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00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So 2017 was just packed with really good smartphone
00:08choices to choose from. Basically every manufacturer out there delivered some really good stuff
00:12this year and it was really hard to make videos on them because every time I would find a
00:16phone and make a video on it, a month later some other company would come out with another
00:20phone that was just as good. It was really hard for me to just be like, hey this one's
00:24good, that one's good, no wait, that one's good. So these are the favorite ones. These
00:28are the ones that over the course of the year were like my top picks. Any phone that
00:32is in this pile was a phone that I just really enjoyed using and just kind of surprised me
00:36as to how good it was. So I'm just kind of going to go through them and eventually I'll
00:42go down to my very favorite phone of 2017. So I'm going to start off with the Note 8.
00:47This phone was, this thing launched at almost $1,000 and when I first learned about its
00:52price tag it was super disappointing because it was so much more expensive than I felt
00:56like it should be. The S8 and the S8 Plus were really similar in experience but this
01:00thing was just so much more than those two. Now it's down to like $750-$800 which is way
01:05more reasonable. It still isn't my favorite phone right now because if you buy it right
01:09now, if I bought this right now, I'd still be paying for things that I don't use and
01:13things that I don't particularly like. So the pen, I would never use it. The telephoto
01:16lens on the back, it's just not stuff that I would ever use. And same with the software,
01:20I'm not a fan of the whole Samsung software. So solid phone, just not my favorite phone.
01:25Okay, moving along, we have the LG V30 and this is a phone that functionally, I enjoyed
01:29more than any of the Samsung phones. It's the same kind of idea, like thin-bezeled but
01:33just ergonomically, I love the way this phone feels and I love the use of the secondary
01:38lens. So this is a wide-angle lens and I just much prefer this type of focal length. I just
01:42find it more useful for the type of photos that I take. But that being said, I still
01:45don't love the software. Now I actually ran mine with the Google launcher and I eventually
01:48tried the Nova launcher but I could never make mine feel stock enough. It always just
01:52had this kind of LG vibe to it. I mean, some people love that stuff but it's just not my
01:57thing. So, not my favorite phone of the year. Next up is the Razer Phone and this is a phone
02:02that really impressed me at launch. It had a lot of unique features that just really
02:06stood out. 120Hz screen, really good speakers, probably the best speakers in the industry.
02:11But the price tag, $700, I mean it's fair for what you're getting, it's not like super
02:15overpriced or anything. But it just felt like it wasn't a compelling enough purchase for
02:19me. A lot of the features in here were geared towards media consumption and gaming, which
02:22were cool, but it didn't have a headphone jack, which was just really backwards to me.
02:26Like on a device like this, where you constantly have this thing plugged up because you're
02:29just draining batteries really quickly, it would be nice to be able to have this thing
02:32able to be charged while having headphones connected to it, which was impossible. So,
02:38yeah. Good device, just not my favorite. I just think a lot of the headlining features
02:41are really, really nice and good for a lot of people, just not ideal for me. Okay, next
02:47up, let's go with the Pixel 2. Pixel 2 XL. This is a phone that I really liked, and when
02:54this thing launched, so many people complained about the screen, but I never had any real
02:57issues with it. I mean, it's not as awesome as a Note 8 screen, but I was always happy
03:01with the screen. I never had burn-in, didn't have really bad blue shift or anything. But
03:05the price tag was steep. $850 is a lot of money for a Pixel device. It does have the
03:10best camera in the Android game right now. Cameras aren't that important to me. They're
03:15important, it's just not the most important feature. I felt like I was paying for features
03:18that I didn't need, like the super smart assistant, the squeeze feature, like it's just stuff
03:23that's cool, but not stuff that I would use every day. So, again, really good phone, not
03:29my favorite. Okay, next up, essential phone. This thing, man, I had huge hopes for this
03:34thing. I really like this phone. This thing, oh, this one's on. I thought I'd turn them
03:38all off. This phone launched at $700, which was stupidly overpriced. I felt like if this
03:44thing had launched at the $500 price point that it is now, this thing would have sold
03:48so well. And the other thing that hurt this thing a lot was the camera. When this thing
03:51launched, it had like a really mediocre camera. The hardware's okay, but I had an engineering
03:55sample and my camera was like better than the retail units, and it just took a long
03:59time for those engineering software bits to kind of trickle down to the retail units.
04:04Now the camera's actually not bad, but a lot of people don't really love this phone because
04:09of the original bad reviews. The one thing that kind of holds me back from this thing
04:12is the screen. It's not an OLED panel, so when you look at it and you look at other
04:16Android devices that do have an OLED panel, it just looks not as nice. The phone is still
04:21really solid. I love the ceramic back. I love that bezel-less design. It's just not my favorite
04:25phone of the year. Okay, last up before my favorite is the iPhone X. Now this was by
04:31far the most exciting iPhone that I had seen launched in a long time. Before this one was
04:35probably like the iPhone 4. That one was pretty hype. This one was the most hype since then.
04:41And I mean, I really like this phone, but the price tag. Holy smokes. This thing...
04:47Okay, this thing's price tag doesn't just affect the people that are going to buy the iPhone X.
04:53This thing's price tag is going to affect the entire industry. Next year, because of this
04:57thing being a thousand dollar phone, all the flagships are going to be like, hey, Apple did
05:01a thousand dollar phone. We can do a thousand dollar phone. So I wouldn't be surprised if like
05:04most of the flagships coming out next year are going to be close to a thousand dollars. This
05:08thing just put a green light out there to make it cool and acceptable for a thousand dollar price
05:13tags on phones. And that kills me. The phone is great. It's just way, way, way too expensive.
05:19Okay, this leads me to my favorite. OnePlus 5T. Now when the OnePlus 5 launched, I liked the
05:25phone. It was good. This thing is even better. It's a more premium looking phone than the original
05:29OnePlus 5 just because of the bigger screen. It's got thinner bezels. It just looks like an eight
05:33or nine hundred dollar phone, but it costs five hundred bucks. I love face unlock on this thing.
05:38I thought it would be gimmicky, but it's so fast and it's super reliable. It's obviously not as
05:42secure as the iPhone X's face ID. That has just so much more tech involved with the face ID process,
05:48but this is fast and it's super, super convenient. I love that. The other thing I love about it is
05:52Dash Charge. I know a lot of phones have the whole wireless charging thing now, even the iPhones this
05:57year, and wireless charging is cool, but Dash Charge for me is just so much more useful. See,
06:01I fall asleep often with Netflix running and I wake up in the morning with like 5, 10% battery
06:06or sometimes dead. Plug it in, 30 minutes and it fills up and that's the thing. The whole marketing
06:11thing that OnePlus says with like, you know, you get a full day of battery on a 30-minute charge,
06:15it's true. You plug it in, literally from 0%, you're going to hit like 60% in half an hour.
06:20It's awesome and when I compare it to the other phones that I have here, it just charges so much
06:25faster. The camera is pretty good. It's obviously not going to outshoot the Pixel 2 XL or the Note
06:308 or the iPhone X, but for $500, I'm really happy with this camera. For low-light scenes,
06:35this camera is noticeably better than the original OnePlus 5, like this shot here where there's some
06:40really bright lights that pop out in the dark. It's just so much cleaner on the 5T compared to
06:45the 5 and I think that's one of the biggest differences between them, but photos in general
06:49just look good on this phone. Obviously not the best, but honestly for $500, I'm super happy with
06:54it. Now, I consider this to be the phone that I would recommend to just basically anyone. If I
06:58had to blindly choose a phone for people that I didn't know, like my relatives or something like
07:03that, I would get this phone for them because it's just, there's so much about this phone that I
07:07love. Things like the headphone jack, like so many people want that thing and last year, a lot of
07:12companies were like, hey, we're keeping the headphone jack, look how cool we are and this
07:16year they drop it and they don't even mention it. They're keeping it. I wouldn't be surprised if the
07:20ones next year have it as well. It's just, they recognize the value of this thing. They recognize
07:23how many people want this thing and I love that about this company. Okay, this is my favorite
07:28phone of 2017. Now, if you're wondering why these phones are red, especially because I don't like
07:32the color red, these are all skinned by dbrand. I got skins from them. The reason why I did it was
07:37because I wanted the thumbnail to look like a heart, like the whole like 808 and Heartbreak
07:41album from Kanye. It's like a really cool thing. I don't know if it worked though. If you guys
07:46thought it looked like a heart, let me know. Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video. Thumbs if you
07:49liked it, subs if you loved it. See you guys next time.