Best Smartphones - 2022!! Ultimate Review

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 and massive phones. So I'm going to tell 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!!

Style, Design & Look

So let's start with the design conscious user. For those of you who really value 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 Mi 11. But I think the most design-conscious device is actually from Sony. Sony's new Xperia 1 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.

Eco Friendly

All right, brand new category time, because this year I also want to award the most eco-conscious phone. 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. Second 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 years warranty.

Size and Pocket Friendly

Now what if you've got smaller hands?? 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 hand. 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 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 Mini. 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.

Gaming Phone

Now we are going 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, second most streamed 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.

Battery / Power Efficiency

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 4500 mAH, it by far beats out every android phone with even 5000 mAH cells. I had to sit there for 10 hours straight waiting for this phone to die in my battery test.

Budget Phone

So 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. 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 part 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.

Foldables

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. Vivo has joined the game with their x-fold, which supposedly gives you the best camera system on foldables. 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 their 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 available.

Best/Worst Phone of the Year

Time to get to final, 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. Then 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. Specially 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 Mi 12 Ultra is coming. And it's seemingly going to be quite a big step up from the current Mi 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 article 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 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 they have added 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 is a flagship spec, supremely refined and really comfortable to hold smartphone. With a good chunk of design!! 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’.

And that leads us to the end, this is the Huawei P50 Pro!! In some parallel universe where Huawei hadn't had the US ban, and they could keep innovating like they used to, this could have been the phone of the Year. But as it stands, you should almost definitely avoid it, it's only just launched here in the UK in march 2022. 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 write this, because I was a huge fan of the momentum that Huawei brought to the smartphone market. But it makes no sense to buy this phone!!