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WIRED Recommends: Samsung Galaxy Note 8
Pros: Superb hardware
Cons: High price
Samsung has made phone buying easy for those who like Android and have a lot of money to spend. It may cost almost £900, roughly double the price of the original Note from 2011, but the Galaxy Note 8 is an almost faultless phone.
Its screen is a mammoth 6.3 inches across, but as the Note 8 has an ultra-widescreen display and almost no bulk around it, it’s surprisingly easy to handle. Apple’s iPhone 8 Plus is almost 4mm wider, despite its smaller 5.5-inch screen.
Like previous Note phones, a smart stylus turns the screen into a miniature graphics tablet. It may be the best feature you almost never use, but is just not found elsewhere.
The Note 8 also has one of the most versatile cameras going. There are two sensors on the rear, for lossless 2x zoom, and great optical image stabilisation in both lenses maintains good image quality even at night.
Best mid-range smartphone: Honor 9
Pros: Great value, advanced features
Cons: Little wrong with it at the price
Apple and Samsung smashed through the smartphone price ceiling in 2017. The Honor 9 is a reminder that spending £1,000 on a phone is completely unnecessary for most people.
At £390, it crams-in a rather unlikely amount of tech, beating what Samsung, LG and even the Moto series offer at the price. That includes a high-end CPU, 64GB of storage and a great 5.2-inch screen.
A dual rear camera also has a crack at the 2x lossless zooming the iPhone 7 Plus made mainstream in 2016. It’s not quite as effective, but at half the price we’re lucky to get such features at all. An ultra-shiny glass and metal finish completes the Honor 9’s successful impersonation of a £500-plus phone.
Its main issue is the OnePlus 5. While more expensive, that phone has a slightly better camera and a larger screen.
