The new HTC One is hands-down the best designed Android phone on
the market, a gorgeous curved slab that feels big and classy and like
it's made to last. It has a beautiful 5-inch, 1080p display, plus a set of
front-firing BoomSound speakers that are shockingly better than any
other phone on the market. The One's only enduring weakness is its
camera, though, and it also doesn’t offer any of the cool additive software
you’ll find on the Moto X. HTC’s hardware is unparalleled, but can’t quite
measure up to Apple and Motorola on other fronts.
TECH REVIEW
The best smart phone you can buy
Our smart phones are the single most important devices we own. They’re the tools we use to communicate with our loved ones, our offices made mobile. They’re our game consoles, our conduit for watching
and reading anything the internet offers. They’ve also become the remote controls to our televisions, our
homes, our cars, and more. Smart phones are the hub for everything we do, everywhere we go — there’s
no more intimate, more personal, more important piece of personal technology.
Not long ago, there were good phones and bad phones. But the industry has matured so quickly that
it’s all but impossible to find a device that flat-out can’t handle making phone calls, texting, casual web
browsing, and the occasional Netflix binge. Now, when you shop for a cellphone, your selection is more
nuanced. Five things matter above all: design, battery life, ecosystem, software, and camera. Every buyer
balances those criteria differently, and which you care most (and least) about could completely change
what you buy.
This is a device you’ll use all day, every day. It’s hard to find an out-and-out bad phone, but it’s easy to
not get the right one. And if you’re looking for the best mix of the five things that matter most, there’s one
choice that stands out.
HTC One (M8)
This phone is huge. Surprisingly huge, especially if you’re upgrading
from an older iPhone. But what huge (a 5.5-inch screen) buys you is
a device that successfully operates as your only computer, able to be
a television and a phone and a tablet and a reading device all at once.
But huge makes it hard to hold in one hand, and really strange to hold
to your face. Maybe someday we’ll all get used to these sizes, and we’ll
all use the 6 Plus — but until then it’s mostly for the big-handed and
forward-looking.
Last year’s Moto X was a complicated animal. On one hand it was
beautiful, comfortable, endlessly customizable, tuned to your own
voice; it felt personal in a way almost no other phone did. But it also
had outdated specs, a frustrating camera, and not-always-great battery
life.
Apple iPhone 6
This year, Motorola kept everything good about the Moto X and fixed
almost every one of its problems. It now has a big, high-resolution
display, a high-end build, a fast processor, and specs that match the
best phones on the market. It’s not a midrange phone with some cool
features anymore — it’s a powerhouse. It’s still easy to personalize, too,
now with even more options (like a really awesome leather). And it has
the same always-listening voice control and always-on notifications that
it always has; these were and are the best things about the Moto X.
The X still has a slightly inconsistent camera, though, along with a battery that doesn’t yet last as long as I’d hope. But it’s a fantastic phone,
through and through. It’s the best Android phone
ever made, and it’s only in second place by a
slim margin of camera performance and battery
life. You can’t go wrong with the Moto X. (EspeIt’s sort of boring to say that the iPhone 6 is the best smart phone you can buy. But
cially a leather one.)
it is. It’s the best because it’s the only phone that doesn’t come with any drawbacks.
Until now, you bought an iPhone despite its smaller screen and somewhat lackluster
battery life; the camera, the app ecosystem, the fit and finish of Apple’s hardware and
software hopefully made those tradeoffs worth it. With the iPhone 6, there simply are no
tradeoffs.
The 6 has a 4.7-inch display with enough pixels that you’ll never see them. It has a
battery that lasts a full day every time, longer if you’re not obsessively refreshing your
Instagram feed. It has the best camera in the industry, with new slow-motion and timelapse video tricks that make it better than ever. It has Apple’s most powerful phone
software ever in iOS 8. But it’s still easy and intuitive and simple to use, a feeling that
extends from the fingerprint-reading TouchID sensor to the slight curve on the screen
itself that just lets your thumb glide across the display.
The iPhone 6 doesn’t have any eye-poppingly impressive features (except maybe the
camera), and it doesn’t do anything you can’t find on another phone. But it does everything well, everything reliably, everything intuitively. And it does it without forcing you to
choose between a big phone and a good phone. It’s still comfortable enough to use in
one hand (thanks to both the design and some slightly awkward software contortions),
but big enough to be immersive and great for video or getting real work done.
Apple iPhone 6 Plus
It’s big, but if you’re in the market for a phablet-style
phone the LG G3 is one of the best. And it actually
doesn’t feel nearly as big as it ought to: it has a big 5.5inch screen in a body with incredibly slim bezels and
really excellent build quality. It has some design quirks,
like the back-mounted power and volume buttons, but
from its camera to its battery and surprisingly handsome
design, it does everything well.
The Galaxy Alpha is proof that Samsung really can make nice phones. It’s lovely, metallic,
and just pleasant to use in a way most Samsung devices are not. It’s held back by some
truly lackluster specs, though, from the display and the battery life to Samsung’s typically
overwrought software customizations. The Galaxy Alpha is the first of a new breed of
better Samsung devices, but it’s not quite the smart phone you want just yet.
Big phones should do big-phone things, and Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 is
untouched in that respect. The Note 3’s 5.7-inch display makes it huge — too
big for most pockets, and m