Welcome to best of 2021 I'm Junaid and today we're going to talk about the best phones of the year now there are a lot of new features and upgrades this year but in many ways that you wouldn't expect so here to uncover with me today is Patrick holland seeing its phone aficionado we're gonna have a conversation we're gonna go through a categorical form factor budget a few other areas and ultimately editor's choice so here it is all right thanks for talking Patrick how's it going hey man it's shaking its bacon can't wait to get some taken into some best phones that are so when it comes to phones in 2021 what were the most standout features would you say this year well I think this year has been the 5g year that everyone had hoped 20 20 would be or 2019 would be there are so many 5g phones in fact predominantly like 90 of the phones that we reviewed were 5g maybe even 95 the other trend we see is a mix of trends the higher end phones you see lots of big revisions to flagship phones like the galaxy line the iPhone and the pixel but we also see on the lower end for budget phones we see a little more compromise than we have in previous years so there's some solid budget phones but they're not quite as appealing overall as maybe the ones were in 2020 compared to 2020 2021 has been a very great year for phones if you had to choose one from this year which would be like the go-to budget phone that you would recommend um that that's tough because budget phones really mean anything that's not a flagship phone so that could be a 700 phone a 500 phone um I could name a couple though um I think a couple that I really like is the pixel 5a 5g I think that's around 450 and that has as the name might suggest 5g but it also has google's fantastic camera systems have found the same system they've been using for the last three years but it's not the same cameras as the google pixel 6, I'm sure we'll talk about in a bit uh then you have like some uh phone makers like Motorola and Samsung who are like kind of serving that 300 to 500 market you got like something like the galaxy a52 5g which i think is an outstanding phone obviously, if you're into cameras I still think google's the way to go but overall I think that is actually a fantastic phone for the money you also have Motorola having the this is the mouthful the Motorola moto g stylus 5g and so this is a 5p version of their even cheaper Motorola moto g stylus so that's the another thing with budget phones nearly any price I tell you you're not going to pay full price for a Motorola a phone that's a budget phone or a Samsung phone a one plus phone TCL had some good ones as well carriers are gonna discount discount discount so you mentioned camera in there what would be the best camera that came out this year even a couple of years ago that would be a tricky one to name completely cameras on phones have improved drastically but here I'll help you out a little bit so I think the overall camera for video and photo not just photos but video and photo I still think the iPhone is a step ahead of the pack when you look at it all together uh video on the iPhone is still ahead of what we get on android has a really good video I'm not saying it doesn't um but I think something like the iPhone 13 pro or 13 pro max is going to be this I think a really good all-around system that said the galaxy s21 ultra is one of my favorite phones in 2021 it has a more versatile camera system you have a telephoto that can go up to well, they say 100x space zoom you're not going to use it at 100x but you might use it at 30x and still get pretty good shots where something like the iPhone's gonna top out around like 12x and that optical that's like three 3x I believe off the top of my head um all that being said is I think that's a great camera system um the video is pretty good but I still think the iPhone with stuff like prores video especially if you're filming like we are uh gives you a little more option for grading then there's this lovely little phone called the pixel 6 that launched red toward the end of the year, I think it just takes outstanding photos and one of the things they marketed was uh the the camera being more equitable so they worked with artists who photograph and film communities of color and they were really honest with google's engineers and they revamped the algorithms and google's pixel 6 really lives up to the hype. I've tested it for me and I did another test for an ABC story and it's just mind-blowing how good uh the colors are the skin tones are and all that so as far as cameras you have stuff like that and the last thing I want to mention though is there's this little phone called sony and sony had the Xperia pro I'm imaging that I want to say this is like a 1700 phone 1800 phone and what it does is it's taken the one-inch sensor from sony's rx100 camera line which is a very it's probably the most popular the point-and-shoot camera that's still made today um and put it into a phone it's just amazing to see the images this creates in the videos when it gets to the low light I still think something like the iPhone or the Galaxy S 21 has an advantage but what sony's doing is gearing this phone with it has a shutter button on it has apps so if you want to be a vlogger and do the kind of stuff, we're doing or a journalist you could do that if you want to be a filmmaker, you can use their uh cinema line uh and all this stuff is baked into the phone you don't have to get extra apps or anything so when it comes to cameras naming one is tough but.
I think overall it's a good year to want to buy a phone to take photos or videos let's talk about software that brought the most os game this year like the flagship phones, I would say android jump from 11 to 12 is probably the biggest jump we've seen on android in five-six years not only a big overhaul of the way it looks but the they fixed so many things a lot of us have been complaining about or have had annoyances with over the years and it's fantastic I've tried it out on the pixel 6 which it's kind of like that's like phone it's designed for and it's just outstanding I really really love it obviously the other big system we'd like to talk about is ios uh and with ios 15 we saw some significant upgrades there not quite as groundbreaking or different as android 12. in fact, I think apple if you look at ios 13 ios 14 and I was 15 yeah it's kind of hard to tell them apart I think that's the idea that if you want to change things about your phone you can if you like the way it is you can just leave it like that and think apple's very smart the way it's been approaching ios updates that kind of leads me to my next the question which is like the coolest form factor device this year like we know Samsung comes out with like a new type of the folding phone all the time I have a galaxy z flip that I love to use and flip uh so yeah best form factor let's start with like the rectangle stuff because rectangles are rectangles or rectangles but here are two that I really like this year this is the galaxy s21 ultra I love the way they integrated the camera bump on it as well it's just a very beautiful phone then we have the pixel 6 pro and this defining feature is going to be this camera bar so some people might not like this some people think it looks like a robocop which could be a good thing too um i really like it because when you put it down it doesn't wobble like all the other phones are gonna wobble and I think it's very striking the way they're doing like a two-tone design as well but this is definitely, the most premium thing I've seen from googling a long time but you alluded to foldable phones and yeah two of my favorite are made by Samsung and probably my favorite phone design wise was the galaxy z flip three which when you really just take the colors away from it is not radically different in any way than the original galaxy z flip or the z flip 5g which is kind of like the unofficial second version um but i just love the way they uh had his alloy metal for the frame which made the the whole thing feels more like one piece it's one of my favorite phones this year as the galaxy flip 3. the only knock i had against it was the battery life if you're used to a regular phone it's a step down but if you can deal with that you're gonna have a delightful time with that phone okay taking all of this in we the got form factor we got software we got cameras what is the editor's choice phone this year okay so with the editor's choice we give it an editor's choice to phones that we think are outstanding and it doesn't mean they have the highest rated review it doesn't mean it's like you know unanimously we have like a little private meeting and put like a mask on and vote in silence or anything it's just something like hey this phone really connected with me and the first one we have a couple so .The first one is the galaxy s21 ultra I've talked about this quite a bit already and this came out almost a year ago and I still would recommend it I would say that we know Samsung's likely gonna update this in a month or two that just that's the way they update these phones is on that yearly cycle but this is an outstanding phone and right now you're gonna find some of the lowest prices to get it another one is another android phone I alluded to which is the pixel 6a pro and also the regular pixel 6a this is just an amazing phone I love this phone as I feel like such a connection with it and I'm having a hard time sending them back to Google, I got to send all these phones back but this one has just been really special with me it's kind of like how you were talking about uh the z flip three how you how much you love that how you connected with that it's like it's kind of how I feel about this and then of course no surprise uh the iPhone the iPhone 13 series I think a lot of people when it came out were like what's different is it doesn't look crazy different looks about the same as the 12. and that goes back to I think apple's biggest uh sell is consistency if you're upgrading from an iPhone i don't know iPhone 10 or 10s to one of these it's not going to be a radically different phone it's going to be like you'll be able to put your stuff on there and have a pretty good experience get better photos and videos have a better screen but this is just amazing packaging almost feels like the s a version of the iPhone 12 which is not a bad thing so those are some of the phones that received a net editor's choice award and uh I was fortunate toreview a few of them so yeah amazing well, thank you so much, Patrick.
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Junaid Chaudhary
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