Top smartphones of 2020: which phone is better to buy | Articles | Phones

Pho­to: pocketlint.com

Choos­ing the best phone of 2020 is not an easy task, since there were a lot of new prod­ucts last year. There­fore, we made a rat­ing by divid­ing smart­phones into three groups: bud­get (up to 10,000 rubles), mid­dle seg­ment (up to 30,000 rubles) and flag­ships — the most expen­sive mod­els. In each group, we chose the best options and rat­ed them on a five-point scale. Look for devices with the high­est rat­ing and decide if the top smart­phone from our list is right for you.

What to look for when choos­ing a smart­phone

The best smart­phones

Bud­get smart­phones

Mid­dle class

Flag­ships

Bot­tom Line: The Best Smart­phones of 2020

What to look for when choosing a smartphone

First, let’s look at the char­ac­ter­is­tics, based on which we com­piled our rat­ing of the best mod­els.

Screen

One of the most visu­al­ly attrac­tive and impor­tant ele­ments of a smart­phone is its dis­play. Pho­to: epicusa.com

Now in the pro­duc­tion of screens, two main tech­nolo­gies are used: OLED (AMOLED) and LCD (IPS). AMOLED, SAMOLED and oth­er sim­i­lar types are a mod­i­fi­ca­tion of the OLED dis­play.

• AMOLED screens are more respon­sive to touch, have a bet­ter image and view­ing angle. They are slight­ly more expen­sive and require more ener­gy.
• LCD (IPS) dis­plays are cheap­er and drain the bat­tery slow­ly. Their response time is high­er and the image is less con­trasty.

Smart­phone dis­play size is a sub­jec­tive mat­ter. Mod­ern mod­els have a diag­o­nal of at least 5 inch­es, the size of the device depends on it. Smart­phones that are too large are uncom­fort­able to hold with one hand, but too small are dif­fi­cult to parse, for exam­ple, text.

• The opti­mal screen size is 6.5 inch­es. The remain­ing smart­phones are either com­pact or phablets (smart­phones-tablets).

The refresh rate is respon­si­ble for the expe­ri­ence while scrolling through the image. 60 Hz is the stan­dard but obso­lete val­ue.

• The most mod­ern smart­phones have a fre­quen­cy of 90–120 Hz — the high­er the val­ue, the bet­ter. How­ev­er, the high fre­quen­cy drains the phone faster, but it can be turned off in the set­tings (usu­al­ly turned off auto­mat­i­cal­ly in bat­tery saver mode).

Assess­ing the screen of a smart­phone, we will pay atten­tion to the total­i­ty of these indi­ca­tors.

Camera

The num­ber of cam­eras does not always mean their qual­i­ty. Pho­to: learn.zoner.com

Mod­ern smart­phones have 2 or more cam­eras. They may have a high res­o­lu­tion: there are 64 megapix­els, and 120 megapix­els, and more. At the same time, cam­eras with 12–13 megapix­els are still found on some flag­ships. The iPhone 12, for exam­ple, has a 12MP dual cam­era set­up. But this does not affect the qual­i­ty of pho­tos: the main load falls on the soft­ware and shoot­ing algo­rithms. So the iPhone and Google Pix­el can afford low-res­o­lu­tion cam­eras, and oth­er com­pa­nies like Xiao­mi or One­Plus are chas­ing after it.

Almost all flag­ship smart­phones have night mode Pho­to. It bright­ens the image tak­en in the dark with the help of AI.

The qual­i­ty of the front cam­era, shoot­ing capa­bil­i­ties is also impor­tant. video. Many devices shoot in 4K res­o­lu­tion, and some even in 8K.

We rate the cam­era on its per­for­mance in good light and night mode.

Memory size

The mem­o­ry of a smart­phone large­ly deter­mines how soon it becomes obso­lete. Pho­to: cnet.com

Smart­phones need RAM to process infor­ma­tion quick­ly. In mod­ern devices, it is usu­al­ly up to 16 GB. This is enough for fast load­ing of games, and for run­ning sev­er­al appli­ca­tions at the same time.

• The most afford­able smart­phones can have 2–3 GB of RAM. This, of course, is not enough for most tasks. There­fore, for bud­get and medi­um-sized mod­els, the val­ue of RAM from 4 GB will be a plus, and for more expen­sive mod­els, from 8 GB.

With built-in mem­o­ry, too, every­thing is very sim­ple. The more of it, the bet­ter. Now for the most mod­ern mod­els, the min­i­mum is 64 GB, and the stan­dard is 128 GB.

The more mem­o­ry, the high­er the score of the smart­phone.

CPU

The proces­sor includes many char­ac­ter­is­tics, but the main one is its per­for­mance. Pho­to: macworld.com

The smart­phone chip is its heart. On a device with a pow­er­ful proces­sor, you can run “demand­ing” games and mul­ti­ple tasks at the same time. A weak proces­sor will cause freezes: the sys­tem will slow down. Dif­fer­ent man­u­fac­tur­ers use dif­fer­ent types of proces­sors.

• Apple puts A Bion­ic chips on its smart­phones: A12, A13 and the lat­est, A14 Bion­ic. By the way, it is he who is now con­sid­ered the most pow­er­ful proces­sor for smart­phones.
• In sec­ond place is the Snap­drag­on 888 from Qual­comm. Qual­comm Snap­drag­on is the most pop­u­lar chips found in most Android devices. The most pow­er­ful among proces­sors are mod­els 888, 865 and 865+. They are equipped with One­Plus smart­phones and some Sam­sung mod­els.

To check the pow­er of the chips, there are spe­cial tests, the results of which we will take into account when choos­ing the best smart­phone. They can be found here.

Operating system

The two most pop­u­lar oper­at­ing sys­tems are Android and iOS. Pho­to: celikk.me

The oper­at­ing sys­tem deter­mines how con­ve­nient it is to use a smart­phone.

• Apple devices work exclu­sive­ly with iOS. It is an oper­at­ing sys­tem with a sim­ple “user-friend­ly” inter­face. It looks styl­ish, but it can not be cus­tomized. Most iOS fea­tures work great with oth­er Apple devices, but are use­less when try­ing to sync them with Android or Win­dows. For exam­ple, you can copy text on your iPhone and imme­di­ate­ly paste it on your Mac or iPad. There­fore, the sys­tem is con­ve­nient, but only for those who are loy­al to the brand.
• Android is a slight­ly more com­plex sys­tem. Almost every man­u­fac­tur­er uses their own ver­sion of the inter­face, so EMUI, MIUI, Oxy­gen OS, One UI are essen­tial­ly the same, but dif­fer in func­tions and design. Android OS allows cus­tomiza­tion, includ­ing visu­al — you can change not only the wall­pa­per, but also the icons.

We eval­u­ate the oper­a­tion of the oper­at­ing sys­tem by its con­ve­nience, speed and capa­bil­i­ties.

Frame

The met­al body is con­sid­ered more durable and styl­ish. Pho­to: apple.com

Many expen­sive mod­els and mid-range smart­phones are made of alu­minum alloy. It is durable enough to with­stand drops to the floor and scratch­es. How­ev­er, smart­phones with a met­al case can heat up or freeze faster.

• The mod­ern trend is to cov­er the case, often met­al, with tem­pered glass. Such smart­phones are also con­sid­ered durable and scratch-resis­tant, but still it is bet­ter to use them in a case, because they can slip out of hands due to glass.
• Plas­tic is found on bud­get smart­phones. It scratch­es faster and is eas­i­ly dam­aged. Anoth­er draw­back is the too sim­ple appear­ance of the plas­tic.

In addi­tion to the mate­r­i­al, the case must be eval­u­at­ed for resis­tance to shock and mois­ture. For this, an IP stan­dard has been devel­oped. The first dig­it of the lev­el mark is respon­si­ble for pro­tec­tion against sol­id objects and dust, the sec­ond for pro­tec­tion against water. For exam­ple, IP67 means that the phone is pro­tect­ed from dust and can be sub­merged in water up to a meter deep. IP68 gives the same pro­tec­tion against dust, plus sub­mer­sion to more than a meter.

The high­er the degree of pro­tec­tion of the case, the high­er the aver­age rat­ing of the smart­phone will be.

Battery

Smart­phone bat­tery capac­i­ty is mea­sured in mAh. Gen­er­al­ly, the high­er this val­ue, the longer the bat­tery lasts. How­ev­er, in prac­tice, the dura­tion of the autonomous ser­vice is affect­ed by the size and bright­ness of the screen, the activ­i­ty of using the gad­get, the vol­ume, soft­ware, and even the tem­per­a­ture out­side. For exam­ple, some smart­phones with a 3000 mAh bat­tery last a whole day, while a 4000 mAh bat­tery lasts only a few hours. A good indi­ca­tor can be con­sid­ered more than 12 hours in stan­dard use. This means you can play games, watch videos, chat, make calls, and use your brows­er a lit­tle through­out the day.

In our assess­ment, we will rely on the results of smart­phone bat­tery tests and take into account the pres­ence of fast and wire­less charg­ing func­tions.

Additional options

Many smart­phones have addi­tion­al options. It could be:

• Face ID Unlock
• Fin­ger­print scan­ner built into the screen
• NFC con­tact­less pay­ment mod­ule
• Head­phone input
• Mem­o­ry card slot
• SIM card slot

Any of these points will add advan­tages to the smart­phone in our rat­ing.

The best smartphones

Budget smartphones — up to 10,000 rubles

Xiaomi Redmi 9A

Despite the lack of many mod­ern fea­tures, Red­mi 9A wins a lot in price. How­ev­er, low pow­er will become notice­able with the active use of the smart­phone. Pho­to: gearbest.com

Red­mi 9A is the bud­get smart­phone of 2020. It fea­tures a large screen and a front-fac­ing drop cam­era. Red­mi has a neat, sim­ple design and three col­or options: green, blue, and grey. The smart­phone looks mod­ern and spec­tac­u­lar, it will suit those who are look­ing for an inex­pen­sive but styl­ish device.
The Medi­aTek Helio G25 proces­sor is ranked 94th out of 112 among mod­ern mobile chips in terms of pow­er. This means that the proces­sor is rather weak and will not be suit­able for those who want to play games. Even with the launch of some appli­ca­tions, he may have dif­fi­cul­ty.
The 2 GB mem­o­ry in com­bi­na­tion with the G25 chip gives a poor per­for­mance result. But 32 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry will be enough for many, espe­cial­ly if you do not store a lot of pho­tos on your smart­phone.
Red­mi has a sin­gle cam­era with a mod­est res­o­lu­tion of 13 megapix­els. With good light­ing, the pho­tos are decent. In the dark, of course, the cam­era is infe­ri­or to more expen­sive mod­els. It can be rat­ed as aver­age. The front cam­era has a res­o­lu­tion of 5 megapix­els and is suit­able for video calls, and with beau­ty modes — for self­ies.
The diag­o­nal of the IPS screen is 6.53 inch­es, the res­o­lu­tion is very mod­est — 1600 x 720. The bright­ness is aver­age, in day­light the screen is clear­ly vis­i­ble.
The smart­phone runs on Android 10 with the MIUI inter­face, which is famous for its abun­dance of ads and unnec­es­sary sys­tem appli­ca­tions.
The case is made of plas­tic and has no offi­cial pro­tec­tion rat­ing.
The bat­tery capac­i­ty is very large, 5000 mAh, on aver­age, this is enough for more than a day, in some cas­es for two days. The 9A does not have fast or wire­less charg­ing.
Addi­tion­al­ly, the smart­phone has a head­phone jack, a mem­o­ry card, the abil­i­ty to insert 2 SIM cards.

Proces­sor: 2/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 2/5
Cam­era: 3/5
Screen: 3/5
OS: 3/5
Body: 3/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 3/5
Aver­age score: 3

Nokia 2.4

The smart­phone has enough pow­er for every­day tasks, and its low price adds to its attrac­tive­ness. How­ev­er, if you are look­ing for a smart­phone with a good cam­era, this is not it. Pho­to: megabites.com.ph

An inex­pen­sive smart­phone mod­el from the well-known com­pa­ny Nokia was released in 2020. The design is the most mod­ern, with an almost frame­less screen.
The smart­phone runs on a Medi­atek Helio P22 proces­sor, in terms of pow­er it is already in 99th place and infe­ri­or to the Red­mi 9A proces­sor.
This is off­set by 3 GB of RAM and 64 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. It should be not­ed that thanks to this, the smart­phone real­ly seems quite fast if you use only instant mes­sen­gers and a brows­er.
The main cam­era is dual, but with a res­o­lu­tion of 8 megapix­els, front — 5 megapix­els. She does­n’t do any­thing super­nat­ur­al.
The IPS-screen has a diag­o­nal of 6.5 inch­es and a res­o­lu­tion of 1600 x 720. It looks accept­able, but in day­light it lacks bright­ness a lit­tle.
Nokia 2.4 runs on pure Android 10, which means that all the func­tions of Google smart­phone are avail­able, and the sys­tem is with­out ads and unnec­es­sary appli­ca­tions. How­ev­er, updates do not appear imme­di­ate­ly.
The case is made of plas­tic, it has no pro­tec­tion against mois­ture and dust.
The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 4500 mAh, it works for about 14 hours with­out recharg­ing, but the smart­phone does not have wire­less and fast charg­ing.
Addi­tion­al options include sup­port for two SIM cards, a mem­o­ry card slot (com­bined with a slot for the 2nd SIM card), a fin­ger­print scan­ner, face recog­ni­tion, and a head­phone jack.

Proces­sor: 2/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 3/5
Cam­era: 2/5
Screen: 3/5
OS: 5/5
Body: 3/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 4/5
Aver­age score: 3.4

Huawei Honor 9A

If there were no prob­lems with the oper­at­ing sys­tem, then this smart­phone could be con­fi­dent­ly con­sid­ered one of the best bud­get smart­phones. But if the lack of Google apps does­n’t both­er you, then it’s well worth a look, if only because of the cool and cheap cam­era. Pho­to: nextpit.com

The 2020 smart­phone from Huawei’s sis­ter brand Hon­or 9A looks styl­ish and meets most of the trends — frame­less screen design, drop cam­era.
Inside the smart­phone is a Medi­aTek Helio P22 proces­sor, which is the same proces­sor we saw in the Nokia 2.4.
The mem­o­ry spec­i­fi­ca­tions of the two smart­phones are also iden­ti­cal — 3 GB of RAM and 64 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry.
With the cam­era, Huawei decid­ed not to save mon­ey, Hon­or 9A received a triple main cam­era with a res­o­lu­tion of 13 megapix­els and a main one with a res­o­lu­tion of 8 megapix­els. The qual­i­ty of the cam­eras is very good, espe­cial­ly for a bud­get mod­el. In dark con­di­tions, the per­for­mance is not at the high­est lev­el, but in day­light you will get excel­lent pic­tures.
The Hon­or 9A has a 6.3‑inch IPS screen with a res­o­lu­tion of 1600 x 720. It is bright and sat­u­rat­ed, and if you don’t pick on the lit­tle things, then the screen is of very good qual­i­ty.
But in the oper­at­ing sys­tem, the smart­phone encoun­tered anoth­er prob­lem — Google ser­vices do not work on EMUI (based on Android 10). This may cause dif­fi­cul­ty when using a smart­phone.
The case is made of plas­tic, which looks metal­lic due to the glossy fin­ish. Like many bud­get devices, it does not have an offi­cial IP rat­ing, which means that it is most like­ly not resis­tant to mois­ture and dust.
The bat­tery has a capac­i­ty of 5000 mAh, so you can use your smart­phone for up to two days with­out recharg­ing. But the phone will take a long time to “recov­er strength”, since it does not have fast charg­ing.
Addi­tion­al­ly, Hon­or 9A has a head­phone jack, a fin­ger­print scan­ner and face recog­ni­tion, 2 SIM cards and a sep­a­rate slot for a mem­o­ry card.

Proces­sor: 2/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 3/5
Cam­era: 4/5
Screen: 4/5
OS: 2/5
Body: 3/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 4/5
Aver­age score: 3.4

Doogee Y9 Plus

The smart­phone def­i­nite­ly has its advan­tages, but it won’t be suit­able for pho­tog­ra­phy enthu­si­asts, and the out­dat­ed oper­at­ing sys­tem takes a toll on per­for­mance. Pho­to: droidafrica.net

If we digress a lit­tle from the com­pa­nies that con­stant­ly appear in the tops, then we can find excel­lent bud­get mod­els, such as the Doogee Y9 Plus.
The smart­phone runs on a Medi­aTek Helio P23 proces­sor, it is slight­ly weak­er in terms of per­for­mance than the P22 (102nd out of 112), but the smart­phone has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. So in every­day use, it will per­form tasks faster than its com­peti­tors with a more pow­er­ful proces­sor.
The main cam­era is triple with a res­o­lu­tion of 16 megapix­els and a wide-angle mod­ule, but it takes high-qual­i­ty pic­tures only in very good light­ing. In oth­er cas­es, detail and sharp­ness will suf­fer. The front cam­era (with the same res­o­lu­tion) works very mediocre.
The IPS screen has a diag­o­nal of 6.3 inch­es, FHD + res­o­lu­tion. It looks very good — rich col­ors and high bright­ness.
Doogee Y9 Plus received an updat­ed inter­face. How­ev­er, it is based on Android 9.0, which is already an out­dat­ed sys­tem.
The case is made of plas­tic with a soft touch coat­ing, and again there is no IP rat­ing, the smart­phone is not pro­tect­ed from mois­ture.
The 4350 mAh bat­tery sup­ports up to 18 hours of talk time, and the smart­phone also has fast charg­ing.
In addi­tion, the Doogee Y9 Plus has face recog­ni­tion, a fin­ger­print scan­ner, a head­phone jack, sup­port for an addi­tion­al SIM card or mem­o­ry card.

Proces­sor: 2/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 4/5
Cam­era: 3/5
Screen: 4/5
OS: 3/5
Body: 3/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 4/5
Aver­age score: 3.5

Xiaomi Redmi Note 8

Despite the fact that the smart­phone has dis­ad­van­tages, they are insignif­i­cant, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the price of Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 8. There­fore, we con­sid­er it the best smart­phone in 2020 under 10,000 rubles. Pho­to: ixbt.com

The most pow­er­ful of today’s bud­get smart­phones, Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 8 is pow­ered by a Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 665 proces­sor (64 out of 112 in the pow­er rat­ing). In addi­tion, the smart­phone from Xiao­mi has 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry.
The smart­phone has only 4 main cam­eras, and the main one has a res­o­lu­tion of 48 megapix­els. The 13 MP front cam­era works with an appli­ca­tion that has many beau­ty modes, includ­ing bokeh. In addi­tion, the cam­era shoots 4K video at 30 fps.
The IPS screen is almost the same as oth­er sim­i­lar mod­els — 6.3 inch­es, but with a high­er res­o­lu­tion — 2340 x 1080. The screen is bright enough, dis­plays a con­trast and rich image.
Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 8 runs on MIUI based on Android 9.0. MIUI itself can be updat­ed, but the sys­tem is full of ads and use­less apps.
The body of the smart­phone is plas­tic, but despite this, it looks very mod­ern. Around the screen, for exam­ple, thin bezels. The only thing miss­ing is pro­tec­tion against mois­ture and dust.
The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 4000 mAh, which is enough for 14.5 hours of watch­ing videos or 16 hours of brows­ing. Smart­phones also have fast charg­ing.
Addi­tion­al­ly — a head­phone jack, an infrared port, a slot for a sec­ond SIM card or a slot for a mem­o­ry card, a fin­ger­print scan­ner and even face recog­ni­tion.

Proces­sor: 4/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 3/5
Body: 4/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 4/5
Aver­age score: 4.4

Best Inexpensive Smartphone: Results

The Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 8 smart­phone received the high­est rat­ing. It has the best dis­play, mem­o­ry and cam­era spec­i­fi­ca­tions. Its only neg­a­tive is the MIUI oper­at­ing sys­tem, so the rat­ing is low­ered.

Middle class — smartphones up to 30,000 rubles

Samsung Galaxy A71

Despite the fact that the smart­phone case is plas­tic, it can sur­vive a fall into the water, and has all the nec­es­sary mod­ern func­tions. All this is not so easy to find in mid-range smart­phones. Pho­to: pcmag.com

One of the best exam­ples of mid-range smart­phones is the Sam­sung A‑series. The com­pa­ny is com­mit­ted to giv­ing these devices the best pos­si­ble expe­ri­ence while keep­ing the cost rea­son­able. The Sam­sung Galaxy A71 is pow­ered by a Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 730 proces­sor (the chip ranked 48th in the pow­er rat­ing). In addi­tion to it, the smart­phone has 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry, which ensures high per­for­mance.
The device has a very advanced cam­era with four sen­sors, a res­o­lu­tion of 64 megapix­els and the abil­i­ty to shoot in 4K qual­i­ty at 30 fps. The front sen­sor with a res­o­lu­tion of 32 MP is suit­able for self­ies and video chats.
Super AMOLED-screen with a diag­o­nal of 6.7 inch­es is the pride of the smart­phone. Its res­o­lu­tion is 2400 x 1080, and the tech­nol­o­gy itself guar­an­tees high qual­i­ty, con­trast and col­or repro­duc­tion. And on a sun­ny day, the bright­ness of the dis­play is more than enough.
The Sam­sung Galaxy A71 runs on One UI based on Android 10. One UI is one of the most suc­cess­ful Android inter­faces. It has no ads and sup­ports all Google apps.
The bud­get Sam­sung case is made of durable, but still plas­tic. The smart­phone looks no worse than pre­mi­um devices, but still the risks of scratch­ing the coat­ing are high. The smart­phone does not have an offi­cial IP rat­ing either, but when test­ed, the smart­phone sur­vived sev­er­al min­utes in the water.
The 4500 mAh bat­tery lasts more than 17 hours of talk time and 13 hours of video play­back. This is a very good indi­ca­tor, with mod­er­ate use the bat­tery will last more than a day. Sam­sung does not have wire­less charg­ing, but there is a fast one.
The Sam­sung Galaxy A71 has a head­phone jack, an in-screen fin­ger­print scan­ner, and face recog­ni­tion. It also has a con­tact­less pay­ment mod­ule and sup­port for two SIM cards, as well as a sep­a­rate slot for a mem­o­ry card.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 5/5
Body: 5/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 5

Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro

Were it not for Xiaomi’s oper­at­ing sys­tem and a bet­ter case, the smart­phone could eas­i­ly be con­sid­ered the best in the cat­e­go­ry, but these short­com­ings can man­i­fest them­selves in an unpleas­ant way. Pho­to: mysmartprice.com

A styl­ish mid-range smart­phone from Xiao­mi was intro­duced in 2020. Red­mi Note 9 Pro is pow­ered by a Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 720G proces­sor, which is slight­ly high­er than the 730th in the rank­ing — in 42nd place in terms of per­for­mance.
6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry are very mod­ern indi­ca­tors, which are enough for games and for stor­ing large amounts of infor­ma­tion.
Xiao­mi also did not spare any effort on the cam­era: 4 sen­sors (the main one with a res­o­lu­tion of 64 megapix­els) and the abil­i­ty to shoot 4K video. The front cam­era is designed for self­ie lovers and has a res­o­lu­tion of 16 megapix­els. The cam­era is excel­lent, although the night mode is weak.
The IPS screen has a high bright­ness and a res­o­lu­tion of 2400 x 1080, and its diag­o­nal is 6.67 inch­es, so it is con­ve­nient to watch videos and movies on it.
The oper­at­ing sys­tem is based on Android 10, but it’s still the same MIUI that not every­one likes.
The body of the smart­phone is also made of plas­tic and with­out an offi­cial IP rat­ing, although it looks very impres­sive.
Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 9 Pro has a very good 5020 mAh bat­tery. It pro­vides almost 17 hours of talk time and 17.5 hours of video play­back. You can expect at least a day and a half of work from her. The smart­phone also has fast charg­ing, but no wire­less.
Addi­tion­al options include a head­phone jack, a sep­a­rate mem­o­ry card slot and dual SIM sup­port, Android (Google) Pay con­tact­less pay­ment, a fin­ger­print scan­ner and facial recog­ni­tion.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 4/5
Screen: 4/5
OS: 4/5
Body: 4/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 4.5

Realme 7

Smart­phone Realme 7 is very good, even despite the plas­tic case. Among its cat­e­go­ry, it is one of the most afford­able, and it has more than enough func­tions and pow­er. Pho­to: gagadgets.com

You can always count on Realme smart­phones in terms of pow­er and afford­able price. This is exact­ly what the Realme 7 mod­el focus­es on. The smart­phone is pow­ered by a Medi­aTek Helio G95 proces­sor (46th in the pow­er rat­ing). Not the most pro­duc­tive proces­sor, but 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry will help it cope with games and mul­ti­task­ing.
The cam­era with four sen­sors and a res­o­lu­tion of 48 megapix­els is designed for mobile pho­tog­ra­phers and takes high-qual­i­ty pic­tures, as well as 4K video at 30 fps. The front cam­era has a res­o­lu­tion of 16 megapix­els and is excel­lent for por­traits.
The IPS dis­play has a rel­a­tive­ly small and com­fort­able diag­o­nal of 6.5 inch­es, and the res­o­lu­tion is 2400 x 1080. The bright­ness and sat­u­ra­tion of Realme screens are always at a high lev­el.
Realme UI runs on Android 10. It’s a bright, intu­itive sys­tem with lit­tle to no extra apps.
The smart­phone has a plas­tic body with no IP rat­ing, which is stan­dard for bud­get mod­els, but it is worth not­ing that Realme does not suf­fer from splash­es and may even sur­vive a drop in water for a short time.
The smart­phone’s 5000 mAh bat­tery lasts almost 15 hours of talk time and 18.5 hours of video play­back. Of course, with such a large bat­tery, the smart­phone has fast charg­ing. But there is no wire­less.
Realme 7 can be unlocked by fin­ger­print or face scan. The smart­phone also has Android (Google) Pay, a head­phone jack, a slot for 2 SIM cards and a sep­a­rate one for a mem­o­ry card.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 4/5
OS: 5/5
Body: 4/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 4.8

Oppo Reno 4 Lite

The Oppo Reno 4 Lite was just a lit­tle short of the max­i­mum score. Its pow­er is not enough for games, and a good qual­i­ty screen is not backed up by a capa­cious bat­tery. Pho­to: gsmonline.pl

Smart­phone from Oppo Reno 4 Lite is almost a dou­ble of Realme. Not sur­pris­ing, because they have the same man­u­fac­tur­er. How­ev­er, there are devices and dif­fer­ences. The proces­sor in the Reno 4 Lite Helio P95 from Medi­aTek is already in 57th place in terms of pow­er and with weak­er per­for­mance than the G95. 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry make up for the short­com­ings of the chip. Oppo will not be the per­fect gam­ing smart­phone, but a work device or a gad­get for view­ing con­tent from it will do just fine.
The cam­era on Oppo is exact­ly the same as the one on Realme. So both pho­tos from the main cam­era and pic­tures from the front cam­era will suit any, albeit not too demand­ing, user. Plus: the smart­phone shoots 4K video.
But the screen is Oppo’s advan­tage: a 6.43-inch SAMOLED dis­play with Full HD res­o­lu­tion. It looks very impres­sive, the col­ors are sat­u­rat­ed and con­trast­ing, and the screen works great in bright light.
On Android 10, a bright, but very neat and con­cise Col­orOS shell is “stretched”. It’s a plea­sure to work with, though it does take a bit of get­ting used to if you’ve migrat­ed from anoth­er sys­tem.
Again we are deal­ing with a plas­tic case with­out offi­cial pro­tec­tion mark­ings. It looks spec­tac­u­lar, and even with a thought­ful design, but I would like to know exact­ly how dan­ger­ous it is to drop a smart­phone into water.
The bat­tery is only 4000 mAh, which is less than the Realme. More­over, the AMOLED screen requires more ener­gy than IPS. And the result is also notice­able: the smart­phone sits down in about 12 hours. It has fast charg­ing, but just like Realme, no wire­less.
Addi­tion­al­ly, the smart­phone has a slot for a sec­ond SIM card or mem­o­ry card, face recog­ni­tion and a fin­ger­print scan­ner, Android (Google) Pay and a head­phone jack.

Proces­sor: 4/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 4/5
Body: 4/5
Bat­tery: 4/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 4

Huawei Honor 30s

The assess­ment of the smart­phone is also affect­ed by its high price, and the absence of some use­ful options, such as a head­phone jack and a mem­o­ry expan­sion slot. Pho­to: hihonor.com

Anoth­er mid-range smart­phone from Huawei. The Hon­or 30s is pow­ered by the HiSil­i­con Kirin 820 chip, and this proces­sor takes the 25th place in the per­for­mance rat­ing, which imme­di­ate­ly makes the smart­phone more pow­er­ful than its com­peti­tors. In addi­tion to this, it has 6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry: enough for all tasks.
No effort was spared on the Hon­or cam­era: the smart­phone has 4 sen­sors, and the main one has a res­o­lu­tion of 68 megapix­els. The cam­era has a 5x opti­cal zoom and shoots 4K video at 30 fps. The front cam­era is also not far behind: with a res­o­lu­tion of 16 megapix­els, it takes excel­lent self­ies.
The IPS screen has a diag­o­nal of 6.5 inch­es, which is rel­a­tive­ly small, and Full HD res­o­lu­tion. It has good col­or repro­duc­tion, high con­trast and bright­ness, which is enough to freely read text from the screen on sun­ny days.
With the EMUI oper­at­ing sys­tem, there is still the same prob­lem — it is devel­oped based on Android 10, but does not sup­port Google ser­vices.
The case is anoth­er point on which Huawei has suc­cess­ful­ly beat­en the com­pe­ti­tion. The smart­phone is made of met­al with a glass coat­ing and a spec­tac­u­lar gra­di­ent pat­tern. But Hon­or does­n’t have an offi­cial IP rat­ing either.
The bat­tery capac­i­ty is not as big as we would like — 4000 mAh, but it can last more than a day of work with mod­er­ate use. The smart­phone also has fast charg­ing.
Addi­tion­al options are a head­phone jack, a slot for a sec­ond SIM card com­bined with a mem­o­ry card slot, a con­tact­less pay­ment mod­ule and Huawei Pay ser­vice, face recog­ni­tion and a fin­ger­print scan­ner.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 3/5
Body: 5/5
Bat­tery: 4/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 4.6

Best mid-range smartphone: results

The top posi­tion was tak­en by the Sam­sung Galaxy A71, which received the high­est marks in all respects. But Realme 7 is sec­ond only in screen and body specs. Huawei Hon­or 30s was very close to the leader, but the prob­lems with the oper­at­ing sys­tem are too sig­nif­i­cant.

Flagships — smartphones from 30,000 rubles

Apple iPhone 12 Pro

A small num­ber of addi­tion­al fea­tures and the high price of a smart­phone do not great­ly affect its pow­er char­ac­ter­is­tics — in this case, the advan­tages out­weigh the dis­ad­van­tages. Pho­to: idropnews.com

The iPhone def­i­nite­ly appears in the lists of the best, and the iPhone 12 Pro can be safe­ly called the most opti­mal smart­phone of the 2020 line.
The phone runs on the A14 Bion­ic proces­sor. It is he who takes first place in the per­for­mance rat­ing, so the smart­phone is suit­able for games, and for work tasks, and for com­mu­ni­ca­tion.
As for mem­o­ry, the iPhone is also all right. There are three vari­ants of the smart­phone, all of them with 6 GB of RAM and 128, 256 or 512 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry.
The Apple iPhone 12 Pro has a triple main cam­era. Its res­o­lu­tion is 12 megapix­els, but the AI-based soft­ware enhances the pho­tos as much as pos­si­ble. Night mode on the iPhone is also there and works fine, and in addi­tion the cam­era has a 2x opti­cal zoom and shoots 4K video at 60 fps. Also, Apple smart­phones are known for high-qual­i­ty self­ies, but the res­o­lu­tion of the front cam­era is also 12 megapix­els.
The Super Reti­na OLED dis­play has a res­o­lu­tion of 1170 x 2532 and a diag­o­nal of 6.1 inch­es, so the smart­phone is very com­pact. The image is clear and rich, and the bright­ness is auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust­ed accord­ing to the sur­round­ings. The only weak point: the screen fre­quen­cy is only 60 Hz.
iOS is a user-friend­ly oper­at­ing sys­tem that can be con­sid­ered a com­fort­able entry point into the Apple ecosys­tem. The inter­face is sim­ple and clear, looks styl­ish, with­out ads and with all ser­vices.
The iPhone 12 Pro has a glass-coat­ed met­al body and is IP68 rat­ed. The smart­phone can be sub­merged to a depth of 6 meters for up to 30 min­utes.
Bat­tery capac­i­ty — 2815 mAh. In prac­tice, the bat­tery lasts for 14 hours of talk time and 21 hours of video play­back. Also, the smart­phone is equipped with fast and wire­less charg­ing.
The smart­phone does not have a head­phone jack, and this is a sig­nif­i­cant dis­ad­van­tage for those who pre­fer wired mod­els. But he has Apple Pay con­tact­less pay­ment, a dual SIM card (main and eSim). Infor­ma­tion is pro­tect­ed by a code pass­word and face recog­ni­tion Face ID.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 5/5
Body: 5/5
Bat­tery: 4/5
Addi­tion­al options: 4/5
Aver­age score: 4.8

One Plus 8 Pro

One­Plus 8 Pro is one of the most afford­able flag­ships around. Pho­to: theguardian.com

The Chi­nese com­pa­ny One­Plus cre­ates smart­phones on the prin­ci­ple of bal­ance between price and qual­i­ty. One­Plus 8 Pro is the com­pa­ny’s flag­ship at the moment. The smart­phone is pow­ered by a Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 865 proces­sor. This chip is in fifth place in the rank­ing. It’s pow­er­ful and fast. The smart­phone option with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry is suit­able for games and resource-demand­ing appli­ca­tions.
The One­Plus 8 Pro fea­tures a 48MP triple-sen­sor cam­era that cap­tures high-qual­i­ty pho­tos and 4K video at 60fps. The front cam­era with a res­o­lu­tion of 16 MP is suit­able for tak­ing self­ies and video calls.
The screen of the smart­phone with a diag­o­nal of 6.78 inch­es has a Flu­id AMOLED matrix and a res­o­lu­tion of 3168 x 1440. This gives a very high-qual­i­ty pic­ture with high con­trast and bright­ness, which can with­stand even sat­u­rat­ed sun­light. The fre­quen­cy of 120 Hz has a pos­i­tive effect on the user expe­ri­ence.
Android 10 is based on OxygenOS, a very del­i­cate inter­face with min­i­mal changes to the orig­i­nal Google sys­tem.
The body of the One­Plus 8 Pro (rat­ed IP68 water resis­tant) is made of met­al cov­ered with glass. You can sub­merge your smart­phone to a depth of up to a meter.
The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 4510 mAh, and the smart­phone works for about 18 hours in talk mode, and about 11 hours when watch­ing videos. The smart­phone has both fast and wire­less charg­ing.
One­Plus 8 Pro also has face recog­ni­tion and a fin­ger­print scan­ner built into the screen, Android (Google) Pay func­tion and a slot for two SIM cards, one of which can be replaced with a mem­o­ry card. The smart­phone also sup­ports 5G, despite the fact that this net­work stan­dard is not used in Rus­sia. But there is no head­phone jack on the case, but you will not regret it if you choose the right wire­less mod­el.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 5/5
Body: 5/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 5

Samsung Galaxy S20+

Anoth­er smart­phone that deserves the high­est rat­ing due to its char­ac­ter­is­tics. Pho­to: gizmodo.com.au

The rank­ing of the best devices has not been com­plete with­out Sam­sung smart­phones for a long time, and this time we present the Galaxy S20+.
The Exynos 990 proces­sor was in 11th place in terms of per­for­mance, which does not make it worse than the rest at the house­hold lev­el, but still it will make you think before buy­ing. But 8 GB of RAM add speed to the smart­phone, and infor­ma­tion can be stored on a 128 GB dri­ve. This is enough for pho­tos and music.
Again we are deal­ing with a cam­era with 4 sen­sors. The main one has a mod­est res­o­lu­tion of 12 megapix­els, but, as is the case with the iPhone, soft­ware and AI algo­rithms are respon­si­ble for the qual­i­ty. In addi­tion, the smart­phone shoots 4K video at 30 fps and makes high-qual­i­ty footage in night mode. The front cam­era has a res­o­lu­tion of 10 megapix­els and is ide­al for self­ies.
It has a 6.7‑inch Dynam­ic AMOLED dis­play with a res­o­lu­tion of 3200 x 1440. Sam­sung screens are always high­ly rat­ed, and for good rea­son. The pic­ture is rich and bright, per­fect for watch­ing movies and videos even when it’s sun­ny out­side. And the screen refresh rate is 120 Hz.
We have already not­ed the advan­tages of One UI, in this smart­phone mod­el it is based on Android 10 and is reg­u­lar­ly updat­ed.
Sim­i­lar to the One­Plus 8 Pro, the Sam­sung Galaxy S20+ fea­tures a glass-coat­ed met­al body with IP68 rat­ing.
The bat­tery capac­i­ty is 4500 mAh, it lasts for 13 hours of talk time and 11 hours of video play­back. The smart­phone is equipped with both fast and wire­less charg­ing.
Sam­sung has more than enough addi­tion­al options. Among them are face recog­ni­tion, a fin­ger­print scan­ner built into the dis­play, Android (Google) Pay and oth­er options from Google, as well as two slots for a SIM card, one of which can insert a mem­o­ry card. The only thing miss­ing is a head­phone jack.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 5/5
Body: 5/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 5

Xiaomi Mi 10

We down­grad­ed the Xiao­mi smart­phone due to sev­er­al rea­sons: the offi­cial IP rat­ing is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant for pre­mi­um smart­phones, the lack of head­phone input on Xiao­mi devices seems imprac­ti­cal, addi­tion­al fea­tures are miss­ing, and the oper­at­ing sys­tem is too chaot­ic. Pho­to: techradar.com

The flag­ship Xiao­mi Mi 10 also deserves a place in our top. The smart­phone is pow­ered by the Qual­comm Snap­drag­on 865 proces­sor, which is in 5th place in the pow­er rat­ing. With it, Mi 10 offers us 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry. For a top mod­el, these are excel­lent char­ac­ter­is­tics.
The smart­phone has an impres­sive 108 MP cam­era with 4 sen­sors. At the same time, he received shoot­ing in 4K qual­i­ty with 30 fps, and bokeh, and night mode. The lat­ter, how­ev­er, is not ide­al. The front cam­era is also not far behind: 20 megapix­els is more than enough for spec­tac­u­lar self­ies.
Super AMOLED tech­nol­o­gy has final­ly hit the Xiao­mi flag­ship. The screen has a diag­o­nal of 6.67 inch­es and a res­o­lu­tion of 2340 x 1080. The col­ors on the dis­play are rich and vibrant, it is great for video and games. The screen fre­quen­cy is 120 Hz.
As always, Xiaomi’s weak point is MIUI based on Android 10. Extra apps cre­ate chaos on the desk­top, and ads are annoy­ing.
The flag­ship of the com­pa­ny has a met­al case cov­ered with glass, but the smart­phone has not yet received an offi­cial pro­tec­tion rat­ing. This is a sig­nif­i­cant draw­back for a mod­el of this lev­el.
But they didn’t spare any effort on the bat­tery: the capac­i­ty is 4780 mAh, there is fast and wire­less charg­ing. All this in order for the smart­phone to work for almost 19 hours of talk time and about 15 hours of video play­back.
Mi 10 was left with­out a slot for a mem­o­ry card, and it only sup­ports one SIM card. But he has a fin­ger­print scan­ner and face recog­ni­tion built into the dis­play, as well as an NFC mod­ule for con­tact­less pay­ment. Like many col­leagues, Xiao­mi aban­doned the head­phone jack in favor of Blue­tooth mod­els.

Proces­sor: 5/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 5/5
OS: 4/5
Body: 3/5
Bat­tery: 5/5
Addi­tion­al options: 5/5
Aver­age score: 4.6

Huawei P40

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, Huawei cut cor­ners here and there, so the result falls far short of the com­pe­ti­tion. Pho­to: pocketnow.com

The flag­ship from Huawei is para­dox­i­cal. On the one hand, it has excel­lent char­ac­ter­is­tics, and on the oth­er hand, an oper­at­ing sys­tem with­out sup­port for Google ser­vices. And yet it is impos­si­ble not to con­sid­er the Huawei P40.
The Kirin 990 proces­sor is respon­si­ble for the speed of oper­a­tions. He is already in 20th place in the rank­ing. 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of inter­nal mem­o­ry are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the top-end P40 mod­el. Such val­ues ​​are suf­fi­cient for both data stor­age and games.
Huawei is dis­tin­guished by high-qual­i­ty cam­eras from Leica. The res­o­lu­tion of the main sen­sor is 50 megapix­els, and there are 3 of them in total. The cam­era has a 3x opti­cal zoom and a night mode. The front cam­era is dual and with a res­o­lu­tion of 32 megapix­els, so it takes very good pho­tos.
Anoth­er spec­tac­u­lar ele­ment is the OLED screen of the device. Its diag­o­nal is 6.1 inch­es, and the res­o­lu­tion is 2340 x 1080. The screen refresh rate is stan­dard, it is “sad” 60 Hz.
EMUI is, of course, the main weak point of the oper­at­ing sys­tem.
The case is made of glass and met­al, and the smart­phone even has a pro­tec­tion rat­ing, but it is small for such a mod­el: only IP53.
Bat­tery capac­i­ty — 3800 mAh. Test­ing showed 18 hours of talk time and 13 hours of video play­back. The smart­phone has sup­port for fast charg­ing and wire­less.
Addi­tion­al options are sup­port for a mem­o­ry card and eSim, Huawei Pay con­tact­less pay­ment, an in-screen fin­ger­print scan­ner and face recog­ni­tion. There is no head­phone jack on the case.

Proces­sor: 4/5
Mem­o­ry capac­i­ty: 5/5
Cam­era: 5/5
Screen: 4/5
OS: 3/5
Body: 3/5
Bat­tery: 3/5
Addi­tion­al options: 3/5
Aver­age score: 3.8

Best Premium Smartphone: Results

Two smart­phones from the pre­mi­um cat­e­go­ry received the high­est score: One­Plus 8 Pro and Sam­sung Galaxy S20+ were the best with­out any flaws. But the cre­ators of the iPhone 12 Pro have some­thing to work on. The smart­phone deserves the top spot, but it could use more fea­tures and a big­ger bat­tery.

Bottom Line: The Best Smartphones of 2020

So, we have iden­ti­fied the top five best smart­phones (pay­ing atten­tion to all three cat­e­gories) and col­lect­ed them, rank­ing them in ascend­ing order of cost:

Xiao­mi Red­mi Note 8 became the best smart­phone in the bud­get cat­e­go­ry. It has sev­er­al draw­backs: the oper­at­ing sys­tem has built-in ads and many unnec­es­sary appli­ca­tions, the case is not pro­tect­ed from mois­ture and there are very few addi­tion­al func­tions. But Red­mi is more pow­er­ful than com­peti­tors due to the chip and mem­o­ry.

In the mid­dle class cat­e­go­ry, we chose the Sam­sung Galaxy A71 as the best mod­el. This is a pro­duc­tive smart­phone with a mod­ern set of fea­tures that costs less than 30,000 rubles.

There are three lead­ers among pre­mi­um smart­phones. While the Apple iPhone 12 Pro falls slight­ly short of the top score, it is the most pow­er­ful of the entrants. Its chip is in first place in terms of per­for­mance, and the mem­o­ry para­me­ters and algo­rithms that Apple uses are designed for the most com­plex tasks. The smart­phone has an excel­lent cam­era, water pro­tec­tion and a unique Face ID mod­ule. The device lacks only expand­able mem­o­ry and bat­tery capac­i­ty. The One­Plus 8 Pro and Sam­sung Galaxy S20+ both scored top marks across the board. Both man­u­fac­tur­ers paid atten­tion not only to basic things, such as mem­o­ry and a chip, but also to addi­tion­al para­me­ters.