Flagship smartphones that have fallen in price, but are still relevant in 2022 | Articles | Phones

Buy­ing a top phone that came out 1–3 years ago is a good idea. Dur­ing this time, the price for it has already decreased slight­ly, but the “stuff­ing” has not had time to become obso­lete. This means that it will def­i­nite­ly serve you for 2–3 years. We have col­lect­ed the top cheap­er flag­ships of pre­vi­ous years (2019–2021), which are worth buy­ing in 2022.

You can buy the flag­ships of past years in dif­fer­ent price cat­e­gories. Pho­to: aldiaargentina.microjuris.com

What to look for when choosing

one. Year of announce­ment. It is bet­ter not to take gad­gets that are old­er than three years. Now tech­nol­o­gy is devel­op­ing rapid­ly. What was top 4–5 years ago is out­dat­ed today.

2. The amount of RAM. It makes no sense to con­sid­er mod­els with a vol­ume of less than 4 GB. This is the min­i­mum amount of RAM with which the smart­phone will not slow down when open­ing the phone book, SMS, brows­er pages.

3. The amount of built-in mem­o­ry. If it is less than 128 GB, then it is bet­ter to be able to insert a mem­o­ry card. 32–64 GB is not enough for an active user for appli­ca­tions, pho­tos, videos.

four. Auton­o­my. It is impor­tant that the smart­phone works for at least 10 hours with active use. To do this, the bat­tery capac­i­ty must be at least 4000 mAh.

Rating of the best smartphones of past years up to 50,000 rubles

Xiaomi Redmi K20 Pro

The first in our top is the flag­ship of 2019 for 29,990 rubles. The mod­el became quick­ly rec­og­niz­able thanks to the unusu­al front cam­era. It is not built into the screen, as usu­al, but extends from the top of the smart­phone.

Advan­tages of Xiao­mi Red­mi K20 Pro:

• 8 GB RAM and 8‑core Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 855 with a fre­quen­cy of 2840 MHz. This is enough to run most util­i­ties and games with­out freez­ing;
• Super AMOLED dis­play. This means that the view­ing angles are wide, the image bright­ness is high, and the includ­ed screen con­sumes less ener­gy than IPS coun­ter­parts;
• front cam­era — 20 megapix­els, rear — 48 megapix­els. It can shoot video in 4K (res­o­lu­tion 3840x2160) 60 frames per sec­ond. A sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage is the mode for shoot­ing in low light, which allows you to reduce the amount of noise and grain­i­ness.

Smart­phone Xiao­mi Mi Red­mi K20 Pro is a flag­ship with a cus­tom design. Pho­to: smartprix.com

One Plus 9

The next flag­ship of 2021 in the rank­ing of smart­phones. Unlike the pre­vi­ous mod­el, it has more:

• RAM (12 GB vs 8 GB);
• built-in mem­o­ry (256 GB vs. 128 GB);
• dis­play diag­o­nal (6.55 vs. 6.39);
• bat­tery capac­i­ty (4500 mAh ver­sus 4000).

Par­tic­u­lar atten­tion should be paid to the cam­era of the One­Plus 9 smart­phone. It was devel­oped specif­i­cal­ly for this mod­el in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Has­sel­blad. This is a Swedish brand that man­u­fac­tures cam­eras and pho­to­graph­ic equip­ment.

The mod­el received a main cam­era of 489 MP and an ultra-wide-angle lens of 50 MP. For day and night pho­tos are char­ac­ter­ized by high sharp­ness and clar­i­ty, accu­rate col­or repro­duc­tion. It is pos­si­ble to shoot video in 8K qual­i­ty (7680 × 4320) at 30 frames per sec­ond.

Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage of the mod­el is the Snap­drag­on 888 proces­sor. Pow­er­ful, fast — it will be top-end for sev­er­al more years. Util­i­ties open and close quick­ly, games do not freeze.

The One­Plus 9 smart­phone is the best solu­tion for those who need an inex­pen­sive cam­era phone. Pho­to: 9to5google.com

Xiaomi 11T Pro

A smart­phone that has one of the best Xiao­mi dis­plays. The 6.67-inch AMOLED screen repro­duces more than 1 bil­lion shades, which allows you to accu­rate­ly repro­duce nat­ur­al col­ors. High-def­i­n­i­tion images and increased col­or depth are pos­si­ble thanks to HDR10+ tech­nol­o­gy.

Anoth­er plus is the high screen refresh rate. This mod­el has it up to 120 Hz. This means that the move­ments in the video or in the game will be smooth. An impor­tant advan­tage is that the intel­li­gent sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly selects the opti­mal num­ber of frames per sec­ond at the moment. This reduces bat­tery con­sump­tion.

Addi­tion­al ben­e­fits of Xiao­mi 11T Pro:

• a capa­cious 5000 mAh bat­tery is enough for 14–15 hours of active use. You can ful­ly charge your smart­phone in just 20 min­utes;
• the main cam­era is 108 MP, the front cam­era is 16 MP. There is arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence that auto­mat­i­cal­ly improves the frame. It changes sharp­ness, bright­ness, white bal­ance to achieve the best result;
• there is a spe­cial mode for read­ing. The screen becomes dim, like a real book page. This helps reduce eye strain.

Xiao­mi 11T Pro is one of the best smart­phones under 50,000 rubles. Pho­to: assets.hardwarezone.com

Black Shark 4

A play­ful, styl­ish, pow­er­ful flag­ship of 2021 for 48,900 rubles, which has many fans. This is not sur­pris­ing, because it has many advan­tages:

• bright, ener­gy-inten­sive AMOLED E4 with a res­o­lu­tion of 2400x1080 and an image refresh rate of 144 Hz. This pro­vides a per­fect pic­ture while play­ing games or watch­ing videos;
• screen response time — 8.3 ms. This is some­thing that gamers will def­i­nite­ly appre­ci­ate. Indeed, dur­ing an online game, it is impor­tant that the screen responds instant­ly to press­ing;
• 4500 mAh bat­tery (enough for up to 12 hours of active use). There is a fast charg­ing func­tion. You can ful­ly charge the device in half an hour;
• 8‑core proces­sor with 12GB RAM and Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 870 proces­sor for smooth oper­a­tion.

The Black Shark 4 smart­phone is a pow­er­ful gam­ing gad­get. Pho­to: techradar.com

We col­lect­ed the top cheap­er flag­ships up to 50,000 rubles and reduced the char­ac­ter­is­tics in one table.

Top flagships of past years up to 100,000 rubles

Samsung Galaxy S21FE

Com­pact (screen diag­o­nal 6.4 inch­es), thin (8 mm) and styl­ish gad­get for 56,990 rubles. This is a ver­sa­tile device that has many advan­tages:

• bright Dynam­ic AMOLED 2X screen with 120 frames per sec­ond refresh pro­vides high smooth video, clear and con­trast pic­ture;
• Goril­la Glass Vic­tum is installed on the screen. Twice as resis­tant to scratch­es and oth­er dam­age as 6th gen­er­a­tion glass, with­stands drops from a height of up to two meters;
• degree of pro­tec­tion against water and dust — IP68. The phone is not afraid of rain, falling into water (to a depth of 1.5 m), dust and debris will not get inside;
• main cam­era 12 MP, front — 32 MP. Less Mp than com­peti­tors com­pen­sates for the arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence that allows you to cap­ture stun­ning por­traits and land­scapes. There is a night mode that reduces noise and increas­es sharp­ness.

Smart­phone Sam­sung Galaxy S21 FE is suit­able for teenagers and adults. Pho­to: hardwarezone.com

Huawei Honor 30 Plus

This smart­phone is the flag­ship of 2020 with:

• pow­er­ful proces­sor HiSil­i­con Kirin 990;
• super sen­si­tive cam­era. There is a laser focus­ing sys­tem, noise reduc­tion in the dark, increased image sharp­ness;
• built-in mem­o­ry 256 GB, there is a slot for a mem­o­ry card;
• OLED dis­play (diag­o­nal 6.57 inch­es) with a refresh rate of 90 Hz. The screen looks unusu­al and styl­ish due to a slight bend back;
• Dual Super­Charge tech­nol­o­gy. Thanks to it, in just 40–50 min­utes, you can ful­ly charge the bat­tery com­plete­ly. Improved charge con­sump­tion sys­tem. The phone can work up to 10–12 hours with active use.

Huawei Hon­or 30 Pro+ has every­thing you need for a phone: styl­ish design, bright screen, good cam­era, pow­er­ful proces­sor and capa­cious bat­tery.

Huawei Hon­or 30 Pro Plus is a one-stop solu­tion for work and play. Pho­to: androidauthority.com

Apple iPhone 12

Apple tech­nol­o­gy has been in demand for a long time. And the iPhone 12 is a good buy in 2022 thanks to:

• pow­er­ful proces­sor (A14 Bion­ic);
• excel­lent cam­eras (12 megapix­el main and front). Although the iPhone cam­era los­es to oth­er mod­els in this top in terms of the num­ber of megapix­els, it is not in terms of shoot­ing qual­i­ty. Why? Because not only num­bers are impor­tant, but also addi­tion­al fea­tures. The Apple iPhone 12 has built-in beau­ti­fi­ca­tion, night mode (reduces noise) and AI that auto­mat­i­cal­ly improves the qual­i­ty of pic­tures. Read more about cam­eras in phones in the blog;
• pro­tec­tion against ingress of water and dust IP68 (can be low­ered into water to a depth of more than 1 meter).

The com­par­i­son table shows that the bat­tery capac­i­ty of the iPhone is low­er than that of oth­er mod­els (3208 mAh ver­sus 4000+ mAh). It also has less RAM (4 GB vs 8 GB). But this does not mean that the iPhone works worse and less. This dif­fer­ence is com­pen­sat­ed by high ener­gy effi­cien­cy and adapt­abil­i­ty of the proces­sor.

The Apple iPhone 12 smart­phone is a pow­er­ful flag­ship of yes­ter­year, which is rel­e­vant in 2022. Pho­to: theverge.com

One Plus 9 Pro

Round­ing out the top best smart­phones of yes­ter­year is the 2021 flag­ship One­Plus 9 Pro. This is the mod­el with the largest screen among the phones from this rat­ing. Its diag­o­nal is 6.7 inch­es, and the res­o­lu­tion is 3200x1440 pix­els.

As with the One­Plus 9 ver­sion, there is a cam­era devel­oped in con­junc­tion with Has­sel­blad. Thanks to a spe­cial col­or cal­i­bra­tion tech­nol­o­gy, Nat­ur­al Col­or Cal­i­bra­tion, it is pos­si­ble to cap­ture the nat­ur­al shades of nature. Col­ors will not be dis­tort­ed, too bright or vice ver­sa, dull.

Why is the Pro ver­sion bet­ter?

• High­er pix­els per inch (526 vs 402). This means the pic­ture will be clear­er;
• 4 rear cam­eras instead of 3;
• there is slow motion;
• there is a wire­less charg­ing func­tion;
• made of met­al and glass (in the usu­al ver­sion, plas­tic and glass);
• there is pro­tec­tion against mois­ture and dust IP68 (the reg­u­lar ver­sion does not have it).

One­Plus 9 Pro is a styl­ish and large smart­phone for shoot­ing pho­tos and videos in excel­lent qual­i­ty. Pho­to: imgix.bustle.com

We col­lect­ed the top cheap­er flag­ships up to 100,000 rubles and reduced the char­ac­ter­is­tics in one table.