What is the best mobile phone?

By Stuart
January 21, 2019

What is the best mobile phone to buy?

Like making any big purchase in terms of financial outlay (not size!) there a lot of factors to consider when making this decision. What is the best mobile phone ? Mobile phones are ubiquitous, and you may have noticed that as the market has moved towards smart phones, they are all starting to look very similar. Metal frame, glass or metal rear and glass front screen with or without a notch at the top to house the camera and other technical stuff. I guess this makes the choice even harder, how do I choose a phone when they essentially all look the same? What makes one stand out from the other? Have a look below at our advice on what to consider when making your purchase and take a look at our best deals here.

Budget

There once was a time when, for a reasonable amount of money every month on a 12, 18 or 24 month contract, you could get almost any handset available for free as long as you paid your monthly sub, the handset would have been subsidised by the mobile phone network. Unfortunately, this is now no longer the case, as the manufacturers have stuffed more tech into each new handset release they have become significantly more expensive to produce therefore, more often and not you will have to pay an upfront contribution as well as a monthly fee. Therefore it is important to recognise what you actually need from your mobile phone in terms of features before you commit to the purchase.

What features are important to you?

Camera

I guess, we all need a million mega pixel camera because that is what is being sold? Do you really? Think about how you currently use the pictures taken on your phone, do you view them anywhere else other than on your handset or do you, like the vast majority of people take pictures and view them on a mobile phone or share them on social media. If you are not a budding David Bailey maybe you don’t need the most up to date mega pixel triple zoom camera. Choose something that fits your needs.

Screen

There is no question that a bigger screen gives you a bigger viewing area, so always go for the biggest viewable screen available on a size of mobile you are happy with carrying with you all of the time. Remember this is a mobile phone not a television, but if you watch a lot of you tube or Netflix when you are commuting for instance, a bigger screen will be invaluable.

Music

Music on your mobile was a big consideration a few years ago, how you purchased and consumed music left you with no choice in the decision on what operating system to use. Do you use iTunes? Do you have all your CD’s transferred to your computer and imported into iTunes, if so you really have no option, an iPhone is your only way forward. If you have moved on and use one of the streaming services you now have nothing to stop you moving away from the walled garden of iTunes and Apple to the more open approach of Android. You can now use Apple Music on Android and we find Android so much easier to use when dealing with playing other music file formats.

Battery

Probably the most important feature you will need to consider when buying your mobile. How long will it last between charges? It used to be days and days before you needed to charge your phone, now your mobile doubles as your main source of entertainment, news, mail, as well as text and voice calls. All of this uses a battery up pretty quickly so think about this as well.

Brand

Brand can be very important factor when making a purchase. After all, big brands spend millions of pounds making sure that we have an emotional attachment to them with the hope that we never leave them. If you can trust us, and take all of the above into account and make the most rational decision of your life, we feel that the best handset available at the moment is:

Huawei P20 pro

This mobile phone is a great balance between size, price, features and usability. There are three main cameras on the back of the Pro 20, one 40mp main sensor, a 20 mp black and white one and 3 X zoom 8mp camera. This is a serious camera phone and one that excels in low light conditions, the front camera is an impressive 24mp for taking detailed selfies. The phone packs 6gb of ram and 128gb of on board storage and the Kirin 970 chipset. The battery is a fantastic 4000mAh which is bigger than all of its rivals. The P20 still manages to be slightly thinner than the S9 at just 7.8mm thick. With water resistance of IP67, fingerprint scanner and no headphone jack, the specs begin to resemble some of the iPhones. The screen is not as good as its peers it is 1080×2244 AMOLED screen but it is a capable screen coping with HDR very well with deep blacks and bright colours. A plus point is the P20 Pro is shipped with a screen protector applied, check out the best deals available for P20 Pro here.

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