What's up guys, Mike here, the Detroit Borg,
and it's the end of the year, so it's
time to recap my favorite smartphones of
the year. So there's been quite a few
phones I reviewed this year, some of
them have been great,
some of them not so much, and there's a
few I can highly recommend to anybody
who asks me, what's my favorite smartphone.
So this top five is going to be a list
of phones that I personally consider the
best out there and I think you should
consider them as well. But of course they're
not going to be perfect for everyone. So
in my case I prefer large high-quality
displays, large batteries for excellent
battery life,
excellent rear-facing cameras, great
design and build quality, and features
that really stand out like a fast
fingerprint sensor, waterproofing, stereo
speakers, and a software experience that
is smooth and provides useful features.
So returning to my top five list,
this year is the LG V20, the V10 was one of my
favorites from last year and the V20
brings many of those same features,
including a large quad HD display and
the only swappable battery in the top
five list. Its also one of the few to still
offer a microSD card slot, and among its
many distinguishing features it has a
dual camera system along the back with
one camera specifically designed for
wide angle shots. A feature borrowed from
the LG G5 and remains a unique feature
in the world of smartphones. And although
it's a little hard to reach on a phone of
this size, we also get a secondary
display, that can be utilized by apps to
display persistent information and tools.
But my favorite use for this is for
notifications, which means that no longer
blocks your status bar or parts of your
screen when they pop up. The primary
camera also delivers some of the best 4k
video recording with high bitrate
recording and custom microphone settings.
Audio files will also find the best
audio experience among all the
smartphones on my list. Thanks to the
dedicated quad deck and custom audio
tuning. Ultimately V20 is a phone for
enthusiasts who want tons of features
and customization, a trade that is sort
of disappearing from phones as the
software experience is simplified. Yet
it does all this while maintaining
excellent performance and Battery life and
is perhaps the most feature-packed phone
on the market. It's by no means the
best-looking or best-built phone in my
top five, but with a rigid metal shell
it's still a premium design, of course it
could use a better speaker or an oled
display instead of the IPS display. Well
overall it's a stand-up phone that gets
the basics right and then some. One plus
Got an
early start in 2016 with the
One Plus 3 but snuck into my top five list
with a revised 3T, and although the price
continues to creep up it still remains
the best value among flagship
smartphones. Now this phone did not make
my top five list because it's a good
value, it made my list because it's an
outstanding phone regardless of the
price. Despite costing half the price of
many flagships it sports the best specs
among 2016 android phones with 6 gigabytes
of ram and a Snapdragon 821 which
gives it some of the best performance
scores in the business today. It's also
equipped with a very capable if ordinary
16 megapixel camera with 4k video
recording.
although only 1080p the large 5.5 inch
display makes up for it thanks to a
bright OLED panel with deep blacks and
vivid colors the 3T also picks up a
massive 3,400 MAh
power battery and excellent all-day
battery life and houses it a thin and
lightweight metal design, but the
distinguishing feature of the One Plus
3T is Dash Charging which is the fastest
charging system on any smartphone today,
and it does this without generating
excessive heat in the phone's battery,
which is common to most rapid charging
solutions. Ultimately my favorite aspect
of the One Plus 3T is that it's just
simple, it gets all the core basics right
with a fast fingerprint scanner
functional design and a software
experience that is simple, with some
useful features added. Now my next three
smartphones are essentially tied for
first place they all represent the best
the industry has to offer with the least
compromise and the most polished designs
and features so among these phones is
the samsung galaxy s7 edge easily one of
the best looking android phones of the
year with a curved display in a glass
and metal design that never fails to
impress it's also the phone with the
best display of the year with a quad HD
Super AMOLED panel which might be reason
enough to buy the phone above all the
others now this super sharp display also
put samsung on the leading edge of BR
the g7 edge also has one of the best
cameras i've used this year with quick
launch times quick all the focusing and
nearly idiot-proof image capture their
life is adequate but probably the
weakest among my top 5 samsung also
packs their phones with software
features which may or may not impress
everybody but longtime temps on users
have come to really appreciate it
certainly adds to the flagship
experience
now the g7 is also the only water
resistant android phone on my list but
unfortunately that comes with one of the
worst sounding loudspeakers I've tested
on any flagship phone this year although
TouchWiz performance has continued to
improve and so has the design
performance speed still can't keep up
with iOS or near stock Android but
ultimately samsung really knows how to
make photos that excite and impress at a
time when everything is starting to look
the same google pixel XL is definitely
my android phone of choice and that's
the very first phone to be designed
entirely by google the true strength of
this phone comes down to it software the
rest of the phone gets the job done but
no better than any of the other
smartphones on this list
the design is functional and visually
distinctive but certainly not the best
looking in 2016 the camera specs sheet
is fairly lightweight without features
like optical image stabilization or a
wide aperture but images are standing on
the list with some of the best image
processing I've seen on any smartphone
this year especially in low light
battery life is superb and the huge 5.5
inch quad HD AMOLED display sacks up
nicely against the galaxy s7 edge though
it could stand to be a little brighter
along with the galaxy s7 edge the pixel
XL is designed specifically for VR and
the high-resolution display and
dangerous vr platform is well suited to
this purpose but just like the Nexus
devices before the pixel represents the
most current state of art for android
and is continuously updated with the
latest releases a persistent issues that
plague other android devices and one of
the reasons i prefer pixel or nexus
devices in general
hello you won't find the ton of features
the software experience is always
reliable and quick and with a recent
addition of raised awake really like
nothing I envy about other smartphones
and finally in my top five we have the
iphone 7 plus which picks up a tweak
design and a new jet black finish that
makes it my favorite design of the year
there's just nothing that can compare to
that flawless continuous glassy surface
that wraps the entire foam and also
picks up an all new camera system on the
back with a camera dedicated to optical
zoom
although it's not an essential feature
and probably not the reason to buy it it
can be useful and I think it's the best
implementation of a dual camera system
on a smartphone this year the iphone
still has one of the best camera systems
on any smartphone with flawless and
smooth all the focusing and perfectly
stabilize 4k video recording which makes
it might
favorite camera for handheld video now
my only complaint is that the camera is
hard to launch quickly which is V try
miss from several of the android phones
on this list the iphone also picks up a
wider aperture which means low light
performance is excellent although phones
like the pixel XL tends to produce
better colors the seven plus also gets a
new brighter 1080p IPS display with a
wider color gamut which is still
brighter and whiter than any of the
amoled displays while still producing
very solid and deep blacks and excellent
off executing performance and perhaps
the most surprising thing about the
iphone 7 plus is that it's the only
phone here with stereo speakers and
easily the best sounding phone of
reviewed this year it's also the only
film besides the gs-7 edge to be water
resistant which makes the speaker
performance here even more impressive
these seven plus also remains the most
powerful smartphone on the market by a
significant margin and it definitely
shows the smooth performance of iOS 10
despite its increasing feature blow it
also manages to hang on to one of the
best battery performances on my list
despite having the smallest battery most
powerful cpu and brightest display no
other phone can really match the quality
of the materials on the iphone right
down to the sapphire crystal on the
fingerprint scanner which tends to be
glass or even plastic on the other
phones in this list the iphone 7 plus is
still larger and bulkier than most
phones with a 5.5 inch screen and it's
still the only flagship phone at this
price with a 1080p display and said the
quad HD which means it's never going to
be a great handset for VR now there are
a few other phones that are worth an
honorable mention including the HTC 10
is so if i have a six spot this would
probably be there now I didn't make my
top five wishes because it doesn't have
a great camera and it doesn't have a lot
of features that really distinguish
itself from the other flagships on the
market today was definitely a great film
overall and it does have one of the best
sounding speaker systems on the market
2016 also brought us modularity for the
first time and we saw that with the LG
g5 and I think more successfully with
the Moto Z but they don't think either
phone are worth recommending based on
modularity alone now it comes the budget
too many smartphones the options can be
overwhelming especially since 2016
introduce a huge variety of them but
there is no question that the one plus
3t is my favorite mid-range phone since
it also made my top five list and
there's just no other phone at this
price
ice that can match it on specs and
features now for a budget phone under
three hundred or two hundred dollars the
emoji for lineup once again stands out
as my go-to recommendation for phone
that delivers the most bang for your
buck with a large display affordable
storage options and near stock Android
experience but if you want altra cheap
smartphones I review the fifty-dollar
blue r 1 HD from amazon which is a
shockingly good smartphone at this price
the next bit Robin is also another
outstanding budget phone since the
prices continue to drop throughout the
years since i reviewed it make it one of
the best values under two hundred
dollars
this has also been a year in which the
Chinese manufacturers have started
producing a huge variety of outstanding
smartphones now entering global markets
the honor eight and Huawei p9 where two
phones are reviewed this year that stood
out as outstanding phones but the phone
that really changes expectations from
chinese manufacturers is the Xiaomi mix
which i just received a day before I
started making this video although not
widely available in global markets it's
easily one of the most stunning pieces
of foam hardware design this year thanks
to an all ceramic chassis and the
display pushed to the edges of the
device i can't speak more on this device
until I give it my full review so please
stay tuned to that video although fairly
rare there are a few disappointments
this year most notably the LG g5 which
is one of the first flagship smartphones
that I couldn't recommend due to very
poor design and build quality and
substandard display which was very
splotchy with a lot of edge leaking but
LG ultimately redeemed itself for the
excellent v20 and of course you can talk
about 2016 without talking about the
galaxy note 7 which almost certainly
would have made it to my top five list
in place of the galaxy s7 but
unfortunately we all know how that
turned out in the end it still wasn't
the perfect phone which suffered from
notable software performance issues a
slow fingerprint scanner but the harbor
and features were outstanding
alright guys thanks for sticking with me
in 2016 when I want to know from you is
what is your favorite smartphone of the
year please let me know in the comments
section below
hope you guys have a good new year and
we'll see you again in my next video