Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Top 5 Smartphones of 2013!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here – and these are my top five best smartphones of 2013.. Now this is a different way of doing this list. This is actually an unordered list, it’s not in order, and it just didn’t really feel right for me to pick a number one best smartphone of the year, but that being said, uh you can feel free to pick your favorite and leave it in the comment section Below whether you do that, before or after watching this video uh, but i’m going to go ahead and look back at it, take a bit of a retrospective look at five phones that really changed 2013. That were really important to 2013 and that’s why they made this list. So first for me, is moto x and moto x, changed 2013 because of its form factor and its quick updates. So this is a phone that didn’t really originally appear to have flagship specs when it first came out. Obviously – and i did my first review and hands-on of it talking about that whole deal and it’s not a 1080p display and it’s not the highest end processor, but it feels amazing in the hand – and it is a great first time, android phone for anyone considering switching To android from any other operating system – and i say quick updates because it was literally almost before some other nexuses to get kitkat – it beat the nexus 4.
I believe to get the latest version of android 4.4. So if you care about that latest pure android experience or even if you’re, an android enthusiast like a real hardcore, android person, you’re still gon na find a lot to like in the moto x. So that was a really interesting phone of the year. Uh turned a lot of heads next, for me, is the nokia lumia 1020. Now it may seem weird to have another 720p phone on this list and even more weird, to have a windows phone on this list, but this phone changed the way we look at uh cameras in smartphones like for good permanently. If you saw the review of it, i’ll have all the reviews and all the links to all these phones that i talk about right down below right below that like button.
But the 1020 had a 41 megapixel camera, and i talked about that in great depth. In my full review of that phone and that that’s changed a lot, we do. We don’t see 41 megapixel cameras at all, really in the wild these days, whether it’s in a dslr or a smartphone. So the fact that they were able to cram that many pixels and that quality of glass and sensor and all those optics into a phone uh really changed the way we think of high-end smartphone cameras.
Next up is the htc one which made the list for two reasons: its build quality and its speakers. This device changed what we thought of smartphones for good in 2013 because of its build quality. You never really looked at the galaxy s4. The same way after the htc one came out that phone was made of solid aluminum.
It was a unibody precision, milled and drilled finish. It was an overall amazing phone to hold in the hand had that cold metal feel when you wake up in the morning. It was a little bit weightier a little bit, uh more compact than the galaxy s4, but overall, an amazingly well-built phone, and then it had those massive front-facing boom, sound speakers uh and again that also changes the way you think about audio in any other smartphone. When you consider someone who wants the best sounding speakers in a phone, that’s immediately the number one recommendation: have you looked at the htc one? It has boom sound speakers.
It sounds ridiculously good compared to anything. So those are the two reasons. The one made the list.
Next up for me on my list is the galaxy note 3 from samsung, and i think this is the first real phone that had pretty much no compromises all across the board. This is, this is a true high-end spec device in every single department, where the biggest actual trade-off is software, whether or not you like the touchwiz skin on top of android, but it had. You know three gigabytes of ram: had a 13 megapixel camera with incredible photos and 4k video uh.
The only weird thing about it was the whole black versus white galaxy. Note: 3 thing: it’s not as weird as it sounds. It was just. It was made of different materials. The black galaxy note 3. I think actually had a much nicer build quality than the white galaxy note.
3, because the white one would have stained if it was made of the material that the black one was made of. But overall i’m a fan of that phone and it was actually a little bit more compact and had a little bit larger battery and better battery life than the galaxy note 2. So it was really an improvement in every area. One of my favorite phones of the year and still one out of six and keep around and last on. My list is number five, which is the nexus 5. uh, and this is a lot of you’ve been asking. What is my daily driver? What phone do you seem to carry around the most often uh? This is it. This is essentially the closest thing i’ve had to my daily driver for the past month, or so.
I’Ve carried the stormtrooper 32 gig white nexus 5., and it’s on my list for not just kitkat, because it is the latest version of android as quickly as possible in a nexus, but for the price it has one of the best price to spec ratios in any Smartphone to date it had the snapdragon 800 2 gigabytes of ram, a 5 inch 1080p display and the latest version of android. This is a top-notch phone that google is selling for 350, starting in the google play store. So if you’re able to get your hands on it, that’s the tough part uh if you’re able to get your hands on the nexus 5. It is an amazing deal, as well as a great smartphone experience.
So that is why the nexus 5 made the list, but believe it or not, that’s five already. That is my five best phones for 2013.. Now there are plenty more smartphones, of course, that i didn’t mention and wasn’t able to when talking about the best of you can’t not talk about the samsung galaxy s4, when talking about 2013., that phone was the best selling smartphone and really further established samsung’s dominance in Android, so the galaxy s4 was their flagship for the year and was a very good seller. There’S also the nokia lumia 1520, which i reviewed pretty recently actually uh, one of my favorites and the highest, and i think, best built and best internally windows phone uh to come out this year.
There’S a blackberry, z30 sort of the blackberry flagship for the year. Maybe not one of the best phones of the year, but certainly their best uh and many many more. The moto g is also something you should you should talk about when you talk about 2013, because that price to performance ratio under 200 to get the kind of specs and performance in a phone like the moto g, very impressive stuff. Now, before i close out, i want to refer you guys to another top five video from tld today.
That’S actually going up today as well i’ll, have a link right below that like button to his best five phones of the year. So you get a different sort of perspective, a different look at it from another angle, we’re both tech people, but we both have different tastes. So his list is different from mine, so check that out right below um and i will be having more sort of fun. Retrospective looks back at this past year in tech coming up very soon, so be sure to subscribe.
If you haven’t already those are coming up very soon. That’S all i have to say what is your number one? What’S your favorite phone of the past 365 days, thanks for watching and i’ll talk to you guys in the next article peace you .