We look at the best Android phones available to buy right now
Choosing the best Android phone means choosing from a lot of different handsets, as Android is the most popular mobile operating system in the world.
There are a vast array of Android smartphones on the market from a whole host of manufacturers, and with more Android phones being released every week a consumer’s choice becomes ever more bewildering.
To help you decide on one we've picked out the best Android phones available to buy right now. Every one of the smartphones on this list is great in its own right and they were picked after considering every aspect of the phone including design, performance and price.
The Oppo Find X3 Pro isn’t the most well-known of handsets, but it is among the best, especially for fans of smartphone cameras.
It has a quad-lens one with a 50MP f/1.8 main snapper, a 13MP f/2.4 telephoto one (with 2x optical zoom), a 50MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one, and a 3MP f/3.0 ‘microlens’ camera, which allows you to take extreme close ups of things – closer to a microscope view than a conventional macro shot.
That’s a lens you won’t find elsewhere, and while it’s a bit niche the other three lenses do a top job for more conventional photography needs.
Beyond the camera, the Oppo Find X3 Pro has a brilliant 6.7-inch 1440 x 3216 AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a top-end Snapdragon 888 chipset, 12GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, a 4,500mAh battery, and a stylish design, with a camera housing that rises smoothly from the back, leaving the Oppo Find X3 Pro looking distinct from most phones.
It’s expensive as you’d expect, and aside from the microlens camera it doesn’t really stand out, but the rest of its specs are easily a match for most other top-end phones, so it’s no worse than high-powered rivals either.
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The OnePlus 9 isn’t quite the best OnePlus phone, but it’s very close, and arguably better value than the OnePlus 9 Pro.
It has a 6.55-inch 1080 x 2400 AMOLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, a powerful Snapdragon 888 chipset, up to 12GB of RAM, a 4,500mAh battery (with speedy 65W charging), and a sleek metal and glass build (though the frame is plastic).
The OnePlus 9 also has a triple-lens camera, with a 48MP f/1.8 main sensor, a 50MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one, and a 2MP f/2.4 monochrome one. These cameras were crafted in collaboration with Hasselblad, and the ultra-wide one has a freeform lens, allowing it to reduce distortion at the edge of images.
It’s an impressive setup and the software impresses too, with the OnePlus 9 running the company’s OxygenOS on top of Android. This is slick and stays true to the stock Android OS, with minimal bloat and an intuitive layout.
Samsung can always be relied upon to make some of the best Android phones of a given year, and the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus is one of its best of 2021.
This phone has top-end power from its Exynos 2100 chipset and 8GB of RAM, a bold and bright 6.7-inch 1080 x 2400 AMOLED screen (with a 120Hz refresh rate), a premium build, water resistance, a large 4,800mAh battery, and a triple-lens camera.
That camera consists of a 12MP f/1.8 main sensor, a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one, and a 64MP f/2.0 telephoto, with 3x hybrid zoom. That’s not the most exciting of camera setups, but the photos it can take are among the best you’ll get from a phone.
There’s the usual flagship features here too, like wireless charging and an in-screen fingerprint scanner, all of which makes this a top Samsung phone – if still a step down from the S21 Ultra.
The OnePlus 9 Pro is the best OnePlus phone you can get and very nearly the best Android phone. As with so many top-tier Android handsets, the camera is one of its biggest highlights though.
It has a quad-lens camera with a 48MP f/1.8 main snapper, a 50MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one, an 8MP f/2.4 telephoto one (with 3.3x optical zoom), and a 2MP f/2.4 monochrome one.
As with the standard OnePlus 9, it’s really the ultra-wide that stands out here, as it uses a freeform lens to reduce distortion at the edge of images, meaning this can take better ultra-wide shots than most smartphone cameras. But the whole camera package impresses.
The rest of the phone does too, with a 6.7-inch 1440 x 3216 AMOLED screen, a 120Hz refresh rate, a top-end Snapdragon 888 chipset, up to 12GB of RAM, a 4,500mAh battery with 65W fast charging and 50W wireless charging, water resistance, and more. The OnePlus 9 Pro really is the complete flagship package.
There are many great Android phones, but no others quite as great as the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra, a phone which if you can stomach its premium price, really does have it all.
There’s its 6.8-inch 1440 x 3200 AMOLED screen for one, with a 120Hz refresh rate and a super-high 1,500-nit maximum brightness. Then there’s its top-tier Exynos 2100 chipset, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 512GB of storage, and its massive 5,000mAh battery.
The camera is remarkable too. There’s a quad-lens one on the back, consisting of a 108MP f/1.8 main sensor, a 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide one, a 10MP f/4.9 periscope one (with 10x optical zoom), and a 10MP f/2.4 telephoto one (with 3x optical zoom). That means it can optically zoom to two different distances, where most phones can only manage one at most.
The design and build excels too of course, and there are all sorts of extras, like a DeX mode to hook the phone up to a monitor, and support for Samsung’s S Pen stylus.
So with its big, brilliant screen, oodles of power, exceptional, versatile cameras, long-lasting battery, and ability to use it with a stylus or a bigger external screen, the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra excels at just about every possibly use case.
The above phones then are the five best Android handsets you can get at the time of writing, and if you need a top-tier phone then any one of them should serve you well.
From the Oppo Find X3 Pro in fifth place, with its elegant design and innovative microlens camera, to the OnePlus 9 at four, with its slightly lower price paired with almost as premium specs and a great ultra-wide snapper. Then there’s the Samsung Galaxy S21 Plus at three, which is a top Samsung flagship if you don’t need the sheer luxury and excess of the Ultra, and then we have the OnePlus 9 Pro at two – a top all-round flagship with no real weaknesses.
Then in first place it’s the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. The price here is high, but no other phone can match this for features, and it beats out most of the competition in any other area too, from its screen to its camera and beyond.
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