Gadgetory

hey guys and welcome back to hard round box today's video is going to be a little different to some of the stuff that we normally do on the channels gonna be more of a sort of discussion star video like Steve would do with unboxing boxes and we're gonna be talking about smartphones specifically the smartphones that I think are some of the best value buyers out on the market right and how everything from sort of your your high-end stuff right at the top like your Galaxy S nines all the way down to I think we're gonna go down to about a hundred dollars in this video so we're covering a whole ton of price points for you guys and this is actually video that I was tossing up whether or not I actually do considering obviously most of the content on our channel is to do with pcs and that sort of thing but I asked you guys on the community tab of our YouTube channel more than a thousand people voted so thank you very much for that I think at the time filming this was about sixty nine percent of people wanted to see this video so I thought that that's probably enough to sort of justify making one so we're going to go through very casually we'll just take a look at some smartphones and yeah I'll give you guys my thoughts so let's get into it I've actually printed some gamers Nexus style notes here for this particular one normally use a teleprompter to fill most of our videos but I felt that it's time to test out super than my printer still actually works so we'll start right at the top end and I think for most people you're going to be deciding whether you want to use Android or iOS I think there's not many people that are really tossing up between say like an iPhone X or a galaxy s 9 or a pixel to excel straight up on value I still think that you know you choose one of those ecosystems and stick with it pretty much for life so obviously with iOS you choose an iPhone X that's the best iPhone you can get on the market as far as Apple devices go that's pretty much the best one as far as Android devices go um there's a lot of really good options at the top and I think it comes down to sort of two brackets you'd have to say I think if you really want the best hardware in terms of the overall package at the moment I'd be going for the Samsung Galaxy S 9 plus and the snapdragon version of that specifically and there's a couple of reasons for that so the Galaxy S 9 plus has a really great display its high resolution it's got really good color quality you've got accurate modes in there as well for vibrant modes the snapdragon 845 that you get in snapdragon model really good performance really good cellular performance for things like 4G LTE it's got a whole range of connectivity features there that aren't necessarily support on some other devices gigabit LT is one of them it's got really good battery life as well the larger phone the s9 + in particular has that good battery life the s9 the smaller one not quite as much but I quite like what the s9 + Snapdragon model provides in that respect and as well the really good cameras on the back I really like their thousand fps slow motion then it can do the true aperture thing is neat and the color quality and just general image quality from the camera is really good there's a few things that I would say though about the s9 + that I don't like the XR nice model I think is worth avoiding so for those of you in Australia like me unfortunately the XR small one that were actually being given but I think that moral because of a few performance issues it's more flash generation its performance and battery life isn't that impressive I would steer clear of that one this is the pixel 2 XL long time was my daily driver I'd probably stick to that if you're in Australia for the best phone you can get the galaxy s 9 plus you get X and all smaller like this one which is not something that I would recommend unfortunately yeah the other concerns I have is with the software and I don't like Samsung software all that much it has been improving but there's still a lot of bloat where there's still a lot of things that I think slow down the performance a bit compared to the stock Android experience that you get with something like the pixel to excel so what I would recommend I know you guys promote say I'm assuming you're enthusiast for this sort of thing if you get your s 9 plus I would definitely be going and looking on xda-developers getting either a stock rom and just flashing that entirely or alternatively using things like the pixel launcher and just generally swapping out as much of Samsung's garbage as you can because yeah Samsung software option is not that great and that's really one of the reasons why I still like the pixel to excel because you get to stock Android and the camera on the pixel to excel is also slightly better than I think you get with the galaxy s 9 plus so next up we have the best value Android smartphone or best value smartphone overall I think this one is the one that I would personally by over some of those top-end devices and actually it's become my daily driver recently this is the one plus six and yeah there's not a lot of bad things I can say about this phone really considering I've been using it for quite a while I've used a lot of these other phones for a while as well but this one in particular it's 520 US dollars through the oneplus store five hundred and thirty US dollars I think for the 64gb model admittedly you do miss out on some of the features that some of the top in phones would get there's no micro SD card slot there's no waterproofing the camera quality isn't quite the same level as your pixels or your samsung galaxy s nines but you still get things like a qualcomm snapdragon 845 SOC it's really fast and in this particular unit considering it uses mostly a stock Android experience I found to be really fast natually in some of our real-world benchmark and I've sort of been doing on the side it was edging out some of the other devices just a little bit which is always nice to see from that sort of phone it's also got a headphone jack I know there's a lot of discussion about whether you know dongles are still a thing and still you know the real downsides to having dongles but I love having the 3.5 mm headphone jack still in the phone because I still have headphones that use it and the pixel two is one of those phones it doesn't have the headphone jack so annoyingly you have to use the dongle the s9 plus has one but I just think it's one of those features that really adds to the value even even though it's just a really sort of small feature I guess you'd have to say other things I guess it is splash proof the device again no micro SD card slot uses oxygen OS which is very close to stock Android you won't get the same level of I guess updates that you would get from a pixel device but because it's stock Android I think there really isn't a lot of things you need to adjust out of the box to make that a really nice usage usage experience and there's not a lot of blood we're on there either there so as far as the software is concerned it's great and they display 1080p class large display I think it's six point three inches or there abouts and it has got at the knotch I was really big notch hater before getting into using this device but honestly after using this for like a month or so now don't notice the knotch so changed my opinion on that one but I really liked what this smartphone provides for the 530 dollars you would get it through Amazon unfortunately for those of you in Australia not available in Australia you'll have to either import it or yeah I don't really know I think one place used to sell the 1+5 in Australia but they're just they've got a bit off that bandwagon with the one plus six unfortunately so so next to use the mid-priced phone sort of looking in your 200 to 400 US dollar price range and there's a lot of phones in this market a lot of phones and one thing that I really don't like people recommending I see this a lot and a lot of articles out there is there's so many mid-range options that just don't give you good value for money they're just they skimp on things in the hardware then don't give you features that other smartphones available in that price to give you things like your mid tiers from Sony from Samsung LG HTC all of those companies I think have pretty unimpressive mid-range options but there are a couple of standouts the first category that I always like recommending is flagship phones from the last generation so often if you go back and look on Amazon for things like LG's last generation phones Samsung's last generation phones they might be starting to fall into that $400 sub $400 price category and I think those phones provide really good value the pixel one at the moment so that's the first generation pixel the one before this one that I've got over here that's currently retailing for 320 US dollars on Amazon it's a really good buy it's got the Snapdragon 820 one in there which is much faster than your Snapdragon 600 series SOC s like you typically see in mid-range devices the camera it's pretty much unparalleled in that price range it's still a really good stock Android you could get Google's you know official software updates cuz it's still supported there that's your life is quite good from this smaller pixel which is the one that's three hundred and twenty dollars so I think all around for 320 bucks that combination of hardware it just blows out of the water to be on some of those other smartphones you know things that only give you the Snapdragon 600 is the crappy 13 megapixel rear cameras all that sort of thing it's just way better value for money in my opinion for $250 I would recommend at the moment the Motorola MOTO G 6 I believe the new one the g6 I've recommended the Moto G phones for a long time and I know this sort of riles up people who are sort of more in the shower and cheap Android device side of things but I really think that for a lot of people who just want a phone that works well out of the box you can't go past the nice stock Android experience that Motorola provides on the Moto G phones it really is so much better than the crap you get with xiaomi phones and especially when you import a lot of xiaomi phones you have to you install the Google Play Store through dodgy means they'll come with Chinese installed out of the box sometimes you have to install English I've actually had to do that on Xiaomi devices in the past I really like what Xiaomi provides from a hardware perspective I think they do quite well there but considering the Moto G 6 is only 250 bucks and you're getting a snapdragon 450 which is reasonably powerful in that sort of price range 32 gig of storage is standard micro SD card slot headphone jack it's got a 5.7 inch 1080p cars 89 display so it's hitting those modern trends there with the display I quite like the display on it Bachelor is really good because you're getting that Snapdragon 400 series SOC but the crucial thing really is that software it's going to be updated to the new version of Android that's coming out shortly no guarantees with Xiaomi devices whatsoever there and I just way prefer using stock Android so probably going to get a ton of comments saying that the Xiaomi devices are better from their hardware and I would agree in some cases that's true you would get better hardware but for someone who just wants to pick up a phone and use it straight out of the box I think the Moto G 6 provides a much better experience and much less frustrating experience and the cameras not too bad either for those who want to spend a little bit less money the Moto G 6 play is $200 through Amazon also a good option you sacrifice a bit of performance and a few other hardware features but you do save a good amount of money there so that's two options and for those of you in Australia who aren't available to access these phones through Amazon unfortunately where things like the pixel 1 and the G 6 aren't as good value for money I would still recommend the g 6 I think it's a really good option here in Australia as well it's actually really competitively priced use so that's quite a good option and the final category that below $100 phone now there's a few caveats I want to talk about with hundred-dollar phones and one of them is really you should avoid buying them I think once you start getting to 200 bucks 250 bucks like with you G sixes and your j6 plays you really get good value-for-money there you get decent hardware decent displays decent cameras and you can use one of those phones and live and have a good life not to be frustrated I think a hundred dollars is really you know you really are strapped for cash and you're trying to save as much money as possible so I would still stick to your $200 phones if you can I know some people can't so the phone I recommend for $100 is the xiaomi redmi v a and i know i was just talking about xiaomi phones having less than ideal software let's say but i think once you get into that hundred or you know category you really want all-out just the best hardware you'll sort out the software later and to be honest there's really not that many options at the moment in that price category that give you sort of like a good software experience plus good hardware not a lot of competition i would have to say so for $100 what do you get five inch 720p display pretty basic but importantly you get a qualcomm snapdragon 425 so that's one of the fastest SOC you can get in this product sort of space in terms of pricing often we see with these sort of phones you get Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 series SSAS which is super slow and like pretty much unusable media tech associates which I don't really like for a range of reasons they have weaker modems they tend to not be that impressive with their performance I still think there's a few issues with their sort of Governors and that sort of thing that Qualcomm is tied up a bit better with the Snapdragon 400 series so really like the inclusion in the Snapdragon 425 there and we really I really hate recommending you know super slow phones to people so I would avoid anything with like lower than that performance dual SIM as well three thousand milliamp hour battery there's really a lot of things to like about that phone considering you can import one for literally a hundred US dollars and again in Australia through these importing websites you can get very good currency conversion so I'd still recommend it I think it's like 150 Australian dollars or there abouts imported that's a really good deal so I'll look into that one and another phone that I will also be keeping my eye out on this one hasn't been released yet but is the nokia 2.1 so that's an android one phone which means you gain more of a stock Android experience than the redmi 5 a but it does also include like the snapdragon 425 I believe some of the features aren't quite as good I think it's only got 1 gig of ram an 8-year storage where's the red me five is a bit better in those two departments very similar display as well but that should be coming in just probably slightly more than a hundred dollars that the read me five a is that so that's another one I'd be keeping my eye out for in I think it's supposed to be released this month so keep an eye out for that one phones that I have also used that I sort of wasn't as keen on LG g7 yeah I don't think it's as good value is something like the one plus six I'd probably pick up this one over the g7 and you know a lot of the hardware features are very similar same with the HTC u12 plus they had the button issue which really frustrated me and again HTC has good camera support good camera software all that sort of thing runs good software but again I just think the value you eat with a sort of phone like the HTC u 12 plus eight I think you should either go higher end and get the best sort of hardware you can get for the price of which would be like your Galaxy S nine plus or you sort of save money and get a one plus six or even a lower tier device you know things like the pixel one that I was talking about that you can get on a really good special at the moment and potentially the new shall be flagship as well I really like the me six when that was you know released last year I thought that provide a really good value for money in terms of its hardware so I think as well looking for those Xiaomi flagship devices can be quite beneficial as well so this has been an interesting video I'm sure for you guys bit more of that sort of discussion style using the paper notes which let's be honest I'm gonna continue using a teleprompter because I prefer that way but yeah I hope you guys sort of learnt something about what we recommend here that you guys use at hardware and box I'm gonna continue using the oneplus 6 in case you guys were wondering Steve I believe uses a Galaxy S 8 plus at the moment so if you want to know what we use that's what we use and that's sort of what we recommend links to other things we're talking about will be in the description below through Amazon if you're in the u.s. and most of these recommendations also carry over to Australia so you know if you buy into a website like Cogan which I think tends to do pretty good phone deals a lot of things that we're talking about here can also be found through there and I would recommend so that's it for this one like this video if you liked it we're not going to be doing on a smart phone content regularly or regularly at all really so don't worry we're going to be getting back to do PC stuff very very shortly and we might update this sort of video doing sort of a roundup of smartphones maybe twice a year or something like that so don't worry I'll be getting back to doing some display testing and other things right after making this video if you have any questions about smartphones we're more than happy to discuss with you in either the comments on this video or check out our exclusive discord chat available for our patreon supporters this one this video it feels like it's been going on for a very long time so I'm just going to end it I'll catch you in the next one you