Best Android phones of 2024, reviewed by a tech expert

The best phones that Google makes are the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL, they are identical in all but screen size and battery capacity, so we’ve rolled them into a single recommendation here. You can choose the 6.3in model or the 6.8in model without worrying that you’re missing out on any features.

Besides costing an extra £200, what’s the difference between the basic Pixel 9 and the two Pro versions? The more expensive Pixel has a sharper, brighter display, faster wireless charging and extra RAM, meaning better performance when loading apps, editing photos and running AI features. You also get a 5x telephoto lens for long-distance photography and a higher-quality selfie camera.

All Pixel 9 phones come with Gemini embedded throughout. Google’s much-hyped artificial intelligence enables things like advanced photo editing at a touch, generating images from text prompts, near-instant transcription and formatting of meeting notes and the ability to summarise phone calls and search for and recall important information from screenshots.

You can have natural back-and-forth conversations with Gemini about topics you’re interested in finding out more about, with a few of the usual LLM caveats – the chatbot will confidently give you incorrect and made-up answers from time to time, for example.

Gemini’s ability to pull information from places like your inbox, calendar and Google Docs is impressive too. That integration hints at the potential for Gemini to evolve into a truly useful and universal, hands-free virtual assistant, but it’s not quite at the stage where it’s accurate enough to rely on.

All this on top of the Pixel’s already excellent camera hardware, the best and slickest Android experience you can find, plus seven years of software updates, security and support. The Pixel 9 Pro phones are naturally the best Google’s ever made, and certainly the most interesting new phone in recent memory.

• Pixel 9 Pro XL with 500GB data: £36.99 per month with £99 up front, Carphonewarehouse.com
• Pixel 9 Pro XL with 500GB data: £34.99 per month with £149 up front, Mobiles.co.uk

The very latest in Samsung’s A-series of budget-friendly phones, the Galaxy A25 launched in December 2023 and is easily one of the best cheap Android phones for less than £250.

A solid little performer, it packs in a 120Hz AMOLED display, 5G connectivity, a decent triple-lens camera, Samsung’s excellent One UI operating system and a long-lasting 5000mAh battery.

The 128GB capacity of the base model means on-device storage could be tight, particularly if you plan on shooting 4K video, but it’s a happy compromise to get the price this low. Plus, unlike even top-of-the-range phones, you can pop a microSD card into the Galaxy A25 for up to 1TB of extra storage.

• Samsung Galaxy A25 with 300GB data: £17 per month, Fonehouse.co.uk

If you want the latest Samsung Galaxy features but don’t want to shell out £1,249 for the all-singing S24 Ultra, we’d recommend the baseline S24 model. It features the same build quality and AI-powered tools in a device costing hundreds of pounds less.

Neither the S24 nor S24 plus is compatible with the S-Pen stylus but, make no mistake, this is still a premium Android phone on par with the iPhone 15 and Google Pixel 8. It features a bright and colourful AMOLED display and a dynamic refresh rate that reaches a butter-smooth 120Hz. The S24 has a camera that effectively matches the S24 Ultra when it comes to daytime and portrait photography too, albeit with a shorter-range telephoto lens with three times optical zoom.

• Samsung Galaxy S24 with unlimited data: £32 per month, £95 up front, Mobiles.co.uk

The latest in the budget-friendly a-series of Pixel phones, the Pixel 8a is the best mid-range Android phone you can buy. It’s effectively a Pixel 8 with slightly thicker bezels and a lower-grade camera and features all of the clever AI photo-editing tools found in the more expensive flagship phones.

The upgrade to Google’s latest Tensor G3 chip means you enjoy all of the search giant’s software smarts in a phone costing less than £500, from photo-editing tools such as Magic Eraser to intelligent battery management and a more responsive Google Assistant. Because it runs on a clean and streamlined version of the Android operating system, you don’t have to fuss around with third-party apps and multiple logins – the Pixel phones offer the best software experience you’ll find on any Android.

In our full Google Pixel 8a review, we called it “one of the best budget phones you can buy in 2024”.

• Pixel 8a with 100GB data: £18.99 per month, Carphonewarehouse.com

Samsung has been making folding phones longer than just about anyone else, and it shows with the Galaxy Z Flip 6, the tech giant’s best flip phone yet.

The hinge mechanism has been refined even further this year, giving the Galaxy Z Flip 6 a sturdy and smooth unfolding action and an even better and more durable feel in the hand. The phone folds down to a neat square you can fit in your palm. Open it up and the 6.7in AMOLED display is bright and responsive, with a tall form factor that’s perfect for vertical scrolling. The crease across the middle of the display is still there, but it’s subtle enough that you soon stop noticing it.

This year’s Flip gets a big camera upgrade, bringing the lenses in line with the Galaxy S24 range, as well as a boost to battery life, which is still just-about-adequate. The outer display isn’t as useful as it could be, with only a handful of apps officially supporting the teeny 3.4in screen. Otherwise, the outer screen is wide enough that you can comfortably ping off quick replies without opening the phone – great when you’re using your phone on the go. The new widgets are fun too, giving you lots of ways to customise the outer screen to show you live weather information, reminders, calendar invites, schedules and more.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 gets a bunch of AI features – apparently a requirement for any phone launching in 2024 – which work well on the little device. These unlock lots of fun photo editing features, like adding objects to pictures you’ve taken, as well as more practical applications like live translation, dictation and meeting notes organisation.

The Galaxy Z Flip 6 is an all-round brilliant folding phone, and a tiny marvel of engineering.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 with unlimited data: £40 per month, Fonehouse.co.uk

Google’s second-generation folding phone is a massive step up from last year’s Pixel Fold, with an entirely new design that’s thinner and more lightweight. The wider dimensions of the phone means it looks and performs like a regular 6.3in phone when closed, and behaves more like two phones side by side when opened to reveal its giant 8in inner display. That’s in contrast to the narrow form factor of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, where the outer display feels squished and cramped.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is also much thinner than last year’s phone, about as thin as a Pixel 9 Pro with a case, so while it’s naturally bulkier than a non-folding phone it’s not so hefty that it can’t fit comfortably into a pocket. The inclusion of the Tensor G4 chip means you get all of the fun Gemini features that headline the rest of the Pixel 9 series, like Pixel Studio and Pixel Screenshots, plus a few fun tricks like the “Made You Look” feature, which shows animated characters on the outer display to make your kids look towards the camera.

You miss out on the top-of-the-line cameras found in the non-folding Pixel 9 phones, but it feels a worthwhile compromise to get an expansive inner folding screen on a device this thin. The first folding phone we’d use as our regular daily device, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is one of the best foldables you can buy today.

• Pixel 9 pro fold with unlimited data: £59.99 a month, £239 up front, Mobiles.co.uk

The Galaxy S24 ultra is the best phone Samsung has ever made. The blisteringly powerful Android phone features a faster processor, a brighter screen, and a newly redesigned flat display.

The only mainstream phone to come with its own stylus, the Galaxy S24 ultra is a genuinely unique device among a sea of iPhone-alikes and is designed to be a productivity powerhouse. The slim and lightweight S-Pen slips out of a neat little enclosure in the bottom of the device, letting you jot down notes, sketch, doodle, and trace circles around things you want to Google.

While the hardware specifications have received just the lightest of upgrades, this year’s flagship Galaxy phone is all about new software features. Like seemingly every other tech company, Samsung has been bitten by the artificial intelligence (AI) bug, incorporating machine-learning magic into its already powerful photography and text-editing tools.

Just like the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro before it, the Galaxy S24 ultra’s camera can now erase subjects and nuisances from pictures, move them around in the frame, change their size or replace them completely. You can also re-crop photos after taking them, letting the AI engine create new parts of the image from its imagination.

• Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with 250GB data: £48 per month, £95 up front, Mobiles.co.uk

The Nothing Phone (2) is the challenger tech brand’s second phone, and is now available SIM-free at Amazon and other major UK retailers.

Nothing has made all the right decisions with the follow-up to its debut smartphone, focusing on an improved display, cameras and performance without compromising on the oddness that makes it so distinctive. The showy glyph interface is back and, while as much of a gimmick as it’s always been, when combined with the improvements to Nothing OS, it feels like a cohesive part of a very thoughtfully designed phone.

The Nothing Phone (2) is defiantly, adorably weird. The steep price increase means you can find similarly priced phones with faster specs and better cameras, but not one so remarkably different to everything else out there. Grab one if you’re bored of the same shiny black rectangles, or just in the market for an excellent, stylish and capable mid-range Android.

Read the full Nothing Phone (2) review

• Nothing Phone (2) with 100GB data: £26.99 per month, £9 up front, Carphonewarehouse.co.uk

The resurgent OnePlus brand was originally celebrated for its super-cheap but flagship-quality Android phones, and while in recent years the price of its phones have crept upwards, last year’s OnePlus 11 and lately the OnePlus 12 have reclaimed the Chinese manufacturer’s crown as one of the best challenger phones on the market.

The OnePlus 12 scores top marks for hardware, packing in 12GB of RAM (we tested the 16GB model) and the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor. The highly optimised software keeps things feeling zippier than any other phone we’ve tested – apps snap open like traps, and navigating the operating system is faultlessly smooth. Charging is also incredible speedy and battery life is huge.

There’s a refreshing lack of focus on trendy AI features here. Instead the OnePlus 12 is all about ease of use and basic, practical features. One stand-out upgrade is the phone’s splash-proof touchscreen, which is still be useable even when wet. If you’ve ever tried to use your phone in the rain and found the touchscreen to behave weirdly, OnePlus has seemingly solved this issue. Great news for anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors.

Decent cameras and great all-round build quality round off this excellent Android phone.

• OnePlus 12 with unlimited data: £46.79 per month, Fonehouse.co.uk

Asus is known for producing some of the best small phones on the market, but the Zenfone 11 Ultra breaks from tradition with a much bigger 6.78in display, putting it in the same category as plus-sized flagships like the Samsung Galaxy S23, Xiaomi 14 and Pixel 8 Pro. That might be sad news for small-handed users, but great for anyone looking for a more expansive AMOLED screen, hugely improved battery life and better overall performance.

The Zenfone 11 Ultra boasts the premium features you’d expect at this price point: a dynamic 1Hz to 144Hz refresh rate, under-display fingerprint sensor, wireless charging, the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and a trio of cameras including a 3x optical zoom telephoto lens and a 13MP ultrawide lens.

Performance is snappy, the display is vibrant, and the clean, squared off design is accented by neatly etched, angled lines. It’s a great looking phone, with similarities inside and out to the Asus ROG phone, giving the Zenfone 11 Ultra unbeatable credentials for handheld gaming on the go.

The numbered Xiaomi phones sit at the top end of the outsider brand’s product range, boasting more premium features and better performance than the budget-focused Redmi and Poco phones.

The Xiaomi 14 is the latest in the flagship Android series, and it’s a solid performer with a bright and vibrant 6.36in screen, running on the latest Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor backed up with 12GB of RAM as standard.

The camera is the star of the show here. Xiaomi’s camera array is made up of three 50MP lenses, enabling fast shutter speeds, 3.2x optical zoom, 14mm ultrawide photography and a pro mode for shooting in RAW format. Pictures look great in all lighting conditions, though, you’ll miss out on some of the fancier post-processing capabilities found in Apple, Samsung and Google phones.

As with all Xiaomi devices, it’s the HyperOS operating system that drags the experience down. Xiaomi ships its phones with a full set of its own basic apps – which are way more fiddly, less integrated and less polished than competitors’ versions – as well as unwelcome third-party bloatware. With some customisation, you can easily tweak the default apps to suit your own preferences but the out-of-the-box experience is cludgy compared with the streamlined elegance of iOS or Pixel phones.

Still, this is an excellent, great-looking and compact Android phone running on seriously impressive hardware.