Best phone 2024: Top 10 Apple and Android smartphones

There are an overwhelming number of smartphones to choose from in 2024, from the familiar Apple iPhone lineup to the wonderful world of Android, where there are umpteen different phones vying for your attention on shop shelves and on online stores.

Whether you want a big screen and great battery life or a small phone with a great camera, there are plenty of options to mix and match the features you want at the price you’re willing to pay, particularly given we are all upgrading far less often than we used to. A phone should last for several years.

At Express.co.uk, our expert tech editors test all the major smartphones released in the UK and put them through their paces to find out if they are as good as the adverts say they are, or if you’re better off spending your money elsewhere.

In this article, we’ve rounded up the ten best smartphones money can buy, with a nod to those who also would prefer to spend a little less, because ‘best’ doesn’t always equal ‘most expensive’.

Apple and Samsung are here, but you have plenty of other options from OnePlus, to Honor, to Google, or even newcomers such as Nothing and companies you didn’t know made phones, such as Asus. There’s a perfect phone out there for everyone.

Here are the best phones you can buy in the UK in 2024.

Samsung has refined its Ultra over the years to bring you the Galaxy S24 Ultra, the best phone you can buy right now. It stuffs absolutely every feature under the sun into its boxy, premium body, complete with S Pen stylus for drawing and writing in apps tucked away when not in use.

The huge 6.8-inch QHD+ display gets incredibly bright when needed and is pin-sharp, but that’s not a drain on the battery, which keeps this monster phone impressively ticking over into a second day on a single charge. It is marketed for its AI features, which include clever text editing, transcribing, and translation tools, but they are not the main reason this is such a good phone. The battery life, for one, is truly outstanding, easily lasting us two days.

Best of all are the cameras, the most versatile you’ll find on any phone. Four rear lenses (main, two telephotos, and an ultra-wide) mean you can pan, zoom, or get up close and personal with your subjects or landscapes, complete with an amazing optical zoom range and enough pro features for tinkering with your photos afterwards. Add to that seven years of software support and you really can’t go wrong with the S24 Ultra – as long as you can stomach the price.

If you want to spend less, the regular Galaxy S24 and S24 Plus are also excellent.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra review

Google markets its Pixel 8 Pro on the strength of its AI features, but the phone is good enough without all that. The smarts include things like Best Take, which lets you mix and match faces from several group shots to make sure no one is blinking, to instant translation so you can quickly chat to someone who doesn’t speak your language.

You can also use other powerful tools in Google Photos to edit snaps to be at different times of day, erase unwanted people from the background, and generally perfect your pocket pictures.

The Pixel’s screen is one of the best on any smartphone with very good viewing angles, vibrant colours and incredible brightness that you’ll really notice. Build quality is also the best ever from a Google phone, with a matt glass back that feels incredibly premium. Google also offers seven years of software updates – an industry best – so if you can keep the phone running it’ll last you longer than any other. If you want a smaller, cheaper version, you can get the Pixel 8.

Read our full Google Pixel 8 Pro review

It’s pricier than previous OnePlus phones but the OnePlus 12 is the company’s best yet, and justifies its price tag (which, don’t forget, is £400 less than the Galaxy S24 Ultra and cheaper than the iPhone 15 Pro and Google Pixel 8 Pro). Available in plain old black or a standout marble green finish, the 12 packs in superb cameras, excellent battery life with incredibly fast wired charging from dead to full in 27 minutes, and highly customisable software.

There’s also wireless charging compatibility and an excellent triple camera array that will produce superb photos. OnePlus has teamed up with legendary camera brand Hasselblad to tune the snaps you take, and it shows, plus a special X-Pan mode lets you shoot in widescreen format like on older film cameras – it’s great.

Compared to the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Pixel 8 Pro you only get five years of software support from launch instead of seven, but if you want a phone with a curved screen, great design, and top performance, the OnePlus 12 will cost you less than those two competing handsets.

Read our full OnePlus 12 review

For every Pro iPhone there’s a non-Pro iPhone, but the regular iPhone 15 is better than it has any right to be. It has gained the Dynamic Island, matt glass back, and lovely curved design of the more expensive iPhone 15 Pro, to the point at which most people will barely be able to tell the difference. If that’s you, then you should spend less and get this one.

The main camera is outstanding, as is battery life, with only the 60Hz refresh rate on the display letting the phone down (every other phone on this list has 90Hz or 120Hz smooth scrolling). Otherwise the software is identical, and should still be getting updates at the end of the decade if Apple keeps up its good work.

It also now charges via USB-C, so if you have an older iPhone you’ll need to get used to not using your Lightning cables. But if you have an iPhone 12 or earlier and want to upgrade, or fancy a change from Android, the iPhone 15 should be the go-to choice for most people – only true tech-heads need to spend more on the iPhone 15 Pro for the higher refresh rate screen and telephoto camera. Opt for the iPhone 15 Plus if you want a bigger screen and better battery life.

Read our full iPhone 15 review

You might not have heard of Xiaomi but this smartphone is one of the best you can buy if camera quality is your number one consideration.. This is the best camera system on any phone we’ve ever tested at Express.co.uk – the main sensor, which has a variable aperture that you can adjust like a DSLR, produces some truly stunning images. It’s hard to believe they came out of a phone, they’re that good.

Four cameras overall on the back make it very versatile, and the sizable camera bump proves mobile photography is the reason to buy the 14 Ultra. It’s a camera with a phone attached and you won’t be disappointed. You also get super fast charging with a charger in the box, excellent all day battery life, a lovely bright, sharp display, a fingerprint-free vegan leather back, and great performance for everything including mobile gaming.

Xiaomi’s HyperOS software is a downside, as the company changes a lot of the look and feel of Android for no good reason, and the phone is very heavy thanks to all the camera tech and metal build. It’s also £1,299 and one of the priciest phones out there – but for photo quality it can’t be beaten.

Read our full Xiaomi 14 Ultra review

Nothing is a UK tech start up and this is its third, and cheapest, phone to date. It’s also the best one – for just £319 it is excellent value with eye-catching design, functional lights on the back, a good screen, solid battery life, and thoughtful Android software.

The camera is nothing to write home about, but it’s solid for the price. The Phone 2a is best as a minimalist’s phone, one to buy, set up, and use as a tool. That’s how we felt best using it, and it could help you use your phone less. This is in part down to Nothing’s software that you can set to look monochrome so those colourful apps don’t draw you in.

It’s also rare to see an always-on display at this price, but you can set your screen time, weather, and other useful information widgets to appear there, reducing the need to pick up your phone. It has a low powered processor, but this also means battery life is great. Along with the Pixel 7a, this is the mid-range phone to go for in 2024.

Read our full Nothing Phone 2a review

If you’re bored of always upgrading your phone to another black rectangle and you’d rather your phone looked like it was from the future then this is the one for you. Folding phones have been around for a few years, but the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is one of the best yet, nailing the balance between design and function.

Also calling on the nostalgia you might have for the flip phones of the 2000s, this premium handset folds out to be the size of a regular modern smartphone but then flips shut to half the size to stow easily in a small pocket or bag. If you want to glance at the time and your notifications, the lid has a 3.4-inch cover screen, which can even run full apps if you want it to. But keeping it shut might make you pick up your phone less, which can only be a good thing.

When it’s open, the phone has excellent dual cameras for those all-important social media snaps, plus the battery life is good enough to keep you going all day away from the charger. With premium design and a guaranteed five years of software support, this is a great choice for something a bit different – and Samsung offers excellent UK support in case of defects, which are something to consider when it comes to folding screens.

Read our full Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 review

The Google Pixel 7a is incredible value at £449, and you can probably find it cheaper than that if you shop around. Using it makes us wonder why you should spend extra on the more expensive phones in this list (i.e. all of them) as the 7a performs admirably in all areas.

It has one of the best – if not the best – camera for still images, with the sharp, contrast-heavy look Pixel phones have become known for, with an ultra-wide angle camera thrown in too. The screen is a good size and is the first with a high refresh rate on a Pixel A-series phone, similarly as it’s the first with wireless charging.

It has the capable Google Tensor G2 chipset and Pixel-exclusive features such as Call Screen and Hold For Me, great automate dealing with spam calls and hold machines respectively. And because it’s a Pixel, you’ll get Android feature updates quicker than any other Android phone on the market, including Samsung.

Read our full Google Pixel 7a review

Perhaps an outsider’s pick, nevertheless we have a lot of time for the Honor Magic 6 Pro with its unique design, excellent screen, and surprisingly capable camera set up. If you don’t want to have the same phone as your mates this is a great pick. It took everything from 2023’s Magic 5 Pro and improved it, with better design, cameras, and software.

Honor rose out of the ashes of former Android favourite Huawei, and still pumps out several phones a year. The Magic 6 Pro is a great all-rounder with a great 50MP camera lens and an excellent 180MP zoom, along with top level performance thanks to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and a boatload of RAM. The screen is very impressive, and one of the most curved you can buy, if that’s your sort of thing.

We find the software skin a little acquired a taste – this is practically Huawei software by a different name – as it changes a lot of stock Android and tends to try and act or look like iOS in several instances. There’s also some AI smarts thrown in but you can largely ignore them if you want. For the most part, the Magic 6 Pro is an outstanding phone that will help you stand out from the Apple and Samsung crowd.

Read our full Honor Magic 6 Pro review