The Best Phones of the First Half of 2020: A Comprehensive Review

In this review, we've put together a list of the best phones from the first half of 2020, taking into account various factors such as battery life, performance, camera quality, value, and more. Our team has extensively tested each phone to determine which one stands out from the rest.

Battery Life: A Key Consideration

One aspect we considered when evaluating these phones was their battery life. With the increasing demand for power-hungry features like large screens and high-performance processors, battery life has become a critical factor in choosing a smartphone. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 10 Pro, for instance, boasts a massive 5000mAh power battery, which is quite impressive considering its relatively affordable price tag.

However, we also discovered that software optimization plays a crucial role in determining the actual battery life of these phones. For example, the LG V60 phone has a significant power battery but still manages to outperform other devices with similar specifications due to effective software optimization. This highlights the importance of software engineering and battery management in modern smartphones.

Performance: A Test of Speed and Efficiency

When it comes to performance, our team ran various benchmarks to assess each phone's speed and efficiency. We used tools like Antutu, 3D Mark, and GFX Bench to evaluate a device's performance under different scenarios. The results were impressive, with the OnePlus 8 Pro emerging as the top performer in our tests.

The OnePlus 8 Pro's Snapdragon 865 processor proved itself to be a formidable contender, barely edging out other high-performance phones like the Oppo Find X2 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra. This victory was all the more remarkable given that these devices also employ similar processors, demonstrating the impressive performance capabilities of this flagship device.

Camera Quality: A Matter of Subjectivity

Camera quality is another aspect where subjectivity plays a significant role. Our team decided to open up the camera testing process to the entire Android Authority crew, asking them to vote on their favorite camera system based on images taken from each phone. The Huawei P40 Pro Plus took home the top prize in this round, thanks to its massive 50-megapixel sensor and innovative 10x optical telephoto lens.

The Oppo Find X2 Pro came close behind, impressing our team with its excellent white balance, sharpness, and 5x optical telephoto capabilities. Although it narrowly missed out on the top spot, this phone is undoubtedly an exceptional camera device that should be considered by anyone looking for high-quality images from their smartphone.

Value: A Comparison of Prices and Performance

Finally, we evaluated each phone based on its value proposition. The Poco F2 Pro emerged as the winner in this category, offering a remarkable balance of performance, features, and price. With a starting price of around $300, this device provides an incredible value for money, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious buyers.

The iPhone SE also made appearances on our list, particularly because its affordability at $399 is quite impressive. However, given the device's iOS ecosystem, it didn't take home the top spot in our overall ranking.

Editor's Choice Award: A Well-Rounded Winner

Our final evaluation came down to a vote among the Android Authority team, where we crowned the OnePlus 8 Pro as the Editor's Choice winner. This decision was based on its exceptional performance, impressive camera capabilities, great build quality, and excellent after-sales support. With a starting price of around $900, this device offers remarkable value for money, making it an attractive option for buyers looking for a high-end smartphone.

The Samsung Galaxy S20 Plus and LG V60 rounded out our top three phones, with both devices delivering impressive performance and features despite their higher prices.

Reader's Choice Award: Vote Now!

To determine the Reader's Choice award winner, we will be opening up voting on July 19th at androidauthority.com. We invite all our readers to participate in this process by casting their votes for their favorite phone from the first half of 2020. The winning device will be announced soon after, so keep an eye out for that update.

We hope you've enjoyed this comprehensive review of the best phones from the first half of 2020. Each device has its unique strengths and weaknesses, but all have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in various areas. Whether you're looking for exceptional performance, a top-notch camera system, or unbeatable value, there's something on our list that should suit your needs.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwell guys it's mid-july and you see the thing is smartphones come out so often and so fast that it can often be really difficult to keep up with which smartphone you want to get and so many smartphones do one or two things really really well but just do other things okay and a lot of people want a phone that does one or two things that they specifically value so a couple years ago we started doing this thing called best of android which was basically this end of the year thing where we ranked a bunch of phones head to head on a bunch of different categories like performance and audio quality and charging speed and all of that stuff now the last time we did this we got a lot of backlash and that was kind of understandable it's kind of on me because i didn't really articulate very well exactly what we were using to do all of this testing a lot of people thought that we were just taking phones that we liked and throwing them at you guys as the overall winners but that's not the case we actually have labs we have a ton of testing equipment we're using x-rite display testers and special software written by gary sims from gary explains subscribe to gary explains by the way so we have all of these articles that explain in depth how we're doing all of this objective testing and if you're interested in checking that out make sure that you actually go read those articles before you leave comment and yeah there are some aspects that are kind of gut-checked crowdsource metrics that we've talked about in aaa like image quality and color and all of this stuff but honestly most of this is objective raw data and we have all that data available for you on the website if you want to check it out so because this is the best of android mid 2020 only phones that were released before the end of june were actually eligible to compete so you're not going to see phones like the sony xperia 1 2 that actually did really well in our testing that will be at the end of the year all right so the first category is audio and there are so many things that can make the audio of a phone better or worse there's the placement of the speakers there's how loud they get there's the codex that it has for bluetooth the fact that it has a headphone jack or not whether it has a quad deck you're probably seeing what i'm getting at here so after we did all of this testing in the audio category the winner and probably what you would expect is the lg v60 just like a lot of lg phones passed it's got so many audio features that you're probably going to love it's got the headphone jack with the quad dac it's got this 3d sound system it's got a bunch of bluetooth codecs it honestly is the audio king for mid 2020. so congratulations to lg for winning that category all right next up is display and this is actually a pretty interesting one because a lot of manufacturers use the same panel from samsung but the thing that makes the difference is how those manufacturers chose to tune that panel our testing is based on a bunch of metrics like how bright the display can get both in auto mode and non-auto mode screen density color accuracy and a ton of other stuff that we've tested using this proprietary software and after testing all these phones the winner was the oneplus 8 pro now the oneplus 8 pro has a super high screen density a super high refresh rate it's got a really low color error in both the default mode and the more natural mode and it had a white balance that wasn't too warm or too cool overall it just barely edged above a couple other devices but the oneplus 8 pro was crowned the overall winner all right next up is battery and there's obviously a lot of facets to the battery in a smartphone there's capacity how fast it charges how long it lasts and a bunch of other stuff now to test the battery we actually used a special proprietary app from gary sims himself to basically run a bunch of benchmarks and see how many times it could complete the benchmark before the phone died we also tested things like how fast it could charge in 15 minutes 30 minutes 60 minutes how long it took to get to full and a few other things obviously we've got a full article in detail if you want to read that but the overall winner for battery in a smartphone in the first half of 2020 is the xiaomi me 10 pro now this is pretty surprising because the xiaomi mi 10 pro has a 4 500 million power battery it's not quite as big as phones like the lg v60 which support 5000 million power batteries but it's really good software optimization makes it so the battery life of this phone is really really very good and it actually took off beyond a lot of other phones that we tested so congratulations to xiaomi for winning the category next up is performance and just like all the other tests we run a variety of benchmarks to understand how fast these phones actually are we run things like antutu and 3d mark and gfx bench we also run gary sims own speed test g and then we compile all of this data to crown and overall winner and the phone that came out on the top was the oneplus 8 pro now because a lot of these phones are using snapdragon 865 processors it was a very tight race it barely beat phones like the oppo find x2 pro and the samsung galaxy s20 ultra but in the end the oneplus 8 pro just skimmed ahead all right let's move on to the camera now i do want to be straight with you guys we did use less objective testing data in the camera section mostly because cameras are very subjective we opened it up to the entirety of android authority to kind of debate the differences between these different camera systems and what images that they thought looked better now there are ways to objectively test cameras obviously that's how companies like dxomark exist and we used to do that as well the problem is we have multiple reviewers and it's really difficult to objectively test cameras if you don't have the exact same controlled environment so instead we thought that we'd open it up to the entire crew to vote on the best camera system based on images that we've taken out of these things and the winner at the very end of the day was the huawei p40 pro plus the p40 pro plus has one of the biggest sensors on the smartphone market today and it also has this really innovative 10x optical telephoto camera all of these features combined mixed with huawei's really good image quality honestly led it to barely barely nudge out as the camera king for the first half of 2020. now i do have to mention that the oppo find x2 pro came right behind the huawei p40 pro plus like the race was extremely close it's got extremely good white balance with amazing sharpness and it's got a 5x optical telephoto sensor as well so overall the upper phone x2 pro also has an incredible camera system and you should give that a look but congrats to huawei for stealing the crown all right now we move on to value and value doesn't necessarily have to be under a specific price point it just has to be a very good phone that offers a ton for the price compared to other phones in that price range so we even put things like the lg v60 thank you in the running but at the end of the day the phone that came out on top was the poco f2 pro the poco f2 pro is just a super solid phone in almost all departments and it's really really cheap so congrats to poco for stealing that crown now we do have to mention that the iphone se was also in the running there and we debated this for a long time because the iphone se is an incredible phone for 399 dollars but at the end of the day we decided this is the best of android so the poco is going to take the crown but if you're interested in ios definitely check out the iphone se because at 3.99 that phone just slays okay and finally we're down to editor's choice and effectively what we did here is we got a ton of people together from android authority and we decided to rank all of these phones in terms of multiple different facets like build quality software after sales support and all of these things and at the end of the day the phone that took home the editor's choice award was the oneplus 8 pro it's got great software great build quality a great camera great after sales support and it's still cheaper than a lot of other phones even at 900 so congratulations to oneplus for taking that crown the phones that came right behind them were the samsung galaxy s 20 plus and the lg v60 so congratulations to those guys for getting really really close all right so now we want to hear from you guys now this video is going live on saturday july 18th but we are going to be opening up voting for the reader's choice award on july 19th on sunday and that's gonna go for about a week so make sure you head over to androidauthority.com to vote for your favorite phone of the first half of 2020 we'll put a link in the description down below so you can head over there and cast your vote and i'll catch you guys in the next videowell guys it's mid-july and you see the thing is smartphones come out so often and so fast that it can often be really difficult to keep up with which smartphone you want to get and so many smartphones do one or two things really really well but just do other things okay and a lot of people want a phone that does one or two things that they specifically value so a couple years ago we started doing this thing called best of android which was basically this end of the year thing where we ranked a bunch of phones head to head on a bunch of different categories like performance and audio quality and charging speed and all of that stuff now the last time we did this we got a lot of backlash and that was kind of understandable it's kind of on me because i didn't really articulate very well exactly what we were using to do all of this testing a lot of people thought that we were just taking phones that we liked and throwing them at you guys as the overall winners but that's not the case we actually have labs we have a ton of testing equipment we're using x-rite display testers and special software written by gary sims from gary explains subscribe to gary explains by the way so we have all of these articles that explain in depth how we're doing all of this objective testing and if you're interested in checking that out make sure that you actually go read those articles before you leave comment and yeah there are some aspects that are kind of gut-checked crowdsource metrics that we've talked about in aaa like image quality and color and all of this stuff but honestly most of this is objective raw data and we have all that data available for you on the website if you want to check it out so because this is the best of android mid 2020 only phones that were released before the end of june were actually eligible to compete so you're not going to see phones like the sony xperia 1 2 that actually did really well in our testing that will be at the end of the year all right so the first category is audio and there are so many things that can make the audio of a phone better or worse there's the placement of the speakers there's how loud they get there's the codex that it has for bluetooth the fact that it has a headphone jack or not whether it has a quad deck you're probably seeing what i'm getting at here so after we did all of this testing in the audio category the winner and probably what you would expect is the lg v60 just like a lot of lg phones passed it's got so many audio features that you're probably going to love it's got the headphone jack with the quad dac it's got this 3d sound system it's got a bunch of bluetooth codecs it honestly is the audio king for mid 2020. so congratulations to lg for winning that category all right next up is display and this is actually a pretty interesting one because a lot of manufacturers use the same panel from samsung but the thing that makes the difference is how those manufacturers chose to tune that panel our testing is based on a bunch of metrics like how bright the display can get both in auto mode and non-auto mode screen density color accuracy and a ton of other stuff that we've tested using this proprietary software and after testing all these phones the winner was the oneplus 8 pro now the oneplus 8 pro has a super high screen density a super high refresh rate it's got a really low color error in both the default mode and the more natural mode and it had a white balance that wasn't too warm or too cool overall it just barely edged above a couple other devices but the oneplus 8 pro was crowned the overall winner all right next up is battery and there's obviously a lot of facets to the battery in a smartphone there's capacity how fast it charges how long it lasts and a bunch of other stuff now to test the battery we actually used a special proprietary app from gary sims himself to basically run a bunch of benchmarks and see how many times it could complete the benchmark before the phone died we also tested things like how fast it could charge in 15 minutes 30 minutes 60 minutes how long it took to get to full and a few other things obviously we've got a full article in detail if you want to read that but the overall winner for battery in a smartphone in the first half of 2020 is the xiaomi me 10 pro now this is pretty surprising because the xiaomi mi 10 pro has a 4 500 million power battery it's not quite as big as phones like the lg v60 which support 5000 million power batteries but it's really good software optimization makes it so the battery life of this phone is really really very good and it actually took off beyond a lot of other phones that we tested so congratulations to xiaomi for winning the category next up is performance and just like all the other tests we run a variety of benchmarks to understand how fast these phones actually are we run things like antutu and 3d mark and gfx bench we also run gary sims own speed test g and then we compile all of this data to crown and overall winner and the phone that came out on the top was the oneplus 8 pro now because a lot of these phones are using snapdragon 865 processors it was a very tight race it barely beat phones like the oppo find x2 pro and the samsung galaxy s20 ultra but in the end the oneplus 8 pro just skimmed ahead all right let's move on to the camera now i do want to be straight with you guys we did use less objective testing data in the camera section mostly because cameras are very subjective we opened it up to the entirety of android authority to kind of debate the differences between these different camera systems and what images that they thought looked better now there are ways to objectively test cameras obviously that's how companies like dxomark exist and we used to do that as well the problem is we have multiple reviewers and it's really difficult to objectively test cameras if you don't have the exact same controlled environment so instead we thought that we'd open it up to the entire crew to vote on the best camera system based on images that we've taken out of these things and the winner at the very end of the day was the huawei p40 pro plus the p40 pro plus has one of the biggest sensors on the smartphone market today and it also has this really innovative 10x optical telephoto camera all of these features combined mixed with huawei's really good image quality honestly led it to barely barely nudge out as the camera king for the first half of 2020. now i do have to mention that the oppo find x2 pro came right behind the huawei p40 pro plus like the race was extremely close it's got extremely good white balance with amazing sharpness and it's got a 5x optical telephoto sensor as well so overall the upper phone x2 pro also has an incredible camera system and you should give that a look but congrats to huawei for stealing the crown all right now we move on to value and value doesn't necessarily have to be under a specific price point it just has to be a very good phone that offers a ton for the price compared to other phones in that price range so we even put things like the lg v60 thank you in the running but at the end of the day the phone that came out on top was the poco f2 pro the poco f2 pro is just a super solid phone in almost all departments and it's really really cheap so congrats to poco for stealing that crown now we do have to mention that the iphone se was also in the running there and we debated this for a long time because the iphone se is an incredible phone for 399 dollars but at the end of the day we decided this is the best of android so the poco is going to take the crown but if you're interested in ios definitely check out the iphone se because at 3.99 that phone just slays okay and finally we're down to editor's choice and effectively what we did here is we got a ton of people together from android authority and we decided to rank all of these phones in terms of multiple different facets like build quality software after sales support and all of these things and at the end of the day the phone that took home the editor's choice award was the oneplus 8 pro it's got great software great build quality a great camera great after sales support and it's still cheaper than a lot of other phones even at 900 so congratulations to oneplus for taking that crown the phones that came right behind them were the samsung galaxy s 20 plus and the lg v60 so congratulations to those guys for getting really really close all right so now we want to hear from you guys now this video is going live on saturday july 18th but we are going to be opening up voting for the reader's choice award on july 19th on sunday and that's gonna go for about a week so make sure you head over to androidauthority.com to vote for your favorite phone of the first half of 2020 we'll put a link in the description down below so you can head over there and cast your vote and i'll catch you guys in the next video\n"