Smartphone Awards 2024: Winners and Best of the Year Announced

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra: The 2024 MVP phone excels in every aspect.

### Smartphone Awards 2024: Celebrating the Best and Worst in Mobile Technology
* 🏆 Welcome to the Smartphone Awards 2024, where we recognize the **best and worst smartphones** released this year across **10 categories**, each with an overall winner receiving a **custom trophy**.
* 📱 The first award for Best Big Phone goes to the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, which excels in **screen quality, camera capabilities, and overall design**, solidifying Samsung's **dominance in the big phone market**.
* 📏 In contrast, the Best Small Phone award is claimed by the iPhone 16, praised for its **compact size and flagship features**, despite the overall trend of **increasing phone sizes**.
* 📸 The Best Camera award continues to go to the iPhone 16 Pro, recognized for its **consistent photo and video quality**, despite fierce competition from the Vivo X90 Pro's impressive camera hardware.
* 💰 For Best Value, the Nothing Phone (2) stands out at **$350**, offering a **bright display**, **solid battery life**, and **flagship performance**, making it an excellent choice for **budget-conscious consumers**.
* 🔋 The Best Battery award goes to the RedMagic 8 Pro, featuring a **massive 7,500 mAh battery** and efficient charging capabilities, perfect for **gaming enthusiasts**.
* 🎨 The Best Design award is given to the Huawei Mate XT, a tri-fold phone that showcases **innovative design** despite some durability concerns, highlighting the **creativity in smartphone design**.
* 🏅 Finally, the MVP Phone of the Year is awarded to the **Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra**, celebrated for its **all-around excellence** in performance, features, and user experience, marking a decade of the Smartphone Awards with gratitude to the audience.

[Music] All right, welcome to the Smartphone Awards 2024! Every year, dozens and dozens of smartphones come out, and this is one of the most highly anticipated videos of the year, where we get to reward and highlight some of the absolute best of them—and some of the worst. So we have 10

categories to go through tonight. Each one of them may have potentially some runners-up or some honorable mentions, depending on if they deserve it, of course. But then every category will have its overall winner, and every overall winner will get a custom trophy that we've made, like usual. So if you are a

tech company watching this and you win a trophy, reach out; let me know. I can send you the trophy. So there are a lot of phones on this desk in front of me from all different manufacturers; some of them flagships, some of them cheap,

some of them big, some of them small, some of them easy to get, some of them hard to get. But they all have one thing in common: which is they all came out during this calendar year of 2024. So let's give out some awards! So the first category: Best Big Phone. So the

idea behind this category was to sort of separate smaller phones and then the bigger phones, and then reward the absolute best big phones. But the thing about phones these days is they're all kind of big now; like, phones are just getting bigger. So I'm going to try to

reward the absolute biggest ones and the ones that make the most use of having a little bit of extra space. So, like, here's an example: the ROG Phone 9. This came out late in the calendar year, but because it's a gaming phone, they sort of target

All the things that make it good at gaming also happen to make it a great regular phone. Huge 6.8-inch screen, huge speakers, huge battery—it's great for regular use. It even has a headphone jack, but it's not

perfect. You know, nothing's perfect, but one got really, really close this year, and that's the Vivo X90 Pro. Again, a phone to come out late in the calendar year, but they basically did everything right with this phone. You can see the huge camera bump; there's some incredible

camera hardware in here. Another huge screen, but one phone did outdo it. There was one big phone that kind of nailed everything about being a big phone, and that's the winner, which is the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Samsung has got this formula down to a science. They have made

a really good use of space in the Ultra series of phones for years now. Really nice screen, probably one of the best in any smartphone, also with this really good anti-reflective coating that kind of went under the radar but is really good on this phone. Really good cameras

on the back without protruding too much. It also has a huge battery while still having a stylus. There's just a lot going on in this phone, and all the software to back it up. Plus, it recently started getting this One UI 7 beta, which

jumps it to Android 15. It's getting software updates—just a lot of good things going on with this phone. It's skewed with these awards sometimes to be the phones that came out later in the year. This came out in January; it still deserves the award. So then, next category

Best small phone. This is kind of a sad one, actually, this year because, while, like, you've seen lots of phones have been getting bigger and bigger, the small phones usually would pull up the rear. There'd be a couple small phones that sort of float around and deliver that

special experience for people who want a flagship but that's not huge; the mini iPhones and the Zen phones of the world. Uh, but those are all dead now. So then what's left could be the best small phone among all the stuff that we saw

come out this year. Here, think about this: the Samsung Galaxy S24 came out earlier this year, right? It's not that big of a phone; it's a 6.2-inch display. It's the smallest flagship that they made; 6.2 inches.

Screen is bigger than the phone that won the best big phone 10 years ago, which was the 5.7-inch Galaxy Note 4. So that just shows you how crazy it's gotten. You know, there's the Vivo X90 mini also came out,

that was still over 6 inches. Really good phone for that size, and I also considered the flipping phones every year. They're they're appealing as small phones, but then you open them up and they're huge again. Ultimately, what I settled on was the iPhone

16, best small phone 2024. So the iPhone 16 is rocking a 6.1-inch display. Note that it's the same body size as the iPhone 16 Pro, but with a slightly smaller screen. But I really like the way that Apple stepped up the base phones this year.

They have really good cameras, really good battery life, flagship chip performance, years of software updates, more RAM than the base phones I've ever had. And yeah, I could have given this to the 16 Pro because of how mad I am personally about the lack of a higher

refresh rate. But everything else about the base iPhone feels as close to the flagship as it's ever been, and I even prefer things like the matte rails and the real variety of colors. They've just done a really good job with the iPhone 16. So in this world of so many phones

being so gigantic and trying to pack as much as possible into a huge phone and being a two-handed phone—shout out to the couple of one-handed phones still left—so then that brings us to our next category of the night: best camera.

camera space for a couple of reasons. Number one, obviously the hardware just keeps getting better and better year after year: better periscope cameras, bigger sensors, all the optics improve. But also this year, especially, we've just seen a ton of AI stuff. Everyone is

expected to have some AI, especially in their cameras, whether it's AI scene recognition or AI portrait mode or AI background object removal—whatever it is, there's got to be AI in just about every camera. So in that way, I can definitely say that my criteria for best camera has

moved around a bit, and this feels like one of the most competitive years ever for cameras. You know, the Pixel—we didn't do the blind camera test this year—but I suspect it would have done really well again. They still have that look to them, and the Galaxy S24 Ultra is just

Consistently so good at photos and videos for Android phones every year, but one really stood out to me this year. And again, it came out late during the calendar year, but the Vivo X90 Pro—man, if you haven't heard about this phone, this has got some serious camera

hardware. And the reason it stood out to me is because it feels like it comes the closest to an actual, real camera shooting experience and results out of anything on this table. So, hardware-wise, it's already high-end. It's got a really big 50-megapixel main sensor; it also has

a large 50-megapixel ultrawide, and it has a 200-megapixel sensor behind that periscope zoom lens as well. The shots that come from it have this great natural depth of field, as well. The camera app is quick and full of options,

and the super high resolution on that telephoto lens means that it can go from the 3.7x optical way, way in and still maintain sharpness, even without doing the S24 Ultra dual telephoto thing. Plus, I had a lot of fun playing with the

portrait lens looks built in, which can shape and stylize the bokeh in a way that's really convincing, even if the subject cutouts aren't perfect. But it didn't win my award this year. Look, I'm just as tired of it as you guys are, but

if you had to take just one smartphone from this table from this year to take all of your photos and videos, the choice is still the iPhone 16 Pro. The streak continues. And yeah, I hate them winning every year just as much as the next person, but look, ask anyone who shoots

and relies on videos and photos from their smartphone regularly; what they would use, and the answer just keeps coming back: iPhone 16 Pro. Obviously, it's easy to shoot with, it's simple, and it's reliable. Over and over again, it produces that similar look, and they added a lot

of specific features this year to dialing in that look. So you have all these new manual controls, you have all these formats that you can shoot in, and the video is consistently unparalleled—from the 4K 30 and the autofocus to the super-stabilized video to the super

slow-mo video. I honestly want another smartphone to come along and knock it off its perch, and I think we're closer than ever to that, but for right now, iPhone's still the truth in the camera department. Next category: best value. Every year, this is the most interesting

and competitive category because there are so many options that come out in the value/budget space—even some that are not on this table in front of me—that are super competitive and all have different things that they prioritize at different price points. And that's

always the question about value, isn't it? What price point are we going to have that qualifies it as a value phone? Is it should just be anything under $500, or anything under $400? Maybe that makes more sense, or maybe it should just be anything that just has

the absolute max value for the price that you can shove in a phone, even if it is a flagship. And that's actually what I'm doing. The fact is, it's just harder, though, for a more expensive phone to actually deliver on much more value.

Classic law of diminishing returns. How can an $800 phone give you twice as much value as a $400 phone? It just can't. So, you know, Redmi every year has a ton of really competitive options. Also, it seems like Poco is always churning out

at every single price point they possibly can. But what stood out to me this year—I do want to give a shout-out to the Pixel 8a. It came out at $500 and has a really good camera system in this price range, but it did kind of feel like it

was clashing a little bit with the Pixel 8. But also, the Nothing Phone (1) came out this year, and this was a $200 phone that delivered a lot of value in a bunch of ways, but also in just fun, modularity, accessibility, and this unique

design. And you don't see a lot of—you don't see any really other—I guess one other orange phone on this desk—but this is a really interesting phone to come out and was actually easy to recommend. So $200, it gets a shout-out for

sure. But my winner for best value for 2024, that's going to go to the Nothing Phone (2). So this phone launched at $350. It gave you a big, bright 120Hz screen with uniform bezels all the way around—that's rare—check. Flagship-size 5,000

mAh battery with 45W charging—check. A serviceable 50-megapixel main camera plus an ultrawide, if you need it—check. Under-display fingerprint reader—you know, it didn't benchmark super high, but their performance has always been really smooth. They do a great job optimizing.

Their software and then, of course, the glyphs on the back. However you feel about those, this is just one of those phones that costs way less than all the other flagships here. But as you use it, at least as I used it, it consistently feels as smooth as, and as well-thought-out as, any other flagship, especially with the smoothness of the software. So a big shout-out to them for that. It keeps getting software updates; I hope it gets way more.

Nothing Phone 2: impressive value, 2024. There's your champ. So then...

Next category: best battery. There have been a lot more phones pushing the battery limits this year, and you know, this award is just for battery experience overall, which includes battery life. So I can't help but notice when there are way more 5,500, 6,000 mAh batteries in these big

flagships that I've seen in a long time. But it's not purely just the biggest battery capacity that's going to win you my award for this. I'm not just going to give this to the 28,000 milliamp-hour Energizer phone that does exist every

year. It's crazy! It's just peace of mind, right? Long battery life is one thing, but then lots of good battery maintenance features; convenient fast charging is another thing. Like, the big iPhones come out every year and they have really good battery life, but they

just charge too slowly. So the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra comes out this year, has a 5,000 mAh battery with room for the stylus as well. It also has 45-watt peak charging and wireless charging, and it just seemed to last forever. Like, this is

A phone you could use all day easily, with this big, bright screen. But that wasn't enough; that wasn't enough. There was almost a subcategory of what I would consider like mega-flagships that came out this year that sort of took things to the next level: the Oppo Find X5 Pro, again,

a late addition to the calendar. 5,900 mAh battery and also 80 watts of peak charging, so this can go 0 to 100 in a little under an hour. It also could do 50-watt wireless charging with the right AirVOOC charging pad. It's ridiculous.

Still wasn't enough. The Vivo X90 Pro also came out this year; had a 6,000 mAh battery and 90-watt charging. Still wasn't enough, because there is one phone that crossed my desk this year, again pretty late, that had two things that I

hadn't really seen much at all during the calendar year, which was the new Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Elite chip and a 7,000 mAh battery. That's your winner, which is the RedMagic 8 Pro. This is a gaming phone and it is entirely designed around

gaming, with things like an exposed active fan that sacrifices water resistance for spinning up and keeping it cool when it's gaming and charging. But the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Elite chip has been like a superpower in a couple of phones that it started to show up in late this

year. There are a couple of other phones that have it, but it has been dramatically more efficient than the previous generation, which we love seeing. So it has that chip—maybe leave a thumbs up if you want to see a video just about the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Elite—but then it also has

A 7,500 mAh battery, and so just that combo alone makes this a 2-day phone comfortably at 144 Hz, which is sick. You could also turn it down to 60 Hz and do even better than that if you want and

when you do have to charge it up, it'll go from zero to 100 in half an hour or so because it charges at 100 watts of peak charging. So it's just got a lot going for it. It also has all the battery maintenance features; you can cap it at

80% charging if you want. It's also got bypass charging to avoid thermal damage. There's just a lot in the battery department. Red Magic 10 Pro: battery champ 2024. So our next category is the best design. If you hang out in the

YouTube comments section long enough, you'll read things like, "Smartphones are just kind of boring these days; like they're all the same as last year." Have we reached peak smartphone? Is nothing different anymore? And if you agree with that, you kind of have to ignore some of the most

interesting stuff happening around the edges; some of the most innovative and fascinating design choices that we've seen in a long time, worth honoring a little bit in 2024. The CMF Phone 1 that I talked about earlier, this is one of those great examples—a super budget

phone that tries to stand out by doing something a little bit different—design, like a fun design being the reason you buy this $200 budget phone over others. I actually think its big brother company, the Nothing Phone (2), did a lot of similar things. It's uh, the Glyph

Design on the back, the transparent stuff. They had some special editions. They thought a lot about design in this phone and connected it to the software, which I think is really cool. But when I'm giving a design award, I also... I don't want to give it to anything that had a critical

flaw. Like, I want to give it to something that definitely didn't do anything wrong, like the S24 or Pixel 9. But that would be boring. So my design award winner for 2024 is the Huawei Mate XT, AKA the tri-fold. You guys have seen the

video on this phone. There were some rumors about it maybe not being super durable; honestly, probably true. There are articles about maybe some bad press being covered up because it's Huawei and this phone's coming straight out of China, and they want to kind of

cover that, probably true. But the fact that a real smartphone company had the audacity to not just build a bunch of these, but build a lot of them and ship them all and actually build features around them that actually work... I actually remember reading those articles about, you know, the spy shots of the

CEO of Huawei using this unique triple-folding thing on a plane, and I remember thinking, okay, yeah, but that's... he knows he's being photographed; that's not a real phone. They not only did they actually do it, but this is a crazy

impressive phone. It's super thin; it has the hinges; it has the battery distributed throughout; it's got the cameras on the back; they've got software features that work with both two and three panels. There's just so much going for it; I can't not... I can't

I'm not going to give this the award. Very deserving of the design award for 2024. So then, next category, conveniently, best foldable. So we added this new category last year just because it was becoming more clear than ever that foldables were, first of all, more plentiful than ever

before. There's more options than ever before, and it feels like they're here to stay, at least for a while. So let's reward the good ones. And you know, at the beginning of the whole foldables category, it was kind of all Samsung; like they had that early lead because they

dove in so early. And you know, they still make the Z Fold 6, and it's a solid phone, but I wouldn't say they're holding the torch anymore. I would actually say this phone right here, this is the Honor Magic V3. This is kind

of the mantle right now for best overall foldable hardware. There's so much good about this hardware. I mean, it's extremely thin; it feels flagship, from the lack of a crease inside to how much battery and how much camera they fit in this phone. Really, really sturdy hinge.

This is a great, really solid piece. There's also the triple fold, you know, that's a crazy design, as we already know, but I'm giving the award for best foldable of 2024 to the Pixel Fold. I really like what Google did with the design and

the hardware and the software of the second ever folding Pixel. You know, they did change a lot, and it is still very usable while closed, but they trimmed up all the dimensions, they flattened the sides, they improved the hinge, the cameras are all better, and it feels

Among the world of folding Android phones that we have right now, the most polished—at least, there's a lot of good Android stuff going on to take advantage of the folding screen. Like, if you forced me to use a folding phone right now, as much as I would want the

hardware of the Honor, I would pick the Pixel Fold. I came close to dailying this phone for quite a while this year; really big fan of this phone. And if you've got to have a flip—because the flipping thing is different from the

folding thing—I would still say Samsung carries the torch there as well. So, little shout-out to the Z Flip 6. No trophy for you, sorry, but shout-out to the Pixel Fold. So, next category—one that's been here again for all 10 of these—is

the most improved award. So, most improved year-over-year. My first thought when putting this category together was, this might be the hardest one to give out this year. Like, what really stood out as the biggest delta, the biggest change? A lot of times it's one that actually went

wrong the previous year and sort of righted the ship, or maybe took a big leap in something that was bad the previous year. But what really had the biggest change from its previous year? I mean, you have the Oppo Find X6 Pro, which—okay,

much brighter screen this year; they've got improved cameras; this new back is really nice; and also it's got the new chipset and the new software, and it's a little more squared up. That's nice. I don't know if it's going to win most

Improved, though, and actually, for the first time in a while, the base iPhones were in consideration for this one. The iPhone 14—this generation did the most relative to the previous base iPhone to get it close to the Pros that we've ever seen, and that's good for us.

Like more RAM, great chipset, improved cameras, and the new layout. And obviously, it has the camera control button that the Pros have, but it also isn't that much better. I think it's pretty clear, though: the most improved smartphone over last year's version is definitely the

Pixel 7 Pro. The foldable Pixel was something we wanted for a long time, and the first Pixel Fold last year was a cool idea—right? Like, we all wanted to see it, and Google finally delivered it. But if we're being honest with ourselves, it didn't really excel in any way with

the hardware, especially. Like, it was cool seeing Android could improve and handle the bigger screen on the inside, but I mean, that thing had some pretty thick bezels; it didn't even fold flat. I'm going to say that again: it didn't even fold flat. So the second-generation

Pixel Fold here represents a glow-up in every single way. Like, every square millimeter of this got better. I think a lot of us were expecting to see a second-generation OnePlus foldable, but they just didn't make it. But this is kind of the closest I think we could see to that.

Much better cameras, much better, thinner hinge; the whole thing is skinnier. The bezels on the inside are much better; it folds flat; there's less crease; the outside screen is better; it's brighter; everything is better. So, just from inside to outside, well done, Google. Well done.

The next award is going to go to the Bust of the Year. So, okay, this is this is a weird one. This is the award you hate to have to give, but I give it every year anyway, to a phone that gets a shout-out for how badly things

went. But this is a little different from previous years, and you'll see why. I'm going to just jump right into it. I'm giving the Bust of the Year award to the Asus Zenphone 11 Ultra. You get a big red trophy for this one, Asus. The 11 Ultra

did not win anybody's favorite phone. Now, if it's any consolation, this is the first year that I'm giving this award to a phone that's not actually that bad of a phone. It's fine. This it's an okay phone. If you bought it, I'm sure you'd be okay

with it. But the point is, it's it's more representative of the whole category because the Zen phones that came before this Zen phone—well, you remember them, right? Those were actually really interesting phones. They won previous awards. They took up some space in our

heads as smartphone enthusiasts, where they were actually giving us what we said we wanted, which was a flagship phone that was actually small, that was one-handed, that fit everything we wanted into a compact size. And then they just turned it into just another generic big phone. It's it's fine, but we

lost something today with this Zen phone. It's gotten to the point where I genuinely don't know if we're going to keep giving out a best small phone award, like phones have, like I said, gotten bigger and bigger and bigger, and I gave

You know, that stat earlier about how small phones are all bigger than the big phones used to be... So, does that mean we're going to be giving out a best small phone award to a 6 1/2-inch screen phone in a year or two? Just...

doesn't feel right. But maybe by that time phones will be even bigger and it'll feel like a small phone. I don't know, I haven't decided yet. Maybe your comments will help me. But this is Bust of the Year, so...

our 10th and final category in the 10th year of the awards: it's the MVP Phone of the Year. There's a lot of choice. This always feels like the highest-pressure award. It's also my favorite, just because... What phone do I choose to carry the torch to sort of...

represent the entire year in smartphones? With all that we've just talked about, with all the exciting features and the risk-takers and the comeback stories and the Bust of the Year and all this stuff... Which phone gets the award? And I think my philosophy here is I am rewarding

overall greatness. So there are a couple of runner-ups here that absolutely deserve real spotlight for a minute. Vivo X90 Pro, especially. So, like, I didn't even review this phone, but again, it came out late this year, and this phone... this is like, God-tier territory. It's got the

awesome, super-bright screen; it's got the great chipset; it's got these incredible cameras and that shooting experience; great battery life; super-fast charging... What doesn't it have? Maybe just the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip at this point, although it does have a pretty great

mediate Tech chip that's no slouch and that enables a lot of its features. But in general, you can't really go wrong here. But I keep, you know, I'm looking around; there are some other really good ones here, and I can't help

but look back at the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. From being such a big comeback story for the Pixel Fold series and being such a good phone—a foldable that I would actually daily drive to this day and doing so many things right—this feels like I should highlight it, so here we

are. But it didn't win. You know what else feels worth highlighting though? This was the year of the base iPhone, especially getting way more praise than the Pro iPhones. This was the most complete base iPhone ever made. It's getting Apple silicon and all that, but it also

Smartphone Awards 2024!

Marques Brownlee

Smartphone Awards 2024 Introduction and Best Big Phone

Introduction to the Smartphone Awards 2024, highlighting the selection process and criteria.

Explanation of the award categories and the custom trophies.

Description of the diverse range of smartphones considered.

Introduction of the 'Best Big Phone' category and its rationale.

ROG Phone 9 and Vivo X90 Pro are mentioned as contenders for Best Big Phone.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra wins 'Best Big Phone' due to its efficient space utilization, excellent screen, cameras, and battery life.

Discussion on the decline of small phones and the challenges in selecting the 'Best Small Phone'.

Samsung Galaxy S24 and Vivo X90 mini are considered, but ultimately iPhone 16 wins 'Best Small Phone'.

Reasons for choosing iPhone 16 as the 'Best Small Phone', emphasizing its features and value.

Introduction to the 'Best Camera' category, discussing advancements in camera hardware and AI integration.

Pixel and Galaxy S24 Ultra are mentioned as strong contenders.

Vivo X90 Pro is highlighted for its camera hardware and shooting experience, but iPhone 16 Pro wins 'Best Camera'.

Reasons for iPhone 16 Pro winning 'Best Camera', focusing on its ease of use, reliability, and features.

Best Value, Best Battery, and Best Design

Discussion on the 'Best Value' category and the challenges in defining value in smartphones.

Pixel 8a and Nothing Phone (1) are mentioned as contenders, with Nothing Phone (2) winning 'Best Value'.

Reasons for Nothing Phone (2) winning 'Best Value', emphasizing its features and price point.

Introduction to the 'Best Battery' category, focusing on battery life and charging capabilities.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Oppo Find X5 Pro, and Vivo X90 Pro are mentioned as contenders.

RedMagic 8 Pro wins 'Best Battery' due to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 Elite chip and 7,000 mAh battery.

Introduction to the 'Best Design' category, addressing the perception of smartphone design homogeneity.

CMF Phone 1 and Nothing Phone (2) are mentioned as design-focused contenders.

Huawei Mate XT wins 'Best Design' for its innovative tri-fold design, despite potential durability concerns.

Best Foldable, Most Improved, and Bust of the Year

Introduction to the 'Best Foldable' category, highlighting the increasing popularity of foldable phones.

Honor Magic V3 is mentioned as a strong contender, but Pixel Fold wins 'Best Foldable'.

Reasons for Pixel Fold winning 'Best Foldable', emphasizing its design, hardware, and software improvements.

Introduction to the 'Most Improved' category and the criteria for selection.

Oppo Find X6 Pro and iPhone 14 are mentioned as potential winners.

Pixel 7 Pro wins 'Most Improved' due to significant advancements in the second-generation Pixel Fold.

Introduction to the 'Bust of the Year' category.

Asus Zenphone 11 Ultra wins 'Bust of the Year' for its departure from the successful small phone design.

Introduction to the 'MVP Phone of the Year' category and the selection criteria.

Vivo X90 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro Fold are mentioned as strong contenders.

iPhone 16 is praised for being a complete base model.

The presenter mentions using the Pixel 9 Pro XL as their daily driver.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra wins 'MVP Phone of the Year' for its overall excellence across all features.

Closing remarks expressing gratitude to viewers and looking forward to future awards.