The best phones in 2024 tested and rated
Here are the best phones for your shortlist if you’re looking to buy now.
1. The list in brief
2. Best overall
3. Best iPhone
4. Best overall value
5. Best iPhone value
6. Best cameras
7. Best flagship value
8. Best Android for most people
9. Best iPhone for most people
10. Best charging
11. Best budget Android
12. Most unique phone
13. Best budget iPhone
14. Best foldable
Here you have the best phones you can get right now, but be aware that things could change soon. The Samsung Galaxy S24 and Galaxy S24 Ultra have launched, and chances are they'll be getting spots on this list very soon.
Contenders from the best Android phones and best iPhones can be found on this list, meaning you're likely to be satisfied no matter what phone you're moving from. And you can rely on the fact these are all phones we at TG have tested thoroughly, with all the pros and cons laid out for you to see to help you make your mind up.
The quick list
Best overall
The best overall phone
Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra is our current smartphone champion. With its amazing cameras, performance, battery life and handy stylus, it offers basically everything you could ask for.
Best iPhone
Best iPhone
The top dog of Apple's line-up, the latest Pro Max offers some top-notch photography and battery life, great performance and unique Apple-y touches like the Action button.
Best value
Best value phone
Google's got a knack for producing great value phones, and the quality of the Pixel 7a's cameras, display and chipset cement its place here despite a price raise since last year.
Best iPhone value
Best iPhone value
This smaller Pro iPhone offers almost identical specs to the Pro Max above (minus display, camera zoom and battery size), just in a more pocket-friendly size and for a little less money.
Best cameras
Best cameras
Between the sensors themselves, and Google's computational brilliance, the Pixel 8 Pro offers the best overall photography package of any phone.
Best flagship value
Best flagship value
OnePlus managed a return to form with the 11, bundling a bunch of class-leading specs in a surprisingly well-priced package, and some particularly good charging and battery specs to boot.
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Best charging
Best charging speed
This phone's 120W charging is remarkably speedy, but don't ignore this phone's mighty camera array and battery life either, as it helps justify the price you'll have to pay for it all.
Best budget Android
Best budget Android phone
Coming in at half the price of a flagship phone, but still offering some cutting-edge comforts, Samsung's got a phone that'll please anybody but those prioritising performance.
Best foldable
Best foldable phone
OnePlus' folding phone is an impressive device that sells for less than its rivals but still can't be matched when it comes to multitasking or charging speed.
The best phones in the UK you can buy today
Why you can trust Tom's Guide
The best phone overall
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Samsung brought quite a few upgrades with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, including a 200MP main camera and a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chip rather than a new Exynos model. These two upgrades have helped close the gap between it and the iPhone 14 Pro Max, and have given the Galaxy S23 Ultra the top spot both in this list and in our best camera phones guide.
There are still some things that may put you off the S23 Ultra. It's slow to charge compared to its rivals (except the iPhone), it's still one of the most expensive phones on the market, and it's kept its curved display. It's flatter than it was on the Galaxy S22 Ultra, but it may still not be flat enough for some users who dislike curved displays.
All that said, there's probably no better overall phone for hardware that you can get right now. If you can afford it, there's nothing that's overall better that you can buy right now.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra review.
The best iPhone
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Apple once again impresses with its top-tier iPhone 15, the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Building on last year's Pro Max, this model gets a new 5x "tetraprism" telephoto camera, a more powerful A17 Pro chipset, and a customizable Action button to replace the mute switch.
What isn't so great is that Apple's still sticking with its 20W charging standard, which is the slowest among flagship phones right now. Also, adding all the new features has meant Apple's upped the price, even if it does offer increased default storage in return. That aside, there's no better iPhone on sale right now, and for many people, that makes their buying choice easy.
Read our full iPhone 15 Pro Max review.
The best value phone
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Google made some big enhancements to the Pixel 7a, which has meant a small price increase. The good news is that this is still a budget phone, just one with a lot more premium features.
Those include the new 90Hz display refresh rate, higher-rez 64MP main camera, and the same Tensor G2 chipset as you'd find on the Pixel 7 flagship series, giving the Pixel 7a a nice amount of power for its price. The screen still has some annoyingly thick bezels hemming in the 6.1-inch display, but if you can forgive that, then you'll have little reason not to pick up this amazing value smartphone.
Read our full Google Pixel 7a review.
Best iPhone value
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Due to the size difference in the display and battery capacity, the iPhone 15 Pro doesn't quite reach the same heights as the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Don't be fooled though, this iPhone still crushes most of the Android competitors beneath its heel, thanks to the combination of power and ease of use that Apple works hard to perfect.
The 6.1-inch 15 Pro still offers an excellent display, an identical A17 Pro chipset to the one inside the iPhone 215 Pro Max, and a new design featuring titanium sides and an Action button, a customizable side key.
Aside from this, we aren't fans of how Apple's still got some of the slowest charging speeds in the business, with a maximum of just 20W. Also, it's a real pity that Apple didn't add its new 5x telephoto camera to the Pro, only the Pro Max. But if you like your flagship phones on the small side but want almost all of the best possible features Apple can offer you, the iPhone 15 Pro is a fine choice.
Read our full iPhone 15 Pro review.
Best cameras
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
There's a lot of clever AI processing stuff beneath the Pixel 8 Pro's skin, but the best usage of it remains for photography. Whether it's straightforward photo post-processing, sharpening zoom images or using the ingenious Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur or Magic Editor features to tidy up your shots, the Pixel 8 Pro can help you get the best images possible.
But all this ignores the fact that this is a phone with a great-looking display, speedy charging and a whopping seven years of Android updates in store for it, which make this a fantastic investment for other reasons besides the cameras. Admittedly the Tensor G3 chip isn't quite as powerful on CPU and graphics benchmarks as rival phones, and its battery life isn't quite as strong as we'd like it to be, but this remains a great purchase for users who are going to get the most out of the software.
Read our full Google Pixel 8 Pro review
Best flagship value
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
There's been a number of changes to the OnePlus 11 from previous OnePlus flagships, but even though it's not strictly a "Pro", it's still got plenty to attract power users.
The OnePlus x Hasselblad collaboration continues to bear fruit with better photography than ever (though we wish the zoom camera had more powerful magnification like rival phones), while the OnePlus staples of fast charging, long-lasting batteries and aggressive pricing have also seen improvements. About the only thing missing is wireless charging, but that's something that's not too difficult to overlook.
Read our full OnePlus 11 review.
Best phone for fast charging
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Xiaomi is a brand that deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Samsung, Google and Apple, and the Xiaomi 13 Pro proves it.
Its cameras, including three 50MP sensors on the back, take more natural-looking photos than others are capable of, while its 120W charging brick gives you more power per minute than any rival device. Its display and UX are up there with the best too.
Where the Xiaomi falls down is performance. Even with the same chip as its rivals, its performance isn't quite as good. It's also got a price that's higher than regular flagship phones but cheaper than the best phones around, which could make it hard to justify paying for when you'd save money or get even more in your new phone. The 13 Pro does merit its premium pricetag though, and could be an excellent device for power users with a focus on photos and quick charging.
Read our full Xiaomi 13 Pro review.
Also take a look at our Xiaomi 13 review for our thoughts on the basic version of this phone, and our Xiaomi 13 Ultra hands-on if you're curious about the range-topping model that isn't coming to the U.K.
Best budget Android
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
Samsung's Galaxy A54 gives you a more affordable entry point to the biggest ecosystem in the Android world, and with fewer sacrifices than ever. The chipset is a little underpowered compared to rival phones that get the same chipsets as their flagship siblings, and we improved main camera photography with its new 50MP sensor and more RAM and storage combined with the rare ability of expandable storage, you get enough options to cover your everyday needs.
We also really like how this phone beats all-comers on battery life. That includes phones within its price bracket and outside it too. So if the other specs didn't convince you, maybe the knowledge you can get over ten hours of continuous use out of the A54 before it shuts down will.
Read our full Samsung Galaxy A54 review
Best foldable phone
Specifications
Reasons to buy
Reasons to avoid
OnePlus did the unexpected and dethroned Samsung when it came to foldable phones, and it's all thanks to the Open. Borrowing knowledge and parts from partner company Oppo, OnePlus gave us a foldable that's a couple of hundred less than the Galaxy Z Fold 5 or Pixel Fold, but one that's if anything more useful.
This boils down to the Open Canvas system, which makes it far easier to move between multiple open apps in a desktop-style interface. A long-lasting battery, fast charging, a powerful chipset/RAM combination all help too, although you'll have to settle for weaker photography and a lack of wireless charging, which is uncommon for a phone of this price.
Read our full OnePlus Open review
How to choose the best U.K. phone for you
Your first question when picking which phones to shortlist should be: Apple or Android? iPhones are excellent, but deciding against any kind of Android phone means limiting your choice significantly. Generally, if you want the latest and greatest hardware, you're better off with a recent Android phone, whereas iPhones prioritise well-optimised features that work seamlessly with user-friendly software.
It's also important to keep the size of the phones you're looking at in mind. Many phones are above 6 inches in size these days, which suits most people but if you want something more compact, you'll need to search more thoroughly for the best small phones.
As for key features, the two you'll want to focus on are cameras and battery. With phones having all but replaced the compact digital camera, it's important to have a versatile array of cameras. High megapixel (MP) counts aren't everything though, so take a look through our comparison photo sliders in our reviews to see how all the cameras on a phone perform against a rival phone.
The importance of battery and charging should be obvious: you want your phone to last as long as possible, and ideally power up again quickly. As a general rule, the more milliamp hours (mAh) in a phone's battery, the better. However it's not always accurate — iPhones have some of the smallest batteries of any modern phone, but some still place highly on our best battery life phones list. Again, it's a good idea to check our reviews where we detail how long these phones last doing everyday tasks.
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 GFXBench 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.
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 a 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 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.
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Richard is based in London, covering news, reviews and how-tos for phones, tablets, gaming, and whatever else people need advice on. Following on from his MA in Magazine Journalism at the University of Sheffield, he's also written for WIRED U.K., The Register and Creative Bloq. When not at work, he's likely thinking about how to brew the perfect cup of specialty coffee.