Best Smartphone Picks from our Reviews in the year 2018

Top Smartphone Picks 2018

Here at Tech Prolonged, we always do our best to bring you the detailed reviews of latest smartphone devices from all ranges. Now that the year 2018 is about close, we think it’s best to have the top picks of the year.

This is going to be little interesting that we have collected only a few from all ranges. However there is quite a possibility that you may not find your favorite smartphone in the list below for various reasons. You just need to know one, that we only picked the ones from a lot that we have reviewed throughout the year.

So here goes the list.

1 – Huawei P20 Pro

Huawei P20 Pro Camera Review

Without a doubt, Huawei P20 Pro is our top pick of the year. The phone was the first to offer triple-camera setup on the back. It wasn’t only the numbers, but camera actually did great of the greatests. We were impressed by the camera performance of this smartphone when we tested it by ourselves – check camera review. The phone received remarkable top score of 109 by DxOMark in March 2018, and the it’s still unbeaten.

Apart from being a brilliant camera smartphone of the year, the P20 Pro is also a stunning pack of hardware. The phone powered with the company’s then-latest Kirin 970 processor coupled with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. It was backed by a big 4000 mAh battery.

It was an impressive piece of dual-glass design with IP67 rating for water and dust resistance.  However the phone lacked tha 3.5mm audio jack. You can still check full review of Huawei P20 Pro.

2 – Nokia 8

Nokia 8 Review Camera

Nokia brand entered the smartphone market last year after a few months Microsoft ditched the and killed it. Credits to HMD Global that felt the brand value and brought it back with a bang of Android operating system. The company first launched a few entry-level and mid-range phones – Nokia 2, 3, 5 and 6, followed by a flagship Nokia 8 carrying the same ZEISS optics that the brand always known to carry for its cameras.

The camera of the smartphone received 8.5/10 score in our review. The phone was powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 paired with the 4GB RAM and 64GB of internal storage. With QHD resolution in a much compact display size of 5.3-inches, the phone boasted with the high pixel density of 554 ppi.

The interesting part was that the phone was announced with a price tag of PKR 59,900/- but after just over a month, the price dropped to PKR 49,900/- at the time when we got our hands on it. The price further dropped in following months after when the company launched the next chapter of Nokia phones.

3 – Vivo V11 Pro

Vivo V11 Pro In-display fingerprint sensor

Vivo Mobile entered Pakistani market just last year and brought a variety of entry-level and mid-range smartphones to consumers in the country. The best part of the smartphone maker was that they wanted to cater with the mass market, not with the unusable Android crap phones but with good looking and performing devices.

What’s even more good about the company is that they don’t just keep making phones and ship them. They are researching and bringing impressive innovations to the industry. The most recent creation of the company is the real kind of dual-display smartphone dubbed as Vivo Nex Dual Display Edition. We do expect it to launch in Pakistan sooner or later but here we recently got our hands on the company’s first ever mid-range smartphone carrying the in-display fingerprint sensor – Vivo V11 pro. We couldn’t review the phone in full for some reason but having reviewed Vivo 11 which is also in the list below, we can tell this phone would take the upper spot with better hardware and features.

4 – Huawei Nova 3i & Vivo V11

Huawei Nova 3i vs Vivo V11

Huawei Nova 3i and Vivo V11 share the same spot in our top picks due to various factors including hardware performance, camera quality, software interface and most importantly the price.

Huawei launched the Nova 3i along with an expensive Nova 3 which was an upper mid-range smartphone. Nova 3i on the other hand was formally more mid-range for all kinds. With the dual-glass build, the phone packed the company’s latest and fastest mid-range processor Kirin 710. In our review the phone performed impressively with a healthy deal of 4GB RAM and 128GB internal storage. Nova 3i also packed dual rear and dual front cameras and backed by a 3340 mAh battery.

Vivo V11 on the other hand had a plastic build but that was cool indeed. The V11 also featured 4GB of RAM and 128GB of internal storage. Vivo incorporated the V11 with MediaTek’s Helio P60 chip that featured an octa-core CPU with four Cortex A73 cores and four A53 along with a Mali G72 graphics processing unit. That is also an impressive performer among the mid-range and equally performed with Huawei’s Kirin 710 in Nova 3i. That’s the main reason we put both the phones at the same spot.

5 – Huawei Y9 2019

Huawei Y9 2019 Review

Last but not the least, we got our hands on with Huawei’s latest mid-ranger the Huawei Y9 2019. This also proved us to be true as we earlier said – once Huawei features something in its flagship devices, they brought it all the way down to its mid-range and some times even entry-level phones too. Specially the design and visual elements.

Previously, it was the FullView display that company brought down to the budget Huawei Y5 Prime 2018. Now it seemed to be the notch but with the recent launch of Nova 4 in China, we believe this kind of notch will soon be abandoned in favour of a punch-hole display.

Well, Huawei Y9 2019 just got into out top picks due to having that same processor as we experienced in the Nova 3i. Y9 also performed at par with those two above. However the phone was a bit more large in size, carried only 64GB of internal storage with 4GB of RAM. Battery wise it was too cool to handle everything for long enough.