Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “The BEST Android phone for the first half of 2020 is…”.
Well, guys, it’s mid-july and you see the thing is smartphones, come out so often and so fast that it can often be really difficult to keep up with which smartphone you want to get, and so many smartphones do one or two things really really well, but just Do other things: okay and a lot of people want a phone that does one or two things that they specifically value. So, a couple years ago we started doing this thing called best of android, which was basically this end of the year thing where we ranked a bunch of phones head to head on a bunch of different categories like performance and audio quality and charging speed. And all of that stuff now the last time we did this, we got a lot of backlash and that was kind of understandable. It’S kind of on me, because i didn’t really articulate very well exactly what we were using to do all of this testing. A lot of people thought that we were just taking phones that we liked and throwing them at you guys as the overall winners.
But that’s not the case. We actually have labs. We have a ton of testing equipment, we’re using x-rite display testers and special software written by gary sims from gary explains subscribe to gary explains by the way. So we have all of these articles that explain in depth how we’re doing all of this objective testing and, if you’re interested in checking that out, make sure that you actually go read those articles before you leave comment and yeah.
There are some aspects that are kind of gut-checked, crowdsource metrics, that we’ve talked about in aaa like image, quality and color and all of this stuff. But honestly most of this is objective raw data, and we have all that data available for you on the website. If you want to check it out so because this is the best of android mid 2020 only phones that were released before the end of june were actually eligible to compete. So you’re not going to see phones like the sony, xperia 1 2.
That actually did really well in our testing that will be at the end of the year, all right, so the first category is audio and there are so many things that can make the audio of a phone better or worse. There’S the placement of the speakers there’s how loud they get, there’s the codex that it has for bluetooth, the fact that it has a headphone jack or not whether it has a quad deck, you’re, probably seeing what i’m getting at here. So after we did. All of this testing in the audio category, the winner and probably what you would expect – is the lg v60.
Just like a lot of lg phones passed, it’s got so many audio features that you’re probably going to love. It’S got the headphone jack with the quad dac. It’S got this 3d sound system. It’S got a bunch of bluetooth codecs.
It honestly is the audio king for mid 2020.. So, congratulations to lg for winning that category all right next up is display, and this is actually a pretty interesting one, because a lot of manufacturers use the same panel from samsung. But the thing that makes the difference is how those manufacturers chose to tune that panel. Our testing is based on a bunch of metrics like how bright the display can get, both in auto mode and non-auto mode, screen, density, color accuracy and a ton of other stuff that we’ve tested using this proprietary software and after testing all these phones. The winner was the oneplus 8 pro now. The oneplus 8 pro has a super high screen density, a super high refresh rate. It’S got a really low, color error in both the default mode and the more natural mode, and it had a white balance that wasn’t too warm or too cool. Overall, it just barely edged above a couple other devices, but the oneplus 8 pro was crowned the overall winner. All right next up is battery and there’s obviously a lot of facets to the battery in a smartphone there’s capacity, how fast it charges how long it lasts and a bunch of other stuff. Now to test the battery, we actually used a special proprietary app from gary sims himself to basically run a bunch of benchmarks and see how many times it could complete the benchmark before the phone died.
We also tested things like how fast it could charge in 15 minutes 30 minutes 60 minutes how long it took to get to full and a few other things. Obviously, we’ve got a full article in detail. If you want to read that, but the overall winner for battery in a smartphone in the first half of 2020, is the xiaomi me 10 pro now. This is pretty surprising, because the xiaomi mi 10 pro has a 4 500 million power battery. It’S not quite as big as phones like the lg v60, which support 5000 million power batteries, but it’s really good software optimization makes it so. The battery life of this phone is really really very good and it actually took off beyond a lot of other phones that we tested.
So congratulations to xiaomi for winning the category. Next up is performance and just like all the other tests, we run a variety of benchmarks to understand how fast these phones actually are. We run things like antutu and 3d mark and gfx bench. We also run gary sims own speed, test g, and then we compile all of this data to crown and overall winner and the phone that came out on the top was the oneplus 8 pro now, because a lot of these phones are using snapdragon 865 processors.
It was a very tight race, it barely beat phones like the oppo find x2 pro and the samsung galaxy s20 ultra, but in the end the oneplus 8 pro just skimmed ahead. All right. Let’S move on to the camera. Now i do want to be straight with you guys. We did use less objective testing data in the camera section, mostly because cameras are very subjective. We opened it up to the entirety of android authority to kind of debate the differences between these different camera systems and what images that they thought looked better now.
There are ways to objectively test cameras. Obviously, that’s how companies like dxomark exist and we used to do that as well. The problem is, we have multiple reviewers and it’s really difficult to objectively test cameras, if you don’t have the exact same controlled environment. So, instead, we thought that we’d open it up to the entire crew to vote on the best camera system, based on images that we’ve taken out of these things and the winner at the very end of the day, was the huawei p40 pro plus the p40 pro Plus has one of the biggest sensors on the smartphone market today, and it also has this really innovative: 10x optical telephoto camera. All of these features combined mixed with huawei’s, really good image. Quality honestly led it to barely barely nudge out as the camera king. For the first half of 2020., now i do have to mention that the oppo find x2 pro came right behind the huawei p40 pro plus, like the race, was extremely close. It’S got extremely good white balance with amazing sharpness, and it’s got a 5x optical telephoto sensor.
As well so overall, the upper phone x2 pro also has an incredible camera system, and you should give that a look but congrats to huawei for stealing the crown all right. Now we move on to value and value doesn’t necessarily have to be under a specific price point. It just has to be a very good phone that offers a ton for the price compared to other phones in that price range. So we even put things like the lg v60. Thank you in the running, but at the end of the day, the phone that came out on top was the poco f2 pro the poco f2 pro is just a super solid phone in almost all departments, and it’s really really cheap, so congrats to poco. For stealing that crown now, we do have to mention that the iphone se was also in the running there, and we debated this for a long time, because the iphone se is an incredible phone for 399 dollars.
But at the end of the day we decided. This is the best of android, so the poco is going to take the crown, but if you’re interested in ios definitely check out the iphone se, because at 3.99 that phone just slays, okay and finally we’re down to editor’s choice and effectively what we did here is We got a ton of people together from android authority and we decided to rank all of these phones in terms of multiple different facets like build quality software after sales support and all of these things and at the end of the day, the phone that took home. The editor’s choice award was the oneplus 8 pro. It’S got great software great, build quality, a great camera great after sales support, and it’s still cheaper than a lot of other phones even at 900. So congratulations to oneplus for taking that crown. The phones that came right behind them were the samsung galaxy s 20 plus and the lg v60.
So congratulations to those guys for getting really really close all right. So now we want to hear from you guys now this video is going live on saturday july 18th, but we are going to be opening up voting for the reader’s choice award on july 19th on sunday and that’s gon na go for about a week. So make sure you head over to androidauthority.com to vote for your favorite phone of the first half of 2020, we’ll put a link in the description down below, so you can head over there and cast your vote and i’ll catch. You guys in the next article .