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 massive phones so i'm just going to lay it down as it is i'm going to show 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 which we're gonna punish on camera so let's start with the design conscious user for those of you who really value the 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 m11 but i think the most design-conscious device is actually from sony sony's new xperia one 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 all right brand new category time because this year i also want to award the most eco-conscious phone no 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 one 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. 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 it's almost not fair to the other phones now what if you've got smaller hands though don't know why i'm doing this minor enormous 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 face 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 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-minute which dare i say is actually quite good value 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 a is going to make quite an impact for around 450 okay we need 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 the second most stream 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 and 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 4 500 milliamp hours it by far beats out every android phone with even 5 000 milliamp hour cells i had to sit there for 10 hours straight waiting for this phone to die in my battery test so a sub to the channel would be triumphant it doesn't come cheap though let's see if we can make this setup a little more budget right 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 now 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 par 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 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 vegas joined the game with their x-fold which supposedly gives you the best camera system on available 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 they're 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 right time to get serious well 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 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 especially 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 me 12 ultra is coming and it's seemingly going to be quite a big step up from the current me 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 video 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 i'm completely 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 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 this is a flagship spec supremely refined and really comfortable to hold smartphone with a good chunk of design personality 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 that leads us to the end or at least the end for this fern right here this is the huawei p50 pro and in some parallel universe where huawei hadn't had the u.s 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 and 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 say this because if you followed for a while you'll know that i was a huge fan of the momentum that huawei brought to the smartphone market but it makes no sense to buy this phone anyways if you are in the market to buy any new tech by the way i have a really cool tool for you karma this video's sponsored this might sound a little random but i've been planning to make a video on my shorts channel all about the most wacky airpods cases and i used karma to actually make sure i got the best prices karma is a free app or browser extension that basically takes the online shopping experience and removes all the pain points it scans the entire web for all available coupon codes and applies the best ones for you automatically at checkout it is very cool watching this happen it gives you cashback for many brands that you can either cash out or donate and my favorite thing is that you can mark an item you want and karma will give you real-time notifications when that item is low in stock when it next comes back in stock and even when it next goes on sale so you can make sure that you never actually pay full price again it effectively lets you keep track of all price alerts from all your favorite brands across multiple different sites and devices so hear the link in the description to download it karma has both a browser extension and an app for android and ios both are free to check out some of the fastest gadgets of 2022 that video is here or for some of the cheapest gadgets that video is here my name is aaron this is the boss
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