Which do you think qualifies for the title this year?

Iphone 6

Asked and answered:
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/3787...he-world-today

It looks like they used price as a significant part of their choice. Neither the Sony nor Nexus are a real match for the S5 or iPhone 6 if it was a "Phone of the Year" rather than "Budget Phone of the Year".

Just waiting on my One plus One to be delivered, I think it has a great claim to the title.

I'd say Z3 if you are Andriod, iPhone 6 if you anything else. Both pretty close.

No, crippled old 4G radio, very poor customer service. Too many bad points to be at the top.

Happily using 4G, no issues with customer service.

How's your 4G experiance with a Vodafone or O2 sim? How will your experience be next year as other than 1800Mhz comes on line from Three and EE? Why are so many owners complaining about poor reception?

http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/...-one-problems/

http://www.androidauthority.com/7-co...ne-fix-536082/

https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/p...y-issue.60373/

Customer service is as bad as any other no-name Chinese phone, RTB to China...

Plenty of bad comments about it, what was the first problem? Something to do with the screen than one+ wouldn't even acknowledge?

https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?hl=en...us+bad+service

https://forums.oneplus.net/threads/v...or-this.48166/

http://www.reddit.com/r/oneplus/comm...e_with_my_opo/

http://androidspin.com/2014/11/16/on...rma-responses/

http://www.talkandroid.com/226665-on...-rma-requests/

That took less than 5 minutes to find (and only took links from page 1 of the search).


If it wasnt so cheap, and without the social media hype they managed to make, it would just be another unknown brand Chinese phone.

I could find those links for any company regarding customer service. To pick at the 4G radio when the iphone 5 was hobbled for long enough is a bit daft as well since it only affects people on certain networks. Means nothing to the people who chose it to use on a network that it works on.

Anyway, phone of the year for me would be the LG G3 or Xperia Z3.

I would have said the same about the iPhone 5 if he had decided to declare it "Phone of the Year 2014" just because he owned it, and in fairness to the iPhone 5, it was released in 2012, not 2014 and 4G at that stage was in its infancy, unlike now when the one+ one was released. It was a plain and simple cost cutting measure to use an old radio chip.

Also, which are the 'certain networks' affected?

O2 and Vodafone in their entirety, and Three and EE as 800MHz rolls out?

Who's left unaffected?

Yes, when 800mhz rolls out. But for now it works fine on EE and Three.

I wouldn't say its phone of the year, but price wise i would say it does hit the top 5 anyway for hardware and features.

The iphone 6+ is maybe in with a shout, but not the 6.

These things are always subjective, but probably the HTC One M8 for me (only just, mind).

* Build quality the best around, even better I feel than the Apple devices
* Screen one of the best around without resorting to battery draining gimmicks like QHD
* Sound quality from speakers and headphones the best around - good choice for an audiophile who doesn't want to compromise too much but also doesn't want to lug 2 devices around.
* Well judged and optimised OS with useful features over Vanilla - I still prefer Vanilla to use but this undeniably adds some useful features.
* Solid battery life - with the latest updates this is easily a 2 day phone with moderate use.
* Camera - some would say poor, but really it's only the resolution that's poor. It comes with some pretty useful functionality, its bloody fast (I'm sick and tired of slow, laggy cameras - I'm looking at you Google Play Edition and Nexus devices) and overall, the pictures look as good as anything else unless you zoom in.
* Processor - one of the earliest adopters of the still superb SD 805.

A close second for me would be the Z3 / Compact. The waterproofing ability is nice to have, and battery life is great, but I've read the camera isn't what its cracked up to be (some say they're poor on auto and some suffer with a pinkish spot in the picture in certain scenarios) and have heard mixed reports on reliability.

Followed by the G3. Lovely, good value phone, but what is the point of QHD which gives it worse battery life than the G2 without any tangible benefit in quality, and I found the default OS somewhat laggy and bloated like a Samsung.

The OS on the G3 was indeed laggy when i first got it. Thankfully it improved over a few months and now, it's not at all like that on Lollypop. Nice and smooth and the battery lasts longer than my Mrs M8 with similar use. The difference in quality when looking at the M8 and G3 side by side is i think huge especially when watching HD videos.

To be fair - I can google negatives and positives regarding anything You say so many, but dont quantify it, so no idea whether it is significant or not.

As I said I dont have any issue with customer service. For the actual people who have the phone, I personally dont know of anyone who regrets buying it, its not perfect but no phone is. Having an opinion based on googling stuff does not represent evidence, the majority of issues indicated relate to the initial firmware which was incredibly buggy. This has been updated so the only thing left would be the radio which people are aware of prior to purchasing the device, so not really a disadvantage if you still bought knowing this, now is it.

Good to hear the lagging is sorted. I'm still not a fan of the look of the OS mind, looks very similar to TouchWiz, which I'm also not keen on. I found the G2 and G3 both looked similar to AMOLED displays so they are usually quite vibrant looking, but I really can't see much difference due to the resolution on a screen this small and I have 20/20 vision.

I certainly have no complaints about the battery life - I've been on 4.4.2 and 4.4.4 on Sense, the former wasn't as good as I thought, the latter seems excellent. Also 4.4.4 GPE and 5.01 GPE, the former was better and probably not far off the Sense ROM, but it just didn't make the most of the phone. The M8 scores very similar to the G3 on GSMArena's battery test. Better than my last best phone (Note 2).

Good shout on the Z3 compact - that would be my vote apart from the low res screen. I also liked the Z3 but dont like the styling of the phone.

G3 is a great phone and the speed of update to a working version of Lollipop alone should make it phone of the year. I also liked the Nexus 6 once I got my hands on one and have swapped my work phone to this, as it great for email, video and music.

I honestly don't get why people still buy HTC phones.

There is no value in them. Even in their home market of Taiwan they were outsold last month. HTC need to change their smartphone strategy soon.

Best phone of the year for me would be between the Huawei Ascend Mate 7, LG G Pro 2 and LG G3.

iPhone 6 Plus.

The best phone is always the ones my friend tell me is the best, makes me look kool and also makes me more sexually desirable to teenage girls.

So an iPhone 6!

Been using the HTC One M8 (Android) for the last few weeks and I am(was) a big iPhone fan but the HTC beats it easily without the constant updates to fix errors Apple use their buyers to test.

Depends on how you want to look at it really. When they have 'car of the year' you often find something mid-range win like a focus rather than what might be 'best' but very expensive so I think that was how they were maybe looking at something like the Nexus 5. It's a very powerful phone for the money that give day to day performance as good as a lot of the more expensive phones.

I didn't buy it because of the perceived worth of them or their company, I bought it because its a damn good phone that has received phone of the year from a number of tech sites. HTC problems aren't their phones, its their marketing. It would be a shame if HTC went down the pan because at least their phones aren't the usual mass produced plastic rubbish you normally get in this sector.




Nexus 5 would have been a good contender for phone of 2013 I agree.

Tomato tomato. Who gives a rats ass? As long as you're happy with your new phone in 2014 then that'll be your own "Phone of the year".

BTW, mine it the OnePlus One.

Works great on Three. No problems with the phone. Not needed CS.

The subject is subjective.