to become obsolete sooner than its successor, and the G6 is likely to start seeming slower sooner than the Galaxy S8.

Price: $550

11. Essential Phone

Business Insider

The Essential Phone is a gorgeous device. It has a mostly edge-to-edge display and a case made of ultra-premium materials — ceramic on the back and titanium on the sides. It also runs a nearly stock version of Android, which I prefer over the heavily modified versions that Samsung and LG phones tend to use.

Overall, the Phone is a great first effort from Essential. It's a speedy performer and takes great photos, too. It has two magnetic pins on its back that serve as a connection point for peripherals, including a 360-degree camera and a wireless-charging dock.

Essential recently dropped the price of the Phone to $500 from $700. That's a great deal for a great phone.

Price: $389 - $664

10. Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus

BI

The Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus are among the best-looking smartphones out right now. It looks better than Apple's iPhone 8, and it's sleeker than Samsung's Note 8.

With the S8 and S8 Plus, Samsung refined the curved glass design it used with the S7. Meanwhile, the ultranarrow borders around the S8's screen make it the new standard for premium smartphone design.

In addition to their good looks, the Galaxy S8 phones are full of great features. They're water-resistant. They have taller-than-average screens that allow you to see more of your apps or webpages. They support both fast and wireless charging, and face and iris recognition. They have one of the best cameras, and, unlike Apple Pay or Android Pay, Samsung's Pay wireless-payments service works on pretty much every credit-card reader. The home button is also hidden beneath the display, so it feels more familiar to use than new phones that have ditched the button.

With all those attributes, you're likely wondering why the S8 phones didn't make the top of this list: I'm not a fan of TouchWiz, Samsung's software interface that runs on top of Android, and I prefer the clean look and features of stock Android.

But it's more than a simple personal preference. Modifications like TouchWiz almost always prevent the phones running them from installing the latest Android updates when they're released. And that's the case here.

The S8 phones rely on TouchWiz for face- and iris-recognition capabilities. But those features don't make up for a possible inability to install timely Android updates.

Galaxy S8 price: $640

Galaxy S8 Plus price: $705

9. Apple iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are now a year old, but at their new $550 and $670 price tags, they easily beat the Galaxy S8 phones.

Apple phones generally offer better apps and a better owner experience than their Android rivals, and the iPhone 7 is no different. The support you get from Apple if something goes wrong is superior to what you get from Android device-makers. And unlike on most Android phones, with iPhones you can always get the latest software updates straight from Apple as soon as it releases them.

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus offer some compelling features, including a water-resistant case, a great camera that performs well in low light, and a powerful processor. The phone also works well with other Apple products, including the company's wireless AirPods headphones.

The iPhone 7 Plus' dual-lens camera system is the key feature. It allows you to take pictures with a professional-looking "bokeh" effect, which blurs the subject's background. The second camera in its system is a telephoto lens that offers a 2x optical zoom. Unlike the digital zoom feature found in other cameras, an optical zoom allows you to enlarge an image of your subject without sacrificing picture quality.

iPhone 7 price: $441 - $628

iPhone 7 Plus price: $541 - $694

8. Razer Phone

Razer/Amazon

The Razer Phone is marketed as a "gaming" phone, mostly because of its unique display that plays games incredibly smoothly — it can achieve up to 120 frames per second, whereas most phones go up to only 60 fps. Having twice the fps makes for super smooth gameplay.

But high fps isn't just for gamers. The phone's apps and Android operating system get the high-fps treatment too, and it works beautifully. Everything you do on the phone is ultrasmooth in a way we've never seen before on a smartphone — Razer may have inadvertently set a new standard for how all phone displays should work moving forward, not just ones on gaming phones.

It also has an eye-catching industrial design compared with most sleek and svelte Android phones. The large bezels above and below the Razer Phone's display may not appeal to everyone, especially since most phones in 2017 have switched to bezel-less designs. However, hiding beneath those massive bezels are the loudest and best speakers we've heard on any smartphone.

Price: $700

7. Samsung Galaxy Note 8

Sarah Jacobs/Business Insider

With its gorgeous design, ultra-thin borders around its screen, a beautiful display, fast performance, a dual-lens camera system, and fancy stylus-based features, the Note 8 takes the best attributes of Samsung's Galaxy S and Note smartphone lines and smashes them together into a phone that's hard to beat.

Price: $780

6. OnePlus 5T

BI

If you're not looking to spend $850 or more on a phone with a large screen, the OnePlus 5T is the Android phone to get. It's a fantastic phone that's only made better by its incredible $500 starting price.

It also comes with more RAM than any other smartphone we've tried, guaranteeing top performance. On top of that, its great camera comes with a portrait mode that competes with those of the iPhone X and Pixel 2 phones. And my favorite feature: It runs a near-stock version of Android.

Price: $469 - $595

5. Google Pixel 2

Google

The Pixel 2 might not be the most beautiful Android phone you can buy, but its secret weapon is its pure Android experience.

The device runs the latest version of the operating system. Because it's unadulterated, that version looks and runs better than any of the tweaked takes on Android other phone-makers include with their devices.

Better yet, because the Pixel 2's Android is unmodified, you'll be able to install the latest updates as soon as Google rolls them out. That's not something you can usually do with other Android phones. It's something that I feel is important — who doesn't want the latest software from the top software company in the world?

But the Pixel 2 has other features that help put it ahead of other Android devices, including its amazing camera, performance, and battery life. It's like a less attractive but smarter Samsung Galaxy phone.

The Pixel 2 is also water-resistant, unlike its predecessor, the original Pixel. But while we rated that device higher than last year's iPhone 7, the new device doesn't out-rate the new iPhone 8. While the iPhone 8 supports wireless charging and ships with a set of headphones, the Pixel 2 offers neither.

Price: $650

4. Google Pixel 2 XL

Google

The Pixel 2 XL has nearly the same components and features that make the Pixel 2 great — but in a bigger package with a larger display and a fresher-looking design. The Pixel 2 XL isn't the best-looking Android phone, but with the narrow borders around its screen, it looks sleeker and more refined than its smaller sibling or its predecessors from last year.

And the unadulterated Android experience it offers is unbeatable.

You should note, though, that users and reviewers have reported encountering several problems with the Pixel 2 XL, mostly with its screen. I haven't experienced any of them while testing my review unit, so I'm not factoring them into the phone's ranking.

Users were also saying that colors on the Pixel 2 XL's display weren't as vibrant as those on other top Android phones. Google has recently issued an update that makes colors more vibrant.

Price: $780 - $1255

3. Apple iPhone 8

BI

Google's original Pixel phones topped last year's iPhone 7. But now that the new iPhones are here, Apple is back on top.

The iPhone 8 comes with a refined glass-and-metal case, a superb camera, and incredible performance. With it, Apple is finally supporting both wireless and fast charging — features that Android phones have long offered but had been missing from previous iPhones.

What pushes the iPhone 8 ahead of the Android pack is its iOS operating system and the broader Apple ecosystem. You can get the latest updates straight from Apple as soon as they're released, iOS apps are generally better-designed than their Android counterparts, and if something goes wrong with your phone, you can get help at one of the hundreds of Apple Stores.

Price: $700

2. Apple iPhone 8 Plus

BI

The iPhone 8 Plus includes all the best things about the iPhone 8, but it adds a bigger, better screen and a dual-lens camera system that features a telephoto lens and the ability to take shots like those you could capture with a professional camera.

Price: $800

1. Apple iPhone X

Hollis Johnson/Business Insider

It's undeniable. The iPhone X offers the best of the iPhone and Apple ecosystem along with the best design in a smartphone we've ever seen.

With its outrageously beautiful OLED display that takes up most of the front of the phone, as well as wireless and fast charging, the iPhone X has brought Apple's iPhones up to speed with top-of-the-line Android hardware. Android owners always enjoyed the latest smartphone hardware features until now.

It'll cost you at least $1,000, but that's the price of near perfection in a smartphone.

Price: $1,000

This post was originally published on: Businessinsider.
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