Top 7 smartphones of summer 2022: what to buy from new products | Articles | Phones

Smart­phones wor­thy of atten­tion appear on the mar­ket every month. Pho­to: nextpit.com

In the spring, we already pub­lished a selec­tion of the best smart­phones pre­sent­ed in 2022. After 4 months we pub­lish a new rat­ing. It includes 7 mod­els that appeared on the mar­ket this sum­mer. They are dis­tin­guished by high-qual­i­ty dis­plays, good cam­eras and high per­for­mance. But each smart­phone has its own char­ac­ter­is­tics. Read on to find out which phones are worth buy­ing.

Terminology

We have added brief expla­na­tions to the main char­ac­ter­is­tics of smart­phones. If you are famil­iar with these options, you can skip this sec­tion.

Display

Smart­phones are equipped with IPS or OLED pan­els. Each type has its pros and cons. For exam­ple, IPS is cheap­er and more durable, their col­or repro­duc­tion is more accu­rate, and the image clar­i­ty is high­er (with a low pix­el den­si­ty). OLEDs are thin­ner, drain the bat­tery slow­er, respond faster to pres­sure, have deep blacks and high con­trast.

LTPO2 AMOLED, Dynam­ic AMOLED, Flu­id AMOLED, Super AMOLED are just mar­ket­ing names for OLED pan­els with­out sig­nif­i­cant changes in qual­i­ty.

A high screen refresh rate (90, 120, or 144Hz) is impor­tant when gam­ing because it pro­vides a smoother pic­ture. When watch­ing a video, it does not play any role.

Tem­pered glass is used to pro­tect the dis­plays from scratch­es and dam­age. Corn­ing Goril­la Glass coat­ings are among the best on the mar­ket.

For exam­ple, smart­phones equipped with one of the lat­est Goril­la Glass Vic­tus glass­es are able to sur­vive repeat­ed drops from a height of two meters. The min­i­mum pro­tec­tion among the phones in ques­tion is Goril­la Glass 3. This glass is resis­tant to deep scratch­es and dam­age from sharp objects.

Chipset Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1

Four out of sev­en smart­phones are built on this mobile proces­sor. It is char­ac­ter­ized by high per­for­mance (3rd place in terms of pow­er among chipsets of all man­u­fac­tur­ers) and is suit­able for the most demand­ing tasks (games, pho­to edit­ing, mul­ti­task­ing).

Random Access Memory (RAM)

This set­ting affects per­for­mance. 4 GB is more than enough for every­day tasks, 6 GB for games, 8 GB for the heav­i­est appli­ca­tions and gives you a head start for the future. You don’t need to buy more than 8 GB: it drains the bat­tery, it’s more expen­sive, and there is no addi­tion­al ben­e­fit from this RAM.

Internal / permanent / built-in memory

A com­fort­able min­i­mum is 128 GB, with a mar­gin for sev­er­al years — 256 GB. If you are a blog­ger, it is bet­ter to choose devices with 512 GB or 1 TB.

Camera

The qual­i­ty of pho­tos is affect­ed not only by the num­ber of megapix­els, but also by the size of the matrix and pix­els, aper­ture (aper­ture, aper­ture), sta­bi­liza­tion, aut­o­fo­cus and a num­ber of oth­er para­me­ters.

The larg­er the matrix (indi­cat­ed in 1/1.8″, while 1/1.9″ is greater than 1/2.2″) and the pix­els locat­ed on it (microm­e­ters, microns), the bet­ter the qual­i­ty of the images, espe­cial­ly in low light con­di­tions . The largest sen­sor is installed in the main cam­era of Xiao­mi 12S Ultra (1″).

The small­er the aper­ture, the high­er the qual­i­ty of the pho­to. This set­ting is expressed as f/number (for exam­ple, f/1.8).

Opti­cal Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (OIS) com­pen­sates for shaky hands when shoot­ing video, which means the pic­ture will be smoother.

The high­est qual­i­ty aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem is con­sid­ered phase (PDAF, Dual-Pix­el PDAF). It works faster and bet­ter espe­cial­ly when shoot­ing on the move.

Reverse charging

Allows you to use your smart­phone as a pow­er bank for charg­ing oth­er devices (head­phones, fit­ness track­ers, smart watch­es, etc.).

You can read more in our arti­cle “Smart­phone Spec­i­fi­ca­tions: A Buyer’s Guide‎”.

Xiaomi 12S Ultra is a flagship with an excellent camera

The smart­phone received a large 1‑inch sen­sor, optics from the lens man­u­fac­tur­er Leica, a bright smooth screen and a pow­er­ful proces­sor. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

Xiao­mi 12S Ultra was intro­duced in July 2022. At the time of the rank­ing, its avail­abil­i­ty out­side of Chi­na is lim­it­ed.

The smart­phone received a bold design: the back pan­el has a tex­tured sur­face with eco-leather trim. It is soft to the touch and does not smudge. The round mod­ule with cam­eras in the upper part is edged with a gold-col­ored alu­minum insert. Visu­al­ly, the back side of the smart­phone is sim­i­lar to the design of cam­eras of the late 20th cen­tu­ry, and the island with cam­eras resem­bles a lens.

It is IP68 water and dust resis­tant. This means that Xiao­mi 12S Ultra is not afraid of not only rain, but also div­ing under water (to a depth of no more than 1.5 meters and no longer than 30 min­utes).

The main fea­ture of the smart­phone is the cam­era. They were devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Leica, a Ger­man man­u­fac­tur­er of pro­fes­sion­al lens­es and cam­eras. Experts from the inde­pen­dent DXOMARK test, which eval­u­ates smart­phones, lens­es and cam­eras, gave the sen­sors of the Xiao­mi 12S Ultra a high score (high­er than that of the Apple iPhone 13 Pro).

On the back of the phone are:

• 50 MP (1‑inch matrix, f / 1.9 aper­ture, phase and laser aut­o­fo­cus, opti­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion OIS);
• 48 MP (PDAF, OIS, 5x opti­cal zoom);
• 48 MP (Dual-Pix­el PDAF, 128˚ FOV for group pho­tos);
• Aux­il­iary TOF 3D sen­sor for por­traits.

A 32-megapix­el cam­era is installed in the cutout on the front pan­el. It takes good pho­tos with lots of detail, wide dynam­ic range and nat­ur­al col­ors.

The 4860 mAh bat­tery pro­vides almost 14 hours and 45 min­utes of web surf­ing. Charg­ing from 0 to 100% takes 50 min­utes (up to 73% in half an hour). There is sup­port for wire­less and reverse charg­ing.

With one of the best dis­plays in an Android smart­phone (6.73″, LTPO2 AMOLED, a bil­lion col­ors, over 1000 nits bright­ness) and Qual­com­m’s flag­ship proces­sor (Snap­drag­on 8+ Gen 1), the smart­phone is great for gam­ing. The per­for­mance is also facil­i­tat­ed by a large amount of built-in (256 and 512 GB) and RAM (8 and 12 GB) mem­o­ry.

For high-qual­i­ty audio, stereo speak­ers from the Amer­i­can audio equip­ment man­u­fac­tur­er Har­man Kar­don are installed.

There is an NFC mod­ule for con­tact­less pay­ments.

The cost of the Xiao­mi 12S Ultra smart­phone is about 950 euros (more than 57,000 rubles at the exchange rate at the time of the rat­ing). Avail­able in black and dark green.

Pros of Xiaomi 12S Ultra:

• Clear and bright AMOLED screen with a fre­quen­cy of 120 Hz, pro­tec­tion against scratch­es and dam­age Goril­la Glass Vic­tus;
• pow­er­ful;
• qual­i­ty cam­eras;
• holds a charge well, wire­less and reverse charg­ing;
• not afraid to drop into the water, thanks to the IP68 pro­tec­tion class.

Cons of Xiaomi 12S Ultra:

• at the time of writ­ing the rat­ing is offi­cial­ly avail­able only in Chi­na (which means there is no glob­al MIUI shell);
• in terms of detail and sharp­ness, the video qual­i­ty is infe­ri­or to 11 Ultra.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is the best clamshell smartphone

Sam­sung Galaxy Z Flip 4 is built on the most pow­er­ful Qual­comm proces­sor and has two high qual­i­ty screens. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

Sam­sung Galaxy Z Flip 4 hit the mar­ket in August 2022. It has two dis­plays:

• main — Dynam­ic AMOLED 2X, 6.7 ″, fre­quen­cy 120 Hz, res­o­lu­tion 1080 x 2640 pix­els;
• exter­nal — Super AMOLED, 1.9″, 260 x 512 pix­els.

The exter­nal screen dis­plays the date, time and charge lev­el. It allows you to check mes­sages and noti­fi­ca­tions with­out open­ing your phone, con­trol music play­back, accept/reject calls, and check the appear­ance when tak­ing a self­ie. Both dis­plays are pro­tect­ed from scratch­es and chips Goril­la Glass Vic­tus+.

The hard­ware basis is the top Snap­drag­on 8+ Gen 1 from Qual­comm. Mem­o­ry con­fig­u­ra­tions include 8GB RAM and 128/256/512GB ROM. RAM is enough to per­form resource-inten­sive tasks (demand­ing games, mul­ti­task­ing, etc.). If you plan to use your smart­phone for sev­er­al years, then it is bet­ter to choose an option with at least 256 GB of inter­nal stor­age (so that there is a mar­gin, since mem­o­ry cards are not sup­port­ed).

On the back side there are 2 cam­eras, both with a res­o­lu­tion of 12 megapix­els. The main sen­sor is com­ple­ment­ed by phase detec­tion aut­o­fo­cus and opti­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion. The sec­ond sen­sor is with an ultra wide-angle lens (123˚).

Pho­tos from the main cam­era, tak­en dur­ing the day, are of excel­lent qual­i­ty: a lot of detail, low noise, wide dynam­ic range, good con­trast. The col­ors are Sam­sung-like, bright, but not exces­sive. In gen­er­al, the pic­tures look bal­anced and nat­ur­al. The design of the smart­phone allows you to use the main cam­era for tak­ing self­ies — objects are clear, dynam­ic range is excel­lent, con­trast and col­ors are excel­lent. Thanks to the f/1.8 aper­ture, there’s no need to fake blur as you’ll get nat­ur­al bokeh in these shots.

There is a 10-megapix­el cam­era on the front. It takes good pho­tos with excel­lent detail for such a cam­era, cor­rect expo­sure, low noise and con­trast. But for tak­ing self­ies, we rec­om­mend using the main cam­era, it wins in terms of qual­i­ty.

The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 3,700 mAh, it lasts for 13 hours and 45 min­utes of web surf­ing. The phone sup­ports 25W wired, 15W wire­less and 4.5W reverse charg­ing. A full cable charge takes 75 min­utes. The pow­er sup­ply is not includ­ed.

When fold­ed, the dimen­sions of the smart­phone are only 84.9 x 71.9 x 15.9–17.1 mm, unfold­ed — 165.2 x 71.9 x 6.9 mm, weight — 187 g. The phone is water­proof — IPX8 ( must with­stand immer­sion under water to a depth of 1.5 m for up to half an hour).

The cost is from 720 US dol­lars (which at the exchange rate at the time of this writ­ing is almost 43,500 rubles). Avail­able col­ors are laven­der, dark grey, gold and blue.

Pros of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4:

• bright fold­ing screen with accu­rate col­or repro­duc­tion;
• good cam­eras;
• pow­er­ful;
• pro­tec­tive glass Vic­tus +, stereo speak­ers from the Aus­tri­an man­u­fac­tur­er of Hi-Fi audio equip­ment AKG, NFC for con­tact­less pay­ments, water­proof;
• com­pact.

Cons of Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4:

• under heavy loads, the smart­phone notice­ably heats up, due to which its per­for­mance decreas­es;
• comes with­out charg­er;
• long charge.

OnePlus 10T is the best smartphone with fast charging

One­Plus 10T received ultra-fast charg­ing and a pow­er­ful proces­sor. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

One­Plus 10T hit the mar­ket in August this year. It has a bright and high-qual­i­ty Flu­id AMOLED dis­play with a diag­o­nal of 6.7″ and a fre­quen­cy of 120Hz. It is pro­tect­ed from scratch­es and dam­age by Corn­ing Goril­la Glass 5.

The smart­phone runs on the flag­ship Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 8+ Gen 1 chip and is equipped with 8 / 12 / 16 GB of RAM and 128 / 256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. Proces­sor per­for­mance and RAM is enough to run the most demand­ing appli­ca­tions. microSD cards are not sup­port­ed, in the future it is bet­ter to choose the 256 GB option.

At the back is a 50-megapix­el main cam­era with phase detec­tion aut­o­fo­cus and opti­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion. It is com­ple­ment­ed by an 8‑megapixel sen­sor with an ultra wide-angle lens (120˚) and a 2‑megapixel cam­era for cap­tur­ing close-ups of objects. Images tak­en dur­ing the day with the main sen­sor are detailed, sat­u­rat­ed, with excel­lent con­trast.

There is a 16MP cam­era on the front. It also takes decent pho­tos with nat­ur­al col­ors and plen­ty of detail.

The 4,800 mAh bat­tery pro­vides just over 14 hours and 40 min­utes of web brows­ing. It charges from 0 to 100% in just 19 min­utes.

The One­Plus 10T starts at Rs 45,000 and comes in black and green.

Pros of OnePlus 10T:

• bright screen with high refresh rate;
• good main cam­era for both pho­tos and videos;
• very fast charg­ing (one of the best at the moment), long bat­tery life;
• high and sta­ble per­for­mance;
• stereo speak­ers, NFC mod­ule.

OnePlus 10T cons:

• no wire­less charg­ing;
• with­out mois­ture pro­tec­tion;
• most games are lim­it­ed to 60Hz.

You can read the full review of the One­Plus 10T smart­phone here.

Asus Zenfone 9 is the best compact flagship

The Asus Zen­fone 9 offers a pow­er­ful proces­sor and excel­lent video sta­bi­liza­tion. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

Asus Zen­fone 9 was pre­sent­ed in July. By mod­ern stan­dards, he received a com­pact dis­play — only 5.9″. It is a Super AMOLED pan­el with a res­o­lu­tion of 1080 x 2400 pix­els and a max­i­mum refresh rate of up to 120Hz. It is pro­tect­ed from scratch­es by Corn­ing Goril­la Glass Vic­tus.

This smart­phone, like the pre­vi­ous mod­els from the rat­ing, is built on Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 8+ Gen 1. It has 128/256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry and 8/16 GB of RAM.

There are two cam­eras on the back:

• 50 MP (PDAF, three-axis gim­bal sta­bi­liza­tion sys­tem);
• 12 MP (aut­o­fo­cus, 113°).

The qual­i­ty of pho­tos tak­en dur­ing the day­time is high: bright col­ors, lots of details.

On the front pan­el is a 12 megapix­el cam­era with phase detec­tion aut­o­fo­cus. She knows how to take great self­ies: good dynam­ic range, rich col­ors, excel­lent detail.

A 4,300 mAh bat­tery can last a lit­tle less than 15 hours and 10 min­utes of web surf­ing. It charges from 0 to 100% in 75 min­utes. The smart­phone can be used to charge oth­er devices.

The phone has dimen­sions of 146.5 x 68.1 x 9.1 mm and weighs only 169 g. There is an IP68 water­proof rat­ing (you can dive up to 1.5 meters for up to 30 min­utes).

The price of Asus Zen­fone 9 in Rus­sia starts at 41,510 rubles. The smart­phone is avail­able in black, blue, red and sil­ver col­ors.

Pros of Asus Zenfone 9:

• holds a charge well, there is a reverse charge;
• sta­ble and pow­er­ful per­for­mance;
• aut­o­fo­cus on all cam­eras, excel­lent video sta­bi­liza­tion;
• stereo speak­ers, IP68 rat­ing, NFC, 3.5mm head­phone jack.

Cons of Asus Zenfone 9:

• the auto­mat­ic night mode of the cam­era slows down a lit­tle (it doesn’t always work, you have to turn it on forcibly);
• takes a long time to charge.

Xiaomi Poco X4 GT is the best sub-flagship

Poco X4 GT is equipped with a pow­er­ful and sta­ble proces­sor. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

The Poco X4 GT was announced at the end of July. It is built on Medi­aTek Dimen­si­ty 8100 (10th in terms of pow­er). Appli­ca­tions and games run quick­ly and smooth­ly, but the phone gets notice­ably warm under pro­longed high loads. The smart­phone is avail­able with 8 GB of RAM and 128 / 256 GB of ROM. The amount of inter­nal stor­age can­not be increased.

The smart­phone uses a 6.6‑inch IPS LCD pan­el with sup­port for a high fre­quen­cy of 144 Hz and Dol­by Vision.

The main cam­era unit includes:

• 64 MP main sen­sor with phase detec­tion aut­o­fo­cus;
• 8 MP (ultra wide-angle, 120˚);
• 2 MP (macro).

The main cam­era takes nice day­light shots with excel­lent con­trast, vibrant col­ors and plen­ty of detail.

The front cam­era has a res­o­lu­tion of 16 megapix­els. Self­ie qual­i­ty is a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing even for a phone in this price range. Regard­less of the light­ing con­di­tions, they look too soft, the dynam­ic range is quite nar­row, and the col­ors are dull.

The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 5,080 mAh, which is enough for almost 20 hours of web surf­ing. It takes 57 min­utes to charge from 0 to 100%. Wire­less and reverse charg­ing are not sup­port­ed.

Poco X4 GT costs about 33,000 rubles and comes in black, blue and sil­ver.

Pros of the Poco X4 GT:

• high-qual­i­ty dis­play;
• works for a long time on a sin­gle charge;
• decent pho­tos when shoot­ing dur­ing the day;
• Corn­ing Goril­la Glass 5 screen pro­tec­tion, great-sound­ing stereo speak­ers, 3.5mm head­phone jack, NFC, lat­est Blue­tooth 5.3.

Poco X4 GT cons:

• lack of mois­ture pro­tec­tion;
• mediocre self­ie qual­i­ty.

Check out our Poco F4, Poco X4 GT, and Poco X4 Pro com­par­i­son review here.

Google Pixel 6a is the best inexpensive camera phone

Google Pix­el smart­phones are famous for their great cam­eras, and the 6a is no excep­tion. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

The Google Pix­el 6a was intro­duced in May but hit the mar­ket in mid-July.

It is equipped with a 6.1″ OLED dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 1080 x 2400 pix­els. Corn­ing Goril­la Glass 3 is used to pro­tect the screen from scratch­es.

The smart­phone is based on the Google Ten­sor chipset (11th place), its per­for­mance is enough to run heavy games (for exam­ple, Call Of Duty Mobile) at max­i­mum graph­ics set­tings. How­ev­er, under load, the phone notice­ably heats up, it is uncom­fort­able to hold it. The Pix­el 6a comes in only one vari­ant — with 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. There is no microSD slot pro­vid­ed.

There are two cam­eras on the back of the Google Pix­el 6a:

• 12.2 MP with dual pix­el phase detec­tion aut­o­fo­cus and opti­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion;
• 12 MP with 114˚ view­ing angle.

The pho­to qual­i­ty is high: nat­ur­al col­ors, suf­fi­cient sharp­ness and excel­lent con­trast.

They are com­ple­ment­ed by a dual LED flash. There is an 8‑megapixel cam­era on the front that takes beau­ti­ful self­ies. Col­ors and con­trast are con­sis­tent with the main cam­era, there is a face retouch­ing option, but it is dis­abled by default.

The smart­phone is pow­ered by a 4410 mAh bat­tery. It allows you to browse the web for almost 15 hours and 25 min­utes. Charg­ing from 0 to 100% is long — 1 hour 51 min­utes.

The price of Google Pix­el 6ao is from 36,224 rubles. It is avail­able in sil­ver, black and light green.

Pros of Google Pixel 6a:

• com­pact (152.2 x 71.8 x 8.9 mm);
• bright and clear AMOLED pan­el;
• sus­tain­able per­for­mance;
• excel­lent cam­era;
• mois­ture pro­tec­tion IP67 (will with­stand not only rain, but also immer­sion by 1 meter for up to half an hour), Goril­la Glass 3, stereo speak­ers, NFC.

Cons of Google Pixel 6a:

• fin­ger­print scan­ner does not always work;
• no high screen refresh rate (only 60Hz);
• adapter not includ­ed.

You can read about the com­par­i­son of Google Pix­el 6a, 6 and 5a cam­era phones here.

Nothing Phone (1) — a smartphone with a unique design

The main fea­ture of Noth­ing Phone (1) is a trans­par­ent back­lit pan­el. Pho­to: www.gsmarena.com

Noth­ing Phone (1) is the first smart­phone from the start­up cre­at­ed by one of the founders of One­Plus. It came out in July 2022.

Noth­ing Phone (1) has an unusu­al back design that makes the smart­phone stand out from the rest. The pan­el itself is trans­par­ent, you can see part of the “stuff­ing” (for exam­ple, the wire­less charg­ing coil).‎ But what real­ly makes the phone unique is the back­light of 900 LEDs. It can be used, for exam­ple, when shoot­ing, dis­play­ing noti­fi­ca­tions, charg­ing.

The smart­phone is equipped with a 6.55-inch OLED dis­play capa­ble of dis­play­ing a bil­lion col­ors. It has a res­o­lu­tion of 1080 x 2400 pix­els and a fre­quen­cy of 120 Hz.

In terms of per­for­mance, this is the “weak­est” smart­phone in our selec­tion of Snap­drag­on 778G Plus — 31st place. Nev­er­the­less, the pow­er of Noth­ing Phone (1) is enough to play all mod­ern games at max­i­mum graph­ics set­tings. With every­day tasks (mes­sen­gers, social net­works, web surf­ing), he eas­i­ly copes.

Avail­able mem­o­ry con­fig­u­ra­tions: 8 + 128 GB, 8 + 256 GB and 12 + 256 GB. No mem­o­ry card slot.

At the back there are two cam­eras with a res­o­lu­tion of 50 megapix­els. The main one sup­ports phase detec­tion aut­o­fo­cus and opti­cal image sta­bi­liza­tion. The sec­ond is an ultra wide-angle lens with a 114˚ field of view and aut­o­fo­cus. The qual­i­ty of pic­tures on the main cam­era is good: a lot of details, real­is­tic (albeit a lit­tle over­sat­u­rat­ed) col­ors, low noise lev­el, homo­ge­neous areas (leaves, grass) are well devel­oped.

There is a 16-megapix­el cam­era on the front. Self­ies are of good qual­i­ty, but they lack sharp­ness. There are enough details, col­ors, con­trast, dynam­ic range, noise reduc­tion are excel­lent.

The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 4500 mAh. It is enough for 15 hours 41 min­utes of web surf­ing. The smart­phone sup­ports 33W fast charg­ing, but comes with­out an adapter. The entire charg­ing process takes 1 hour 31 min­utes (we used a 65W pow­er sup­ply). The phone also sup­ports wire­less (15W) and reverse (5W) charg­ing.

Noth­ing Phone (1) starts at Rs 36,480 and is avail­able in black and white.

Pros of Nothing Phone (1):

• unique glass design (Goril­la Glass 5 on both sides);
• smooth OLED screen with accu­rate col­or repro­duc­tion;
• long bat­tery life;
• high and sta­ble per­for­mance;
• excel­lent pho­to and video qual­i­ty;
• water­proof IP53 (can be used in the rain), stereo speak­ers, NFC.

Cons of Nothing Phone (1):

• qui­et top speak­er;
• no charg­er includ­ed.