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You probably don't need a flagship phone
It's easier than ever to score a premium experience at a fraction of the price
It's no secret that flagship smartphones are expensive. Walk into any carrier store, and unless you're willing to trade in a recent device, you'll be on the hook for a pretty penny, either upfront or spread out over three years of monthly payments. Of course, you get plenty of benefits for the price: premium camera systems with multiple lens options; gorgeous, expansive AMOLED displays; top-of-the-line processors capable of console-grade gaming; optional add-ons like styluses or folding displays; and of course, the longest-lasting update support around.
Is the Google Pixel 6's new Night Sight as good as the Pixel 7's?
Google’s improved Night Sight algorithm is nothing to sneeze at
One of the biggest highlights of Google’s March Pixel Feature Drop wasn’t the debut of a brand-new feature, but rather, extending the availability of a Pixel 7-exclusive feature to the Pixel 6 series: Google’s best phones from 2021 received the Pixel 7's new Night Sight algorithm and controls. The company started rolling out this camera update in March already, but it took quite some time until it reached all Pixel 6 units out there.
Why the Pixel 7 finally made me ditch my iPhone
The Pixel 7 Pro is the best phone from Google yet, and it's been good enough to make me switch away from my iPhone
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The Apple iPhone has been the singular iOS phone for the longest time, and many of us have wished for a worthy Android equivalent for years. Quite a few incredible Android phones have been offered and continue to offer solid competition to the iPhone on multiple fronts. But I'm talking about a different kind of iPhone competitor here. One from Google, a pure Android experience that is coherent, smooth, and has at least some of that ecosystem charm.
How to keep your phone safe from the scary Exynos modem vulnerability
It’s easier than you think…mostly
Every once in a while, a major security vulnerability is discovered in devices you use in your daily life that could put your privacy at risk. Recently, Google's Project Zero team revealed multiple remote code execution vulnerabilities in Exynos modems that could allow hackers to compromise some of the best Android phones like the Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 without any user interaction. Worse, they only needed to know the victim's phone number to achieve this. So, how can you keep yourself safe if you own an Android phone, watch, or even a car that uses an affected Exynos modem?
Google might have the perfect phone for everyone this year, and I’m all here for it
The Pixel 8 lineup is shaping up to be Google's best yet
We finally have an idea what the Google Pixel 8 and 8 Pro will look like, thanks to the creation of renders based on hardware measurements, and we've also been able to check out quite a few leaks showing us what the Pixel 7a and the Pixel Fold might offer, too. It sure looks like this year, Google might have a smartphone for almost everyone in the market — and I’m all here for it.
What will make the Pixel 8 great, as told by the Android Police podcast
Plus, a cracker of a trailer for a berry good movie
It's been a week for the Pixel speculators out there as a flood of Pixel 7a and Pixel 8 intelligence has spilled and thrilled all of us. We'll be picking through the details on the Android Police podcast plus a Samsung non-controversy, a real Samsung controversy, a new Samsung phone, and... just a lot. It's everything, everywhere, all at... okay, maybe not so much that. No multiverse here. But we do fit in a blissful mention of the upcoming BlackBerry movie on this episode of the show.
Samsung gave the Moon a beauty filter because that's what users actually want
If your Moon pics are fake, then so is nearly every other picture taken by your phone
The Galaxy S23 Ultra is one of the very best Android phones your money can buy right now. If you have one, the very first thing you probably did with it, right after unboxing and getting set up, was trying out that fancy new 200MP camera. But maybe the phone's coolest trick involves its telephoto camera. The ability of these phones to combine that lens with additional digital zoom to grab some surprisingly decent pictures of the Moon (famously going up to 100X) went viral last year with the arrival of the Galaxy S22 Ultra — and Samsung's latest phone is just as capable of this. However, a minor scandal has broken out around claims that these Moon shots are artificially enhanced with an excessive dose of AI. If you ask me, though, this whole thing is being blown way out of proportion. In fact, it's not a bad thing at all.
The Google Pixel 7 is still more exciting than the Samsung Galaxy S23
Samsung is just perfecting great devices while Google had a lot of issues to fix
It's been a little over a month now since the Samsung Galaxy S23 lineup was finally unpacked, and a few weeks since the first customers got their hands on early Galaxy S23 orders. Samsung's flashy event was videographed on Galaxy S23 hardware and saw Alien creator Ridley Scott endorsing the Galaxy S23 Ultra's new 200MP camera. While the whole thing was sure entertaining to watch, what struck me the most, and a feeling I haven't been able to shake off in the weeks since, is the sense that we've seen it all before (apart from that 200MP camera, anyway). The S23 lineup represents a purely iterative upgrade over its predecessors, with minor design changes and the usual hardware improvements being the only real highlights for what could still be some of the best phones of 2023.
The top 9 ways the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 can make you more productive
The smartphone that makes multitasking easy
Foldables are the future of smartphones. They have their own set of reliability issues, but most of these concerns should be resolved with time. Samsung currently leads the foldable market with its Galaxy Z Flip and Fold lineups, and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 ranks high in our list of the top Android phones on the market.
11 incredible Samsung One UI features to try on your Galaxy phone
Make the most out of Samsung's software
Gone are the days when Samsung was infamous for the TouchWiz Android skin. The company's One UI software skin has received positive responses from users and reviewers. With a long list of features, smooth performance, and timely updates, One UI has become the prime reason to get a top Samsung Galaxy phone over its rivals. Here are the best One UI features you should use on your Samsung Galaxy device.
The wild, wonderful world of North Korean smartphones
3G service and built-in mosquito repellant are a few features you'll find on North Korean smartphones.
There are a lot of fantastic Android phones out there, but in today's era of sleek, camera-heavy smartphones, their similarities stand out more than differences. Devices like the eye-catching Nothing Phone are interesting, but mainstream phones don't generate the excitement they used to. At MWC 2023, we saw a range of exciting concepts, but we'll have to wait a while before they hit shelves.
The Galaxy S20 signified Samsung's renewed focus on innovating and the ensuing months have given us plenty to believe that the company is committed to this vision. The Galaxy S22 is the company's latest and greatest, and if you sat out the S21, it's probably already enticing you to ditch your S20. Should you though?
This light-based Wi-Fi alternative wants to supercharge your next phone's connection
The Li-Fi standard uses infrared light to speed up your internet connection while making your Wi-Fi less congested
Wi-Fi networks are great at keeping all your devices connected to high-speed internet, but they have their downsides. The more great smart home devices you add and the more neighbors you have with similar setups, the more congested radio frequencies inevitably get. Despite encryption, Wi-Fi also isn't entirely private, allowing prying eyes to see which devices are connected and active. So, how do we get around all of these issues? Perhaps by seeing the light.
How do you pronounce 'Rizr,' the Android Police podcast asks?
It's the invasion of the concept phone
Will, Manuel, and, for the first time, our editor-in-chief James gather for a debrief round robin after a week of MWC 2023 coverage. From spotting Carl Pei at the Unihertz booth to destroying Motorola's rollable phone concept with facts and logic(?), the team's got a lot to talk about. Too bad our expensive audio recorder doesn't like our expensive SD cards. Or that we didn't have a Mini-USB cable. Despite all of that, we hope you enjoy this episode of the Android Police podcast!
Best of MWC 2023: Android Police’s awards for the big mobile show
The best tech we've seen during MWC 2023
The world's biggest mobile phone show is drawing to a close, and while Mobile World Congress 2023 hasn't been as chock-full of announcements as pre-pandemic iterations of the show, we've seen some reveals of exciting smartphones, interesting concept devices, and other oddities.
The first cellphone with a camera landed on American shores in 2002. Since then, OEMs have been racing to produce better mobile cameras. The dawn of the smartphone era in 2008 and the rise of social media made having a good phone camera a must for everyone who wants to keep up with the Joneses. But before mobile cameras began taking most of the world's photos, pictures were taken with devices that were larger than nearly all the mobile devices that replaced them. How is this possible? What's going on inside our phone that lets it take 200MP photos?
The Galaxy S23, the triumph of ZKD, and the Android Police podcast
Tales of Snapdragon, Exynos, and downright weird customer service
Our Zachary Kew-Denniss joins the Android Police podcast this week to express all the things that have finally gone right for him in the world. By that, we mean getting a Galaxy flagship phone that doesn't have an Exynos chip in it. Fancy that! Plus, more chat about YouTube Premium, Android Auto, and the uncanny valley of Spotify's AI DJs — all in this episode!
Here's the real reason why Samsung's Galaxy S23 has a 'huge' system partition
Maybe your S23 doesn't need to go on a diet, after all
The Galaxy S23 series has been the talk of the town since it was announced, and the sentiment around it has been mostly positive. Those feelings wavered a bit recently when it was reported that the 512GB S23 Ultra was using a whopping 60GB of storage space for its system partition — far larger than the 14GB you'd find on something like a Pixel 6a. Naturally, this story went viral, with people accusing Samsung of filling the S23 Ultra with unnecessary bloat. As it turns out, though, there's slightly more nuance to the story, and the truth is that the system partition on the S23 isn't quite so large.
How to watch Honor’s book-style Magic Vs and Magic 5 launch
Honor has some impressive devices lined up for announcement at MWC 2023
Huawei sold Honor to a Chinese government-backed consortium in November 2020 to ensure its survival. That move has paid well, as Honor has launched some impressive devices since then, including its first folding phone, the Magic V. The company followed this up with its second foldable, the Magic Vs, which we found to be a worthy competitor to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 in our hands-on. Three months after its China debut, the foldable is set to launch internationally alongside Honor's flagship Magic 5 series. The devices will be unveiled at MWC 2023, and if they have caught your fancy, here's how you can watch them being revealed live.
Xiaomi was among the first companies to announce a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2-powered phone: the Xiaomi 13 series. While the phone launched in December 2022, its availability has been limited to China. Two months after its debut, the company is finally ready to bring the Xiaomi 13 to international markets, making it a strong contender for our list of the best Android phones. Xiaomi is holding the phone's global launch event in Barcelona on February 26. You can always watch the live stream to learn more about the Xiaomi 13 and its Leica-branded camera.