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00:00All right, welcome to the Smartphone Awards 2021.
00:18So as you can see by the table in front of me, we've got plenty of smartphones that have
00:21all come out in the past 365 days or so, or at least the calendar year, in all shapes
00:27and sizes.
00:28And well, it's a bit of a tradition around here to reward some of the best ones in a
00:32bunch of different categories for a bunch of different reasons to sort of incentivize
00:36and show the best of the stuff that came out during this year.
00:39So we've got nine categories and each one of these categories, we're going to have an
00:43overall winner and that winner will get a shiny, super cool MKBHD edition trophy, which
00:49is sweet.
00:50But then also we'll probably have a runner up and maybe even some honorable mentions
00:53depending on how close the category is.
00:55And honestly, some of these are toss-ups, but some of these are pretty firm winners
01:00for sure.
01:01But before we get into all of that, I do want to take a moment of silence and remembrance
01:06of LG.
01:07See, we always want more competition in the smartphone space, more variety, more options.
01:12And so it's always a bummer to end up with less than before.
01:15So let's take a quick moment to remember when life was good.
01:20All right, let's give out some trophies.
01:24So our first up category is best big phone.
01:29Now we already know most phones are pretty big.
01:31That's not a surprise, but I do want to reward the ones that make the best use of a lot
01:36of space.
01:37So if you're going to go out of your way to get a bigger than normal phone, you really
01:39want a phone that takes advantage of having that extra space.
01:42Big screen, big battery, big specs, and just an overall good software experience to use
01:48it all.
01:49So in 2021, we got a bunch of different versions of this, but the best big phone for this
01:54year was Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 3.
02:00And I'm really glad we have a folding phone that's able to win awards like this.
02:03So obviously you've got the big 7.4 inch display on the inside and you close it up and you
02:08still get a very usable display on the outside.
02:10I've talked at length about the idea of folding phones and the benefit it can possibly afford
02:16you.
02:17And clearly they're getting better every year.
02:18The technology is not perfect yet, but Fold 3 was kind of the hard work king of all the
02:23folding phones that came out.
02:24If you made me pick a folding phone to use right now full time, it would without a question
02:29be this one.
02:30And it gives you the best big phone experience of any phone out here immediately as you unfold
02:35it.
02:36So huge shout out to the Fold 3 for being a real option for a lot of people.
02:40Now I'm pretty firm on that being the winner, but I do have some honorable mentions.
02:44I'm going to give a shout out to a non-folding phone, Galaxy S21 Ultra, which also came out
02:49right at the beginning of this year as being pretty much the standard big phone experience.
02:56Big screen, big battery, big cameras, big specs, and great software.
03:01Everything about this phone hit all its marks.
03:03And I also want to give a shout out to the gamer phone, which has continued to either
03:07top this category or be right up near the top.
03:10This is the ROG Phone 5, one of the special editions with this like matte white back.
03:14But they've done the same thing they always do, huge battery, but it's also got a screen
03:18on the back, it's got triple cameras, it's a whole thing.
03:21So for the gamers who like the front facing speakers and the huge high refresh rate screen,
03:26this is definitely still top of the list for people who are into that.
03:31So then next up, best small phone.
03:34Now this is the opposite of what we just went into.
03:37Clearly phones been getting bigger and bigger, and it's more and more rare to have a really
03:42good even flagship level phone that's small, like genuinely small.
03:47And so I want to reward this.
03:49This is the thing that I sort of created a bunch of categories for in the first place.
03:53It's like this phone might not get that many awards without this category, but I do want
03:57to highlight it.
03:58And so I actually think this is my closest race yet.
04:03It could have gone either way between number one or number two, but I'm going to give my
04:07best small phone award, my best use of not much space to the iPhone 13 mini.
04:15So we already know what this is about.
04:16It's basically got all the same specs as a larger iPhone 13, but crunched down into
04:21a smaller body.
04:22iPhone 13 is a flagship.
04:24This one has the same cameras.
04:26It's got the same performance.
04:27It's got basically the same screen, just smaller, and it's all crunched down into a mini phone.
04:33And it fixed what we were really complaining about with the last iPhone 12 mini, which
04:38actually won this award last year, which was a kind of weak battery life by just making
04:43the phone a little bit thicker and giving it a physically larger battery.
04:46All the things we like about a mini flagship phone are happening in the iPhone 13 mini,
04:52but it was close and I'm telling you it's close because it honestly could have gone
04:56either way and I would have been totally fine with it, but I'm giving the runner up for
04:59best small phone this year to Samsung's Z Flip 3.
05:05This is a small phone when it's folded, but when you unfold it, you end up with sort of
05:11a normal-sized phone.
05:14Now it's debatable how much utility this has.
05:17I mean, you kind of use it the same way as a normal candy bar-sized phone, but the fact
05:21that you're able to fit all of that normal-sized phone down into half the size when it's folded
05:26and you get the satisfaction of closing it, and you also get the ability to fit it into
05:30smaller pockets, smaller bags, and into smaller spaces, makes this one a really fun option.
05:36I like this phone a lot.
05:38Like I said, I wouldn't choose it personally if I had to pick one of the folding phones,
05:42but that's because I'm not a small phone person.
05:44So this one is really compelling to see, and they dropped the price all the way down to
05:48$999 at launch, which made waves.
05:50So another real folding phone option.
05:53I'm also going to give two honorable mentions in this category for smaller phones.
05:57One to the Oppo Find N, which was released literally right under the buzzer.
06:03It just got in on time, but this is a smaller version of basically the Z Fold 3, and I really
06:09liked it.
06:10I talked about it a lot in the video about how it might actually be a preferred form
06:14factor.
06:15And then the other is actually the Asus Zenfone 8 over here.
06:19It's a pretty solid phone.
06:20I mean, it got really deep in the blind smartphone camera test like it does every year, but also
06:25it's just a nice compact size.
06:27I like the design, and it fits in pockets like some of these other bigger phones don't.
06:31If you're looking for a smaller phone, definitely don't count out the Zenfone 8.
06:36So okay, next up, best camera.
06:39Who's going to get the camera award in the smartphones this year?
06:43I feel like I kind of say this every year, but I've mentioned it recently on Twitter,
06:46and I'll say it again.
06:48It's kind of hard to go wrong, really, with almost any of the options on this table, especially
06:53if you're spending premium smartphone money.
06:56You're probably getting a pretty good camera, and the differences come down to subjectivity.
06:59But for me, there really still is a clear winner for the best overall smartphone camera
07:05system because that's a whole package that includes not just the apps that use the camera,
07:09but photo quality, low-light videos, low-light photos, overall video quality, different codecs
07:15and formats available, and just what you would use to shoot videos with if you had the option.
07:22This one's a no-brainer for me.
07:23It's the iPhone 13 Pro.
07:26So the iPhone 13 Pro is actually a pretty substantial jump up in the camera department
07:31from the last iPhone, which is also really good.
07:34So it takes much better photos.
07:35You might remember the really huge sensor from the 12 Pro Max last year.
07:39That's now the primary sensor in these phones with the improved stabilization.
07:43And it also has these new picture profiles, which are super useful for changing the look
07:48of the photos and baking that in, of course, but then also ProRes video.
07:53I shot an entire video on this channel during this year on an iPhone 13 Pro with 4K ProRes
07:59video.
08:00Super useful to have that available to you.
08:01So just as far as overall smartphone camera package, I got to go iPhone 13 Pro.
08:08But I do want to give my runner-up to a phone that still, to this day, gets carried by,
08:13I think, more people in the tech world than any other that I know because of its camera.
08:18And I still really like the photos it takes and looks.
08:22And that is the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.
08:25The Pixel 6 Pro here also has that telephoto camera.
08:28Some people like it a lot, some people not so much.
08:31But just as far as the look of the photos, the contrasty, HDR-y, computational look that
08:38you get out of a Pixel, still some of my favorite photos I've ever taken on a smartphone
08:43come from these cameras.
08:44So it's still a Google phone, still making great photos, shout out to the Pixel 6.
08:48I also want to give two little honorable mention shout outs.
08:51One to the Vivo X70 Pro+.
08:54I didn't get to make a video on the phone this year, but I'm going to give a link in
08:57the description to a really good one about it.
08:59Extremely interesting camera setup and also just the overall phone is well built.
09:04But definitely worth checking out that camera.
09:06And also to our blind smartphone camera test winner, the Pixel 5a, which beat the Pixel
09:146 in the first round and then just kept crushing right through and eventually won in the finals.
09:20So I always do this, it's on the table, there it is, Pixel 5a, shout out to the blind smartphone
09:25camera test winner.
09:26So next category, best battery.
09:29Best overall battery experience.
09:31This is for your power users.
09:33This is for people who need the phone to last, not just all day, but as long as possible.
09:38Maybe you want to go a whole weekend on one charge.
09:40Maybe you know you're not going to be near an outlet for an extended 20 plus hour international
09:45flight, all this stuff.
09:46You need the best overall battery.
09:49There's a couple options here that are going to do really well.
09:51And I like to factor in not just overall battery size, but now increasingly in this award,
09:57charging speed, charging convenience, wireless charging, all that sort of stuff for just
10:02the best overall battery experience.
10:05Now that being said, our winner this year is the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
10:13This is the battery experience king.
10:15So again, something Apple did with their iPhones this year is bump up the overall size and
10:21weight of their phones to include a physically larger battery.
10:24Now on paper, it's not the biggest sell actually.
10:27I think it's about a 4,400 milliamp hour battery or something like that.
10:30But we know what Apple's magic has been doing for the past couple of years with their
10:34silicon and just optimization.
10:36And these phones just last forever.
10:38So this is easily a two day phone for a lot of people.
10:42And if you turn off promotion and you see that 60 Hertz all the time, I can feel confident
10:47going a whole weekend, maybe even three days on one charge on this phone.
10:51So that's super cool to see.
10:52It also has decently fast charging and also supports wireless charging.
10:56But the runner up has yet again, at least tied for the largest battery of any phone
11:03that I tested that came out this year.
11:06That's the ROG Phone 5, 6,000 milliamp hour battery, which is incredible to see.
11:11It also has quite fast charging, but it does not have wireless charging.
11:15So that's something to keep in mind.
11:16But again, the whole gaming phone thing, like they keep saying these phones are supposed
11:20to be really great just for gaming.
11:23And they are.
11:24A lot of the things that are good for gaming are great for the rest of the media experience.
11:29Front facing speakers, big higher fresh rate screens, huge batteries, who doesn't want
11:33that stuff?
11:34So shout out to the gaming phone.
11:35So next up we have our design award.
11:40This used to be, this used to be the build quality award and then it was like the flashiest
11:43coolest design.
11:44But now I'm just, it's just the design award.
11:46This is the best overall design.
11:48And this award is easily the most wide open, totally subjective.
11:53It's just what I like and how I feel about a phone's design and what I think is my favorite
11:57phone design of the year.
11:59And now there's a couple of criteria that go into that.
12:01Just for me, I've said this before, but I couldn't give this to a phone that has like
12:05a super fingerprinty glossy back.
12:07But there's a lot of things about holding a phone and just the way the back feels,
12:11even if you're not looking at it, the way the camera bump protrudes or doesn't protrude,
12:15things like that.
12:16A lot to consider with a good design, but it's got to look good at the end of the day.
12:20So my award winner for design for 2021, well, that would be the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
12:27right here.
12:28Grabbing another award.
12:29This phone was not only one of the best big phones, but one of the best looking phones.
12:33You can tell it's matte black, so it's got a soft spot in my heart right off the bat.
12:38But I kept talking over and over again during the year about how I really appreciated Samsung
12:42embracing the camera bump, doing something unique with it and actually sort of making
12:47it look really good, honestly.
12:50It also has a great display that didn't curve over the edges nearly as much as previous
12:54generations, which was nice.
12:55Also the display goes pretty much corner to corner.
12:58Center hole punch was fine with me.
12:59Just didn't really make any mistakes as far as design and holding it in the hand.
13:05There's also a subtle thing that happens with a lot of the phones on this desk where if
13:09the camera bump is just the right size, it kind of acts as a spot to hold with your finger.
13:15Depends on how big your hand is, of course, it's just a personal thing.
13:18But I really like that about this and several other phones here.
13:21Nevertheless, Galaxy S21 Ultra gets my design award for 2021.
13:25But I do have a couple of runner ups because I want to give some shout outs to again, things
13:28that I think went really well.
13:30One Oppo Find X3 Pro.
13:33Just the simple camera bump on the back here, which was sort of sloped up.
13:38You can tell it wasn't too jarring.
13:40It just basically sort of curved its way onto the camera plateau on the back.
13:45Really like that.
13:46I also like the blue matte finish.
13:48Not a whole ton of dramatic colors on this desk, you might've noticed, so I'm a fan
13:52of when they do mix it up.
13:54Really like the Find X3 Pro here.
13:56Also, Oppo again with the Reno6.
13:59This one I just like the way it felt.
14:02Just the soft satin, soft touch back.
14:05Not a lot of soft touch back phones out here.
14:07And then let's just give a crazy design, thanks for taking a risk award to the Legion phone.
14:13There's not a lot of phones like this out there.
14:15I still remember shooting the thumbnail for this phone.
14:18There's two USB-C ports.
14:19You can charge it in double wattage if you want, or super fast.
14:24But it's a phone designed to be held mostly in landscape.
14:28There's a battery on each side, camera module in the middle, fans, front facing speakers.
14:34This was a crazy phone, but in a world where you kind of only have a couple of shapes, I'm
14:41glad we're still getting weird, crazy stuff like that.
14:44So I got to at least shout that out.
14:45So the next award is going to be called the Value Award.
14:49Now this is a different name from last year.
14:52This used to be called the Best Budget Phone Award.
14:55And basically I think the word budget means something different, slightly different for
14:59everyone.
15:00Basically depends on how much you want to spend.
15:01But I'm calling this Best Budget because this is just overall best bang for the buck.
15:06That's the definition.
15:07It can be any price.
15:08It just has to have immense value.
15:11And so now the Value Award actually goes to a phone that made its sibling look pretty
15:16bad in value, which is kind of funny.
15:18But it's the Pixel 6, the standard Google Pixel 6.
15:23So you can see why this isn't the budget phone of the year.
15:25It wasn't that cheap.
15:26It was $599.
15:28But the value you got from this phone at $599 with the Tensor chip, which performed really
15:33well, with this high refresh rate OLED display, with these really great cameras which match
15:38the Pixel 6 Pro, decent battery life, but also just overall nice charging and nice
15:43wireless charging.
15:44This phone, with its great software, made the Pixel 6 Pro look like a bad deal.
15:51It was that good.
15:52And so I highly recommend this if you're looking in the Pixel line.
15:55And this gets my Value Award.
15:56This is like a really easy phone to recommend because of the price it launched at.
16:00Now again, this is a category that's changed over the years and obviously has a lot of
16:04competition.
16:06Phones like the Poco F3, which have incredible value.
16:08It's much more along the lines of a budget phone and deserves to be highlighted just
16:12for that.
16:13There's also the Samsung A52s of the world.
16:15There's the Realme GTs of the world.
16:17Just a lot of good overall phones for less money.
16:20I keep saying this.
16:22Good phones might not be getting cheap, but cheap phones, cheap phones are getting good.
16:27All right.
16:28So the next category, the award you don't want to have to give, but hey, I'm giving it anyway.
16:35It's the bust of the year.
16:38Basically the worst phone to come out this year.
16:40Maybe not the worst overall phone actually, but just the phone that shouldn't have happened
16:45the way it did.
16:46I've given all kinds of different phones this award, whether they launched at the wrong
16:50price or had awful marketing or were just bad phones in general, bad builds, whatever.
16:56Generally, like I said, it's kind of hard to go wrong with a lot of the stuff on this
16:59desk.
17:00Whether you're looking at camera quality or battery or value, this is part of the thing
17:04about living in the world of smartphones, is there's so many good ones to pick from.
17:08But I have to give a bust of the year.
17:11And because I give a bust of the year, I have to give it to the, what is it, $1,500 Surface
17:19Duo 2.
17:20It's the Microsoft Surface Duo 2.
17:21So I remember when the first one of these phones came out and it obviously had one of
17:25the sweetest hinges, which is a really nice piece of hardware, one of the sweetest back
17:30folding hinges of any phone we've ever seen.
17:33And so there's a little bit of hope that it might be amazing.
17:35And maybe the second one will be amazing because they didn't have cameras and I don't know,
17:39there's just a bunch of bugs with the software, but we'll give it some time.
17:42They launched the second one.
17:43It's more expensive than the first one and it's worse.
17:47It's just not as good.
17:49And so I'm kind of sad that it's not doing better.
17:51Like I want to see a phone like this, which is dual screen instead of a single folding
17:56screen work.
17:57I think it's a cool idea.
17:59But as you could tell by the review video, there's still just too much unfinished about
18:04it.
18:05The software is still not great.
18:06The camera is just not very good.
18:08I mean, to have those big cameras on the back, to sacrifice the full 360 fold and still
18:12not be good cameras, there's just no way to recommend that phone to most people.
18:18Lots of other things on this desk, I could just hand any of these phones to most people.
18:22I would just never give a Duo 2 to anyone I really liked.
18:26Now next up, this is one of my favorite awards to give.
18:29The most improved award.
18:33And often what we'll see is companies learning from their mistakes and actually listening
18:38and doing a much better version of something than the year before.
18:41It's actually happened a couple of times where a bust of the year turns into a most improved
18:45award the next year, which is pretty cool to see.
18:49But this year's most improved award just goes to a phone that did everything better than
18:53last year.
18:55Last year's phone, not easy to recommend.
18:57This year's phone kind of doesn't have any flaws.
18:59They did a great job.
19:01So the most improved award is going to go to Samsung's Galaxy S21 Ultra as a huge improvement
19:07over the Galaxy S20 Ultra.
19:09We all understood what Samsung was trying to do with the Ultra thing.
19:13And when the S20 came out and the S20 Ultra was the top of that line, we saw the big
19:18numbers and we saw the 100x on the camera and we knew what they were getting at, but
19:22there were some weird autofocus issues with the camera, never really resolved themselves
19:26and they ended up having to add hardware in future phones for that laser autofocus.
19:31But generally, hard to recommend the S20 Ultra, S21 Ultra comes along and just nails it.
19:38Just everything again, they have a great screen, great battery, great cameras that actually
19:42focus and they still maintain a lot of those super big numbers and the Ultra thing lives
19:47on.
19:48So that's a huge improvement over last year.
19:51And you know, you generally don't see like massive year over year jumps, big gaps between
19:58phones, but I do have some honorable mentions as well for most improved.
20:01One is going to go to Samsung's Z Flip 3.
20:05Not only did it become a much better phone with this larger display and better usability
20:09on the outside, like this is one of the things that made the phone much easier to recommend,
20:14but the price also went down.
20:16That's huge.
20:17That's incredible that you don't usually see a phone make it a big leap in usability
20:22and leap down in price.
20:24So I want to shout out the Flip 3 and I hope other phones do that again, to be honest.
20:29I also will shout out iPhone 13 Pro just because we got a much better camera system and a much
20:35better battery and I don't know how many years late, but we finally got the ProMotion displays.
20:41So camera, screen and battery, sort of the three most important things about a phone,
20:46all got bumped up on this year's iPhone Pros.
20:50So anytime you can nail the fundamentals like that, you deserve a shout out.
20:53Good job.
20:54But we've got our most improved and that's S21 Ultra.
20:57So that leads us to the final award of the night, the biggest one, actually, the sort
21:02of the one we've all been waiting for, which is the MVP, the phone of the year.
21:08Now the thing about phone of the year is again, now we're drifting back a little bit more
21:12into subjective territory, meaning it's not just straight up the best phone to come out
21:19during the year.
21:20But if you think about it kind of like the MVP award in a sports league, maybe, maybe
21:24the NBA or NFL or something like that, it's a little more about that plus the impact you
21:30have on the game, plus the overall like challenges you may have overcome.
21:36There's just a little more that goes into the MVP plus a little bit of which one was
21:41my favorite.
21:42So with all of that considered and looking at all the phones that came out this year
21:47in 2021, I think we got to give an acknowledgement to a phone that came out right at the beginning
21:53of the year and was one of the absolute best phones you can buy at its price the entire
21:59year.
22:00And that's Galaxy S21 Ultra from Samsung, it's your MVP.
22:05Yet another award for this phone, but honestly, it deserves it.
22:08I think it's really easy to forget about the phones that come out in like January,
22:12February, because this is a year old at this point now, which is crazy to say compared
22:16to all the other phones here.
22:18But the price did steadily drop a little bit.
22:21I mean, you can buy this phone now for like, what, 700, 600 bucks, which is kind of insane.
22:27And it's really good at everything a big flagship phone should be good at.
22:33It really doesn't have any of the flaws.
22:35Maybe you might have the camera be a little bit of a downside, or you might have the battery
22:39be a little bit of a downside.
22:40You know, with Pixel, it was the battery, with the gaming phones, it's the cameras,
22:44like there's always something, there's always something.
22:47But Galaxy S21 Ultra, on top of having a pretty great premium design to package it all, nailed
22:53it.
22:54They nailed it with this phone.
22:55Now I do have a runner up for the MVP, the second highest voted in this imaginary world
22:59where I'm voting on these.
23:02And that is the iPhone 13 Pro.
23:05And again, with this phone, it comes down to, okay, they took the three most fundamental
23:10things about a phone and made them all way better than last year.
23:14So overdue.
23:15But they finally added the ProMotion 120 hertz, variable refresh rate, and it looks great.
23:20With this battery, they made the phone literally larger to have a much better battery life.
23:24Doesn't necessarily charge super fast, but that might be nice to see.
23:27And then the cameras, all got better.
23:30So all class cameras, great photo and video quality.
23:33I wouldn't mind seeing USB-C or like having a charger in the box, but the phone itself
23:38is really good.
23:39And I really like using the iPhone 13 Pro.
23:41And then I also want to give a shout out, a sort of honorable mention in the MVP category
23:46to Pixel 6.
23:49I think this might be underrated as how important this phone actually is this year.
23:54Obviously, this is the Google phone.
23:56So we're looking at, you know, Google software, all the stuff that comes from having a Pixel,
24:01but also Tensor, having your own custom silicon and that trend moving forward.
24:06And being $599 at launch, which is incredibly good price for a phone that basically has
24:12all the flagship features you'd probably want.
24:15So why spend $1,000 when you can have a phone for $599 that does all the same stuff.
24:19And so I want to give that shout out.
24:21The best value phone is also worthy as a second runner-up to MVP, phone of the year.
24:27But that's it.
24:28That's it for my awards.
24:29Again, this is all hand-selected by the entire judging committee, which is me.
24:33So if you have any problems with them, let me know in the comments section, because
24:36I picked them all.
24:37But also we can talk about these.
24:39I think we're going to have a Discord stages event pretty soon, maybe in the next day or
24:43so.
24:44So follow me on Twitter or join our Discord channel if you want to be up there and grab
24:47a mic and we can talk about it.
24:49But generally, I think my sentiment is still the same.
24:53Lots of really interesting phones still coming out, even though they're mostly the same shape.
24:58You know, you still have a rectangle slab, but you get crazy weird cameras or you get
25:03gaming aesthetic or you get, you know, tensor processor or you get amazing world-class design.
25:09Like there's a bunch of different stuff available and you kind of have a hard time going wrong
25:13with a lot of it.
25:14So shout out to great phones for being a great reason to be alive in 2021.
25:19That's been it for the Smartphone Awards.
25:21I've been your host Marques Brownlee.
25:22Thanks for watching.
25:23And I'll catch you guys next year.
25:25Peace.