Best Android Phones to Buy in 2017

The Android market is fiercely competitive. With brands like Google, LG, Samsung, HTC, and Motorola all competing for a share of the pie, it’s no wonder that Android fans are every bit as loyal as Apple fanboys, if not more. But there are a lot of differences between all the smartphones. Do you want the best camera? The best sound/audio? The best value? Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Android smartphones by category to help make your buying decision even easier.

 Pixel 2

The Pixel 2 runs on the Android 8 Oreo OS, and will probably be the smoothest phone to do so because the hardware is designed by Google to work with the software. Speaking of running, the Snapdragon 835 processor is more than quick enough for the phone. Google claims you can charge the battery for 15 minutes and get a full 7 hours of charge, which will be clutch when you’re trying to juice up your phone on your Uber ride. There’s a 12.2 MP camera on the back (complete with a software-forward dual pixel function that tries to recreate that multi-lens feature found on the latest iPhones) and an 8 MP camera on the front, so your video calls to be smooth and crisp.

The phone looks pretty slick and has a unibody aluminum design (that doubles as a way to keep dust and water out of the device), and the five-inch AMOLED screen is the perfect balance between “not too big” and "wow, this thing looks good,” with a 1920 x 1080 resolution. There’s a nicely intuitive squeeze function called Active Edge sensors that calls up Google Assistant with the tightening of your hand and there’s even a proprietary Google Security chip built-in with three years of included security updates. The phone comes in 64GB and 128GB models, and it is a proper answer to the huge iPhone announcements of this year.

 Pixel 2 XL

As we mentioned on the standard Pixel writeup, the Pixel XL does share a lot of features with the standard Pixel 2, but it carves its own brilliant space in the market by sheer use of design and space. The XL also runs on Android 8 with all the smoothness you’d expect a device designed by the same company as the software to. It sports an 835 Snapdragon processor, a beautiful 12.2MP back camera and an 8MP front camera – the former with a dual-pixel tech that gives you depth of field flexibility – and the Active Edge sensor functionality that calls up Google Assistant. You can count on the same level of security with the dedicated chip and three-year software security support, and the aluminum unibody design provides that dust and water protection here, too.

But the key difference on this bad boy is the screen size. The XL shows off with a six-inch P-OLED screen and a resolution to match at 2880 x 1440 pixels. That ratio gives a more cinematic aspect approach at 16:1, making it look just a bit slicker. But, they’ve worked this screen into a much smaller bezel edge, which gives the phone a surprisingly different look than the standard Pixel. This is important because if you’re buying a phone, you want it to look premium and exciting, and the XL here turned our head just a bit more than the standard Pixel, so it’s something to consider when purchasing. You can also rely on a 3,520 mAh battery, which gives you about 1,000 mAh more than the standard Pixel. That’s important to power the larger screen, but it does translate to just a bit more battery life on that back end, so it’s another variable to be aware of.

 Samsung Galaxy Note 8

The phone’s centerpiece is its 6.3-inch screen (device dimensions are 6.4 x 2.94 x 0.34 inches) that offers an impressive quad HD super AMOLED resolution of 2960 x 1440 (factoring out to 521 ppi). The phone can give you that size screen on such a small device precisely because the screen runs basically right up to the edge giving you very small bezels. The front camera gives you 8MP of crispness for eye-catching selfies and the 12MP sensor on the back camera is powered by two lenses: a telephoto and a wide angle for dual lens effects. If you’re shooting video, it will let you capture 4K at up to 30 frames per second and the software is designed to stabilize a shaky hand digitally, which is extra important for those long hyper-lapse videos.

The phone’s companion is the S pen, which is sort of like a stylus on steroids. You can use it like a normal stylus with cool software integrations like sketching and smart notes (hence the phone’s name), but it also offers programmable buttons and some hover functionality that gives you some really cool app integrations, as well as a super intuitive smart menu function. As far as the software, it runs the latest Android OS on a super powerful Octa-core processor that combines both quad 2.35 GHz and quad 1.9 GHz models at 64-bit for absurdly quick operation. There’s 6GB of RAM and 64GB of storage with expandability up to 256GB via the microSD slot. And with a bigger phone comes a bigger battery, and the 3300 mAh battery is sure to last you through any “ugh, I forgot to charge!” moments.

LG V30

Front and center is the V30’s insanely detailed 16MP rear camera (that’s more MP than many standalone digital cameras). The front-facing cam offers 5MP, so it’s no slouch either, but the main camera is going to give you some serious Instagram edge. It obviously shoots in full 4K HD, and they’ve even packed in more than a dozen cinema-quality effects to pump up the backend product. They’ve even put a ton of thought into the audio, as they’ve packed in some pro-quality mics and even a 32-bit digital-to-analog converter that gives you studio quality sound right on the device.

Powering all of this is the V30’s quad 2.45 GHz Snapdragon processor with 4GB of RAM, so there’s plenty of computational headroom. There’s a six-inch, QHD OLED FullVision Display that will basically beg you to use the phone with its 2880 x 1440 pixel resolution. It supports HDR10 technology for optimized image exposure, and you can get the phone in either the 64GB standard edition or the 128GB plus model.

The whole package is 5.97 x 2.97 x 0.29 inches, so it won’t take up a ton of precious pocket or backpack real estate. It’s constructed beautifully with near destruction-proof Anodized Metal sides and a Gorilla Glass 5 front and back. You wake the phone via one button on the back that doubles as your unlock fingerprint sensor. And they’ve even included a pretty unique heat pipe system the collects and funnels high temps away from the processor to help optimize performance further.

Credits to Google Images