Christmas season phone review

The best and brightest

It’s been a year of amazing smartphones and, as we’re coming up to Christmas, we thought we’d list the top five smartphones on the market right now.

iPhone 5C

Touted as the new, cheap, practical iPhone, you may disagree when you see the price tag (£469 inc VAT for a 16GB). It’s basically an iPhone 5 in a different shell and with fewer features. It feels more practical in that if you drop it it might not be the end of the world, but it’s really expensive for what it is. We think there are cheaper and more impressive Android options out there and if you’re desperate to stick with Apple then get the iPhone 5S at £80 more.

LG G2

This phone is really good value for money, coming in as it does under £400. It has high end features and an amazing spec. The software is brilliant and the hardware equally so. It’s an ideal smartphone if you’re into playing games or hitting up a smartphone casino, and looks really really good. We’d definitely recommend it, although it doesn’t have a microSD card slot, which is kind of annoying.

SONY XPERIA Z1

It’s not cheap but it’s even better than the already excellent Xperia Z. Although this makes it a brilliant machine, it’s bigger and heavier as well, which could be off putting for some. It’s definitely one of the best Android sets you can get at the moment but at almost £600 you’d hope it would be!

iPHONE 5S

It’s a lot faster than the iPhone 5 and the quality of photos and videos is better as well. Whether that’s enough for you to want to upgrade from the serviceable and stylish iPhone 5 is really up to you. If you timed it right and are about ready to give up on your iPhone 4 or 4S, then you are going to love this. It has a bigger screen, is better for streaming stuff, playing games and taking photos and the fingerprint scanner is cool. It’s probably more future proof than some of the others out there as well.

HTC One

This is one of the very best out there right now. Its performance levels are second to none and it has an extremely high build quality. It matches all the other high end phones and comes in cheaper than a lot of them (£449). For audio and visual performance we think it’s the very best out there. You may need to take a while to figure out the UI, but it’s right up there.