Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Behind the Scenes of the 2019 MKBHD Awards

Episode Date: December 27, 2019

As the year comes to a close, Marques and Andrew review their process of creating the two biggest videos of 2019 for the channel: the Blind Smartphone Camera Test & the 2019 Smartphone Awards! They also discuss fan submissions debating whether or not the awards went to the correct smartphones! Links: https://twitter.com/WVFRM https://twitter.com/MKBHD https://twitter.com/AndyManganelli Blind Smartphone Test: https://bit.ly/2ES093o Blind Smartphone Bracket Image: https://bit.ly/2MukNL2 2019 Smartphone Awards: https://bit.ly/2ZBA0Q9 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home. Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt. Stressing about not knowing where to start. In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done. Out. Word art. Sorry, live laugh lovers. In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home with confidence. Download Thumbtack today. Hello, welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast.

Happy holidays. We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And it's right after Christmas right now. We're going to do a sort of a wrap up, an end of the year, technically end of the decade, but also some people say 2021 is the beginning of the new decade. Also, we just started our podcast this year.

So end of the decade makes it sound more impressive. Yeah, it makes it sound really grand. But it is the end of last, it's the last podcast of 2019. And so we're going to be diving into the nitty gritty of like the two big videos and concepts that ended our year, which was the blind smartphone camera test of 2019. Yeah. The big one. Everyone's favorite.

Yeah. And the smartphone awards, which was the last big video and since we're spending this whole episode going over these two episodes i think i would suggest if you're listening to this and you haven't seen those two videos yet go ahead and check them out there will be spoilers of course because we're going to talk about all that stuff here um they're not just two of the most looked forward to videos of the year but honestly probably two of the most fun so check them out uh we start planning them like soon as phones start coming out yeah like during the year i feel like august right before smartphone season we're like well with what we know yeah what would be your choice right now and then every month is like has anything changed it keeps

evolving yeah and the blind smartphone test is just it's chaos every time so we'll dive into both um but before we get into those, how was your holiday? It was great. It was nice and relaxing. You get anything good? Yeah. Actually, I did get something tech related from Claire. I have a smartwatch now. Nice. And what is that? It's a circle face. Garmin Vivo Active 3. So I think this is actually last year's model, but they went like crazy on sale. The Garmin's are like a hundred bucks. They're always really good with the fitness tracking. And yeah, that's definitely what she got it for.

Like we go hiking a lot and I go climbing and that's, uh, that's way more what I'm interested in. It's, I haven't really gotten much time to try it though yet. Kevin O'Leary would be so angry, even more upset than an Apple watch, I think.

Um, but yeah, I'm super excited to try it and I look forward to it. Did you get anything good or give anything good? I was given some good tech gifts. I'm always the guy you expect a tech gift from. I think it was just,

there was a really great tweet from Dieter from The Verge. It was like, tweet me your photos of some accessories or gadgets you got that are powered by micro USB. I didn't realize that, but there are still so many things powered by. I got a little white noise machine because I always like to,

I sleep with like a fan on because that's like the best version of it to me. But every white noise machine you can buy is powered by micro USB. It's hilarious. So yeah, shout out to everyone who got a micro USB powered gadget this holiday season. Yeah, I also, I feel like I found a great like Secret Santa party gift that's tech related and actually

useful. See, that's the thing is. That's tough. If you do Secret Santa, do you want to give something useful or do you want to give something like totally absurd? I like to give a good tech thing. You can get the Google Home Mini, the non-nest version for 25 bucks on like best buy or everything now because they're always on they're just trying to get rid of it because it's nest mini or nest

home whatever now um 25 bucks might be kind of an expensive secret santa but it's not totally unheard of and it's a great little gift for people you can turn a random person's home into a smart home. Yeah. With 25 bucks in a small box. Yeah, 25 bucks. It's hard to beat that, I think. All right. Good shout out to that. All right. I think we just jump right in.

Let's get right into the big ones. We'll do blind smartphone camera test first. Yeah. Okay. So for those who are unfamiliar with the concept, the blind smartphone camera test is this big concept where, okay, every smartphone that comes out this year has a camera and they're all pretty good at different things. We all kind of know the best ones are going to be the Pixel and the iPhone and the Samsung phones and the Huawei phones, but why not just put them all against each other

and put them online and let people vote against them, but don't tell them which one's which and see what people vote for without knowing what they're voting for. And so because we have a huge bracket of 16 phones, it sort of removes all the bias and it's just exciting. It's like a March Madness style. Yeah, it's March Madness.

Like first round, whoever gets the most votes moves on. There's always upsets, always crazy things. The first year we ever did it was last year. And of course there's these crazy upsets. Last year was kind of nutty. It was, it was wild. I think that both the pixels we put in and both the iPhones we put in all got knocked out on the first round, which is insane. So we tried to be, I don't know, I don't say, I don't want to say scientific. We're not very scientific

about it, but very opposite of scientific. Yeah. It's a fun thing, but we try to be consistent and include like, oh, let's see, this is things you typically take photos of, like, you know, it's going to be an iPhone, an Instagram photo, sorry. So you want to have like a picture of a person, maybe a landscape, a sky in the background, stuff like that. Yeah. And then we like take that and give it a couple extra little variables where a phone might be able to prevail over another phone.

Because so many phones are so good now. Like when you're seeing them on social media sites, it's hard to tell what they are. So like, I think for example, I believe the first one was a picture of you, but we had all these colorful chairs we put in the background. So you had like great dynamic range

with the clouds in the background and you had all different colors in the background. So it kind of gives you a couple different things to look at and and observe and then pick your favorite and then pick your favorite i think a lot of people are just shotgunning it just like which one looks better two seconds move on not even two seconds but i mean when you scroll through instagram that's how fast that's the user experience yeah yeah so that's what we did we put it on instagram we put it on twitter and uh we got our results again and again spoiler we're just going to talk about all the stuff that happened in the videos galaxy note 10 plus uh was the winner

in the finals over over the samsung galaxy s10e so we did have some consistency we had two samsung phones making it to the end this year and a lot of interesting stuff happening in between so where do we even start also before before that, we all guessed. We did our own brackets. I don't think Brandon was here, but Vin picked the winner. He got the note 10. Yeah, I had a note 10, but it was the me note 10. I was really hoping 103 megapixels would pull through,

but I was very wrong. First round exit with the eventual winner there. Yeah, I forgot what I picked, but I didn't have a good time either uh it's tough to pick what you think people will vote for okay so first round we actually there's a results list we'll put this in the show notes where someone was nice enough to compile uh before i even did so when the video came out all of the rounds all of the winners and the percents that each phone won by so you can see what photo you voted for if you look back, and you can see how much it might have won or lost by.

And when you look back at this, there's actually some pretty interesting findings. Yeah, I think everyone watches the video and sees what the two winners are, or the two finalists are, and just neglects all the other rounds. And there's some, like, I remember in round two, all of us texting each

other at night after we went home and be like oh my god like or round one i think the big one round one first first matchup was oneplus 7t versus asus zenfone 6 and it's like i remember us all thinking like we don't know the zenfone camera that well we haven't used it too long oneplus we know really well and oneplus has done pretty good in these so and then zen phone just destroyed it okay zen phone 6 in my opinion took the best photo in the first round yeah it was better than the pixel better than the iphone better than all the other phones in the first round so if you go back and look at it uh this is it's crazy because i'm going to go back and try to tell you what letter it is but b it's b it's b it took the best photo, in my opinion.

The most balanced, the best colors, best dynamic range, and detail was solid. So it crushed the OnePlus 7T in the first round. Then it came up against the Huawei Mate 30 Pro, kind of what you'd consider a one seed, like a favorite. Yeah. I mean, it won last year. It's hard not to rank it up there. Yeah, the Mate 20 Pro won last year. It lost in that round by 10%.

Pro won last year, it lost in that round by 10%. Yeah, and that was the closest matchup out of any round in the entire bracket. Yeah. So that I think was one of the notables that impressed me the most. And I'd be curious to see if it didn't have to face the Mate 30 Pro. Maybe if it was in a different side of the bracket, could it have beat Samsung? Could it have made it to the finals? I would be interested in putting it up against... So what's funny is we actually have we after the first round took photos with every single phone after this and then just didn't use the ones we didn't need so we do have a photo of the roadster and could put it against the note 10 yeah i would be super interested to see how it did versus the note 10 i think both of us agreed we still think note 10 would win i think the note Note would have beaten it still, but I learned a lot about the Zenfone 6, how good that phone is. And we'll talk about that more later in the show too, in the smartphone

awards. But that thing flips around and it becomes your selfie camera. So in theory, that's the best selfie camera in the game right now. Yeah, I don't think a selfie camera could really beat that if it's doing that well on its main and it's also a selfie yeah so big props to that here's another thing uh the biggest victory margin of any of the rounds was your mi note 10 losing in the first round to the s10e the 103 megapixel phone is the thing is we wanted to do a very consistent job of just pointing tapping and shooting in every single round. And the one thing that we didn't do that with was the Mi Note 10, where we pointed, switched to 108 megapixel mode, and then shot. Just because we were using that phone because of the 108 megapixel sensor.

So we give that a shot, but I think most people will just use pixel binning mode most of the time. So it did not the best job of exposing and it was a much darker photo and we you know we know how that goes it might be it might be the worst photo in round one and that's against the flex buy it's like down there with the flex but i'm gonna say the flex buy was worse yeah because the flex buy both when you're exposed when you and overexposed that was the best comment on twitter yeah um i would say on like Instagram stories, you could probably put the Note 10 next to FlexPi because you're getting it compressed

and then halved compressed in stories. So like FlexPi, when you look at the full res of that, you're like, what? Like it was trash? Yeah, this was the iPhone 1. It was very bad. Yeah. Yeah, I thought about including the original iPhone in here and we opted to do the FlexPi instead as the iPhone one. This is very bad. Yeah. Yeah. I thought about including the,

the original iPhone in here and we opted to do the flex pie instead as the gag phone. And I think the, the original iPhone could have maybe won a round if it was up against the Minot 10. Or Minot. Yeah. Yeah.

So anyway, that was a, that was another interesting fact. I got a, I got a nice email I want to talk about and I'm not going to say who it's from, but it came from someone at Google who was very involved with the pixel camera who had some interesting words about how basically this test could be improved

to be maybe more scientific. I'm using air quotes. So scientific, like we're not trying to make a super scientific test, but the information was interesting because one of the things he claims is that through all of their testing with Google's camera, they know that people don't actually tap on the subject of their photo. Most of the time they just open the camera app and hit the shutter. And I thought that was fascinating. Do you tap on the subject? Yeah. We, when we were reading this email, I remember you saying that and I was like, huh, that's really interesting. And then I thought to myself, like, who are I know that yeah I wouldn't consider like smartphone enthusiasts that take a lot of pictures and it's my mom and it's Claire's mom okay and when I

thought about it both of them tap faces that's like something that they both do so okay I asked some people and they they I had a mixed bag some people said no I never tap I just take the shutter and some people said yeah if it's like if it's close to the camera then you want to make sure you nail the focus on the foreground and not the background so you sort of help it out by tapping the subject but other than that like just i could i mean first of all he's the one with the actual statistics right he knows better than we do yeah that's why i thought it was so fascinating yeah we have a much smaller sample size but i could definitely see like if somebody was just picking the camera up and everything looked in

focus at first why tap anything right um but I guess with a picture closer up you have more of a chance of the phone assuming something else is in focus and then you have to fix it yeah so maybe people tap more on something like that but it makes sense that there's probably a lot of people who don't tap here's the reason I tap to focus. I have a darker skin tone, and every time you tap to expose on, like, when I'm taking a picture of my hand or of my face or something like that, it always adjusts the exposure to get my face in best exposure. Now, a lot of these, if you just point it at me and take the photo, my face will be underexposed, and the sky behind me will look great. me and take the photo, my face will be underexposed and the sky behind me will look great. So that's why we made a point to for every single one to tap my face so that it got my face because it's a photo of my face. Yeah. And then sometimes it would blow out the background and we got some interesting results as a result of that. But I'd be curious if we didn't tap on my face on those

photos, how different might it have gone? I would be interested if we put two people in with totally different skin tones. Yeah. Didn't tap a face. tap a face oh that'd be yeah there are just so many variables and and we get it people have sent us a million variables but no matter what we do we're not gonna be able to combat all of the different variables here's here's an idea i really like though yeah yeah pool play yeah and if we had maybe some more days to do this because we were really crunching up against the end of the year. But for those unfamiliar, you probably know what pool play is, but I'll just explain.

Right now it's March Madness style. One game, whoever gets the most votes moves on. Yeah. And so we have so many variables. It's so exciting, and that's what really makes it good. But if we wanted to make it, here comes the air quotes again, more scientific, I guess what we would do is we would have sort of pool play where there's like three or four

phones in a pool and then they would all compete against each other in multiple rounds and the winner of the most rounds would advance out of that pool. Yeah. So pretty much we would, I'm assuming, initially seed the, how we think they should do. And then each pool would have, like the first pool would have like the first seed, the fourth or fifth seed. You'd have like the iPhone 11 Pro and then you'd have like the OnePlus 7T,

the Zen phone and the FlexPi. And then they'd all have several different photos to compete against each other to rack up votes to really definitely get the winner. Yeah, and then the winner of that that based on the winner of each pool you get a correct seating out to go into the bracket play right so then pretty much you're quote-unquote guaranteeing that a good phone doesn't have a hard matchup in the first round because they earn their matchup already right so we wouldn't be guessing which one we think would be more powerful so it's another thing that's like sure it's a little more fair but it's still really not fair at all um

this this thing was never supposed to be fair it was just i love the idea last year and that's why we did it again and i think maybe next year we will we'll mix it up a bit maybe we'll do like a portrait mode thing or a night mode or throw in some other ideas but i had a lot of fun with it so yeah uh pool play sounds great in terms of fairness that was actually renee richie who said that and i can't believe neither of us thought of that because we've both played ultimate for so many years and that is like literally how you play every weekend is pool play into bracket play um so thanks renee he was on twit tv why everyone else was complaining about it he was actually giving useful information so appreciate that we appreciate you renee um

so then in terms of fairness though we have another thing that like people keep mentioning which is oh boy compressed photos on social media right so like this is the one that irks me the most because we talked about this last year and just like first of all i think my main gripe is that sure we could put this on flickr but but who's going on Flickr every day and like finding photos I personally want every photo to be uploaded in the highest resolution possible uncompressed so that it takes a couple minutes for me to download it but I can appreciate it in its glory and I can see what you had for lunch on Instagram and high res no uh yeah this is the one thing is like oh well if you really want us to see which one's better why don't you

upload them in high resolution so that we can pixel peep and go back and forth and then pick a winner and the point of that was this isn't scientific this is where most people see the most photos in their life think about that in your life twitter and instagram and social media i would argue that 99 of the video the pictures you see are i guess reddit also but like yeah instagram and twitter is where most people see their photos and they're compressed um so when i kept seeing needs to be fair it needs to be fair i think the only way we could make this totally fair is if we found the five people who had like perfectly calibrated like four plus k monitors and then we could yeah like think about even if we did this high res what if somebody's looking on uh like Oh, the displays. being able to see exactly what they are. So we're putting it in a natural environment and that's how people are voting.

And that's totally okay. Yeah, that's pretty much the point. Some people will have this on their iPhone. Some people will have this on their Pixel or on their Samsung phone. All their levels will be different. Some people will have a Pro Display XDR and they'll vote on Twitter on their desktop.

All of this stuff gets counted and all of this stuff contributes to a winner. So I don't mind that. I think we're gonna keep doing it that way. But the benefit of doing it the same way is I think we heard something about Twitter's potentially offering either higher quality or full res photos. Okay. This was announced, this was announced while we were in the middle of our photos. So we didn't really want to stop and start over, but Twitter, I think either starting now or

starting at the beginning of 2020 is going to, to to view full-size uncompressed JPEGs in the image viewer. So in the preview window, it'll still be small, but when you click to open it, a JPEG will be uncompressed and much higher quality and better looking. So maybe the smartphone awards will benefit from that. Sorry, the blind camera test will benefit from that next year. Yeah, which is awesome because then you get it on a platform that people actually look at. And sure, now some people get to get a higher res version um but we'll we're still going to do it on instagram and it's not going to be weighted because a lot of people look at photos on instagram yes instagram votes i mean i have more followers on twitter but instagram votes were definitely yet again about twice as much as twitter wow i didn't know it is that much yeah It was about three and a half million total votes on Instagram and about two million total votes on Twitter

Yeah, so how many far is like I mean Instagram as an image hosting website, so that's where you get it I bet if I did it on a flicker We'd probably have about a thousand total votes so you could count them, but they wouldn't really sway anything no no so there you go Well yeah, okay. that's pretty much it. Big congrats. Shout out to the Galaxy Note 10 for fair and square, pulling off a win and beating in the finals its same exact camera brother, literally because of, you saw the video?

Yeah. It's because of the color of the phone. I was at a promo event for Retro Tech, so I was like figuring out who was winning during the last couple hours, and I was like, all right, it's gonna be Samsung versus Samsung. I'll just take some random photo because it's the same camera. It doesn't matter. I took it through a window and the reflection of

the pink Galaxy S10e cast a little magenta in the bottom half of that image. And people picked up on that and actually voted for the one that didn't have magenta in it. So good job guys who were voting and y'all picked Galaxy Note 10. So shout out to the Note 10. All right, let's take a quick break and then we'll hop back in to the Smartphone Awards. Bet MGM is an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League and has your back all season long. From puck drop to the final shot, you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas. That's a feeling you can only get with Bet MGM. We'll be right back. hockey home for the season. Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM,

a sports book worth a celly and an official sports betting partner of the National Hockey League. BetMGM.com for terms and conditions. Must be 19 years of age or older to wager. Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge bet mgm operates pursuant to an operating agreement with i gaming ontario with uber reserve good things come to those who plan ahead family vacay reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights to all the planners now you can reserve your uber ride up to 90 days in advance see uber app for details all right welcome back so the smartphone awards 2019 yeah always a fun one so this is uh this is our awards we i started this back in 2014 with a couple phones on my desk

and just telling what my favorite phones of the year were. And it slowly evolved year over year into this, this like, it's like this recap, this big grand recap. It's so much fun though, um, of the entire, like every category of phone that came out this year. And, uh, we did it again in 2019 and it was, uh, I'll just go ahead and read to you right off the top, all of the winners of each category. And we're going to sort of descend into each one. And and we we did a little fun polling thing on twitter that we'll get into but here's here's the winners for 2019 best big phone asus rog phone 2 best compact

smartphone samsung galaxy s10e and every category by the way has runner-ups uh best smartphone camera iphone 11 pro and 11 pro max best smartphone battery asus rog phone 2 6 000 milliamp hour battery best or we just call this the design award samsung galaxy fold best budget phone redmi k20 pro biggest bust google 4, most improved award, Asus ROG Phone 2, and MVP, smartphone of the year, OnePlus 7 Pro. So now that I've gone through all that list, you've probably had your thoughts, of course. And I go through the reasoning for every single one of these in the video. And then we have our runner-ups, and there's also new reasons for the runner-ups, and we sort of detail each category.

But that's surface level where we're at. So I feel like everyone's sort of calibrated in. So because this has turned into so much of a community thing, of course everyone else has their own different picks and different choices for their favorite smartphone of the year, and everyone has their own unique perspective too. I'm a person sitting at the desk with all 38 phones in front of me. And other people have had certain phones they really like.

So because of that, we get tons of responses and tons of comments. And everyone has their own reasoning why maybe it should have been a bit different. Maybe we should have had a different winner here or a different honorable mention. I think there are some pretty big snubs. And I kind of look at it the same way you might look at maybe NBA All-Star voting, which is just starting up right now. But there's always going to be snubs and i kind of look at it the same way you might look at maybe like nba all-star voting which is like just starting up right now but like there's always going to be snubs yeah there's always going to be people who barely get in uh and and obvious favorites but from that we actually polled you guys on twitter from the waveform twitter at wvfrm and we of course have some

comments from from other videos and reddit Reddit too about some legit different ways this could have gone. So we'll go through the categories and look through them. We wanted you guys to pretty much argue with us. Because, I mean, hey, it's fun. And I get it. People think things should have won. And we're here to defend our choices and possibly agree with you and possibly disagree with you.

Now, I'll caveat this on the top of all of it. These are all my personal picks, and you could probably sway me about some honorable mentions. I think I have a biggest snub, and we'll get into those and see what other people say. But it's my show, so I'm giving the awards that I feel the strongest about. So I think I nailed it, but we'll see how you feel, and we'll see how everyone else feels.

All right, so first category was Best Big phone, Asus ROG phone two. This one, I, I gave the runner up to galaxy note 10 plus, and I could see how anyone would be swayed that note 10. I think if it did win, that would have been maybe the third year in a row at one best big phone. Yeah. I'm pretty sure it was note eight, note nine. Yeah. Yeah. But I, i think rog phone 2 cleaned up it had every single thing you could ask for short of a stylus uh and put high refresh rate on top of that high refresh rate oled and it just it has to beat note 10 and kept the headphone jack i kept i think note 10 losing headphone jack i still think rog phone has more features losing the headphone jack on the note 10 was like a big downside this year

that a lot of people were pretty upset about. And it's hard to lose something when the phone's so big already. Here's another thing. I was originally really hot on notes winning the best big phone because they also historically have done the best job of software for big features. They were some of the only ones and some of the first ones to like split screen apps okay so when the note was younger they were really leaning into like look how big this screen is you can have four apps open at once you can multitask like crazy use a stylus to do whatever you want and i was like there's no doubt this is the best big phone experience they're giving you everything here but this year it sort of leaned back into hardware and if you look at the spec sheet, Snapdragon 855+, 12 gigs of RAM, 120 hertz, 6.3 inch OLED,

dual front-facing speakers, underrated. You don't see that a lot anymore. And you know, all this other gaming stuff, 6,000 milliamp hour batteries. That is like, to me, I have a big phone and I want it to last forever. And like 6,000 milliamp hour batteries just absolutely crazy to me.

It's two times some other phones that came out this year. You got a terabyte of flash storage. You had all this other stuff. So I think it didn't have quite as much software features as the Note. It doesn't have a stylus, clearly. But when you put all that hardware together with a headphone jack and a huge battery, that's a big phone for me. Yeah.

And that's nothing against the Note 10. Oh, no. The Note 10 is incredible. But Asus knocked it out of the park this year with that phone, and I think it deserved it. Here's my biggest snub of the year, I think. I think if this was like, because I think it could have been in this discussion. Samsung Galaxy S10, and in this case, specifically S10 Plus.

Okay. And this will be a recurring theme, because they were like right on the brink of a lot of these. It's not quite as good of a big phone as the note yeah and and i'll bring it up again later but i think s10 plus was gonna feel like a pretty big snub in some of these categories so just bringing it up now we'll come back to it but uh did anyone else did anyone have any big disagreements with this category for big phone no i think it was anyone who disagreed with it thought no 10 plus okay well there we have it two best big phones of the year right there all right so next up category category for big phone no i think it was anyone who disagreed with it thought no 10 plus okay

well there we have it two best big phones of the year right there all right so next up category best compact smartphone and i had galaxy s10e as the winner for that and our runner-up was iphone 11 pro so where are we at on that all right uh so someone named Sam had a response to that, actually. Let's hear it. Let's play it. So I think the iPhone 11 Pro should have won the best compact phone since it is a small phone in relative terms, which is kind of the criteria. I don't know how the S10e would have won when iPhone 11 Pro has better specs overall as well as better cameras. cameras well depending on the blind smartphone

test that might not be true but anyways i feel like iphone 11 pro was robbed for best compact phone uh okay yeah i i think that and we're gonna see a lot of top twos for this this as a theme but i could be convinced iphone 11 pro could be best compact phone over the S10e. But it's interesting when you say specs because you have the A11, which I'll give the edge to the iPhone, but you have more RAM in the Samsung phone. You have a bigger phone and a high, is it a higher resolution? I have to double check on resolution, but you have a bigger screen in a small phone on the S10e. You have a bigger battery on the S10e and You have a bigger battery on the S10e

and you have expandable storage on the S10e and you have a headphone jack on the S10e. So does the iPhone really have better specs? I'd really say it just comes down to experience though. And the iPhone 11 Pro is a full-on flagship. It has all the cameras and everything. That's the hard thing sometimes is to compare experience through iOS and Android because that can get down to really, really relative to the person who enjoys it.

Yeah, for a lot of people, the iPhone 11 Pro is obviously the better choice because they're in that world and they're in that ecosystem. And that's why it's got runner up too is because it's such a good option. So, yeah, I'll say you could convince me iPhone 11 Pro. But I just I really liked a lot of the little subtle things Samsung did with the S10e. The fingerprint reader on the right, on that button, like on the smaller phone where it's reachable and super fast. That was dope to me. So little stuff like that. So also, yes, it did happen to get to the finals of the blind smartphone camera test.

So, uh, yeah, that's, that's your top two for sure. Yeah. All right. Next up was best camera. This one, I don't think you can sway me. It's fine because I don't think anyone argued. Okay, yeah, I'm a lock for this one. iPhone 11 Pro, runner-up being Pixel 4,

and I gave honorable mentions to Huawei Mate 30 Pro and the Note 10 Plus for winning the blind smartphone camera test. But overall, iPhone 11 Pro took a really solid jump up with photos this year. Now, Pixel did, in my opinion, take sometimes better photos. Like I'd prefer the photo from the Pixel side by side with the iPhone like pretty often. But I would gladly take a photo from each if I also get in addition, an ultra wide, a better mic and significantly better video 4k 60, like all the stuff that pixel didn't do in the video world. The iPhone crushed it there. Yeah. So I think I remember

in previous years, I would give out a winner. And then I would also give an honorable mention for video. I think I just wrapped it all up this year. Like the iPhone is just a better camera now in every way. Yeah, I think we've discussed a lot since we've gotten the Pixel 4 and the iPhone 11 in-house. It's just like now the camera is sometimes iPhone does better in this scenario and sometimes Pixel does better in that scenario. So like the camera stills are pretty much even. I know you prefer the Pixel a little bit probably because the pictures it takes are the pictures you like better or what it excels in you like better. So like for you, that's a better still photo.

But now that the stills are better and then iPhone is just light years ahead of Pixels, it was the obvious winner. Yeah, the video world you have to take account of. And that ultra wide, I even think if the Pixel had an ultra wide, which i would have loved to see it still would have gone to the iphone for video so yeah i think that that's a pretty unanimous one there iphone 11 pro is the smartphone camera of the year for 2019 yeah so uh then we move to best budget phone that this is the hardest one this is obviously the hardest for everybody i feel like this is the most we've gotten of it should have been this, it should have been that.

Okay. I mean, we have a couple of videos that people sent us. Great. Most of them are agreeing on the same thing, but this is one where people on Reddit and on Twitter are like, this should have been it, this should have been it, this should have been it. All right, then let's hit that. So I have Redmi K20 Pro as the winner and Pixel 3a as the close runner-up yeah so let's see first we have i'm assuming most people are going to try to convince me that pixel 3a should have been the unanimous winner very much okay all

right what is going on mr marquez brownlee thank you so much for tuning in my name is john i've got a small tech youtube channel. Every year I give a smartphone award to a qualifying smartphone that makes it a Best Buy of that given year. This year I gave it to the Google Pixel 3a because Google and Best Buy work together to leak the phone and make it available at affordable prices all year round at Best Buy stores. I think you can get the Pixel 3a $100 off if you have Sprint. That deal's been going on for a long time. Nonetheless, this is a $399 phone with an awesome camera and great software features. This is why I gave it the Best Buy of 2019.

Did you say Best Buy collaborated with Google to leak the phone? Yeah, I wasn't really sure about that part. Interesting. Okay. Anyway, I just want to say right off the top, a lot of, especially with price, what I talk about is bias towards the launch price. Yeah. And so, yes, the Pixel did launch for $399. And he mentioned it was working with Sprint to give, I'm sure they had some deals where you could trade in or you could pay it over time and it would be less expensive. But I'm just generally going with Google's launch price of $399.

And we had the Redmi K20 Pro launching for a rough equivalent of about $300. Here's what I'll say, because I didn't say this in the Smartphone Awards video, but a big part of the reason why I weighted the K20 Pro over the Pixel 4 is not just the $100 cheaper price, which is a 66% difference, but it's a better performer. And this came from the specs they chose to use and the choices they made. So this was a little bit of a higher-end chip, some more RAM, and it was a bit of a more responsive phone.

And the Pixel obviously went with a lower-end chip, higher-end camera, and they sort of skimped a bit on build quality. And build quality, not as important to me. Some people might like the glass on the K20 Pro more. But really, it's just the Pixel was not a very fast phone for a lot of people. And that's fine. It's a fine phone. It's not fast.

But the K20 Pro for $300 was actually a pretty good performer. Not the best camera clearly, but decent enough. The K20 like in hand and if you were walking around with it would like feel and look more like a flagship phone because of three cameras on the back, a glass back and everything about it just felt like you weren't spending $300. It felt like you were spending $700, where the Pixel 3a is, it's plastic and it's slower. It's not bad. It's fantastic. And honestly, I would probably pick that over the K20 if I were personally buying a phone, just because I like the camera and I like that stock Google.

Yeah, that's a great question. Which one would I personally buy if I only had, you know, 400 bucks to buy a phone? I, hmm, that's actually a tough one. I'd be swayed a little closer to Pixel, but I still think the reason I like K20 Pro, it's basically just mimicking a high-end flagship phone and it's doing the best possible job of it.

Another one I included, I had some honorable mentions, OnePlus 7T, which was like right in that middle ground of 700 bucks. flagship phone and it's doing the best possible job of it. Another one I included, I had some honorable mentions one plus seven T, which was like right in that middle ground of 700 bucks. Yeah. But also, uh, the Motorola one hyper,

which did the same thing. It has this full screen display, huge screen, pop up camera, like nice back. And it's really just mimicking as best as it can, like a really nice high end phone with a flashy design. Like that's what they're trying to do so k20 pro got really close did some really good stuff in that hundred dollar lower price and

of course they both go down over time but that's my justification but of course you know people like their pixels and i think i i understand that software experience is really important uh hello this is me replying to what you posted about twitter um i think that your most affordable one was wrong i think that it should have been well you said that the they're really close but i think that the pixel 3a should have actually been the one because even though the Pixel 3a is more expensive, I think it's a better quality. It's a better price for what you get with it. I think it's a better quality and a phone that more people will go to than red then going with the redimi got it i think a lot of this is going to be like almost personal preference similar to the way the iphone could have won

in a previous category if you value camera yeah this is easily the best quality camera you can get for the money like it's the pixel 3s camera but it's half the price so he's right about that so i'm with you on that and thank you for that submission. But yeah, I think if you just want to use the overall quality word, you have to think about hardware quality too. And Pixel 4's hardware quality wasn't quite as good. So yeah, it's all the factors, but there are also personal decisions where you wouldn't necessarily always want to use the winner that's the funny part i wouldn't necessarily want to pick the winner of some of my categories yeah as the phone i choose over another phone but you have to respect the decisions they're making that got them to

exactly the top of that category yeah i think for more people on planet earth redmi k20 pro is a better buy yeah but we are also biased towards the towards the US where I bet you in the US, obviously Google's 3A is going to sell far better. Yeah. So I'll asterisk that and I'll say the Pixel 3A for more people in the US is probably a better buy. For sure. But if you're just going for straight value and consider all of planet earth where Redmi killed it this year in value, you have to look at K20 Pro. So I think if're if you're in the u.s go ahead and switch those two so it's interesting so you would you would take the pixel i'm assuming over the k20 pro if you're buying one of the two yes and that's most likely due to bias of using past pixel devices and and like my being a pixel guy right now okay so what

if i'm gonna give you an imaginary phone uh-huh both at 400 bucks okay would you take a pixel 4a that had a great camera and terrible performance not that it's terrible but would you take that or a pixel 4a with great design and performance but the camera takes a step down so you're looking at like uh you're looking at like you're looking at like an iPhone level like really nice Shiny hardware and they do something cool with like the fingerprint reader under the glass or something crazy But the camera is not clearly best-in-class anymore So it's not a pixel but it's it's also 400 bucks this great design features solely because if it's that I'll take whatever the It's not a project solely but I feel like this is a choice google isn't necessarily trying to make right now

but it's an interesting variable to consider yeah i think um i find it would find it very surprising if they ever took a step down in cameras because camera is easily what's pulling google up right now and that's what's keeping them in yeah that and software so like as long it's gonna have a nice camera it's gonna have a good software experience uh i would probably still pick the camera the camera if it was 400 bucks i mean i don't need super gimmicky stuff i don't care that it it looks and feels like a uh flagship but i think some people do some people are like hey there's all these people around me that have these flagship phones and I want to also have one,

but I'm in a situation where I can't afford that. So I think that's where Redmi comes in or those phones that are designed to feel like flagships and then spec down a little bit. That's where those come in great. So yeah, I think I would pick the camera just because I can deal with something a little slower. And then I would probably use it for a week

and be like, I made the worst decision. It's so slow. All right, well, let's go to the next category, which we have best battery, Asus ROG Phone 2. This was again, a hands down for me. I've used a lot of phones over a lot of different time and a lot of different versions. And I also gave my honorable mention to the fastest charging phone because I've always

sort of included that in the calculus for best battery. But, you know, OnePlus phones having dash charging and Oppo phones having VOOC charging. The Oppo Reno Ace had Super VOOC 2.0 65 watt fast charging, which was this insane like zero to 130 minutes type of deal. Love that. But the 6,000 milliampere battery on the ROG Phone 2 dominated. It was just, I could use it for two straight days in 120 hertz. And if I turned it down to 60 hertz, which a lot of other flagships are 60 hertz.

So it sounds like bad that i have to turn it down but when you turn it down to 60 hertz this phone just goes forever yeah i think there was someone who said oh you have to turn it down to to get all the good battery life it's like no you don't have to turn it down you're easily getting a full day at 120 hertz double the refresh rate of most phones but say you know you're going out for the weekend you're not coming home you get to where you're going and you look in your bag and like oh man i forgot my there's no charger no problem whatever i'll bump it down to 60 hertz which is still the same as every other phone most phones out there think of it this way i'll make it think of it this way if you could have uh people

were pointing to like iphone 11 or note 10 plus think of if you could turn, people were pointing to like iPhone 11 or Note 10 Plus. Think of if you could turn that phone up to 120 hertz. How insane that would be. And have a 6,000 milliamp hour battery. It's just in another class. Yeah. So that was a no brainer for me. ROG Phone 2.

And then I gave my honorable mention to iPhone 11. And I guess that was my runner up was the iPhone 11, the longest lasting iPhone, really close with iPhone 11 Pro Max at this point because they've included, the iPhone 11 Pro Max got like a several hour boost in battery and the iPhone 11 got an hour boost in battery, but it's still been better in my experience. And then you have the super fast charging phones.

So all those phones together, good stuff. Yeah, I think the only other argument and I have a rebuttal to that, is that the ROG Phone 2 doesn't have wireless charging. Wireless, yeah. That should be part of the battery award, and I agree it should be. The thing about wireless charging is

it's convenient to top off at parts in the day. I'm somebody who uses wireless charging, and I wouldn't want to go back off of that, but I don't need a wireless charger if I'm guaranteeing it's making it through the day every single day. I'll plug it in at night. That I don't need to just lay it down at night.

I can plug it in, but it's when I have to plug it at my desk and in my car and here and there. You don't with ROG phone. Right, and I mentioned this actually in the ROG phone review. It changed the way I use phones. In a normal range for a phone battery, I'm constantly thinking about, all right, does it have wireless charging? All right, I can top it up at my desk,

or oh, I'll just put it on the wireless charging pad at night, and I have this fast charger in my car. So, you know, I combine all these things, and I can go all day. The ROG phone doesn't have wireless charging. It doesn't even really have very fast charging, but it just didn't matter. Yeah, it doesn't. It just doesn't matter. I start the day with 100 and i ended at 77 and it just straight up doesn't matter that i don't have wireless charging so yeah uh that was yeah wireless charging is normally a part of the calculus but when the battery is so big it doesn't matter then you can neglect that part of it yeah so there you have it so that brings us to most improved and the most improved winner with uh its third trophy of the night was the aces rog phone 2 this one i think you could convince me of any other phone

winning this was like the most random one i think no real huge winner okay um i compare this super similar to last year where everyone agreed with us razor Phone 2 made big steps from Razer Phone 1, the one most improved. I think what people aren't doing is looking at the, they're seeing something wins an award that's a phone that's not super widely used compared to Samsung, Apple, Google. Everyone's got to be one of those, huh? Yeah. So like it deserves it because last year I remember going over ROG phone or the first

ROG phone. We were like, wow, these specs are great ROG phone, or the first ROG phone, we were like, wow, these specs are great. And like, there's a lot of really cool things about it. And then the minute we used it and we're like, I just don't know. Like, I don't think I could use it. Yeah, ZenUI kind of held it back. ZenUI was bad. It was at the top.

And then Asus listened to what everyone said. And they put pretty much all of that while keeping their vision of this gaming phone um and then they come back out they ditch zen ui they give us a 6 000 million power battery they give us the hundred last it was 120 hertz last year but this year it's 120 hertz oled which is the first one we saw on any phone right which is amazing they just and they kept the headphone jack they they listened to what they wanted and it made the biggest jump from last year i think some people i know viper mentioned it argue that the iphone 11 was a good jump from the iphone 10s and it was but i think the the rog phone one was so much further

down than the than the 10s yeah and then jumped to the ROG Phone 2, which is amazing, whereas the jump from 10S to 11 was much smaller. Yeah, and so think of it, when you think of most improved award in sports, what do you think of? It doesn't get given out as much. I know we play a Frisbee league called McCuttle, which is just like a summer league

and they usually do most improved. And it's usually someone who was like a rookie last season that spent their entire off season practicing non-stop and came back the next year and looked great wow you look nothing like last year man you're killing it and that's what this was the rog asus makes phones but rog phone was our new phone like that was their first step at this gaming phone or whatever yeah they saw what happened to it just like razor did the year before they reached out and asked for what people wanted like differently and they took that advice and they actually changed it could you imagine if pixel 4 did that this year oh man um man yeah i when i think of most improved player in sports i think of basketball a lot i think of like the guy who is like coming off the bench like sixth guy seventh man yeah who comes back the next year like pascal siakam and

is just a dominant player suddenly you're like he changed a lot uh he clearly listened to coaches and he got better and now he's an impact player and i think when you look at my runner-up was the iphone yeah and it's it's tough because a lot of times you'll see a great player make a big improvement And he's an even more dominant player like iPhone 10s to iPhone 11 Pro major battery games major camera games How can you not give it most improved, but that guy was already a starter? Yeah, and he's still a starter, but now he's having more impact But like I don't know when you look at someone who came off the bench like the ROG phone was just not an option for most people last year. And now suddenly it's the best big phone and the best battery you can get.

Like those huge, huge improvements, I think, are what pushed me over the top. So, you know, I think I could be swayed, but that's where I was at for most improved award. That to me is one of the most obvious awards. Yeah, I think it's so hard. obvious okay awards uh yeah i think it's so hard i remember when the first rog phone came in and there was someone from asus here asus here talking to us about it and why they chose zen ui and and how it is better than all these things yeah and then they make that decision after they hear all those things that the fans disagreed that's a that's a big step you know what i want to see because they gave you they didn't ditch then u i they gave you the option to choose one or the other i would love to see if they have the numbers

what people chose yeah where is that percentage super interesting that'd be interesting this phone is something that i think is just going to get better and better and i think i think with a couple other changes it could actually be a phone we're seeing people a lot of people using soon early candidate for most improved 2020 this is how it could win 2020 uh the same rog yeah okay rog phone 3 could win 2020 if it gets ip rated okay um uh i like want it to be closer to bezel list but i don't want to lose front dual front facing speakers okay um the design they got to tone that down to sell to more people okay here's my theory on that is really really cool computers now are going the clean look oh they're selling to the okay rgb is

becoming less and less of a thing and i think it's becoming more of like super clean all the same colors and everything matches if they just did a real like razor phone to a really nice glass back with oh the roG logo is awesome. And that could just glow different colors. And then you could also add wireless. So IP, wireless charging, cleaner design. Okay. And a nice camera, please.

Yeah. I mean, if it could somehow come into a nice camera, then that easy 2020. Okay. Yeah. If you gave me the ROG Phone 2 right now with the iPhone 11 or the pixels camera, I would use that phone right now. Yeah. That's how much I like it. So give me the software updates. I'm, I'm into it. So next up was the design award and this one, this one changes every year. It means something different. Is it the best build quality? Is it the best design, industrial

design, the least breakable one? Clearly it's not the least breakable one. I gave the design award to the Samsung Galaxy Fold. And the reason is because I think it's the most important design. Obvious caveat here. People broke it. But these people did not buy the phone. This was reviewers who got it in the couple of days where they were sending out the first wave of units and then they started to break and they sent them back and then they made some improvements and then shipped it a couple months later as the first legitimately i think good to go you can buy this today folding phone i would not buy the royal flex i wouldn't even buy the huawei mate x right now in a lot of places especially in the u.s Galaxy Fold folds in half,

has a seven inch screen in your pocket. This is also a candidate for most improved because there's tons of things you can nitpick about it. But I love the risks that Samsung took here. And I think it's the most important phone of 2019 because of its design. So you're saying that innovation is part of the design award?

Yeah, innovation and just risk-taking in design, basically. Yeah. And I gave my runner-up to Galaxy Note 10, the smaller Note 10, which is really nice. This is another one where I think you could say Galaxy S10 and S10 Plus were snubbed because those were also really, really nicely designed phones in pretty much all the same ways as a Note 10.

Yeah. So Samsung's just filling up the design chart. Yeah yeah we had a couple responses uh for this one go for it yo marquez hi andrew uh best wishes for the season and yeah i just wanted to say that yeah you've already placed the award so nicely uh but uh i have a suggestion uh i think the design award uh is equally uh you know belonging to samsung galaxy s10 or as rds and plus you know in the world of notches for 2018 they have they came up with a notchless we can say notchless design. You know, it is equally beautiful. And yeah, that's what I'm saying. Peace.

Yeah, biggest snub for sure. Galaxy S10, S10+. And you're right. Also, it came out earlier in the year and they were pretty expensive, but they were among the first to do the hole punch that the Note later got. And if you asked me to buy an S10+, or a Note 10,

I think I would buy the s10 plus because i just take the bigger battery and i don't need the stylus and the headphone jack and the headphone jack so yeah if you're if you're talking about biggest snubs i'm kind of with you i probably could have replaced my runner-up of note 10 with galaxy s10 plus i like that all right so we had another response with a different suggestion for winner of this so let's do what you think hey marquez hey andrew good job you guys on the uh smartphone awards uh i'm wondering if maybe in the design category we can give a special nod to the zenfone 6 uh fair to say nothing else really looked like it this year um handle the notch in a unique way and

uh well i mean the galaxy fold is a hell of a phone, but I think this deserves an honorable mention. What do you guys think? Yeah, interesting. So Zenfone 6 had this swiveling camera at the top that flipped around and gave you the high-quality camera as a selfie camera. I think it could have gotten an honorable...

I think a lot of phones could have gotten honorable mentions, this one this one for me was only held back because it was just such a big phone it was really bulbous and again you can you can make a laundry list of complaints about the galaxy folds design i think it's sort of exempt because of the uniqueness of it but um i'm not against zenfone 6 i think this is also one of the bigger snubs. I think I would have loved to have had a different bracket for the smartphone camera test, knowing how good it is. I also think about whether or not I would use that phone in general, and I think it was just a little big

and a little bit clunky feeling, but I do appreciate the way they attacked the notch in a different way. Maybe if it was a bit smaller. Huh, yeah, I think they attacked the notch really well. And we saw that those cameras did do well in the test. So the fact that then I get that as a selfie and there's also this like super, super niche,

you can control the camera and take a panorama or something. Like someone might be able to do something really interesting with that. But yeah, it's a different way for the notch. Everyone always worries about moving parts, but everything we've tried, it seemed totally fine. I don't see any issues with how it did it rather than just a little pop-up camera. Yeah, so at the beginning, if you take Galaxy Fold out of all of this and you just had to say, what's the best designed phone of the year?

That was a really tough call because you're like, all right, I don't think I can pick something that just got rid of the headphone jack. I don't think I can pick something that has a huge ugly notch, right? I gotta do something that doesn't have that. Okay, so we're at where I get. So then you're in the world of like moving parts of like pop-up cameras and swiveling cameras

and none of them really broke. So I guess that's fine too. I think I have more confidence in the pop-up camera than the swivel to not break, but maybe that's just me. Yeah, I look at the Samsung stuff, and they kept it pretty good. OnePlus 7T, if it had a less ridiculously terrible-looking camera bump, I think could have been considered too. Just a teardrop notch, and it's a flat.

You know, there's a bunch of possible considerations for like literally just best designed phone yeah i think people would have hated iphone just because like the stovetop on the back and the huge notch and same design for the past three years isn't yeah i don't think that should have won it um so yeah i do have to say and you mentioned moving parts before and pop-up cameras like it was definitely something everyone was very nervous about at first and i'm really glad to see i don't i don't recall any big news articles or anything saying that there's a broken after x amount of time so it seems like they're all holding up really well yeah um way better than the original folding part of the galaxy fold yeah because it's just one of those things where you see those tests done by a machine in a lab where you saw the Galaxy Fold folding and you saw the OnePlus

selfie camera opening a million times. You wonder in everyday use how that'll hold up. And it seems like all these moving parts have held up really well. Yeah. Conceal them the best you can and hopefully they don't get any debris in them. So there it is uh speaking of debris bust of the year we arrive at the the one negative award we give every year this one was this one was uh pixel 4 and i did give an honorable little runner up there but the pixel 4 won the bust of the year and i are there people who disagree with this one there are a lot oh really i don't think i i don't think we have time to put all the videos in for this so we might add put one or two in okay um well disagree with this one? There are a lot. Oh, really? I don't think we have time to put all the videos in for this, so we might put one or two in.

Okay. Well, I mean, this one was just the delta between the expectations and the deliverable. I have a lot to say about this. As a Pixel 4 user, I have a lot to say about this. Well, I want to hear it. I mean, first of all, I would say I persuaded you very hard to make this bust of the year.

I think you originally had something else in mind. I had the FlexPi as my winner for bus of the year. And I tried very hard to change your mind. And actually, I didn't think you even did. And I remember the trophies came in. I went, you gave it to Pixel? And I was like, it deserves it. Fair warning, the Pixel 4 is a fine phone. If you have the Pixel 4 and you're enjoying it, you should enjoy it. Fair warning, the Pixel 4 is a fine phone.

If you have the Pixel 4 and you're enjoying it, you should enjoy it. It's fine enough. In terms of the two phones that I used the most in the last couple months of the year, basically it came down to like, okay, I need higher refresh rate. It's clearly come down to this.

Between ROG Phone 2, Pixel 4, and OnePlus 7T Pro. And I kept coming back to Pixel because of that camera. I've been using the Pixel really often. It's clearly not a bad phone. But performance started to go down on me, and I'm just so done with dealing with that. So I was back to OnePlus 7T Pro. Yeah, it's like people see bust

of the year and they think it's going to be this complete garbage phone which is like that's what the flex pie was it was terrible and it's what the hydrogen was last year yeah so i mean well the hydrogen performs better than the flex pie at least like true it performed the flex pie is truly the worst phone we've seen in a long time. But I'm curious what people had to say. All right, so here's someone's take on why Pixel should not have been Busted the Year. What's up? I'm QDHD. My name is Arman. I think the Busted the Year should have been the Royal FlexPi.

It was absolute garbage. The hardware was horrible. The software kept glitching out every time you fold it. And it was just so big and clanky on the on the other hand the pixel had an amazing camera even the telephoto the great still had a pretty great camera the screen was much better than the last one and the and the software was pretty good and the hardware was pretty good so i think the best of of the year should have been the Royal Flex Pi. So I feel like after I watched that video,

I came up with kind of like an analogy of why we picked Pixel 4 as bust. This is bust of the year, not worst phone of the year. Right. So when you look in sports, you would never, like people call players busts all the time, young players. Like the number two draft pick that never even scored. Yeah, like four years later is like getting benched some games People call players busts all the time, young players. Like the number two draft pick that never even scored. Yeah, like four years later is getting benched some games

or healthy scratched. So you would never call a player a bust if they were picked in the 10th round. Which the FlexPi is not like a first round pick. The FlexPi wasn't this crazy advertised phone that we were all like, oh my God, here's a folding phone. This is going to be amazing. We saw it at CES. We all like oh my god here's a folding phone this is gonna be amazing we saw it at ces we heard like oh they have a folding phone let's try it and the minute we touched that thing we were like oh lord that's what it was that phone

was perfect for ces look what we made we're not gonna sell it but like check it out phones can fold someday and you're like oh neat and then they put it on a shelf you're like whoa whoa whoa wait a second so like nobody had expectations for flex pie to be good fair you can't bust if no one ever thought you were gonna be good on the first base whereas the pixel you get all these rumors and it's hard to like blame google that they didn't live up to rumors because we're at the point where so many people put out so many fake rumors about things that it's just you're expecting the next you're expecting a holy grail of a phone yeah exactly and it's not gonna happen but like we see the pixel 4 and it was just the most meh response ever to the point where they i feel like they even took features away we go back to the fact that we lost unlimited full res uh unlimited full res photo storage. We lost our super wide angle selfie.

We don't have portrait mode in wide anymore. I mean, I still like the notch better than the forehead. That's a bold statement right there. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about that before in here and I think you agreed with me actually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like instead we got Soli, which I was actually really into solely at first

i was like i think this is a great idea not for like the swipe features but for the fact that when i go it makes face id faster or face unlock faster and it makes like turning my alarm off better now i can't stand it that is actually that's a little underrated i think solely or this face unlock is actually the one thing that was actively driving me away from the Pixel, is like I just wanted like a, and it would unlock, and I'd just start pressing things as I was taking it out the car. And I just wanted, like, a normal unlock experience. And, you know, I could do the pin and everything, keep turning it back off, but I switched away from it, and I really don't miss it.

Yeah, I have, like, two examples of why Soli makes me furious. So let's just start bashing Pixel 4. I mean, we're arguing our pick here. Yeah, right. So I have my wireless charger set up to the top left of my keyboard at work and at home. There's so many times where if I reach for the escape key, I guess I go in Soli's little dome. Oh, boy. And it goes, oh, hey, someone's trying to unlock this.

And then it kind of lights the screen up. And then I catch it out of the corner of my eye. And I look at my phone. And now my phone's unlocked. It's unlocked. unlocked i'm like so then i have to lock it again or it's just going to be on for a while then the other thing i've had is in my car holder which is like right over my radio in the middle of my car okay i've had it be unlocked before because lord knows i probably looked at it or if it's connected to my bluetooth it's like smart trusted device um i've reached for

like a water bottle in my passenger seat and it skipped my song before like it's just all these things that oh man make me not very happy about solely and and the way i yeah it's funny because when i try to like swipe on purpose it like sometimes doesn't work um yeah no i the funny part is like you're right the the the comment the, the commenter, like the FlexPi is the worst phone. It costs more. You should never buy it. But I think that argument that we're, that we're sort of leaning on is like the Delta between your expectations, which may just, they may come from hype or they just may just come from like, Hey, at the beginning of the year, what are the best phones probably going to be the iPhone, the Samsung and the pixel. So we're

talking like top five draft pick at least. And when it turns out to really not live up to that 900 price tag no that's when we're considering it a bust yeah there are people that this phone will be great for it but it's so much harder to recommend to the average person mostly because of battery life some people say they get great battery life out of it i don't i would say most times i put it on my charger at night and i go to bed pretty early and it stays on a charger almost all day i'm at like 20 and that's sitting on a wireless charger wow for a long time yeah um that's really hard to suggest it's just i don't know the 90 hertz thing was what i was so excited for and i still don't even consider myself on a 90 hertz phone.

I don't force it because my battery life isn't great, and I just don't really feel like it's 90 hertz at all. It's really a very often 60 hertz phone, but hey, there you have it. Yeah, it was supposed to be. That's why it's a bust. It was supposed to be top three. You know what this opens the door for? Yeah.

Most improved toward 2020 pixel five i'm just saying i hope like with every bone in my body i hope pixel five is most improved yeah um yeah i want this phone to be good so bad all right well you know that was the title of the hydrogen review and we saw what happened so anyway let's uh let's take a quick break and we'll come back and get fired up and talk about OnePlus 7 Pro being the MVP. And we'll probably have some talks about that too. Yeah, a lot. Let's take a quick break.

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big trophy, literally. So this is the one that gets the most fire. I just want to start by saying the MVP, and this is sort of what drives this whole conversation, is not necessarily the best phone for everyone because there is no best phone for everyone. It's not necessarily the best overall phone. And I draw a lot of parallels to this and the way I think about it, uh, actually from basketball again, and just at any point during the season, there's like three or four, probably more great arguments for an MVP.

And that could be, you know, best player on the best team. That's Giannis right now. Or it could be perennial all time. Great player. It could be LeBron right now. It could be who is,

uh, historically hot right now. That's James Harden. Like you could make a great argument for all of them. So in this case, I have OnePlus 7 Pro as my MVP for 2019. And of course, there are going to be great arguments for others, but that I think I'm prepared to defend. Okay, good.

I think you're going to have some. I think there's a lot. Do you know what? Actually, before we get into people disagreeing with you, one place that seemed to agree with you almost unanimously on this, I'm sure there's a few people who didn't, was Reddit. So Reddit doesn't always agree with us. And our Android subreddit, which is what I was looking at this on, is generally kind

of all over the place. Because when you see Android versus Apple, that's pretty specific. Apple likes Apple because of Apple things. Android doesn't just like Android because of Android things. Then you have your subcategories in Android of the different phone companies. There's a subreddit for every phone. So the Android subreddit itself is normally crazy, but so many of the top comments agreed that they thought OnePlus was like,

OnePlus 7 Pro is one of the best phones this year, if not the best phone. So just the fact that this is a place that generally doesn't always agree with us and they took this video really well, they thought all the explanations were great and that all of them could see why it got picked. Is that so? But I could easily see like,

and I'm sure we'll have plenty, but a variety of opinions about others that could just as easily be considered an MVP. There's always gonna be. Should we jump? Well, here's what, I'll give my explanation a variety of opinions about others that could just as easily be considered an MVP. There's always going to be. Should we jump? Well, here's what I'll give my explanation for why I chose it right up the top. And then we'll go to see what people say.

So here's why I picked OnePlus 7 Pro. First of all, performance. And you get all the great stuff on paper, obviously. OnePlus 7T and 7T Pro came out later in the year. But just as far as setting the tone for the year about what they were going to do, you got Snapdragon 855. You got, I think it's eight gigs of RAM and a 4,000 milliamp hour battery. You got dash charging and it's missing like some of the things like a headphone jack and wireless charging, like people always like to bring up, but the performance of OxygenOS on that phone and the user experience was A plus the notchless display a little bit annoying that

it was curved on the edges but i thought that was an excellent display 1440p pop-up camera the cameras and this is something i always say i'm trying to keep things about like where they appear on launch yeah and they were like decent to okay cameras but they were the worst part of the phone but they have gotten a lot better with software updates. And then the price. And so this launched at 669, and 90 hertz was the real separator for me. So it became very obvious over the course of the year that you basically have higher refresh rate or not, and that was a big part of why

I either liked the phone or didn't. And since it's my awards, this is one of the big things that was playing into my my consideration for mvp so i mean that's big but like you say like 90 i know you don't mean it but you're saying it like 90 hertz is the only reason it won it didn't the specs that this 669 phone has are the same specs that thousand dollar phones have it was all around a1 like everything they did was either a or about to be A, like B to B+. It's actually funny.

People said, how did OnePlus 7 Pro not get a runner-up or honorable mention in any category but then win the overall? If you kind of look at the categories we have, the ones winning the camera, especially the Pixel, that's kind of a one trick pony at this point well just go through the categories it's not going to be best in class in best big phone it's not huge it's not going to be the best compact phone it's not compact right it's not the most improved player they've sort of had their thing for a couple years yeah the design i think is one place it could have stepped up and maybe gotten an honorable mention yeah having a

fully bezel-less type of look and not having a notch and the pop-up camera and everything. But it sort of felt pretty standard and the camera hump on the back was fine. It didn't really stand out to me. I think you could have given it an honorable mention, but I chose not to. So yeah, the categories were really about spikes in those places. Yeah. It's kind of like in the car sense, like not a lot of Hondas or Toyotas are really blowing

your mind. But when it comes down to like, I'm of Hondas or Toyotas are really blowing your mind. But when it comes down to like, I'm going to spend this amount of money overall, yeah. Overall, it's a car that's going to last me forever. And I'm always going to be confident in my buying decision. That's what the OnePlus 7 Pro felt like. It's a Prius. Okay. So no, that's definitely not a true statement.

Not the complete opposite. But let's go, let's get into disagreements because I know there's some others. Also, I had, I had some runner ups, so I'll just toss those in there. I had iPhone 11 Pro. I had Samsung Galaxy Fold. I had, I think that's it. Okay. That's what we said in the video.

Yeah. Yeah. We've been talking a little bit. I mean, no, let's go into, what should we go into first? What people said or other phones that people think got snubbed? I want to hear arguments for other phones that should have won. Okay, let's go into a video first. Okay.

This is from Viper. He's posted a lot about this. This seems to be his most concise argument, so we'll go over this one. Let's hear it, Viper. He's talked in a lot of different other ways, but we don't have time to go over literally everything. All right, let's hear it. So Mark Kemp wants to know why the OnePlus 7 Pro isn't the smartphone of the year in 2019 where do i begin maybe i could begin with the suspect battery light or the mediocre camera in comparison to a competition or the lack of wireless charging

or the fact that it is priced so dangerously close to the iphone 11 that the iphone 11 runs circles around the one plus seven pro okay so it sounds like he's the iphone 11 that the iphone 11 runs circles around the one plus seven pro okay so it sounds like he's saying iphone 11 should have been uh phone of the year over one plus seven because of its shortcomings i think like i don't know if that's exactly what he thinks should have been also he says phone of the year but it's mvp yeah most valuable so i think that right off the bat is a big distinction to make like what is it it doesn't it almost doesn't matter what you call it like i call it mvp but it's also the smartphone of the year like it doesn't really matter what you call it as long

as mvp takes into account price and like worth oh that too being worthy of the price like plays a little bit into it more than phone of the year where phone of the year i feel like you don't really think about price it's just flat out what. What's the best phone. And I think that argument comes a little differently when you can add $1,200 phones onto it. Um, but in terms of value, uh, so it seems like if he's honoring value at a $30 higher price tag with the regular iPhone 11, not the pro versions versions he thinks it runs circles around the the one plus seven pro so i think that's the main part of his argument here runs circles around the one plus seven pro okay so i will give the iphone the edge in the a11 department because

that chip is notoriously incredible um but is there any other way that the iphone runs circles around camera that's okay camera is the biggest gap between the two i think for sure we've always known that with one plus the thing is is we say one plus is an okay camera okay is still really good in 2019 like okay is still all that anybody most people really need so like if you're really getting down into the nitty-gritty like 4k 60 fps video or maybe better portrait mode and stuff like that then yeah yeah the iphone might be better but the one plus camera is not bad it's just not as good as pixel i'd say today it's a b plus but here's what i'll give the two reasons that i'll disagree with viper one is why i can't give mvp to ip. Okay. And two is to address his other points. Okay.

I can't give MVP to iPhone 11 because of the display. And there are, you know, I'm going to be biased and just love pixels and love displays, and you've got to have a nice screen for me to enjoy using the phone. So I just couldn't give it to the iPhone 11 for that reason. Big notch. Just not a great all-around display for me. LCD 800p. Yeah, just not a lot going for that screen. And number two, big notch, just not a great all-around display for me. LCD 800p.

Yeah, just not a lot going for that screen. And number two, he said, so I think he said suspect battery life was his word choice on that. I don't have any problems with the OnePlus 7 Pro's battery life. It's a 4,000 milliamp hour battery, and you are going to use a lot of power using a 1440p 90Hz panel, but then also dash charging comes in and was a big part of why i didn't have any problems with the battery so i'm not gonna say that that's anything i would hold against oneplus 7 pro and then he said uh oh wireless charging yes uh wireless charging is one of those things that is a nice to have for me but not necessary and i think we went over this when

we talked about the rog phone yeah where like certain phones could definitely benefit from it. Especially with not great battery life, if you just top it up all the time. But I can't really, similar to the headphone jack, I can't really say it's necessary for me to call it MVP. So here's what's interesting to me is his argument, I think can be taken and swapped around. His argument right now is that OnePlus still doesn't have wireless charging when it should have wireless charging. Because to him, wireless charging is something that's very important. To you, high refresh rate is very important. And iPhone doesn't have high refresh rate, but it does have wireless charging. So you can't say, hey, why don't you have wireless charging? You don't get to win. When you could say, why don't you have a higher refresh rate?

You don't get to win. And you can. I'm don't you have a higher refresh rate? Yeah. You don't get to win. And you can. I'm sure Viper is a big fan of wireless charging and that's why he wants the MVP to have it. And there are a bunch of great phones this year that did have it. But here's what I'll say. The iPhone 11 and 11 Pro, they are the fastest, smoothest 60 Hertz phones.

So they are really right at the top. They have 120 Hertz refresh layer of touch sensitivity. So when you move your hand across the screen and move it back and forth, it's responding at twice as fast as a typical 60 hertz display that's refreshing the touch layer at 60 hertz. So it's the smoothest 60 hertz phone, but there's just something about those 90 hertz and 120 hertz phones that consistently feel smoother and faster. And I would say the whole running circles around it part

is just negated. It just doesn't feel that way when you have a higher refresh rate. I think it's, I mean, yes, but there's also other reasons. In terms of running circles, I just thought I'd pull up a spec sheet. Now I know specs aren't everything. All right. So just numbers here. Okay. Yeah. Just pure specs here. We're going to kind of go back and forth to see if any of these are, which is better, which is running circles, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. So A13 Bionic versus Snapdragon 855. Okay. Both the highest end at the time, but advantage Apple. Yep. Yeah. Okay. Storage. I'm pretty sure this is base storage, 64 versus 128. Right. So double the base storage advantage OnePlus. Yep. Sure.

Camera, there's numbers here, but I'm not going to read them because we all know apple is much better are they both 12 megapixels i think uh both cameras on apple are 12 megapixels then one plus goes 48 16 8 oh right yeah advantage apple with the cameras for sure i would say that's the biggest place where it quote unquote run circles around yeah which Yeah. An A plus camera run circles around a B camera, B plus camera, if you want to say that, sure. But yeah, advantage is what I'd call that. Battery, we have 3110 milliamp hours versus 4000 milliamp hours, but you've had more experience. This is a classic like numbers don't matter as much stat, just like megapixels. The iPhone, I'd say the iPhone 11 has better battery life than the OnePlus 7 Pro, despite that having a bigger battery cell.

But you also get wireless charging on the iPhone. You also have dash charging, fast charging in the box on the cheaper OnePlus. So, you know, again, no circles being run at this point, but I would say advantage Apple. Okay. So, so far we're what four specs in and three of them are to apple so far right cool uh next is we're gonna go to display and i'm just gonna kind of lump the whole display together well yeah so it's a 6.1 inch lcd 800p notched display with bezels yeah with bezels on the side yep versus a 6.67 inch notchless 1440p amoled 90 hertz it's

not close like that's running circles that's that's running circles that is just on a whole nother level yeah so uh advantage one plus okay and then ram four gigs versus six gigs that's base that's about the same if If you're talking about equivalent on an Android phone, that's about the same thing. I'd call that very close. Both phones were launching around $700 so iPhone 11 launched at $700, $699 and OnePlus 7 Pro

launched at $669. I think those phones are pretty much even as far as experience and what you're getting for the money to which point it comes down to iOS versus Android. What is better for you? Yeah. No way I can answer that for everyone viewing this, but I don't think any one of those phones

is obviously a better buy than the other until you consider what's valuable to you. Yeah, I think both of these phones, especially at that price range, if we're talking about value for MVP, are both super super valuable super worth it phones to buy in 2019 but to say that you can't see why the other phone is worthy of that is just insane to me yeah listen okay i'm i'm gonna just break it down to the simplest reason why oneplus 7 pro was phone of the year software experience so i'm talking oxygen os and your phone of the year. Software experience, so I'm talking Oxygen OS. Your phone of the year also. Sorry, OnePlus 7 Pro was my phone of the year.

Okay, yeah. For me, I value things like camera, display, performance, and software, and this phone was great at all these things. It had a pretty good camera. It had great software experience. Oxygen OS, I think, alongside alongside pixel is about the best android gets but then you also have 90 hertz and you have the optimization one plus is put in there it's the fastest snappiest feeling phone and so having that for the money right off the bat is awesome then you have a pretty great battery life you

have dash charging and then you have on top of all that the low price uh i don't see any phone being better for me for that yeah and it's my award show so i'm buying it so yeah there's gonna be other people who would have different mvps but that's where i'm at i'm kind of interested i would be shocked if nobody thought like iphone 11 pro max should have been mvp because it's just the best phone i think there are people that think that actually viper probably thinks that as well i think there are people who think that and i think it's a great argument i think he just wanted to bring it down into the the value aspect of it okay sure and like compare something closer i think he's him and some other people i've seen um have said that they don't think the one plus seven pro is

even in top five phones of the year and they think that's in that's tough i don't want to put too many words in their mouth but i'm pretty sure from one of the videos and they think that's in that's tough i don't want to put too many words in their mouth but i'm pretty sure from one of the videos i read or watched said it was an easy choice to not even put that in top five of the year okay for my nba fans i'm going to assign mvp candidates to current nba players how about that sure so i won't understand any of this okay that's it'll be i'll explain it a little bit okay Okay. Cool. Okay. So the iPhone 11 Pro is LeBron James. Okay. Right. He's the best player in the world. He has been the best player in the world for years.

He had a little bit of a decline last year, and that's when everyone swooped in and decided to make arguments that he's not the best player in the world already, but he's the player of the decade. The iPhone's a player of the decade. It's easy to make an argument that LeBron's the MVP, just like it's easy to make an argument that the iPhone 11 Pro is the best phone. So I accept that. Okay, then I'll go to something like the Galaxy Fold. And I'm going to go, this is hilarious. I'm going to go, James Harden is the Samsung Galaxy Fold. He's kind of breaking the game right now, no pun intended, where he's historically great at a couple of things, which are getting to the free throw line and making and shooting a lot of three-pointers

and doesn't really worry about the other things. And to me, this Galaxy Fold being like the first phone that's going, okay, you know what, we're folding it in half. This is a new concept, a new idea. We'll see if it works. And the fact that it's off the ground and working is amazing. James Harden, you can make an argument right now, is the MVP. Leads the NBA in scoring by a mile.

And then chokes when it gets released or hits the playoffs. Possibly, exactly, exactly. That's all I know about the NBA. He gets to the playoffs, which is releasing the phone, and it's a little bit different, a little shaky, but that's another one. Then we'll go uh galaxy note 10 plus is yannis yannis antetokounmpo this dude 610 absolute freak massive great use of space

this guy he's getting to the bucket no matter what he doesn't really have a jump shot meaning he's not playing as well as smaller players in certain areas. But if you just want it the best big possible, just get a Giannis, man. Just get an ROG phone or a Note 10. That's Giannis. So that's a legit argument too. And then I'll go one more, which is gonna be,

I think I can weirdly assign the ROG phone to Luka Doncic right now because he's young. And the ROG phone too is the second phone they've ever made. And they're kind of young and they're kind of new to it, but they lit it up on the spec sheet. And if you look at Luka across the numbers, dude's averaging 30 points, nine rebounds, nine assists. He's leading a team into the playoff picture

that shouldn't be there. Suddenly Asus got three awards this year. So Asus ROG Phone 2, that's Luka. You can make a real argument he's the MVP right now. And I couldn't really strongly disagree. Like, yo, LeBron runs circles around Luka. Like, well, they're both incredible. Like, there's no real obvious choice for MVP,

which is why it's just going to come down to my own values and what I like as a player and who I like watching. So I'll say OnePlus 7. Let me pick a player now. For the OnePlus 7 Pro, so you're looking at more like a speedster. like watching. So I'll say one plus seven. Let me pick a player now for the one plus seven pro. So you're looking at more like a speedster. You're looking at more like a Steph Curry type when he was like the 2015, 2016 unanimous MVP version where like, again, he's just faster than you. He's going to beat you in a certain couple of ways. And maybe he's not the strongest and maybe

he's not posting people up or anything like that, but he's got a couple of things he does really, really well. And it's clearly valuable for his team and what you get for the money. Cause he's not posting people up or anything like that, but he's got a couple things he does really, really well and is clearly valuable for his team and what you get for the money, because he's being underpaid, is definitely worth it. So there's my argument, there's my MVP collaboration. I don't even know what to call that, but that's what I'll say is my justification.

There are several MVPs that are legit, awesome players, but I'm picking my steph curry 2015 2016 i think we were we definitely totally understand that there are other people think there's a smartphone of the year out there but it shouldn't be that much big of a surprise that that was your pick and it's totally worthy of being in that conversation which some people apparently don't think it is. But anyways, let's go. We have one other person on Twitter who said something about MVP. Actually, two more. Hey, Marcus.

Happy New Year. Thanks for giving us this chance. I just think that a phone which doesn't have the best camera or is not among top two, three of this category should not be the MVP of the year. And that's it. Cheers, mate. Plain and simple. I like it.

You got to have a top camera to be a top MVP candidate. And that is a great point. And I think a lot of people would agree that is sort of similar to the argument like you can't give Giannis the MVP if you can't shoot. I would argue you got to have higher refresh rate to be an MVP. sort of similar to the argument like you can't give yannis the mvp if you can't shoot um i would

argue you gotta have higher refresh rate to be an mvp and that's just my again bias is a word i like to use but like that's just what i value in a phone um i think the one plus seven pro camera was pretty good it and i think a lot of people just like i think i said it's the worst part about the phone in my video which made people think it's like bad, but like, it's really not that bad. So yeah, that would be my counter argument is, hey, you can win MVP without a jump shot. You can win best, most valuable phone of the year if you have higher refresh rate. You don't necessarily have to have the best camera. Yeah.

So you're looking at the things that you value, which is also pretty crazy to me. And I think people watching this knowing you're such a camera person and a pixel peeper and all that they're assuming you're gonna pick one of the best cameras yeah um but i think that just speaks more to how great the user experience is on oneplus 7 because you are someone who wants to have the best i've watched you multiple times switch between like try the pixel 4 again because it has a great camera and then i just a couple days later watch you swap your sims back out um so you have to pick kind of what is going to feel the best to you and if that part that's lacking it as long as it's not lacking enough that it ruins the rest of the experience right

it's fine like you're you're gonna make of the experience, right. It's fine. Like you're, you're going to make your sacrifice for the one plus seven pro the sacrifices, the camera, but it's not that big of a sacrifice. Yeah. Yeah. If you,

you could put the, the absolute greatest camera you could, if you redid the red hydrogen and it had the greatest camera, any smartphone had ever seen incredible photos and videos, but it had like a 30 Hertz display and like it was like the trash the rest of user experience i don't i couldn't use it as my daily phone like i'd really not be able to keep using the rest of the phone all the time how often are you taking pictures versus how often are you looking at pictures scrolling through instagram emailing and like

calling texting all this other stuff you do on your phone so that's where i'm at all right so we have one other person who has a different suggestion for mvp or at least an honorable mention and we kind of talked about this phone before so let's give him a shot and we'll respond um is in the smartphone awards is that why wasn't the galaxy s10 plus considered the winner or even an honourable mention for MVP of this year. Comparing with the OnePlus 7 Pro, both of these phones now are reduced in the price but the S10 Plus has more features. It still kept the headphone jack, It still has expandable storage via micro SD. And it has the capability of having fast wireless charging and reverse wireless charging. So I'm interested in your views and points.

And yeah, Merry Christmas. 100%, Merry Christmas. I'm with you on Galaxy S10 Plus snub of the year in like pretty much all the categories that sat there on my desk. Didn't win anything, but I think was a bit overshadowed by the Note, like because of how similar they are. Yeah. So he's right. So this phone has wireless charging, reverse wireless charging. If you're into that, has, I would say, slightly better cameras than the OnePlus, but it also launched at nine hundred dollars eight fifty nine hundred bucks it is tough to say both have been reduced in price because we don't like to

take that into consideration but right but it is true if you're gonna like literally pick which one to buy you should you consider that um but again i think if samsung's phones this year had high refresh rate we would be having a totally different picture as far as i forgot i forgot to ask that question so just going back into like phone of the year or mvp whatever if the iphone 11 pro or the iphone 11 or the note 10 had 90 hertz yeah yeah no absolutely i love those phones i would love those i would be using probably the note 10 right now if i had 90 hertz so like one plus seven pro instantly gone if one of those has higher i don't know i don't know about instantly gone but that's such a big factor for me so like one plus seven pro instantly gone if one of those has i don't know i don't know about instantly gone but that's such a big factor for me so like you look at so that phone

was the note 10 plus was 1100 bucks so at that point i'm looking like you gotta have high refresh rate for me to even think about it at that price um if you go down all the way to galaxy s10 and you have high refresh rate and you have all those other things and it's 800 bucks. And I think that's a phone you definitely consider for phone of the year. Um, and you know, I did give an honorable mention to the iPhone 11 pro without high refresh rate. I gave galaxy fold for the design and honorable mention, but I, I, I think that's really the theme of this entire hour and a half is I really like high refresh rate at the expense of some other things because that overall experience gets that much better when your refresh rate is 50% higher

and even double with 120 hertz. So yeah, I would say Galaxy S10 Plus number of the year, but I'm crossing my fingers for high refresh rate stuff from Samsung because they made the panels. That would be awesome. And I mean, Samsung screens have always just looked like the best.

They've been best in class displays. So there we have it. So what have we learned? If we wrap this whole thing up. You know what? I will say this. Everyone's got different values. I've probably said this exact thing before.

Probably in this podcast. Yeah, probably already today. Everyone has different values about what they different- Probably in this podcast. Yeah, probably already today. Everyone has different values about what they actually really like in a smartphone. So for my award show, I gave my winners based on what I valued. We had some design stuff, best big phone, best small phone, all that stuff.

I think if you listening to this had your own personal smartphone awards, you could make a very legitimate argument for seven totally different phones. You could have a different bust of the year. You could have a different big phone, different small phone, and you'd be totally right. And that's the beauty of it is everyone can have their own set of values and line up things on a chart based on those values. And I'm just glad everyone got to participate a little bit and talk it out. It's been good. Yeah, that was a lot of fun.

got to participate a little bit and talk it out. Yeah. It's been good. Yeah, that was a lot of fun. So hopefully we get to do this again next year because the blind smartphone camera test gets that much more interesting every year and the smartphone awards gets that much more hype every year.

So I am fully ready for 2020 to be the year of the high refresh rate iPhone, the most improved Pixel, all these other big know big small phones all getting better and uh maybe some more phones folding i'm looking forward to a couple gaming phones coming out and and maybe making more of a a stay in the smartphone market i would love to see a razor phone 3 from improvements they did from one to two and i would love to see an rog phone 3 yeah um both of those coming out and're, like we've said in both of the

reviews, they're proving that specs from gaming phones are what a lot of just enthusiasts want, even if they don't want to game on it. And I think if they can take that next step into being just a little more mainstream with the specs they're offering, we could have some really, really cool phones. Yeah. I'm excited. We should just rebrand those as media phones. Anyway, okay, well, that's about it. Hey, thanks for listening. Thank you for tuning in on Twitter. We'll catch you guys in 2020

with the next episode of Waveform. There's, of course, a couple of videos left on the channel for the rest of the year you should check out too, but this has been Marques. And this has been Andrew. Thanks for listening. Yeah, happy new year, everyone. Waveform podcast is brought to you by Studio 71.

And the intro outro music is brought to you by Cameron Barlow.