Gadgetory

welcome to the smartphone Awards so there were a ton of smartphones that have come out in 2018 from January and CES straight all the way through all the launches and events till December now and all these phones have different strengths different weaknesses different goals different designs different things they do well and not as well they're all similar in some ways but they're all different so naturally at the end of the year we got to break it all down and reward the very best of them so there will be a bunch of categories and for each category there will be an overall winner and then there will be if there is a worthy one a second-place sort of a runner-up if there are some more good stuff there's an honorable mention so without any further ado let's get started first category is best big smartphones so nowadays most smartphones are already pretty big right they've gotten bigger a year after year all these phones in 2018 are way bigger than the phones from 2015 but this award goes to the one that takes the best advantage of all that extra space that makes the most use of being big both with hardware and software and the winner for Best big smartphone of 2018 goes to Samsung Galaxy Note 9 and this one's honestly a no-brainer if you've got to have a big phone the note 9 has absolutely one of the best big phone feature sets you can possibly get it's the absolute best display in any phone a six inch AMOLED and a huge body holds a 4000 milliamp hour battery it keeps the headphone jack it has expandable storage it has dual cameras there's no knotch and it has room for a stylus that doubles as a remote control but it's not just about having big hardware we're really wanted over for the note is having all this software that takes advantage of it all all the S Pen features the multi window support this phone is a power users default it's the big phone of the year no doubt and then the runner-up for best big phone of the year is gonna go to huawei mate 20 pro this was the last phone I reviewed this year kind of snuck in at the buzzer but they killed it it's not quite as big as the no.9 but it still has a 6 four inch AMOLED it has a four thousand two hundred million power battery and it has triple cameras instead of the usual one or two all at different focal lengths there's no pen which is actually fine for most people but there's also no headphone jack and it does have a notch but still this is one of the most complete big phones of the year both in hardware features and software all right so the next up category is best small smartphone the best compact phone of the year you see small smartphones are kind of a rare breed nowadays all throughout everyone's lineup phones have just gotten bigger across the board but you can still do great things in compact packages not as compact as phones used to be a couple years ago but still there are some great small phones out there also by the way I think this is the closest contested category some really good ones here but the winner for Best small smartphone in 2018 it's gonna go to iPhone 10s this one's got a 5.8 inch display like I said not a super small phone but to win this award you have to do everything in the small phone that the big phone does and iPhone 10s truly does pretty much everything the iPhone 10s max does just with a smaller display and smaller battery there's basically no other drawbacks obviously it's one of the fastest chips with that a 12 it has the same dual cameras as the bigger phone same Ram and you know what you're getting with iOS there's not many people out there regretting buying this phone by the way I'm gonna leave my my list of all the reviews of the phones I talked about down below so spoiler alert that's kind of like a winners section but that will be below anyway a very close second place or runner-up - best compact smartphone of 2018 is going to go to the pixel 3 5.5 inch display so it's even smaller and some might even say the pixel 3 is an even more appealing buy than the bigger brother at the pixel 3 XL the only thing you're losing out on here is you have a smaller display and a smaller battery but you even keep the stereo front-facing speakers and the dual front-facing cameras and then runner-up right behind that is gonna go to samsung galaxy s 9 back to a five-point eight inch display and this thing has a lot going for it already great design we all love that already 3000 milliamp hour battery the only points you got a dock for it are having one less camera than a galaxy s 9 plus and for having a little bit less ram but as of you noticing those things are both pretty small ok next up best camera so for some people like me having a great camera is super important in a smartphone if you take a lot of photos and videos it's just encouraging to know that you'll be able to capture the moment in as high of a quality as possible I happen to like to take a lot of photos on my smartphone so this is a category that I have spent a lot of time analyzing and it's come out crystal clear this is probably no surprise if you've watched the videos but the winner for the best camera and a smartphone in 2018 is gonna go to the pixel 3 in pixel 3 excel there is one camera in this phone and the amount of software magic Google's done with this one is nothing short of amazing there were of course plenty of other good phone cameras this year but Google's hdr+ and software magic plus nitesite and all the incredible shots I've gotten with it put it clear and far ahead as the favorite camera ever in any smartphone it's so good in second place though I have a camera that does slightly lesser photos but that I'd say does much better video and audio and that is the iPhone 10's iPhones have been sort of the king of video and smartphones for a little while now and the 2018 iPhone is no exception to that rule if you're trying to do a lot of video on your smartphone you should get the iPhone I'm gonna give my honorable mention for cameras to the huawei mate 20 pro for an excellent use of three cameras obviously with three unique different focal lengths I really like the super wide angle camera especially for a lot of things now of course LG and others also did the whole triple camera thing but this one happens to be the best quality of those three cameras alright next award best battery life and this is this is an important one for most people because I feel like a big complaint a lot of people have about their current smartphone is it just doesn't last long enough so it's good to see some smart phones focusing on not getting super super thin but actually giving you a long lasting battery life plus you'll get extra points in this category for things like fast charging and wireless charging and the winner sneaking in at the end of the year for best battery life I've had actually ever in a phone but of course of 2018 is the huawei mate 20 pro this one I want to say it shocked me because I knew it would be good I just didn't know it would be this good so it's a 4200 milliamp hour battery 6 point 4 inch display but the aggressive memory management combined with the actively changing resolution and fast charging and wireless charging all this combined meant I literally never think about battery when using this phone I could be using it for six straight hours in a day and end the day with 40% left or something ridiculous it's really impressive what they've done with this phone and all of that in a phone that's not even that thick kind of sorcery well done huawei runner-up for best battery iphone 10 our turns out combining the best SOC in any phone with the Apple a 12 with a particularly low resolution is a recipe for a super long lasting battery life this is the longest lasting iPhone I've ever tested and happens to be a bunch of colors and other sweet stuff too but 10 are very good battery and then honorable mention will go to red hydrogen one this phone it is obviously pretty thick but it's packed in a 4500 milliamp hour battery making it officially the biggest battery cell I've ever held in my pocket or at least in a smart phone anyway it does have pretty fast charging doesn't have wireless charging but it just blasts for an eternity on battery so that's a good sign okay next up the design award and this is an interesting one because for a lot of the year we got these complaints of every phone kind of looks the same are we at peak smartphone and this is kind of when they're all doing glass backs dual cameras and a knotch like every single phone but I found that the most interesting looking most innovative design looking phones this year came from a lot of boutique manufacturers trying to avoid the knotch so they knew that if they could say they made a totally bezel us phone with no knotch before Apple then you'd have a big hit on your hands and that's upon this whole genre of these crazy looking phones that were trying their best to be bezel us but then put the front facing camera and the earpiece and all those sensors behind the screen or in some other places it was really interesting to see anyway the point I'm getting at the design of the year for 2018 is gonna go to the Oppo find 10 this was I mean what a head-turner of a phone this year they decided to go with a full-on motorized slider that holds the front facing camera and IR sensors and full facial recognition system it pops up every time you unlock the phone and I don't think anyone can really speak to the long-term durability of a system like this yet but the result is definitely a really fascinating ly beautiful phone that could totally end up in a museum in a few years also there's a pretty good chance in the future we're gonna laugh at what we had to do to get these bezels designs back in 2018 but I'm gonna give honorable mentions to the Xiaomi me mix three also a slider and the NEX S which was just the single pop-up camera okay next category best budget phone and 2018 this is an important one this year because if you haven't noticed pretty much every phone that came out over this calendar year of 2018 has been more expensive at launch than the one that came before I used to say it often good phones are getting cheap and cheap phones are getting good now half of that is still true but basically a great budget phone is becoming more and more rare but they do still exist so the winner for best budget phone of 2018 goes to you guessed it the xiaomi polka phone f1 this thing turned a lot of heads when it came out it's not available everywhere still and it's not the only good phone in this price range but it just got so much hype and then it does a lot of things well snapdragon 845 six gigs of ram four thousand milliamp power battery and it's pretty well built and it's around 300 bucks give or take with a bit of shipping but even knowing numbers don't mean everything like this phone performed pretty well the skin wasn't too overwhelming but you could just flash another ROM on it anyway and on top of that it wouldn't took down the iPhone 10 and our blind camera test so it's just she's got a lot going for it you guys already know I'm so busy with flagships I don't get to spend a lot of time with budget phones unless they really pop up on my radar but this one really earned its time in my pocket and I hope we see more phones like it next year I'm gonna do honorable mentions in this category as well and that would be for the Nokia 7 and the honor 8x get it honor at it alright next up is the award I hate to have to give but I have to give it it's the bus the biggest bust of 2018 we all have disappointments okay I get it like stairs mistakes mistakes get made sometimes two or three or eight or nine things go wrong or maybe just didn't live up to the hype or you just didn't see something going the way it you probably ready to tell what I'm getting at no doubt the bust of the year for smartphones in 2018 was the red hydrogen one it was so frustrating because I wanted this phone to be so good the whole video if you watch it it's just let down after let down which is only so bad because I love so many other red products and what they do as a company but that being said I'm still crossing my fingers for those modules or hydrogen - whichever comes first but that's all coming in the future next year this was the bust of 2018 right next up the most improved award this goes to the phone that just improved the most year-over-year now for as much as phones gotten more expensive over the last year not a lot of them got significantly better to warrant that difference in price let you know the new iPhone looks like the old iPhone the new samsung looks like the old samsung that's part of the whole tick-tock design strategy but you have to reward the ones that really take a big leap forward so the winner for most improved smartphone of 2018 goes to razor phone - and they earned this award in a pretty new gaming phone category but basically attacking all the things that were weak about the first razor phone and keeping all the good stuff so they sort of repositioned it from a hardcore gaming phone to a flagship that happened to be great at media and gaming so they added a glass back for wireless charging they dropped in a glowing RGB logo the cameras are improved they kept the front-facing speakers they kept the awesome 120 Hertz display but made it brighter and I made the whole thing water-resistant like last year I wouldn't have necessarily recommended the first razor phone to most people but this one is much more complete much more daily drivable it's kind of like going from a prototype car to a full finished production version with all the trims like it's much better so this is a it's always sort of had the specs it's just much more daily drivable now so then last but not least the biggest award of the night literally it's the MVP the smartphone of the year you can see it as the best phone the most complete phone the most impactful phone either way there's only one voter and that's me so the winner of the MVP the smartphone of the year for 2018 goes to the oneplus 60 now this one's truly deserved but if you scroll back up the awards it's not really the best at anything actually it's arguably the fastest Android phone but there's no award for that but it does pretty much everything very well and it makes a couple sacrifices in the right place to bring the price way down so in a world where phones are approaching 900 a thousand eleven hundred dollars the one plus sixty this phone brings a lot of flagship performance and kind of flagship design to down to literally half the price it's not to go wrong and now that this is also in stores - this is a phone that I'm recommending to a lot of people and they're enjoying it - now it's gonna be a tough act for them to follow next year but we kind of always see it coming because we see the phone they release earlier in the year then a couple months later there's the T version that's way better but I gotta say they've done a great job with the 60 this year so then my runner-up for the MVP is gonna be the Samsung Galaxy Note 9 this is what you might call the most complete phone of the year not a lot of phones make it feel like you're getting more than you paid for especially at a thousand dollars but if you want something that checks every box note nine checks every box is basically the only flagship left with no notch with a headphone jack with a stylus built in and then with that incredible display with a variable aperture camera and with all-around high-end specs it's just it's checking every box and then my MVP honorable mention will go to the huawei mate 20 Pro still not available in the US and still not the best reputation of a company in the u.s. either but this phone did a lot of things right so I'm talking best battery life that I've ever used in a smartphone which is really impressive you get the triple cameras of different focal lengths so again high quality very versatile you have to call it power button and a great design and great overall performance not a whole lot not to let easily my favorite Huawei phone of all time and one of the best devices to come out in 2018 so there you have it it's the smartphone awards of 2018 like I said earlier though it was a little bit of a sentiment that we were sort of all getting the same smartphone over and over but really when you look at it there has never been a better selection there's something for everyone genuinely like whether you're into smartphone photography or video or you're working on a budget or you need a compact phone or you're really into something that'll last you all day with a big battery even phones that aren't winning awards that are on this table if he brought this lineup of phones to six years ago these are all be incredible choices so it's kind of a good time to be alive so thank you for watching this annual award show it's been a pleasure to host for 2018 hope you enjoyed and I'll catch you guys in the next one peace