The trend towards growing displays seems to be plateauing, but even in the current state of things, most phones are just too big for easy handling with one hand. This is why we always enjoy it when we come across the ocasional competent compact handset. In this section of our buyer’s guide, we’ll try to point out the ones we think deserve your attention.
Editors’ choice
Proper triple camera setup (wide, ultra wide, tele) with great image quality
Excellent display
Dependable battery life, quick top-ups
Plenty of performance for the money
No storage expansion
No 3.5mm jack
Superb display
Great battery life, two-way wireless charging
Nice camera output across the board
Has a 3.5mm jack
Awkward fingerprint reader placement
No tele camera
Superb display
Great (screen-on) battery life, wireless charging
Class-leading performance
Proper triple camera (wide, ultra wide, tele)
Best video capture on the market
Very expensive
May be compact, but it’s not light in weight
Lightning port, no storage expansion, pricey storage upgrades
Compact and light, and affordable
Very good AMOLED display, FullHD too at a small diagonal
Good camera output for the money
Has an ultra wide angle cam (not spectacular, but present still)
Battery life is decent, but nothing more
The chipset is good enough for basic daily tasks, but is geared towards efficiency and struggles under GPU-heavy loads
Niche choice
Great performance
Outstanding camera (albeit a single one)
Clean UI and guaranteed software updates
Dated design with plastic construction
No dust and water-resistance
No wireless charging
No wide or telephoto cameras
Google’s been making a compact version of all generations of Pixels, but with the Pixel 4, we don’t feel like it’s making a convincing case. Hence, our recommendation for getting a good enough Pixel experience at a sensible price goes to the Pixel 3a.
When the flagship 4 is missing a camera it should have, does it matter that the 3a is missing two? We reckon not, plus the Pixel 3a puts out identical images to the Pixel 3, and those are great images. The midrange Snapdragon 670 is… well, good enough.
Google was careful to make the 3a midrange nature apparent and made it out of plastic. It also denied it nice features like wireless charging and the ingress protection, but it is a Pixel at half the price, so all is well.
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