Best Phones in 2022: Specs, Prices and Tests

Smartphone manufacturers are looking for new ways to outdo each other, from intense screens and sharp cameras to higher performance and fast-charging batteries. Here are the best and most expensive mobiles right now.

Which is the phone for you? It depends on what you are willing to pay. It makes a difference of several thousand. The advantages of the more expensive models are certainly tangible, but it is not certain that their advantages are something you need.

Get big surprises

It is the same five manufacturers who play in their own division in terms of price. Apple, Samsung, Sony, Xiaomi and Oneplus have price tags on their top phones between around $900 and $1,200 for a base model, often with more expensive options with more storage memory.

Then manufacturers such as Asus, Motorola and Realme challenge with the same high performance and many other functions, but with some compromises in function and construction and a price between $599 and $699.

Other manufacturers have chosen to stay out of the performance race, at least for now. Nokia bets everything on lower price ranges. In the past year, Poco has become more of a series of budget models for Xiaomi, than an own brand that competes at a higher level. Maybe that will change in the future, which is very unpredictable.

There are other major phone manufacturers with really interesting mobiles in the top class. We are already familiar with Huawei and Honor. In addition to them, you may also have heard of mobile giants such as Oppo and Vivo.  Many of them can easily be bought online, as some manufacturers have sales in other European countries.

Let there be light

The latest wave of mobiles has mainly offered two novelties in the screens – they are brighter and at the same time smarter. New amoled panels, which several of the latest mobiles have, push point brightness and short-term brightness well above 1,200 cd/m ² , which both provides an efficient and intense experience when playing hdr movies. They can also reach higher brightness for use in sunlight.

Several of the screens can also dynamically adjust the frame rate as needed, using so-called lpto2 technology. Screens have been able to handle this in the past, but now it is possible to reduce the frequency extremely low, which saves a lot of battery. Worth noting is that there is no manufacturer left that sticks to 60 Hz screens. The last two laggards, Sony and Apple, now have high-frequency screens in their best phones.

There are other things that markedly set the phones apart. The camera setups are more varied than in a long time, with different combinations of wide-angle zoom and macro cameras, as well as some experimentation with effects, photo and movie modes we haven’t seen before. But also a general increase in quality, which seems to prioritize better dark properties and faster handling of extra pixels.

Another thing that sets the manufacturers apart is how they invest in batteries. A handful of manufacturers compete to have the fastest charge, with massive chargers included in the box, sometimes with power of over 100 watts, which can fully charge a battery in just over a quarter of an hour. Others have chargers that are a fifth as efficient and still call them “fast chargers”. And then we have Samsung and Apple who have decided to more or less ignore it and not even include a charger.

So we did the selection and the test

Over the years, we have tested all newly released top mobiles and compiled, revisited and updated the phone test published on Unlocky.org blog. The criteria for being included in the test are 5g connection and premium performance, that the phone is less than a year old and that it can be bought in EU stores at the time of writing.

The phones have been tested at launch, unless otherwise stated, and with the then current operating system and system updates. The performance of the mobiles was measured with the latest version of Antutu Benchmark, Geekbench and 3dmark.

Battery life has been assessed with streaming video playback, as well as estimated during everyday use. Different testers and writers may have been responsible for and contributed to different tests. Therefore, the assessment may vary.

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