That’s fine. It comes with the territory, really. I write about all kinds of technology all day, every day, but none so much as smartphones. I’ve reviewed many of the major ones released in the past year, from the dirt-cheap to the metal and glossy. They all have something to add in their own way, but only a handful really stand out.
And as you’d imagine, the answer is complicated.
The funny thing about buying a smartphone in 2016 is that it’s hard to go wrong. Not too long ago, even great phones could have terrible battery life, be bogged down by gobs of unwanted software, have an awful camera, or be missing a crucial feature or two. Now, we find almost every major handset will last till bedtime, take decent photos, display them on an excellent screen, blaze through apps with a speedy processor, and browse the web with fast LTE connectivity.
If you want a great smartphone, all you really need to do is avoid phones that pretend to be excellent, but aren’t.
So if all good phones are great phones, what makes a phone The Best? It simply had to be better than every other phone at providing something people crave. That was the bar we set.