2024 is the year that AI has taken over the smartphone world. It feels like that's all every company wants to talk about: AI, AI with AI, Galaxy AI, AI. So let's see where it's made a big difference, where it's made no difference at all, and where actually going right back

to basics has paid off even better. Welcome to the best smartphones of 2024, and while we're at it, also the worst smartphones that you should not buy. We've got 10 categories and it's all leading up to the one true overall champion. So given that 2024 has been a

total AI arms race, who is actually winning that race? Well, as far as Apple is concerned, most of their AI features are absent, especially in Europe. And the few that are here are good, but not enough to ignore that feeling of 'is that it?' I'd say Google's AI is better. I love

some of the photography stuff that the Google Pixel's got going on, like, you know, that zoom enhance feature that's practically just an upgrade button for your shots. And I thought Gemini Live, this instant free-flowing AI chat, was kind of amazing, but then ChatGPT has

now just started doing the same thing, and in my experience, that's better. And so ultimately, Samsung takes it. Samsung AI came out first, it was already pretty interesting, and they've only made it more stable and given it more options since then. Like, I have actually used

some of their stuff like the live text translations on a day-to-day basis. So given that the S24 Ultra is Samsung's kind of hero device this year, this trophy has that phone's name on it. I'm actually so happy with how these turned

You can see how this isn't just a flat photo of the phone, too. We actually went and got the full 3D model of every phone here, laser etched into these trophies, front, back, and sides, just like my haircut. Very fun. The most improved

phone this year has a very obvious answer. So last year Google released what looked an awful lot like an offseason April Fool's joke with the Google Pixel Fold. These screen bezels, this crease, for this price, and the thing barely even folded flat when you opened it.

Unsurprisingly, this, this was one of the worst phones of 2023. Oh my God, I actually forgot how bad this crease was. But this year, the new Google Pixel Fold 99 Pro is, well, it's infinitely better at everything, apart from the name, like,

What is this? The software has come a long way, as you'd expect between a gen one and gen 2 product, and they've actually justified paying the extra to buy a foldable this time. But also the hardware, the crazy bezels are gone. It's

thinner, it's lighter, it's faster, it's brighter. If someone were to tell me they went out and bought this thing, I wouldn't be holding in a laugh anymore, and that is a compliment. I like this thing. And as usual, if any company wants

these awards, just message us and we'll send them. And now we're on the subject of foldable phones, what's the best foldable in the world ever? Well, honestly, I'm kind of bummed about this. Last year we saw something special with the OnePlus Open: affordable with zero camera

compromise amazing battery and software that actually made even people who'd completely written foldables off reconsider. However, they did not upgrade it this year. Yeah, well they they kind of did; they made this OnePlus Open Apex Edition which does sound very cool. It has more storage, it has a dedicated VIP

security chip which can quickly cut an app's access to your camera and microphone and this fancy new red color but it's powered by last year's chip. It's really hard to recommend that you pay full whack pricing this year for something that really should be heavily

discounted by now. And so I spent quite a lot of time deliberating between the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the Google Pixel 9 Pro. Eventually deciding that it's just personal preference between the two. The Pixel is thinner and it feels a bit more like a normal phone

when folded and then the Samsung has about 50% more power, but neither of these phones are actually taking home the trophy. So funny story, I actually did some very detailed testing until I decided which phone won. I got as far in the process as to actually make a trophy

saying that the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 was the winner, but that's because there was one phone that I hadn't tested until that point and that is the Honor Magic V3. I got this thing a couple of weeks ago but we won't be needing this anymore

for starters, this thing is so pretty. The faux leather back, the texture trim on the spine, it's got small bezels on both the outside and the inside, basically no crease. Oh yeah, and the phone is paper thin. It really is a spectacle, but then where this starts to get almost

confusing is instead of that size reduction being achieved by chopping out everything on the inside, it's just better. This has got a far bigger battery than Samsung, it also has stylus support, it charges faster, they even fit in a proper Periscope zoom camera, so the true

winner of the foldable category. The only thing that's a little bit less developed is the foldable software. Samsung can do a bit more with a little bit more polish, but this hardware feels so much better that frankly, I don't really care. With these smaller flip phones though, I think

it's actually between Samsung and Motorola. I think Motorola's Razr Plus is actually the prettier phone, like the cover screen is more impressive and it feels like they've thought more purposefully about what you can actually do with it, but ultimately, Samsung just

has better fundamentals. It is the significantly more powerful phone. Samsung software skin is more reliable and you get way more updates, plus you get Samsung's very optimized image processing, which does also make this the better camera. Now, it's not just OnePlus who's bowed out this year because the

other iconic line of phones that's notably absent is the compact Asus Zen phones. And it seems strange, year after year, Asus released these super compact but high-end phones, and year after year people labeled them as the gold standard for their diminutive size, but I think

the crux of it is this: when most people are shopping for a smartphone, the primary limiting factor is budget. We want to get the most product for that budget, but you can't do that if you're also working with a size constraint. There's a reason that the iPhone Minis

failed so what's left then well I really like the Samsung Galaxy S24 it's a very light very small all-rounder you get Samsung's AI which as we've seen is the best but the battery and the cameras while solid aren't great for this

flagship tier so then you've got the Google Pixel 9 Pro which has good battery life and great cameras Google's really neatened up their game in 2024 especially with their flagship phones but I would go as far as to say that

none of those beats the Xiaomi 14 kind of reaching the limits of how far I can stretch with a suit this tight this thing isn't quite as mini as the S24 but it's not far off and it has top-notch cameras it's just so fun to

shoot with cuz it doesn't for once feel like you're getting the sloppy camera seconds from the Ultra phone like it definitely does with the Samsung Also the battery does last a really long time for such a small phone so here it is on the plimp Xiaomi did well

me that was disgusting now there are two things that I would flag software-wise you get four years of software updates here as opposed to seven on Samsung and not everyone loves Xiaomi's MIUI operating system it does feel a little bit like a knockoff iOS but if that

doesn't matter to you then it is fast and it is customizable the second thing though is that slightly awkward fact that Xiaomi has actually already released the Xiaomi 15 but they just have this extremely delayed process getting those new phones to the west but

what if you just want a phone that lasts forever? Well, 2024 has actually been a particularly good year for this. Android 14 has improved basically every flagship phone's battery life by 10% plus, and Apple specifically made battery one of the key things they focused on with

the iPhone 16s. But if you're asking who does it the best, then that would have to be Vivo. Now, I never got around to making a dedicated video on this bad boy, but let me tell you, Vivo's flagship phone for 2024, the Vivo X200 Pro, is an

absolutely mind-blowing phone. Its specs feel like a cut above the rest, and that's only amplified when you use the thing because it's so damn optimized. But I'm going to talk more about this later. For the purposes of right now, just know

that this thing isn't one of those mediocre mid-rangers strapped to an absolutely bonkers size battery. It's an incredible phone in its own right with a 6,000 mAh cell that actually uses that insane amount of juice very efficiently

too. So this was a pretty easy one for me, and I just want to mention while we're on the topic, there are two ways that I could have done this whole trophy thing, and I spent a while going back and forth on which one was the way to go, cuz the

thing is, Vivo is pretty tricky to buy in the UK and the US, which are two of our three top viewing regions. So some part of me was thinking, should I just stick to rewarding the phones that you can easily buy and get your full customer support? Maybe. But eventually, I decided

that I don't see these videos as just a buying guide, this is an awards ceremony. So eventually I decided it would feel silly to not celebrate the phones and the innovation that I actually feel deserves it just because they're not made for certain markets all

right, final few categories now before we get to the overall winners and of course tonight's big loser. What is the best phone for gaming? Can we get some RGBs in here? Well, I would say there's three runners up. There's the obvious yearly phone from

Red Magic, which is lost in the SE somewhere, which like all Red Magic phones has absolutely beautiful hardware, especially for the money, but they need to improve their software and their front camera before I can crown them the best. Then also the iPhone 16 Pro Max and

the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, they both have really good screens, very fast chips, good cooling, basically all you need for a flawless gaming experience in most cases. But there is a clear leader of the pack, if you so desire, it is the ROG Phone 9 Pro for two reasons. This has the

brand new Snapdragon 8 Elite chip inside of it, which is top-end, next-gen, I don't know quite how they got it in here so soon, but you can think of this as next year's flagship chip. It's like a proper 30%

faster than the chips in the rest of these phones, but it's also ROG have really mellowed out over the years. The software is less in-your-face gamer than it used to be while actually hiding more gamer features than ever before. The

design has got that cool gamery edge to it like this pixel display is the best that they've done so far without looking tacky the cameras are the best they've ever been you get a proper 50 megapixel main camera a pretty good three times

optical zoom camera and a serviceable ultrawide camera so if you do want to properly sink your teeth into mobile gaming it's not close this thing is amazing my only slight beef is that they have had to tone down the speaker quality a bit from their old phones to

make the bezels around the screen smaller but we can't have everything this is a banging phone okay so that's gaming what is the best camera of 2024 you would expect this to be easy I compared what I thought with the two

best smartphone cameras the iPhone 16 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and I found that the iPhone 1 so iPhone right well that was before I tested the Vivo X200 Pro the way that I would describe this is technically speaking the iPhone is a fantastic camera I don't

think I've ever taken a photo or video on this thing thinking that sucks it shoots exactly what you think it's going to but when I use this phone the oh that's not good I promise these are really durable trophies my wife comes to save the

day I just break things okay let's put what's left of this trophy on the plinth we'll have to get a new one of these made but the point I was making is when I use this phone it makes me feel like I can capture things that I never thought

I could just feel its style. It's got a big main camera sensor, it's got a 200 megapixel zoom camera which means you can get a lot closer to things than you think. An absolutely amazing portrait mode that makes me feel like I could do

this as a career. And even the video quality is probably the best that I have seen on Android. So even though the phone is not as widely available as others, you got to give credit where credit's due or I guess in this case, broken trophies. I either want this in the west or I want

Western companies to be more like this. The only downside of shooting with Vivo of course is that you've still got to keep an eye on what you're shooting. You don't even need to do that with our sponsor, the Insta360 X4, because look at this. If I attach this

camera onto the invisible selfie stick and then I place it in the middle of this basketball court, whoa, I always forget how tall this thing is. Then I don't need to think about anything anymore. It records an 8K resolution, it records in 360° so you can

capture every single part of this game all at once. And then if I later decided that I wanted a completely different viewpoint of that same scene, I can tap on Josh's face instead of mine and voila, the camera follows him all the way around instead. But here's the coolest

part, if you really decide that you want to flex today, you can swing the camera around your head to capture these frankly insane matrix-like bullet time shots in which the camera and all equipment around it disappears. Oh, and there's an exclusive holiday deal so

it's 15% off the X4, it's a free bullet time handle like this and it's a free invisible selfie stick, all from the link in the description. So that's all the subcategories, let's talk winners. So the best budget phone of 2024, as per usual,

there's been a billion of them, all the usual contenders. There's great phones from Redmi, there's great phones from Realme, great phones from Poco, but there's one phone that to me feels special and that is the CMF phone one. 'Cause here's the thing, it's got the specs

that you'd be looking for at this $200 price. Nothing feels lacking when you're using it, but it combines that with a pretty big practicality upside. The thing is modular and it has an entire ecosystem of accessories just to go with it. And yeah, not in a super slick

everything's magnetic and wirelessly communicates kind of way, but it's the best it can be given the price and it's far more than anyone else is doing it. It means you damage your phone's back, you can just swap it out. You want to add in

a phone stand, just screw one in. You want a wallet, you can have one completely secured to the rear of your device. Ooh, I feel like this trophy's turned out particularly cool, but while the best budget phone was a pretty easy decision, the best mid-range phone was not.

Sleepless nights, I tell you, sleepless nights. You know that meme, 'I bet he's thinking about other girls'? Yeah, that's me, but all I could think of was Xiaomi, Samsung, no no no, Google, OnePlus, oh nothing. Anyway, there were a couple of

options that were easier to eliminate, like the Google Pixel 8a, which is a little underpowered for what you're paying, doesn't have that great a battery, and also just looks kind of bad for a 2024 mid-range phone with these thick and uneven screen borders. The Nothing

Phone 2 is, well, it's last year's phone, and they haven't made a Nothing Phone 3 yet. But now it gets tricky because I think this phone, the OnePlus Nord 4, is absolutely amazing. It's been a long time since I've used a metal body phone. This

thing takes me all the way back to the HTC One days, and those were good times. It's one of those phones that you pick up and you're just like, yes, you get it. This works. It's thin, it's light, it's fast. Pretty much everything about it

feels flagship, and it stands shockingly close to phones like the Samsung Galaxy S24 Plus, but at less than half the price. The only thing that puts me off giving it the trophy is that the ultra-wide camera is really quite soft

and there is no zoom camera. But genuinely, if this company had just invested another $30 in this camera system, this would have been my favorite phone for sure. So this ended up for me being a decision between the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, which is Samsung's

slightly scaled-back S24 Plus phone, and then the Xiaomi 14T, which is pretty similar. It's Xiaomi's mid-range equivalent to their flagship 14 series of phones. And honestly, when you put these two side-by-side, the S24 FE does

feel pretty lazy by comparison, it does have a faster chip and it does have wireless charging, which the Xiaomi doesn't, but it just feels like Xiaomi has put a lot more care into their device. The 14T has got a higher

resolution screen, a larger battery, faster charging, more RAM, even just comparing the screen bezels, Xiaomi feels definitively ahead. Not to mention this is the standard 14T, which is quite a lot cheaper than Samsung once you get to the

14T Pro, which is more similar, it absolutely smokes it. Also, I was expecting the Samsung zoom camera to be significantly better than Xiaomi, since this is a three times optical zoom and this is a two times optical zoom, but when I tested it and I found that it wasn't, I

looked up the specs only to find that the Xiaomi zoom camera has a 50 megapixel resolution, Samsung's has eight, which just feels really rough for something of this price. And now, just before the overall phone of the year, someone has to take the L. Last year

it was Apple with the iPhone SE and Google with their first Pixel Fold, both very prolific devices that the whole industry knew were coming. This year, we have something that I don't think anyone saw coming, really. So, HMD, the company who you most likely know for their Nokia

phones, they decided this time around to make something called the Skyline, and um, a horrendously mediocre device. I mean, first of all, whose idea was this design? Who decided that the combination of a sharp angular body and then a rounded screen was the way to go? You literally picked the worst parts of

both decisions and merge them together into a phone that looks even worse than the sum of its parts. The thing literally looks like you started cutting out the approximate shape of a smartphone and then halfway through realized that you couldn't actually be bothered. The cameras sound good on paper, but the

tuning is bad. You have to work to get great images out of it, and you don't get like the 7 years of software support of Samsung or even the four years of Xiaomi. You get two here, and if that wasn't enough, it gets pretty laggy fairly often.

It's got this horrible tiny vibration motor. Put it this way, I'm not surprised that you can already get this thing for like 30 to 40% off even though it's only been out for a few months. It hardly manages to deliver, which is why we need to give it

its own wooden spoon. Okay, so what is the best flagship phone of 2024 if you just truly want the best of the best? Well, honestly, I think the OnePlus 12 is absolutely amazing for slightly less money than the rest. The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is very good for

people who are a bit less into gaming and more into AI supercharged photography. But this has felt like a particularly great year for Samsung software. They've gone quite suddenly from having one of the weakest software skins to one of the strongest, and so even though not every piece of hardware

they've made this year has been a hit, their top-end S24 Ultra does come out as a very immediate top contender. Some of their Samsung AI stuff is actually useful. Battery life is amazing. The S Pen is physically baked inside, and also this anti-reflective display they've put onto

It is amazing, don't underestimate it. And all of this is happening while I would go as far as to say Apple has floundered. Even though, yes, the iPhone camera does come out on top, aside from that, the battery improvements were not significant. Basically, no other hardware

changed, and the key new thing is Apple intelligence, which is both very early right now and also coming to last year's Pros anyway. Also, I don't really like iOS 18. I feel like the two key things that have changed are: one, the control center, which makes zero sense to me. I just

don't understand how Apple decided that the key thing their users want in the next update is a full-screen music widget, even though they have a music widget here. And then you scroll down another page, and you've just got an expanded list of the same controls that

you also still have on your homepage. Why? And then you got the new Photos app, which is just beyond confusing and slower to navigate. And so, while obviously choosing a phone nowadays is highly based on ecosystem, if we just put that to the side, who made the best phone

this year? I would say Samsung, until I tested this Vivo. I wish the body of this phone was a little less sticky, but apart from that, Vivo's Origin OS is so fast, so smooth. Like I said before, the camera is shockingly good. It's like the best parts from every

phone camera put together, and the battery is amazing. When I use this phone, it genuinely feels like I've just inserted a cheat code and have early access to next year's device. It, it feels naughty. And so, it brings me great pleasure to announce that the overall

champion of 2024 is in fact the Vivo X90 Pro. The bad news is it's not easy to get hold of in countries like the UK and the US. The good news is that if this phone really appeals to you then the Oppo Find X5 Pro is really similar and

much easier to get. It's the same parent company making both and so the core DNA behind them is pretty much identical. To find out how we've turned this room that we're sitting in right now into the perfect living room, click here and I will catch you in the next one.

The BEST Smartphones of 2024!

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I'm Arun Maini, I'm a 27 year old Economics graduate whose life's passion is Technology, and I'm on a mission to make the most FUN and USEFUL Tech videos on the Planet! 🙏





The BEST Smartphones of 2024!

The BEST Smartphones of 2024!

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