Even though it has minimal upgrades to previous Z Flips, the Samsung Galax
y Z Flip 5 is the best folding phone you can buy thanks to its winning combination of price, design, features, and software support.
At $999/£1,049, it’s priced to compete with ‘regular’ phones, and its inner display is the same size as those rivals, except this one folds in half so it’s smaller in your pocket. The Z Flip 5 also now folds completely flat and has a larger outer screen so you can check the time, notifications, and even whole apps without unfolding it.
This is slightly contradictory given you can just unfold the phone, and the attraction of that is you are less tempted to look at your phone the whole time. But on the pure gadget, The phone that sits atop our best budget phone round-up should rightly get a mention as one of the best phones overall – not every great phone has to cost the earth.
The Moto G62 is a sub-£200 handset with all the basics covered – a solid 120Hz screen, attractively simple Android software, very good two-day battery life, and a chipset with a processor strong enough to keep up with normal phone tasks (unlike other cheaper phones).
A 50Mp main camera is also nice to find at this price, but there’s no stabilization tech so you’ll need a steady hand, while the ultrawide and macro lenses aren’t anything to write home about. But at this price, a camera that takes bright, sharp images in daylight is all you could want.
With 5G built in then you’re set for a few years of use on new networks, though we don’t expect the G62 to get many software updates. Motorola doesn’t sell this phone in the US, but it sells plenty of equivalent solid Moto phones for around the $200 price point. terms, having two screens is irresistibly fun. You can just about have fun with all-day battery life too, but if you’re always on your phone you’ll creep into the red before bed. Charging is annoyingly slow at 25W, with no charger in the box.
Samsung’s five years of software support, with four years of Android updates, is still an industry best and the OneUI software features for this folding design are excellent, such as turning it into a tripod for taking handsfree photos – but you can get better smartphone cameras for this price if you get a phone that doesn’t fold.t’s one of the first phones you can buy outside of China that has a 1in camera sensor, tech that is hotly tipped to level-up smartphone cameras in the next couple of years, but Xiaomi got there early doors. In our testing, the larger sensor area takes in more light, resulting in sensational low-light photography and a level of detail not found on smaller sensors. Throw in a capable 50Mp telephoto sensor and a 50Mp ultrawide and you’ve got a great setup, despite the large camera bump.When choosing a phone you should consider these things: build quality and design, ease of use, features, performance, and value.
Generally speaking, a flagship phone in 2023 will start at around $700/£700 but can cost over $1,000/£1,000 in some cases. On contract, you’re looking at between £30 and £50-per-month on average in the UK but you can spend a lot more if you want an expensive phone and lots of mobile data.
In the US you can often find very good contract deals on phones, better than in the UK and Europe.
It’s worth noting that while this list highlights the best smartphones available right now, that doesn’t explicitly mean flagships (even though they do feature heavily here). There are entries that cross over with our mid-range and budget phone charts too, but earnt their place here, based on the capabilities and quality on offer, relative to their price.
Buying a phone outright will usually give you the best value, but we appreciate finances in the real world don’t always accommodate such big one-off purchases. If you can, you’ll obviously need a SIM card and plan, as well as the phone. If you don’t already have one, check out our best SIM-only deals.
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