The Best Mobile Phones or Smartphones of 2021

 So, I’ve spent the last five and a half months collecting and testing all the top globally available smartphones I’ve rated every single ones performance camera battery and display based on what price it's selling for and giving them an overall value rating so with that in mind these are the top 22 smartphones in the world right now from good to better to the best some of these will surprise you.

So, at the back end is Nokia specifically the x20 which is their affordable flagship 2021 phone and Nokia's doing a lot of great stuff right now their phones are all inexpensive they're bloatware free Nokia gives extended warranties and loads of

software supports their entire angle is sustainability smartphones that you buy and you keep it really is an admirable message but i think they focused a little too

much on this at the cost of how capable their phones actually are like for this x20

their marketing doesn't even mention a single specification that's like applying to university but refusing to show them your grades and fundamentally.

 It's because this phone is absolutely crushed by even the cheaper phones from

companies like xiaomi so b minus and then we've got samsung they recently came out with the A52 

which is like their mid-range flagship of the year and there's nothing inherently wrong with it it's a fun design it's pleasant to use but it costs too much for what it is it's pretty clear that all samsung's done is taken one of their top end phones and made everything a bit worse but for 500 in today's market you can nearly buy yourself an actual flagship so you don't need to make this kind of compromise do you remember the Oppo find x3 pro the company's 2021 flagship that looks a little too close to the Iphone for it to be a coincidence well there's plenty to like about it it's supremely comfortable for starters thanks to being made of one continuous sheet of glass and that microscope camera on the back is

it's unlike anything i've ever seen on a phone before but the main issue and this seems to happen every year is that as soon as Oppo launches a flagship phone

it is pretty much destroyed and valued by Oneplus flagship that launches a

month later both companies use very similar components and materials and they are good components and materials but the fact that this phone is selling at

the equivalent of fifteen hundred dollars makes it much less good for the money

and that's actually a pretty great segue on to our next phone.

 So we're getting pretty used to the idea of paying over a thousand dollars for a

top-end flagship right

but Zte has something to say about that yeah Zte they are still making phones but the ax130 ultra genuinely is worth talking about because it has the highest end snapdragon 888 chipset a 144 hertz refresh rate amoled display

big battery fast charging stereo speakers really everything and it even looks an awful lot like Samsung’s note 20 ultra which is not a taller criticism and most

significantly I’m told this is going to cost 800 excuse me i was having a whale of a time with it until i tested the cameras and they really revealed just how much progress the competition has made everything from the interface to the image processing feels really behind I’ll reserve final judgement until updates drop because this camera hardware should be better than this but in its current state

it's a b and thanks to surfsharkvpn for sponsoring this video okay the iPhone 12 mini what is it has not been a commercial hit when apple first came out and announced that they built a fully flagship 5g iPhone that literally fits into your palm i think a lot of us thought whoa that's gonna fly off the shelves

but it didn't according to research firms this phone only made up about five

to seven percent of total iPhone 12 sales but that doesn't mean it's a bad phone i

think the reason it didn't sell well is because a the price is so close to the

much bigger iPhone 12 combined with b the apple has kind of built an association between their smaller phones being their cheaper phones which may have created the perception that the 12 mini was an inferior product but really it is the same speedy experience with a great camera as the 12 that i can recommend to any iPhone fan who doesn't need a power user's level of battery life okay now we're getting on to the really good phones the rog phone 5 is a beast it's the highest performing smartphone I’ve used today it's six thousand milliamp hour battery

is ludicrous actually earning it the best battery phones so far in 2021 and its speakers are so punchy that you will want to stop whatever it is you're

doing and just lose yourself in them its only problem comes from the fact that

it's a pretty specialized device like it takes a certain kind of user to want to

carry a phone of such monumental proportions tolerate some slightly outdated looking bezels and use a camera system that feels noticeably lacking but if you are that user then bob's your uncle but what kind of surprised me almost as much as phone number one is going to surprise you is that even though as us has been

dominating the gaming space for a while now i don't think they're the best value

anymore enter the Lenovo legion phone dual 2. it almost exactly matches the

rog in specs but you get 50 more ram and 100 more storage by default

it has fans built inside of it instead of needing this external attachment

and somehow it's cheaper the hardware on this phone is so good for the money that

they can't be making a lot of profit but it is a little let down on the software

front like the camera image processing isn't getting the best out of the camera

hardware you have here still though this is an a-grade phone

and is also the winner of best gaming phone on the market right

now okay you might remember from my best phones of 2020 video that

one of the winners was a bit of a surprise the zenfone 7 pro it was just this no-nonsense combination of a great price huge battery seamless uninterrupted screen and a capable camera that can also double as basically the greatest selfie machine of all time well this is basically the successor to that

so as you can probably imagine it's a very good phone but it's no longer one

of the best simply because all they've done is taken last year's zenfone 7 and given it a slight spec bump and that's just not enough against companies who are really pushing still though I’m willing to bet that if you ever get to try this selfie camera

it is so good that you have to smile alrighty you might remember my video on

this guy the vivo x60 pro plus to be honest I’ve used a decent amount

of vivo devices over the years and I’ve always liked them but I’ve

never really loved them they kind of developed a reputation for

a garish software overlay and crazy levels of skin beautification in the

cameras

 

but the viva x60 pro plus is the first viva phone I’ve used

that understands sophistication did I just change my entire outfit to film one

sentence maybe aesthetically it treads the line well between looking fashionable

and looking like it means business and everything from the gaming performance

to the camera performance is very close to the best you can buy

and it helps that the camera is just super fun to use too it's slightly let down by a mono speaker and middle of the line battery but that doesn't stop me loving it

number 13. this could be an unlucky one again

 

 

 

fashion fruit it's the iPhone 12 pro this is a great phone but the reason

that it's not higher up on the list is that the way i see it it's just an optional

extra to the 12. it offers a few fairly minor features like a lidar scanner for better

augmented reality and a two times telephoto lens I appreciate these but for the majority of consumers the only notable difference will be the extra storage it comes with the fact that it's heavier and the fact that it has a matte finish

it's basically the iPhone to get if you want to spend a bit more than the base

but you don't want to get the max sized one and that leads me

onto the base iPhone 12 because this phone hugely benefits by how similar it

is to the 12 pro you know just before they launched i was using both these phones at the same time and i couldn't even tell you how many moments I had where I’d pick one off the table use it for a good five minutes only to

realize i picked the wrong one up this phone is just as powerful the screen is almost

identical you still get all the same iOS features it's just 200 cheaper the only reason this isn't higher up on the list is that it only comes with a 60 hertz display versus 120 or the 144 we've started seeing now and it only starts with 64 gigs of storage

which is going to end up being more lik 50 by the time you factored in the size

of the operating system so still an a grade and just above that i would put samsung

space flagships

 

There we go the s21 and s21 plus are not the most exciting devices

they don't do anything particularly new or groundbreaking in fact in a lot of

ways they're a complete side grade from last year's s20 phones

but they bring in a lot of smaller quality of life improvements they've had a redesign that takes them from some of the worst looking flagships

to some of the best in my books and in a bit of a surprise turn of

events they're cheaper than last year's okay we're in the top 10.

 

 

 

this is the Xiao mi 11. it's great it's cheaper than the base s21

in just about every region but the us and spec wise it's more of a match for

the galaxy s21 plus which is two hundred dollars more than that

 

the best way to think about the mi 11 is there's a high-end flagship all around

with the best in-class display the only potential hurdle is xiaomi's miui

software skin which to be honest i like but i've showed it to enough people who

don't to know that not everyone does and just above the

me11 is not today milo then we've got the one plus 9 now this phone had a bit of a rough launch i think what happened is that oneplus basically spent an entire month

before it came out hyping up their collaboration with

Hasselblad giving us never-ending teasers about how it was going to

revolutionize photography but then when the phones actually

arrived Hasselblad might as well not have been involved

you couldn't tell and so justifiably most reviewers came down

pretty hard on this but a few weeks later i got a call from oneplus

they said we watched your camera comparison we took your feedback on

board and we've improved them don't get me wrong this didn't immediately make it a dream camera system but for its price now it is a good camera system and even without optical image stabilization it takes crisp smooth video plus of

course being a oneplus phone you get fast bloat free software with guaranteed updates it's a little more focused on exactly what the user needs

with no unnecessary extras and because of this they've managed to keep to their

tradition of staying more affordable than their competitors

definitely a grade phone then we've got the oneplus 9 pro which

is the 9's more expensive counterpart and the reason it's above it is that if you have the budget it's worth it it's basically the oneplus 9 but with all those little bits that

had to be trimmed put back into it it's not quite an ultraphone but it is a fully fleshed out flagship and in my eyes the best flagship phone under one thousand dollars okay we can't make a list of the best

phones without including the pixel 4a it was google's mid-range phone from 2020

and i usually try and refrain from recommending last year's options when a

new one may well be around the corner but given that this is available now for

299 dollars compared to 3.49 it was launched at given that it's only gotten better since it launched and the because it's a google made phone it'll

most likely still get updates all the way till android 14. i wouldn't hesitate in still

recommending it the pixel 4a should not be as good as it is no part

of this phone's spec sheet is impressive in 2021 but it's just

carried by phenomenal software not to mention it's a really enjoyable

size the bezels are nice and even and it's powerful enough that i don't think you'll be worrying about speed but as much as i do like the pixel i'd be lying if i said that that was the best compact phone you can get because that award goes to the zenfone 8. you might remember how I completely grilled the way it looks in my full review and i stand by it but that doesn't change the fact that like the iphone 12 mini this is a flagship phone through and through but unlike that phone

this one has a great battery too this is pretty much the only small phone

where the fact that it's small has no negative consequences so this is an a plus in my books but now we're on to the big boy phones in fifth place is the iphone 12 pro max it's a phone that providing you have the budget and the palm size it's an easy win i totally agree that it's not the most exciting phone in the world but the  eason that this is still the main phone i use on a day-to-day basis is that it's  upremely reliable the combination of ios levels of optimization with the best hardware you can get on an iphone means that if i want to post an instagram story

i know it's going to look good if i want to send a whatsapp voice note i know it's going to sound good and the battery is going to reliably get me through any day i throw at it also this phone is so strong that it's the first i've ever used caseless

i've dropped this thing enough times and seen it come back unscathed enough

times that i just don't worry about it anymore the only two things that do

sting a little are the fact that it's distinctly uncomfortable to hold

and that it's the only phone even close to this price bracket that doesn't have

a high refresh rate screen now slightly better than even that is why is samsung's top end phone i think the galaxy s21 ultra is genuinely the most refined polished device they've ever released it's a big visual upgrade over the s20 ultra plus a long list of subtle corrections which is exactly what that phone needed it's taken it from incredibly capable with mixed delivery to incredibly capable with strong delivery i like the way it looks i like the way it feels and providing you've got a hand big enough to hold it i have no reservations in recommending it and that leaves us with the best overall flagship phone if money was no object and this award is going to the xiaomi me 11 ultra I could spend 15 minutes straight just talking about this phone actually that's what i did a few weeks ago I’ll leave the video linked up here

but fundamentally the summary is this thing is a nuclear missile xiaomi looked at what samsung was doing and built a phone squarely targeted straight at it it takes samsung's best features and one-ups it in almost every aspect for the same price i wouldn't say it completely invalidates samsung's s21 ultra i think this is still a nicer looking phone i still think this has a more consistent camera but for a true power

user you just can't get more than this on a phone so what on earth can be better than that well we've got two more phones and they're not trying to be the highest end phones you can buy but they're focused on value and their value proposition is just so unbelievably good that it makes you want to take a chair sit down and just have a think what are other companies doing so in second place is the redmi note 10 pro now for those of you who don't know redmi is a spin-off brand of xiaomi who have basically built a reputation for one of the highest spec to price ratios on the market so in this case we have a 108 megapixel camera a 120 hertz display 5020 million power battery and it's 279 this thing is stupid levels of value it does have ads in the software but you can turn them off and i mean look these are the kinds of photos i'm taking on this phone

 

 

it's not even funny don't get me wrong you will know when you're using it that

it's not a thousand dollar flagship but it outperforms its price so severely

that I’m gonna have to give this an a plus plus in terms of value

and that leaves us with number one the most worth it phone of 2021

and i guess by implication the most worth it phone to have ever released

it's the poco f3 just like redmi poco is yet another value-centric spin-off

company of xiaomi but the difference with this phone is that it's less about camera and it's more about processing power so in this case for 350 you get a 120 hertz amoled display you get a 4 520 milliamp hour battery but

the kind of crown jewel here is a snapdragon 870 chip it's not the absolute bleeding edge you can get but it's an overclocked version of last year's flagship 865. for this

price that is ridiculous levels of performance it makes the google pixel 4a look like

it belongs in a museum and while this isn't google pixel quality software

no amount of software is going to change the fact that it's twice as powerful

and i think what makes this phone particularly impressive is the fact that

it takes more than a cursory glance to even realize that it's not a flagship

it still has a glass back it still has decent haptics

and it's just crazy that i can play the most demanding games on the entire

android platform at nearly their highest settings on a phone that costs barely a quarter of what the highest n1's do and so the poco f3 earns not just my best

affordable phone award but also my overall best value phone award if you wanted to go even cheaper you can get the poco m3 pro which is fantastic value or something like the real me 8 for 200 but my general recommendation is that if

you can try to spend a bit more you will get a lot more okay couple of

things to mention here there's been no lg on this list because

sad to say but lg has finally left the smartphone market there's been no sony on this list because at the time of filming they haven't quite launched their next xperia

1 mark iii and also to be honest thus far I have not tested a single sony phone that

i thought for a mainstream market was better than the competition

but open to changing my mind on that in the future though and finally i decided

to keep foldables out of this video too just because as a category of phones i

feel like they're much harder to rank under the same criteria okay here's

something to think about for a second your location your operating system

every hardware detail of the device you're on right now as well as all your past browsing history these are things that you'd want to keep to yourself right

well this is how much information a website immediately knows about you the

second you click on it and to be honest if it's a website you

trust then it's fine but there's probably a fair few that you visit that you wouldn't want to know this and that's where surfsharkvpn comes in as far as i've seen it's the most affordable way to keep yourself anonymous it's just over two dollars a month for as many people and devices as you want but there's another perk

because you can effectively pick the location that you want your device to

come from i can for example pick the us and watch us tv shows you can effectively have the exclusives for every single region without leaving your home like if i want to watch batman the dark knight i just switch to canada and i can do

that so check the link in the description and use the code boss that'll give you 83

off and an extra three months for free if you enjoyed this video then do

consider checking out my zenfone 8 review the best compact phone i've ever used or for something a bit more chill 20 inventions that i think are

completely next level thanks for watching my name is aaron

this is mr who's the boss i'll catch you in the next one.