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Best mobile phones to buy in
2013
Smartphones have never been
bigger. Soon enough every pocket will have a mini-computer, and the sheer
variety of smartphones out there means there's something for everyone, at almost
any budget.
Once you've used a smartphone
every day, you'll never look back. Here's our pick of the bunch, from
Android
Samsung Galaxy S4
The Galaxy S4 is the update to
the Galaxy S3, our favourite Android smartphone for the last year. It's possibly
the most hyped phone of all time, but thankfully it's still an impressive
handset.
Despite the phone's huge 5in
screen, it manages to be slim and light, and weighs just 130g. It's the first
phone to use an AMOLED screen with a Full HD resolution, which gives it a huge
pixels-per-inch figure of 441, up from 306ppi on its predecessor. The
operating system and web pages are, as you'd expect,
hyper-sharp.
The S4 uses the same Qualcomm
chipset as the HTC One, but it's clocked at 1.9GHz rather than 1.7GHz. The phone
is awesomely fast in both everyday apps and running 3D benchmarks. Despite all
this power, the S4's 2,600mAh battery managed to keep it running for ten hours
and 43 minutes when playing back video, which is one of the most impressive
figures we've seen.
The S4 is a lot of smartphone for
your money. It's a relatively conservative design, yet has a bigger screen and
battery than the HTC One in a smaller package. You may prefer the HTC One's
metal body, but if you don't get on with HTC's extensive operating system
tweaks, the Galaxy S4 is the phone for you.
Samsung Galaxy S3
Our Expert Opinion The Samsung
Galaxy S3 is no longer the best Android smartphone there is and has been
superseded by the S4, but it's still slim, fast, has a beautiful AMOLED screen
and is now available at a very reasonable price.
The phone has just got better,
too, thanks to an upgrade to support 4G. On Everything Everywhere network we saw
speeds up to 25Mbit/s, which is twice as quick as many home broadband
connections. However, if you want 4G be sure to get the LTE version of the
handset, as there's still a lot of 3G-only ones on sale and only these are
available as part of the cheapest offers
Samsung has loaded the phone with
clever features. If you bring the phone to your ear while a contact is on screen
it will call that person automatically, if you flip the phone over while it's
ringing it will turn the ringer off, and the Smart Stay feature uses the front
camera to keep the screen on while you're looking at it.
Throw in an excellent camera and
you've got all the ingredients for a brilliant smartphone, which is now
available for a very reasonable price.
HTC One
Now that the Samsung Galaxy S4 is
here, the HTC One finally has some stiff competition, but it still holds its
head up high. The phone has a gorgeous metal body and high-contrast 4.7in Full
HD display, which is perfect for browsing web pages at full zoom.
The phone feels gorgeous in the
hand, and the display's vibrant colours makes using Android 4.1 a pleasure. The
HTC One is fast, too, thanks to its quad-core 1.7GHz processor.
Beautiful design aside, the One
stands out from other Full HD Android phones such as the Sony Xperia Z due to
its far-reaching
software modifications. Instead
of being full of icons and widgets, by default the homescreen is an information
feed, with chunky tiles displaying the latest information from news and social
media feeds.
If you'd prefer the standard
Android homescreens instead, you can always shuffle around the order so the news
feed isn't the first thing you see. If you like your phones to have a gorgeous
design this is the handset to buy, but the Samsung Galaxy S4 has a larger screen
and longer battery life, as well as less extensive operating system tweaks.
Apple iPhone
5
Our Expert Opinion Five
generations on, and the iPhone is still the model to beat. Android has taken
great strides, but iOS is still the slickest, fastest and easiest to use
operating system, and there's no arguing with the quality of the apps in the
Apple App Store.
The iPhone 5 is an evolution of
the 4, with a longer screen for more room for app icons and an aspect ratio
better suited to widescreen films. It's also incredibly quick - more than twice
as fast as the iPhone 4S in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark.
The only thing stopping the
iPhone 5 from getting an award is Apple's horrendous new Maps app, which
replaces Google Maps, but this should improve with time.