it’s 2022 and let’s be honest
smartphones have never been as confusing
as they are right now we’ve got
flagships we’ve got mid-ranges
pretending to be flagships we’ve got
foldables rollables mini phones massive
phones so
i’m just going to lay it down as it is
i’m going to show you the best phone for
each of the seven different kinds of
user leading up to the best overall
phone of the year so far and then topped
off with the worst phone which
we’re gonna punish on camera so let’s
start with the design conscious user for
those of you who really value the the
look and the feel of a smartphone
2022 has been a great year i really like
how samsung streamlined their s21 ultra
with the new s22 ultra xiaomi’s had a
similar blow-off their mi 12 pro it
looks way cleaner than last year’s m11
but i think the most design-conscious
device
is actually from sony sony’s new xperia
one mark iv from a hardware perspective
at least it’s an absolute pleasure it’s
narrow enough that it fits perfectly in
your palm it’s got a matte finish that
says goodbye to fingerprints a dedicated
camera shutter button and even a sim
card and micro sd card tray that you can
access with just your fingers all right
brand new category time
because this year i also want to award
the most eco-conscious phone no
not giving points for excluding the
charger there’s three companies that
stand out here one is nokia who’ve
started doing a lot of different things
to play their part like they give good
software support and large batteries so
your phone lasts as long as possible
they give at least two years of warranty
for repairs in case something goes wrong
and they even plant trees for every
single purchase one is apple whose
latest devices are made from about 20
recycled materials like even used water
bottles plus apple is ahead when it
comes to offsetting the pollution caused
by its manufacturing with other green
projects that they invest in and their
phones also have the longest life cycle
when it comes to updates but if you
wanted to go all in on the eco front
there is only one phone for you the
fairphone 4. this is kind of like a
run-of-the-mill 500 phone but with its
screen and specs downgraded and then all
of that extra budget used to make it as
sustainable as possible i mean even its
presentation is it’s about as lateral as
you can get
they built it such that the entire thing
can be taken apart with just fingers and
a simple screwdriver so it’s extremely
repairable the company promises that for
every phone they sell they’ll recycle an
equal amount of electronic waste plus
this thing doesn’t come with like one
year or two years of warranty
it comes with five
it’s almost not fair to the other phones
now what if you’ve got smaller hands
though
don’t know why i’m doing this minor
enormous it is a genuine problem though
you have the budget you want the best
phone you can get but most good devices
are the size of your face
well thankfully samsung has actually
done a really good job with their base
galaxy s22 it isn’t anything special in
the hardware department but it is
cheaper than last year’s s21 and it’s
it’s just so polished for such a dinky
little device plus there is also the
samsung galaxy z flip 3 which because it
folds is even more compact both of these
are capable phones for their size i
would just be a little careful if you’re
a real enthusiast and you want your top
tier battery life the other good option
is the iphone 13 mini apple has also
released an updated iphone se this year
which is also small but it’s just it’s
so far behind when it comes to the
screen quality and the camera quality
that it doesn’t really feel worth
two-thirds of the asking price of the
13-minute which dare i say is actually
quite good value
but if you want the absolute best value
compact phone of the year
you’re gonna have to wait a little
because i think there is a very strong
chance that it’s going to be the google
pixel 6a it’s releasing in july so i
haven’t used it yet but google’s a
series so far they have smashed it every
single time they are affordable clean
intelligent phones that also happen to
take some of the best photos that money
can buy and so it’s looking like the 6a
is going to make quite an impact for
around 450
okay we need to talk about gaming i feel
like we are on the cusp of a smartphone
gaming renaissance after years of the
top trending games being subway surfers
and cookie clicker and
text or die
we’re finally about to get some heavy
hitters we’ve just had apex legends the
most streamed game in the world right
now valorum is coming the second most
stream game we’re even getting a call of
duty warzone for smartphones and so when
you combine this influx of titles with
the fact that most top-end mobile chips
they now require significant calling to
actually retain their best performance
there is increasing merit to having a
gaming phone which can focus on that and
there are three really good options
right now each one more extreme than the
last so for starters we have the poco f4
gt which for around 600 is just straight
up flagship power slapped onto a phone
with insanely cool retractable triggers
and very fast charging it’s hard to
argue against this one
but then you have the red magic 7 pro
which for around 800 is somehow even
more powerful it comes with a physical
fan on the inside and even an under
display selfie camera for a completely
uninterrupted screen one of the main
caveats with these red magic phones it
used to be their janky not very pretty
software skin but given that that’s
improving too this is becoming a really
easy phone to recommend and then at the
highest end you have the rog phone from
asus every year this company comes out
with the most stacked gaming phone that
we’ve ever seen the only thing is they
haven’t released this year’s version yet
so if your budget does stretch all the
way to a thousand dollars plus and you
do want the absolute best gaming phone
that money can buy then it is worth
waiting to see the rg phone 6 which will
probably be out this summer
and on the subject of immense levels of
power
what about power users those of you
whose number one priority is just
battery life we’ve got to be a little
bit careful here because batteries are
one of the cheapest components you do
get a lot of companies who just throw
these enormous sized cells inside their
devices they market them as having an
endurance of like two and a half days
and then they heavily skimp on the other
parts of the phone and that’s no good so
the question that i’m actually going to
answer here is not which phone has the
best battery life but instead which is
the best phone if you want a lot of
battery life and the answer to that
question is still hands down the iphone
13 pro max even though its actual
battery capacity is less than 4 500
milliamp hours it by far beats out every
android phone with even 5 000 milliamp
hour cells i had to sit there for 10
hours straight waiting for this phone to
die in my battery test so a sub to the
channel would be
triumphant
it doesn’t come cheap though let’s see
if we can make this setup a little more
budget
right if you’re someone who wants to
make sure that every single penny that
you spend is being put to good use there
are two phones that i think absolutely
smash it the first being the oneplus
nord ce2 now i’ve definitely noticed
oneplus losing a bit of their fandom
over the years they’ve very quickly gone
from this small-time community-driven
phone maker to this huge corporate
spewing out more devices than we can
keep track of but if you put all of that
aside the ce2 it does stand out as a
particularly strong value sweet spot for
around 350
it just feels accomplished like no
corners have been cut and that it’s
exactly what it’s set out to be there’s
no obvious weak point there’s no glaring
caveats except for the chin at the
bottom but that’s pretty much par for
the course at this price and it’s just a
really smooth experience and then if
your budget is even tighter
the poco x4 squeezes every last drop of
value out of the 250 that it costs it
has the fundamentals like a decent
processor a great battery and a very
functional camera it has the full set of
nice to haves like a headphone jack an
ir blaster a micro sd card slot and it
even manages to cram in a couple of
luxuries like fast charging and a
genuinely beautiful high refresh rate
display now it’s also worth considering
the redmi note 11 series for a slightly
more camera-centric option and you
pretty much can’t go wrong with realme
who feel like they’re in an expansion
phase right now where they’re selling
everything super cheap to just try and
get more market penetration
but the poco gets my vote
and finally just before we get to the
best
and of course the worst overall phone i
want to touch on foldables because it’s
taken its sweet time but this market is
finally starting to get subtraction
we’ve had a really solid foldable from
oppo which has some of the best foldable
fundamentals on the market a sturdy
hinge a palm-friendly size and a screen
that isn’t creased by the constant
folding and unfolding vegas joined the
game with their x-fold which supposedly
gives you the best camera system on
available but
while i do think that we should watch
these companies the simple fact that
samsung has had practically a two-year
head start in the market just means that
they’re foldable the z-fold 3 which will
soon be updated to the z-fold 4 in
august is just currently ahead when it
comes to the software that maximizes all
that extra real estate plus it helps
that it’s the only one that’s globally
right time to get serious well the
foldable and the gaming and the compact
phones they’re all very interesting
niches to look at the best phone for
most people is the all-rounder so
which is the best all-rounder i’ve had
multiple sleepless nights debating this
because on one hand you’ve got the vivo
x80 pro which is in a lot of ways the
pinnacle of smartphone photography but
it’s let down by a lack of availability
you’ve got sony’s xperia one mark iv
which did win my design award but in my
opinion has weakest software compared to
its peers
especially when it comes to cameras
you’ve got the oneplus 10 pro which
actually launched at a lower price than
last year’s nine pro and does have a
genuinely beautiful finish but this
isn’t winning it either i don’t think
this company lowered the price because
they’re feeling extra generous this year
more because the company is
repositioning their pro phones to make
them noticeably less good than their
soon to release ultraphone and it’s the
same story for xiaomi the company has
basically confirmed that a me 12 ultra
is coming and it’s seemingly going to be
quite a big step up from the current me
12 and the knee 12 pro and so this
process of elimination has left me with
the best of the best and it of course
does depend what ecosystem you want to
be in if you’ve decided that you want an
iphone then
it’s really simple actually just get the
latest iphone
you can take this video as a reassurance
that if you do so you’re not missing out
on any game-changing features on
android’s end plus if you go for the pro
max you are getting battery life that
would make every other phone jealous but
then when it comes to android there are
two phones that i am i’m completely 50
50 on the first being samsung’s s22
ultra which has probably the greatest
brightest screen on any smartphone it
has one of the best camera systems with
stupendous levels of zoom plus for the
first time on an s series phone
an s pen
which i mean if this is important to you
then there’s no question about it this
should be your phone but if you decide
that you’re not going to use it then i
would start to side with our second
winner the oppo find x5 pro now i never
got around to making a full review of
this phone but the long and short of it
is this this is a flagship spec
supremely refined and really comfortable
to hold smartphone with a good chunk of
design
personality
i guess we could say
for me this phone’s camera and screen
they are very slightly weaker than
samsung’s but it’s a cheaper phone it
comes with more ram it’s less prone to
scratches thanks to the ceramic material
it has super fast charging and more
importantly actually comes with that
charger that leads us
to the end
[Music]
or at least
the end for this fern right here
this is the huawei p50 pro and in some
parallel universe where huawei hadn’t
had the u.s ban and they could keep
innovating like they used to
this could have been the phone of the
year
[Music]
but as it stands you should almost
definitely avoid it it’s only just
launched here in the uk in march 2022
and for a price of eleven hundred pounds
or thirteen hundred dollars it’s rocking
a camera from a year ago a chipset from
two years ago and of course no access to
the google play store it is really
genuinely sad that i have to say this
because if you followed for a while
you’ll know that i was a huge fan of the
momentum that huawei brought to the
smartphone market
but
it makes no sense to buy this phone
[Music]
anyways if you are in the market to buy
any new tech by the way i have a really
cool tool for you karma this video’s
sponsored this might sound a little
random but i’ve been planning to make a
video on my shorts channel all about the
most wacky airpods cases and i used
karma to actually make sure i got the
best prices karma is a free app or
browser extension that basically takes
the online shopping experience
and removes all the pain points it scans
the entire web for all available coupon
codes and applies the best ones for you
automatically at checkout it is very
cool watching this happen it gives you
cashback for many brands that you can
either cash out or donate and my
favorite thing is that you can mark an
item you want and karma will give you
real-time notifications when that item
is low in stock when it next comes back
in stock and even when it next goes on
sale so you can make sure that you never
actually pay full price again it
effectively lets you keep track of all
price alerts from all your favorite
brands across multiple different sites
and devices so hear the link in the
description to download it karma has
both a browser extension and an app for
android and ios
both are free to check out some of the
fastest gadgets of 2022 that video is
here or for some of the cheapest gadgets
that video is here my name is aaron this
your boss