Best Smartphones of 2024

The premium smartphone segment, for nearly half a decade, has been dominated by Samsung and Apple. However, we saw a small shift a few years ago, with Vivo bringing in more premium products to India, while Google’s Pixel series returned to the country with its Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro after a three-year hiatus. This year, the premium segment has been choc-a-bloc with smartphone brands, giving consumers a variety of devices and form factors to choose from. Apart from OnePlus and Vivo that have stuck with their premium offerings we also saw Oppo returning to the premium segment with its Find X8 and Find X8 Pro smartphones. Google, too, decided to bring all of its smartphones to India this year, which included its most expensive device to date, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Be it book-style foldables, clamshell foldables or regular bar-shaped smartphones, there’s enough variety in the premium segment in 2024, which includes a long list of all-rounders. But just because they are priced higher, it does not mean that we would wholeheartedly recommend all of them. So, here’s a short list of the best smartphones from 2024 (in no particular order) that we would recommend to our readers.

Each phone has something special about them that helps them stand out. So, if you are looking to bring in the new year with a new smartphone purchase, be sure to browse through this guide before you take the leap.

Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max

Claiming to be Apple’s first set of iPhones that have been designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence, the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max comes with interesting upgrades. Apart from being physically bigger than the previous model, there’s a bigger display with super skinny bezels, a brand-new dedicated Camera Control button and improved battery life along with some new camera and video recording tricks as well.

We aren’t sure whether Apple will make the new Camera Control button a standard on all of its iPhones going forward. However, we are pretty sure that Apple isn’t afraid to add more buttons to its iPhones, provided they bring some added functionality. In our review, the Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max left us impressed with its raw performance, top-notch display, imaging prowess and battery life, even though it still looks and feels very much like last year’s model. Charging is still relatively slow, and Apple Intelligence remains a promise that will hopefully keep up with Google’s AI advancements when it’s finally available to everyone in the coming year.

Apple iPhone 16

Despite having some hardware shortcomings like slow charging and a standard 60Hz display, Apple’s iPhone 16 is an excellent choice for those looking to upgrade from an older non-Pro iPhone model. Its display and software aren’t going to feel any smoother when compared to your iPhone 15, but Apple has taken bigger strides by adding a new processor (Apple A18 instead of its top-end A18 Pro), which lets it deliver performance that will feel as good as the new Pro models.

For the past few years, Apple has chosen a processor from the previous year’s Pro model for its new non-Pro iPhones. And since it did not hold back with its chipset this year, it also gets the new Camera Control button, along with various Apple Intelligence and photo editing features (some of which should arrive in the coming year). We received the iPhone 16 Plus model for review and were left impressed by its raw performance, camera performance and battery life. Camera performance is also noticeably better compared to the previous model.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra

Samsung’s Galaxy S24 Ultra may not look too different from last year’s model, but it does have a few qualitative advancements under the hood. Its brighter display shows fewer reflections, which is good when viewing content outdoors. The cameras have improved, but we aren’t big fans of the shift from a 10X telephoto camera (on the Galaxy S23 Ultra) to a 5X camera.

Like with any other Galaxy devices, this one, too, is loaded to the brim with plenty of AI-enabled features that come under Samsung’s Galaxy AI branding. Powering that experience is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, which, apart from Samsung’s optimisations, is a better choice over the Exynos chips the brand uses in its [Galaxy S24] and [Galaxy S24+] models. Our review found its charging speed relatively slow, but you get 7 years of software and security updates. It’s a big phone overall, but it’s choc-a-block with features and delivers good battery life.

Motorola Razr 50 Ultra

Motorola’s Razr 50 Ultra easily possesses the best clamshell foldable design to date. It takes design to the very extremes while offering premium features like an IP rating and wireless charging.

We are still fans of its floating cameras embedded into its large cover display that now has skinny borders all around. The phone has also lost some weight and is slimmer than the previous model. In our review, we found that performance was not a problem and the phone does manage heat well, save for when recording video.

Its cover display design and software remain best in class. And Motorola’s all added improved cameras (compared to the previous model), fast wired charging and finally, a battery that can last a full day without problems.

Vivo X Fold 3 Pro

One of the best book-style foldable designs we have seen this year, Vivo’s X Fold 3 Pro also has the most sensible one as it offers a large (and slightly taller cover display), which makes way for a wider main display that is great for watching movies. Its design is also super slim, and that camera bump, while being thicker than Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold and Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6’s camera modules, makes up for it when it comes to still camera performance.

While Vivo FunTouch OS did have some rough edges when we reviewed the phone, the latest version with Android 15 squishes most bugs and adds some additional AI features to the mix. In terms of battery life, Vivo’s foldable almost feels like a regular bar-shaped premium flagship as it can not only last beyond a day but can also charge up very fast at 100W, a lot higher than all the devices in this segment.

Google Pixel 9 Pro XL

Google has always struggled with performance with its Pixel Pro smartphone lineup. This year, the Pixel 9 Pro XL also came with a new Tensor G4 chipset with incremental updates, but it also added a vapour chamber cooling system that aimed to address all of those heating issues that we faced in the Pixel 7 Pro and even the 8 Pro series. With this in place, the Pixel 9 Pro XL now runs cooler even when using the camera, and this finally makes it easy to recommend to anyone who is looking for a premium smartphone with the cleanest software experience and a great set of cameras.

In our review, we found that the new Tensor G4 SoC also brings several new AI features and makes the existing ones a lot faster. Video Boost feature, which debuted with the Pixel 8 Pro, now works a lot better with the Pixel 9 Pro models, creating some impressively stable and clear low-light video recordings. But you will have to wait until the on-cloud processing is done, so be prepared for that. AI tricks aside, Google’s Pixel 9 Pro XL is also one of the

Oppo Find X8

Oppo’s Find X8 Pro did not make it to this list, but the smaller Find X8 sure stands out because it’s a compact powerhouse available at a competitive price. There are just a handful of compact premium flagships in India, and Oppo’s Find X8 stands out because it is the most feature-packed device in the segment.

In our review, we loved its design, which kept things simple and elegant with its flat display (with skinny borders) and flat sides. There’s a capable processor onboard that can easily handle everything from games to imaging. Cameras are pretty good for its asking price, and with features like an IP69 rating, 50W wireless and 80W wired charging, they should quickly put it on top of your list when looking out for a sensible compact flagship.

Realme GT 7 Pro

Realme has always stood out because the brand tends to launch value for money products that are hard to beat. Realme’s GT Pro series returned to the premium segment after a long break, but just like the previous GT Pro model, offers plenty of value for its asking price.

If performance is your thing, then look no further, as the Realme GT 7 Pro offers Qualcomm’s latest and greatest offering at a low price. It looks like the part, as well as the GT 7 Pro, is a departure from the tacky designs that have plagued Realme flagships in the past. While we reviewed the Chinese phone variant, which has a substantially larger 6,500mAh battery, Realme claims to offer excellent battery life and charging speeds from the 5,800mAh unit. Camera performance is also quite sorted, which is a good thing, as past models were a bit shaky in this area.

OnePlus 12

The OnePlus 12, given its pricing and features, is one of the most effortless smartphones to recommend in the premium segment. It has enough power and offers well-tuned and optimised software to take advantage of its high-resolution display.

Smooth software experience aside, the cameras are great as well. It offers fast wired charging and, with the recent software update, several usable AI features. The only catch is that the OnePlus 13 is on its way to India, so we recommend holding on to this one, as the 13 is turning out to be a worthy replacement.

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Vivo X200 Pro

With Oppo launching its Find X8 Pro, it was a bit surprising to see Vivo launch its X200 Pro flagship in India at the very end of 2024. The phone has a 3nm MediaTek processor that packs enough power for day-to-day tasks. It is up there with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite, which is available in other high-end flagships.

Vivo’s focus for the X series has always been camera performance, and things are no different this year. In our review, the phone managed photos that have excellent colour reproduction that remains consistent in every and any shooting scenario. The star of this show is the 200-megapixel telephoto camera, which manages excellent zoom images well beyond its native 3.9X optical zoom. The Zeiss collaboration goes a step further this year with the optics specialist joining hands for a Zeiss-calibrated colour display to go with its Zeiss-branded cameras.

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