It’s that time again when we at GSMArena talk about our favorite phones of the year. My colleagues already talked about theirs, and now it’s my turn. But before I proceed, I’d like to mention that, as always, I’ve compiled the list of smartphones from the ones I got to use myself here in India for an extended duration, so there’s always a chance that you may not see some phones in the list, no matter how good they are and how much of a high praise they received from us. We are talking about our personal favorites, after all. With that disclaimer out of the way, these are my top 5 phones of 2024, in no particular order.
vivo X Fold3 Pro
The vivo X Fold3 Pro, introduced in India and Indonesia in June, was the first folding smartphone from vivo to launch outside China. It was powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC and had 16GB RAM and 512GB of storage onboard, so performance wasn’t an issue.
However, what impressed me the most about the vivo X Fold3 Pro was its design. It was pretty sleek and lightweight for a foldable, and I found it very comfortable to use in both folded and unfolded states. The compact design looks more impressive when you find out the X Fold3 Pro has a 5,700 mAh battery under the hood, supporting 100W wired and 50W wireless charging. It went from 1% to 100% in about 45 minutes with 100W charging in my usage – that’s plenty fast.
The vivo X Fold3 Pro’s screens were bright, and we had two 3D ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanners – one each for both screens. These were not only fast and accurate, but a fingerprint registered with one scanner allowed you to unlock the phone with the other scanner as well, which was very convenient.
The vivo X Fold3 Pro sported three rear cameras – 50MP primary, 50MP ultrawide, and 64MP periscope telephoto. While the main camera was great, it was the periscope unit that I used most of the time, which powered the Portrait Mode and Super Macro Mode. These allowed me to click some nice product shots. In fact, all the product shots I included in my iQOO Z9s Pro review were clicked with the vivo X Fold3 Pro.
The vivo X Fold3 Pro remains my favorite foldable of 2024, and it made the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold6 look pale in comparison with its specs sheet. Even after launching six generations of book-style foldables, Samsung continues to employ side-mounted fingerprint scanners on its Fold series, while the measly 25W charging speed is just unacceptable to me. It remains to be seen how much more time it will take Samsung to wake up from its deep slumber and move to the present century to actually offer a competitive book-style foldable that doesn’t make it look stubborn and complacent.
vivo X Fold3 Pro
As far as vivo is concerned, I hope its future foldables will have wider global availability and better software support. vivo has promised three years of OS upgrades and four years of security updates for the X Fold3 Pro’s Funtouch OS model, which is sold outside China. In my opinion, that’s the only department where Samsung earns a point.
iQOO 13
The iQOO 13 arrived as a successor to 2023’s iQOO 12, launched in India as the country’s first Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered smartphone. That wasn’t the case with the iQOO 13 since it was the second smartphone in India to have Qualcomm’s latest flagship Snapdragon chip at the helm.
While the iQOO 13 came with a new, powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, it looked similar to the iQOO 12, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing since I liked the iQOO 12’s design as well and found it comfortable to hold, which was also the case with the iQOO 13.
However, what’s new this time is the RGB lights around the camera module, an IP68/69 rating, an ultrasonic in-display fingerprint scanner, and a bigger, brighter LTPO AMOLED screen with a higher resolution. The iQOO 13 also packed a bigger battery (6,150 mAh vs. 5,000 mAh) without significantly increasing thickness.
The Indian model – which is the one my HQ-based colleagues and I tested – comes with a 6,000 mAh battery, and it offered a nice battery life. In fact, the iQOO 13’s Indian version ranks second in our new battery life tests table and is the first on the Android side since the Apple iPhone 16 Plus got the first spot. You can check the complete list here. I also appreciate how iQOO didn’t reduce the charging speed on the iQOO 13, citing battery capacity increase as the reason, like some brands do.
Another upgrade the iQOO 13 came with is in the software updates department. It will get four years of Android version upgrades and five years of security updates. It may not look that impressive compared to the Samsungs and Apples and Googles of the world, but its closest competitor in India right now – the Realme GT 7 Pro – comes with three years of OS upgrades and four years of security patches.
vivo iQOO 13
My biggest complaint is about the iQOO 13’s camera department, and when I say that, I’m referring to the downgrade from the iQOO 12’s 3x 64MP periscope telephoto camera to the 2x 50MP telephoto unit. Sure, it did take some nice portraits in daylight, but that also meant the Super Macro mode now relied on the ultrawide camera for macro shots, and that doesn’t sit well with me as someone who’s team Tele Macro. The iQOO 12’s telephoto macro was absolutely fun to use, and I hope it will return with the iQOO 14 (or whatever iQOO decides to call the 13’s successor).
Realme GT 7 Pro
The Realme GT 7 Pro arrived in India as the country’s first Snapdragon 8 Elite-powered smartphone, and it was the first phone after the Realme X50 Pro launched in 2020 by Realme outside China that felt like a flagship to me.
The Realme GT 7 Pro has Qualcomm’s latest flagship silicon, oodles of RAM and storage, boots Android 15, and features an incredibly bright LTPO AMOLED screen with Dolby Vision support. I used the phone under strong sunlight and never faced any legibility issues. The ultrasonic fingerprint scanner embedded in the screen was also fast and accurate.
Moreover, the Realme GT 7 Pro is built well and feels sturdy, and we also get an IP68/69 rating. Then there’s 120W charging and 6,500 mAh battery. In India, we get a 5,800 mAh battery, which, though smaller than the iQOO 13, is big enough. It’s also worth mentioning that while iQOO told me the exact reason behind launching the iQOO 13 with a smaller battery in India, Realme failed to do that.
I have no complaints about the Realme GT 7 Pro’s battery life, but it’s worth mentioning that the model I received here in India had a 6,500 mAh battery since it was the non-Indian version. Needless to say, the model with a 5,800 mAh cell will have less endurance, but the 120W charging speed should make up for it. My unit, with a 6,500 mAh battery, went from 1% to 100% in about 40 minutes, which is impressive. The Indian model should take less time for a full charge due to the smaller battery.
The Realme GT 7 Pro offered a very smooth, lag-free experience, and while it’s not a proper cameraphone, it clicked some nice pictures. However, my biggest gripes with this smartphone are: 1) The ultrawide camera has a measly resolution of 8MP, which isn’t acceptable to me in 2024 for a phone of this price; 2) Realme should have offered longer software support.
Realme GT 7 Pro
Realme’s blunt response to my query about the not-so-competitive software support compared to the iQOO 13 was that “no one uses a phone that long.” Well, I would like the folks reading this to sound off in the comments section and tell me how long you use your smartphone and what’s the ideal software support period for a phone in any range – both in terms of OS upgrades and security patches.
Oppo Find X7 Ultra
The Oppo Find X7 Ultra, unveiled in January, is something you don’t call a smartphone with cameras but a camera with a smartphone’s features. It is the first Ultra phone from Oppo, and it sports four 50MP rear cameras: a primary camera using a 1″ type sensor, an ultrawide unit with 123˚ FOV, and two periscope telephotos – one with 2.8x optical zoom and another with 6x optical zoom. You also get Hasselblad Color Calibration.
The Oppo Find X7 Ultra is one impressive cameraphone. Its primary camera clicked great pictures, and the two telephotos did a nice job of capturing nearby and distant subjects. The macro mode uses the telephoto camera instead of the ultrawide for close-up shots.
However, I preferred vivo’s X series phones over the Oppo Find X7 Ultra when it came to portraits and macro shots. I found vivo’s multi-focal portrait lens package more useful, and I like how I can manually switch to the telephoto macro mode – called Super Macro – when I want instead of waiting for the default Camera app to automatically switch to the macro mode like the Find X7 Ultra did.
Not having a dedicated macro mode toggle on the Oppo Find X7 Ultra was a bummer. I’d like Oppo to copy vivo’s way of handling telephoto macro and also provide a manual focus slider to help users get better results. It helped me click amazing product shots of smartphones with the vivo X100, X100 Pro, X Fold3 Pro, and X200, and that’s the reason why I preferred these vivo phones over the Oppo Find X7 Ultra when it came to portraits and macro shots. Not to mention the pleasing bokeh that vivo’s periscope telephoto-enabled Super Macro mode produces.
The Oppo Find X7 Ultra did well in other departments, too. It has the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC under the hood, comes with up to four years of Android OS upgrades and five years of security updates, and has an IP68 rating. I also like the Find X7 Ultra’s design. The faux leather panel remains one of my favorite features on a smartphone, and as far as the Find X7 Ultra is concerned, its blue color model looked pretty cool to me.
The Find X7 Ultra’s screen isn’t the brightest I’ve seen, and its 5,000 mAh battery could’ve offered better endurance. Fortunately, the 100W charging makes up for it. The smartphone also runs Chinese ColorOS ROM, which didn’t provide the same experience as its global counterpart, thus limiting my phone usage to taking pictures and recording videos.
The Oppo Find X7 Ultra is a China-only device, but seeing how the Find X series returned to the international markets with the Find X8 duo, I hope the Ultra models will also come to global markets eventually.
vivo X200
vivo’s X200 series includes three phones – X200, X200 Pro, and X200 Pro mini. The Pro mini remains exclusive to China, but the other two phones made their international debut in November. I didn’t get my hands on the Pro model this time. However, I did receive the X200. I haven’t used it as much as other phones on this list, but based on my experience with it so far, it deserved to be on this list.
The vivo X200 has MediaTek’s flagship Dimensity 9400 SoC at the helm – the same chip that powers the more expensive X200 Pro. The X200’s AMOLED screen is smaller than the X100’s and is non-LTPO this time, but is fortunately brighter. It’s also a quad-curved type and offered a comfortable experience. I was skeptical about the X200’s flat frames, but the back panel with curved edges made the X200 ergonomic enough for prolonged usage.
The display’s smaller diagonal resulted in a smaller footprint, making the X200 quite compact. However, that didn’t lead to a decrease in battery capacity. We actually got a bigger battery (5,800 mAh vs. 5,000 mAh), which lasted me an entire day on a single charge without any gaming. And since this is a silicon-carbon type cell, an increase in battery capacity didn’t increase the phone’s thickness. However, vivo traded the charging speed for a higher battery capacity since it dropped from 120W to 90W, leading to increased charging time. While the X100 went from 1% to 100% in 29 minutes, the X200 took 44 minutes. It’s not blazing fast, but fast enough.
vivo X200
That said, in addition to a bigger battery, we get an IP69 rating, and vivo is offering four years of OS upgrades and five years of security updates for the X200. The periscope telephoto’s resolution dropped from 64MP to 50MP, but it clicked nice macro shots with the Super Macro mode, and I like those.
I’d have liked to see the vivo X200 Pro mini launch in India, but the X200 is also pretty compact, and so far, I’ve enjoyed using it.
And that’s pretty much it. Those are my top phones of 2024. Thanks for reading through! I used smartphones from other brands as well, and they were good, but not good enough to be in my top 5. If you, too, used any of the aforementioned smartphones, let me know how your experience was in the comments section below. Also, feel free to share your top 5 phones of 2024 and what you expect from smartphones in 2025. I will see you again next time.