The Best Android Phones For 2018: Reviews By Wirecutter

It has the best display on any phone, a glass and aluminum body that looks nicer than the Pixel’s, and a camera almost as good as the Pixel’s. The same great design as the Galaxy S9 with an even bigger screen and dual rear-facing cameras. Samsung’s latest phones do most things nearly as well as the Pixel 2, and they offer a few advantages, including a headphone jack, microSD card slot, wireless charging, and larger screens that don’t make the phones gigantic. 2x zoom shots. These phones ship with Android 8.0 Oreo, which offers most of the same features as the Pixel 2, but Samsung’s software is slower and more cluttered, and updates will take longer. The Pixel 2 takes better pictures overall, but the Galaxy S9 beats everything that isn’t a Pixel. 30 to your monthly bill. 100 more, with correspondingly higher monthly payments. If you prefer, you can just buy the phones outright from Samsung and they’ll work on any network.

18.5:9 screen aspect ratios and slim bezels that fit more screen area into a typical phone footprint. The Pixel 2 has a smaller 5-inch 16:9 display in a body that’s the same size as the Galaxy S9. These curved OLED screens are the brightest and sharpest we’ve ever tested. DisplayMate agrees, pointing out these screens are 20 percent brighter than the Galaxy S8 for improved outdoor readability. 12-megapixel main camera sensor featuring an adjustable aperture—f/1.5 and f/2.4. This means the camera lens can physically adjust to let in more or less light, just like a standalone camera. The Galaxy S9 can take impressively bright low-light shots and crisp outdoor images, giving it more range than other phone cameras. “The S9 manages to pull a good photo out of a less-than-ideal situation better than any Galaxy device before it,” according to Android Authority. However, Samsung’s HDR processing still doesn’t cope with dark and light areas in the same photo as well as the Pixel 2, and shutter speeds tend to be too long.

That leads to blurriness when your subject is moving, even with the help of above-average optical stabilization. ’t change the equation—the Pixel 2 takes better pictures overall, but the GS9 bests everything that isn’t a Pixel. The metal and glass body of the Galaxy S9 is solid and curves in the right places to fit comfortably in your hand. The phone looks beautiful, but it picks up fingerprints as soon as you handle it. It’s also slippery and fragile with all that glass. We do like Samsung’s pressure-sensitive home button—it’s like Apple’s 3D touch but just on the bottom part of the screen. You can hard-press this spot to trigger the home button at all times, even if the navigation buttons are hidden by full-screen content or the phone is asleep. The Galaxy S9 is IP68-rated for dust and water-resistance, which means it’ll keep working even after being fully submerged in 1.5 meters (about 5 feet) of water for half an hour.

The Pixel 2 is only certified to dive up to 1 meter deep for 30 minutes. Snapdragon 845 chip, offering less lag and better battery life than the Galaxy S8. The Galaxy S9 isn’t slow, but Samsung’s software makes it less smooth and consistent than the Pixel 2 when multitasking or installing apps. 3,500 mAh battery (the larger display on the Plus consumes more power). Depending on how you’re using it, the Pixel 2 will give you several more hours of standby or an extra hour or so of usage per charge than the Galaxy S9. Samsung ships the Galaxy S9 with Android 8.0 Oreo (the most recent version is 8.1, but the differences are minimal) with its Samsung Experience UI layer on top. Samsung’s version of Android has improved over the years to the point that it gets most things right. However, there are still a lot of unnecessary features hiding in the software, and Samsung loads phones up with unnecessary and duplicate apps. Samsung’s home screen is also clunky compared to what you get on the Pixel 2, and the Bixby voice assistant is given a prominent position. Android Police calls Bixby “nearly useless;” you’re better off disabling it and sticking to Google Assistant. The physical Bixby button on the phone can be disabled but not remapped, which is annoying. Samsung did put the fingerprint sensor in a better location than it did on the Galaxy S8 (below the camera instead of next to it). It’s still not as fast or accurate as the one on the Pixel 2, though. Samsung aims for monthly security updates like the Pixel gets, but it rarely manages that.

Google are going to innovate Android. The Android system has for a long time been going stale as the focus has been put on the hardware and not the software, but Pixel has made the effort to think about the software, as well as their hardware. A rarity in the Android smartphone market. Harsh competition - as marketing efforts seem more prominent in the angle of Samsung and Apple. But, Google practically run the web, so there are Google Pixel images plastered all around the internet. Still, many people will see a Google Pixel picture and straight away think of the iPhone. This could take some time. Google needs to work on the design for Pixel so that it stands out as purely unique in the eyes of the consumer. Relying on Android - even though the Pixel has got the full support of the Google company they are still innovating technology that can easily be copied by the rest of Android in no more than a few months.