Best big phones 2023

The best big phones offer huge screens and massive batteries, but at the cost of easy one-handed use. Opposite of compact, these large devices let you lose yourself in games, videos, and text. All that screen real estate also makes it easier to type without typos.

Alongside their more expansive displays and improved longevity on a charge, the best big phones pack more elaborate cameras, with a greater quantity of lenses and the best optics and sensors on the market. Rest assured, we've tested them all.

If you're ready to go big on your next phone, we've put together a list of some of our super-sized favorites. And should you want one of the best small phones instead, we've got you covered there, too.

The quick list

Best big phone overall

Our pick for the best big phone belongs to Samsung and the Galaxy S23 Ultra. This is a beast of a device with a massive 6.8-inch Super AMOLED display, the powerful Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 for Galaxy chipset, an amazing 200MP camera, and the fan-favorite S Pen.

Battery life is vastly improved since the Galaxy S22 Ultra (which is still available for sale). Samsung kept a similar to design to last year, though we don't think the display is flat enough yet since the curves can get in the way. The Galaxy S23 Ultra is also the most expensive traditional smartphone on this list at a starting price of $1,199. At least you get a base storage of 256GB.

Read our full Galaxy S23 Ultra review.

Best big iPhone

The iPhone 15 Pro Max is one of the best big phones around, and without doubt the best big iPhone, which may be all you need to hear to convince it’s worth buying.

Thanks to a customizable Action button, a better chipset,a lighter design and an improved zoom camera, you will want for nothing with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. It’s a shame it’s so expensive though. And that the charging is a bit slow. This is forgivable to some degree though, considering how much you still get.

Read our full iPhone 15 Pro Max review.

Best big phone value

If you want the best big phone for your money, then look no further than the OnePlus 11. This flagship boasts top-tier specs, great cameras, and stellar battery life for just $699. It goes head-to-head with the likes of the Pixel 7 Pro, Galaxy S23, and iPhone 14 Pro, all while costing less.

With a 6.7-inch QHD+ AMOLED display, the OnePlus 11 has plenty of screen real estate for gaming, which it can handle without a problem thanks to its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 system-on-chip. This is the best value right now and well worth your consideration.

Read our full OnePlus 11 review.

Best big phone for cameras

With an expansive 6.7-inch OLED display, the Pixel 7 Pro is a large phone without a doubt. But thanks to the curved edges and front glass, it easily fits in your hand (though it is a bit slippery). It has a large 5,000 mAh battery that, somehow, continues to manage to disappoint us in our battery life test.

But the Pixel 7 Pro’s strengths come down to its new Tensor G2 chipset and its cameras. The photos the Pixel 7 Pro can take are amazing, with beautiful colors, sharp focus, and nifty features like Photo Unblur. Tensor G2 itself is a big improvement over the first-generation chip, offering performance that’s closer to Qualcomm.

The Pixel 7 Pro is a big boy and worth it if you want the best cameras in an Android phone. 

Read our full Pixel 7 Pro review.

Best big foldable phone

You can't get a phone much bigger than a full-size folding phone, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 is our current favorite.

Opening up to 7.8 inches, but weighing less than last year and offering a lighter design, the practical concerns of using a phone of this size have been reduced. It's still expensive and fragile, but being able to open up to four apps at once and interact with them via touch (or optional stylus) is the kind of multitasking no other phone can match.

While its cameras and battery life are improved, they still can't match the best regular smartphones for performance here. Some people searching for big phones will want greater balance, but if size is all that matters, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 delivers.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 review.

Best big iPhone value

The iPhone 15 Plus is here to let you get an iPhone that's the same size as the iPhone 15 Pro Max, but for $300 less.

Unfortunately for this larger basic iPhone, it doesn't have a 120Hz display refresh rate, a telephoto camera, or particularly fast charging. These are all things that its Android-using rivals all have, meaning it's a hard sell in some ways.

Lucky for Apple, there's still plenty to like about the iPhone 15 Plus. Its main, 2x ultrawide and selfie photos are all very strong, its A16 Bionic chipset still outperforms anything excluding the iPhone 15 Pro, and it's surprisingly light for its size. Plus, with all the standard iPhone software and UI polish, including a new Dynamic Island on the display, it's still a joy to use.

Read our full iPhone 15 Plus review.

Best big phone refresh rate

Fast-refreshing displays are becoming a more common feature among flagship phones, though most of the phones on this list top out at a 120Hz rate. The Motorola Edge Plus (2022) does that one better with a 6.7-inch panel that refreshes at 144Hz when your on-screen activity demands it. That makes for smoother scrolling and more immersive graphics.

The Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 chipset powering Motorola’s flagship can keep up with any Android phone released in 2022, and the 50MP main camera can produce some great shots in the right conditions. We wish the 4,800 mAh battery in the Motorola Edge Plus was better equipped to last long on a charge, and Motorola’s software upgrade policy lags behind Samsung’s. But if you can find this flagship at the right price, the Motorola Edge Plus has some appeal to gamers who like big displays.

Read our full Motorola Edge Plus (2022) review.

How to choose the best big phone for you

• Android or iPhone? Android phones give you more choice in terms of price, size and innovative designs — many of them happen to be larger, too. However, iPhones offer speedier software updates, better games and apps and better security and privacy. See our iPhone vs Android face-off.
• Unlocked or carrier? Most shoppers in the U.S. buy new phones through their wireless carrier. But an unlocked phone gives you the freedom to buy the device without any sort of contract and then bring it to the provider you want to use.
• Screen size: For fans of big phones, 6 inches and up is a good place to start. The biggest phones are 6.5 to just under 7 inches. If you want something you can easily use with one hand, go with one of the best small phones with a screen under 6 inches.
• Cameras: Don't pay attention to the megapixel count. Instead, look at camera face-offs between phones to see the photo quality and look for special features like Night Mode to get better quality in low light. Also see our best camera phone roundup.
• Battery life: Generally, phones with larger batteries (measured in mAh) offer the longest battery life, but that's not always the case. That's why we run our own custom battery tests, where phones repeatedly load webpages over a T-Mobile data connection while set to 150 nits of display brightness until they run out of juice.

How we test smartphones

In order for a smartphone to make our best phone list, it needs to excel on several tests that we run on every handset. We perform some of these tests in our labs and some in the real world.

When it comes to performance, we rely on such synthetic benchmarks as Geekbench 5 and 3DMark to measure graphics performance. These tests allow us to compare performance across iPhones and Android devices. We also run a real-world video transcoding test on each phone using the Adobe Premiere Rush app and time the result. (We unfortunately have to skip this test on some phones due to app compatibility issues, but we attempt this benchmark with each device we get in to review.)

To measure the quality of a phone's display, we perform lab tests to determine the brightness of the panel (in nits), as well as how colorful each screen is (DCI-P3 color gamut). In these cases, higher numbers are better. We also measure color accuracy of each panel with a Delta-E rating, where lower numbers are better and score of 0 is perfect.

One of the most important tests we run is the Tom's Guide battery test. We run a web surfing test over 5G (or 4G if the phone doesn't have 5G support) at 150 nits of screen brightness until the battery gives out. In general, a phone that lasts 10 hours or more is good, and anything above 11 hours makes our list of the best phone battery life.

Last but not least, we take the best phones out in the field to take photos outdoors, indoors and at night in low light to see how they perform versus their closest competitors. We take shots of landscapes, food, portraits and more, and also allow you to be the judge with side-by-side comparisons in our reviews.