Best of Android 2016 – What is the best smartphone?

What is the best phone? The one that beats all others? The best of the best that money can buy?

If you're a tech aficionado, these are probably questions that you're asked quite often. We know we are. Because we're often asked for advice on what the best phone to buy is, we thought we'd help answer this question for you with the ultimate smartphone comparison.

Welcome to the second annual edition of Best of Android!

What is Best of Android?

With Best of Android 2016, we're trying to give an objective answer to the question "What's the best Android smartphone?"

We'll be looking at several key areas where the best flagship smartphones need to perform, and ranking ten of the finest smartphones in the ultimate shootout. From the quality and clarity of the display and the audio, to the performance, battery, camera, and the overall user experience, we're conducting the ultimate smartphone comparison.

More than ever, 2016 has given us a lot of great Android devices to choose from. While the ten phones on our least are quite different in terms of features or appearance, they all have something in common – each one is pushing the boundaries of good user experience in their own way.

Here are the ten devices that, we think, were the most compelling and representative in 2016:

• Sony Xperia XZ
• OnePlus 3T
• Google Pixel XL
• Huawei Mate 9
• Xiaomi Mi 5
• Moto Z Force Droid
• LG V20
• HTC 10
• ZTE Axon 7
• Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge

What we tested

Each phone has a feature that makes it stand out from the rest, but now it's time to find out which is the handset that rules them all. Over the next days, we'll be bringing the ultimate smartphone comparison in a bid to crown the ultimate smartphone.

In Best of Android 2016, we'll be looking at these crucial aspects of user experience:

• Display
• Audio
• Camera
• Battery life
• Performance

We've broken down each of these aspects into certain criteria and over the coming days, we'll reveal how each phone performs. The testing was conducted on all of these phones over the past four weeks and although several members of our team were involved, the phones, testing conditions and equipment were the same across all tests.

How we plan to crown the winner

Throughout all the testing, we'll rank each smartphone in order (from 1^st to 10^th) and we'll be using this rankings to decide the overall winner. For each category, the smartphone coming first gains ten points, second place gets nine points and so on. At the end, we add up all the points and then calculate average scores for each phones across all test. The phone with the highest will be crowned the Phone of the Year 2016!

Over the following days, we'll publish the results of our tests, along with an in-depth explanation of the results and our take on the findings. We're starting with the Display category today, so check back soon. We'll be updating this page every day with each new installment of Best of Android so keep this page in your bookmarks!

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Credits

Tested by: Gary Sims, Andrew Grush, Nirave Gondhia, John Velasco, Joshua Vergara, Lanh Nguyen
Series Contributors: Rob Triggs, Edgar Cervantes, Kris Carlon
Series Editors: Nirave Gondhia, Bogdan Petrovan, Andrew Grush

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