Best smartphones you can buy right now: April 2017

Samsung Galaxy S8

Price: $750  full retail

Display	5.8" at 1440 x 2960 pixels, Super AMOLED
Hardware	Snapdragon 835 with 4 GB of RAM
Camera	12MP main cam with Dual Pixel AF, 8MP AF selfie cam
Battery	3000 mAh with Fast Charge

The Samsung Galaxy S8 is in many ways a revolutionary new phone: it features a larger, bezel-less display that takes up nearly all of its front and is gorgeous to look at, it sports an even more refined design, and it has become more powerful and smarter with the addition of the new Bixby assistant.

Yet despite its 5.8-inch display (keep in mind that you should not compare inch size directly with other screens, since this one has a different, taller aspect ratio of 18.5:9), it is not too big: it's taller, that's true, but its width is about the same as on the Galaxy S7 predecessor, so it is easy to handle in a single hand. The camera has received some improvements too: it shoots a little brighter images and seems to be able to get more definition in the details. The one thing where we don't have so much change is the battery: it is good, but not great or revolutionary as other parts of this phone.

Apple iPhone 7

Price: $27.09 on a 24-month lease | $650 for full retail

Display	4.7" at 750 x 1334 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Apple A10 with 2GB of RAM
Camera	12MP f/1.8 main cam with 4K video, 7MP selfie cam
Battery	1915 mAh

Pros

• Cleaner design
• Impressive colors on display
• Smooth and fast iOS 10 user experience, regular updates
• Very good camera
• Great optical stabilization in video
• Longer lasting battery (but still not great)
• Water-proof, dual speaker

Cons

• No 3.5mm headset jack
• Jet Black model scratches easily
• Closed ecosystem
• Less customization options than on Android
• Pricey

The Apple iPhone 7 kills the headphone jack, but that's not the only reason why there's so much buzz around it.

Despite featuring practically the same design as the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6, it adds some significant improvements in everything else: the new A10 system chip is much more powerful, the new rear camera takes better pictures in low light, the front camera takes much sharper selfies, the battery life is better, the screen now has more eye-popping color, the phone is water-proof, and there is now optical stabilization that allows shooting smoother-looking video. Did we mention that the pitiful 16GB base model finally goes the way of the dodo and is being replaced by a 32GB version? For $100 on top of the price of that base model you can get a 128GB version. Add another $100, and you get 256GB of storage, as much as on many laptops, and the most we've seen on a mainstream phone.

Add to this the rich iOS ecosystem that continues to secure the best apps and games first, and one starts to understand why it's so hard t o argue against the iPhone 7.

Google Pixel

Price: $650 full retail

Display	5.0" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, AMOLED
Hardware	Snapdragon 821 with 4GB of RAM
Camera	12MP Sony IMX378 camera with EIS, 8MP selfie cam
Battery	2770 mAh

Pros

• Premium design, solid build quality
• Latest stock Android Nougat
• One of the smoothest performers
• One of the best cameras with great dynamic range
• Promising new Google Assistant
• Properly imp lemented Doze should bring improvements to battery life

Cons

• Comparatively expensive
• No microSD expansion memory slot

Google is now a hardware company. Its first foray into the creation of a Google phone has resulted in the Google Pixel family. The 5" Pixel features a stylish, metal design and a clean build of the latest Android 7.0 Nougat with a promise for quick updates. The best about the Pixel is that it is one of the best (if not the best) performing phone out there and also one of the very best camera phones. Add to that a brand new focus on AI as the future and a fast and responsive Google Assistant, this phone shows a lot of what Google thinks a future phone would be able to do.

LG G6

Price: $700 full retail

Display	5.7" 18:9 at 1440 x 2880 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Snapdragon 821 with 4 GB of RAM
Camera	13 MP Duo rear camera, 5 MP selfie cam
Battery	3,300 mAh

Pros

• Solid design, pocketable size
• Excellent camera, useful wide-angle option
• Very fast recharging capability

Cons

• Battery life is good, but not great
• A bit on the pricey side

The LG G6 marks a new era for LG: less experiments with crazy designs and a focus back on the essentials of great design and performan ce. The new G6 is not a revolutionary phone, but it still has the extremely cool bezel-less screen with a new, taller 2:1 format. It has also improved its already very good cameras: now you have two 13-megapixel shooter for the dual camera system on the back, so there is no abrupt switch in the camera when you zoom in and out. LG has also improved battery with the G6 to good (but it's still not great), and coupled with nice software experience, the LG G6 is one of the best options for a new phone out there.

Huawei P10

Price: €600

Display	5.1" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Kirin 960 with 4 GB of RAM
Camera	12 MP Duo camera with Leica branding, 8 MP AF selfie cam
Battery	3,200 mAh

Pros

• Stylish, thin design, quality build
• Good battery life
• Fast and reliable fingerprint reader
• Plentiful 64GB base storage option
• Very good camera quality
• Good price

Cons

• Huawei's UI is still ugly

The Huawei P10 is a beautifully designed, stylish phone for a price lower than that of 2017's flagships, yet with a similar level of performance and a very good camera. The bad news is that it will not be sold in the United States (at least initially), but it will be in all other parts of the world.

Under the hood roars Huawei's own Kirin 960 system chip, which is indeed a powerful creation, and Huawei has improved the dual camera system. The idea is to be able to blur the background to images, a nice effect, but not quite as accurate as the Portrait mode on the iPhone 7 Plus. Still, it's nice to have and you get a secondary, black-and-white camera that gives you a different perspective to images.

Sony Xperia XZ

Display	5.2" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Snapdragon 820 with 3GB of RAM, 32GB storage
Camera	23MP f/2 24mm main cam, 13MP selfie cam
Battery	2900 mAh

Pros

• Stylish design with smooth Alkeleido metal finish
• Very good battery life
• Improved camera with great detail
• Water-proof!
• Great for gamers, games arrive first on iOS

Cons

• Vapid user interface
• Lacks cool features
• Pricey
• Sup er slow re-charge times

While we are perplexed by the high price of the Sony Xperia XZ, there is a lot to like about it as well. It's a safe option meaning that it has a fast and reliable interface that works well, it has a decent keyboard typing experience and a very good camera that focuses quickly and captures detailed and good-looking images. The phone has also got a solid battery life and is water-proof. It does not get talked about that much, but this is certainly a nice set of advantages and while there is nothing particularly exciting about this phone (we'd even say it's a bit boring), it will get the job done.

A large phone with a great camera (phablets):

Samsung Galaxy S8+

Display	6.2" 18.5:9 at 1440 x 2960 pixels, Super AMOLED
Hardware	Snapdragon 835 with 4GB of RAM
Camera	12MP camera with Dual Pixel AF, 8 MP AF selfie cam
Battery	3,500 mAh

Pros

• Beautiful, stylish design
• Immersive, bezel-less display with gorgeous colors
• Base model has plentiful 64 GB of storage + microSD support
• Water proof! Fast charge and wireless charge support
• Fastest on Android, Snapdragon 835 system chip
• USB-C, finally
• Bixby assistant

Cons

• TouchWiz icons look a bit ugly
• Good (but not great) battery life
• No dual camera system
• Body is a fingerprint magnet

The Samsung Galaxy S8+ is the bigger of the two S8 siblings. Unlike Apple's devices, though, we have no huge differences here except for the larger screen and the bigger battery. The S8+ is the same beautiful, full-screen phone that display an outstanding level of craftsmanship. It also features a bezel-less, 6.2" display with a 18.5:9 aspect ratio (it's taller than a regular display) that looks gorgeous. The fingerprint is now on the back alongside the camera. The S8+ comes with a new interface and the brand new context-aware Bixby assistant.

Apple iPhone 7 Plus

Price: $32.04 on a 24-month lease | $770 full retail | Review

Display	5.5" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Apple A10 with 3GB of RAM
Camera	12MP f/1.8 28mm main cam, 56mm secondary cam, 7MP selfie cam
Battery	2900 mAh

Pros

• Secondary telephoto camera is a god-send for photo enthusiasts
• Main cam has wider aperture, takes much better pictures in low light
• Well-adapted interface for the larger screen estate
• Great battery life
• Improved display with impressive colors
• Dual speakers! Water-proof!
• Great for gamers, games arrive first on iOS

Cons

• Physically larger than most its 5.5" rivals, huge screen bezel
• No 3.5mm headset jack
• Jet Black model scratches easily
• Pricey
• Closed ecosystem

The larger iPhone wa s never a better iPhone than the smaller one. The iPhone 7 Plus, however, changes that for the first time, Apple includes an impressive secondary camera only in the Plus model, and it has more RAM. And this is important: the secondary camera is a small revolution in smartphone photography, enabling much better looking portrait shots and giving users the option to zoom much closer in pictures while losing little in terms of image quality.

Yes, the iPhone 7 Plus has no headphone jack (Apple says it's because it needed the space for more essential components), but in exchange it has gained water-resistance and a louder, dual-speaker system. The Apple A10 inside the 7 Plus is also a big improvement: yes, common users won't notice much of it, but go into image and video processing, as well as gaming and the gains are easily felt. Apple has also killed the pitiful 16GB storage option in favor of a much more sensible 32GB one, and there is a 128GB model and a 256GB version for heavier users. The only thing that still remains a sore short-coming of this otherwise excellent phone is its pure physical size: it's a gargantuan phone with huge screen bezels.

Google Pixel XL

Price: $770 full retail

Display	5.5" at 1440 x 2560 pixels, AMOLED
Hardware	Snapdragon 821 with 4GB of RAM
Camera	12MP Sony IMX378 camera with EIS, 8MP selfie cam
Battery	3450 mAh

Pros

• Premium design, solid build quality
• Latest stock Android Nougat
• One of the best cameras with great dynamic range
• Promising new Google Assistant
• Properly implemented Doze should bring improvements to battery life

Cons

• Lacks exciting new features
• Comparatively expensive
• No microSD expansion memory slot

Google's larger phone, the Pixel XL, is a beautifully crafted device with a metal body, a slight chamfer that makes it a more comfortable in-hand fit, and it's also powerful on the inside. The big highlight of the Pixel XL, however, is without a doubt the stock Android 7.1 Nougat experience with the promise for timely updates in the future. It also showcases Google's idea of a future, where AI will be more useful and the Google Assistant that helps you with your searches is a peek at that.

Motorola Moto Z Force Droid

Pr ice: $30.17 on a 24-month lease | Review

Display	ShatterShield 5.5" at 1440 x 2560 pixels, AMOLED
Hardware	Snapdragon 820 with 4GB of RAM
Camera	21MP with f/1.8 lens, 5MP selfie cam
Battery	3500 mAh

Pros

• Modular design makes it the most versatile flagship Android phone
• Fast and nearly stock version of Android
• Very good camera

Cons

• Can get quite bulky with modules
• Camera interface is a bit underwhelming

The Moto Z Force Droid is a phone that makes some bold moves: it's the first modular phone by Lenovo-owned Moto brand. Here's how this works: yo u get a magnetic connector on the phone and you easily snap additional modules on top of that with no wires or other complicated connections. You can get a pico projector, a much louder and better speaker, easily swappable battery and regular back covers, and more.

The Moto Z Force Droid also features the excellent ShatterScreen tech that ensures that the display won't shatter even if dropped from a few feet down on the hard concrete. Not that you should do this, of course. The near-stock software, the good camera and the few Moto tricks, make this one of the most exciting Android phones around.

Huawei Mate 9

Display	5.9" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Kirin 960 with 4GB of RAM, 64GB of storage
Camera	12MP f/2.2 main cam with OIS, 8MP selfie cam
Battery	4,000 mAh

The Huawei Mate 9 is one of the first major-league phones by Chinese phone and network equipment maker Huawei, and it's excellent. Priced at $600, some $150 less than the price of iPhone and Pixel rivals, it offers impressive looks with a metal body and Huawei's dual camera system on board. It features a somewhat foreign interface, but you get used to it and after using it for a while it will leave you impressed with its consistently smooth animations and transitions. It's a powerful device with a beautiful display and plentiful storage, well worth your attention.

Best $400 flagship: the new category

Display	5.5" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, AMOLED
Hardware	Snapdragon 821 with 6GB of RAM
Camera	16MP with PDAF, OIS, 16MP selfie cam
Battery	3400 mAh

Pros

• Outstanding value
• Stylish, premium design
• Good-looking display
• Very fast performance, impressively quick fingerprint
• Plentiful 64GB storage in base model, new 128GB version
• Very good and fast camera

The OnePlus 3T is a phone that truly feels premium: gone are the experimental sandstone finishes that OnePlus used before, gone is the extremely annoying invitation system and coming to replace them is a phone that feels well-built and very solid. The OnePlus 3T might not have any gimmicky features that would make it espcially unique, but it does have that special $440 price tag in a world of similarly-sp ecced $800 phones, and it does feature one solid and fast performance.

Powered by the top-end Snapdragon 821 system chip and with a whopping 6GB of RAM, the OnePlus 3T runs fast and has a well-performing camera. It's hard to find a reason not to recommend it, at its outstanding price, it's one of the best phones around.

Moto Z Play

Price: $450

If you want the phone with the best battery life in this list, the Moto Z Play is certainly that. With its economical Snapdragon 625 chip and specs that are not too demanding, this is the true 2-day battery phone and that is quite the gamechanger. Apart from that, it is just a good and thin phone. It is not particularly elegant with those huge magnetic connections, but you can add some neat Moto Mods to spice its looks, or at least use as easily exchangeable covers. The Z Play has also got a solid camera that is able to shoot 4K video and it has been updated to Android 7.0 Nougat.

Honor 8

Display	5.2" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Kirin 950 with 4GB of RAM
Camera	12MP f/2.2 main cam (no 4K), secondary lens 8MP selfie cam
Battery	3000 mAh

Pros

• Competitive price
• Good-looking design, solid build quality
• Fast and responsive fingerprint reader
• Excellent battery life

Cons

• Interface feels a bit strange and takes some getting used to

The Honor brand is new to the U.S. market, but after the successful and affordable Honor 5X, some phone enthusiasts have already set a curious eye on it.

The new Honor 8 is the brand's new and more refined phone, and the latest one to join the "$400 flagship" battle arena. And it does so with a heavy bang: an extremely stylish phone made out of glass and with an innovative dual rear-cam system that allows creating a fake bokeh-like effect, the Honor 8 is a compact 5.2" phone with the fast, but not fastest Kirin 950 system chip.

Display	4.0" at 640 x 1136 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Apple A9
Camera	12MP main cam with 4K video, 1.2MP selfie cam
Battery	1624 mAh

Pros

• Very compact and light
• Unprecedented power a t this form factor
• Outstanding camera
• Smooth and reliable software experience
• Good battery life

Cons

• Design feels dated, at least - not exciting
• Loudspeaker lacks depth

Big phones are just not everyone's cup of tea (at least not yet), and that's why there is still a market for extremely compact devices that you can easily use with a single hand.

The iPhone SE is one of the best such phones you can get at the moment: in fact, it's the only phone of such small sizes. It stands out not just with its size: even among Android compacts, it offers the fastest performance with a great and consistently reliable 12-megapixel camera that can capture 4K video and supports the fun Live Photos.

On top of that, the small iPhone SE features better battery life than even the iPhone 6s and 6: its smaller screen size and newer silicon allow for more effective use of battery. Add to that the affordable (at least in the US) price, and you have quite the appealing small phone.

Sony Xperia X Compact

Price: $500 | €450 full retail | Review

Display	4.6" at 720 x 1280 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Snapdragon 650 with 3GB of RAM
Camera	23MP 1/2.3" main cam, 5MP selfie shooter
Battery	2700 mAh

Pros

• Very compact for the screen size
• Screen has high brightness
• Very good camera
• Good battery life

Cons

• Questionable, all-plastic design
• A bit too thick

The most notable alternative to the iPhone SE in the compact phone market is the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact. 

Rather unfortunately for many, the way of evolution has proven to be towards larger and larger screen sizes and now it's hard to get a contemporary Android phone with good performance under a 5" envelope. The Xperia Z5 Compact, however, does deliver just that: a no-compromise performance courtesy of the top-of-the-line Snapdragon 810 system chip and Sony's best 23-megapixel camera.

The Sony Xperia Z5 Compact features a 4.6-inch screen with slim bezels that make it a very compact device for its size, it has that signature eye-catching Sony design and remains usable with a single hand.

For those on a budget:

Nexus 5X

*Available on Google Project Fi only

Price: $250 full retail | Review

Display	5.2" at 1080 x 1920 pixels, LCD
Hardware	Snapdragon 808 with 2GB of RAM
Camera	12MP main cam, 5MP selfie cam
Battery	2700 mAh

Pros

• Very affordable price
• Stock Android, quick updates
• Very good-looking display
• Fast and accurate fingerprint reader

Cons

• Plastic, uninspiring design
• No expandable storage
• Video capture is very shaky

The Google Nexus is back. 

After a lackluster year for the Nexus series with the overwhelmingly gigantic Nexus 6 that even Google admits failed the modest sales expectations, this year Google brings the successor to one of the most demanded Nexus phones of all times: the LG Nexus 5. The new Nexus 5X is also made by LG and it shows the way forward for Android: it runs on the latest Android 6.0 Marshmallow, finally has a native fingerprint scanner and charges via the fast and reversible USB Type C connector. Those all pale in comparison with its biggest promise, though: a hugely improved camera. The Nexus 5X is the first phone to ship with the 12.3-megapixel Sony IMX377 image sensor, a 1/2.3" sensor, one of the largest ever on an Android phone. It has large pixel and aspirations to be among the very best smartphone cameras. If that wasn't enough, Google has priced the Nexus 5X at a very alluring price: just $380 for the 16GB model and $430 for the 32GB version.

Moto G5 Plus

Price: $230 for 32 GB storage, 2 GB RAM 

$290 for 64 GB storage, 4 GB RAM

Display	5.5" at 1080 x 1920 pixels
Hardware	Snapdragon 625 with 2 / 4 GB of RAM
Camera	12MP Dual Pixel main cam
Battery	3,000 mAh

Pros

• Very affordable price
• Clean and fast build of Android
• Very good performance
• Fast and decent camera
• Good battery life

Cons

• Plastic design elements are a bit on the cheap side

The new Moto G5 Plus brings back the Moto G series to where it first started: an amazing value-for-the-money proposition. At under $300, this phone is great value: it ships with the latest Android 7 Nougat, it's got very good performance and a clean interface, it's got a decent camera and above average battery life.