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The current
market for smartphones is cornered by Android and iOS, but Windows Phone continues to
climb positions. The secret of its success terminals are cheap but with good
looks, and an operating system that ensures that even the lowest possible
hardware will fully fluid.
Here you can
see the collection of the best Windows phones of the moment, divided into
categories so that you easier to choose your terminal. All often share be made
with polycarbonate premium house brand (resistant, interchangeable covers and
in which fingerprints are not), with Clear Black display technology and cameras
that even the low-end models take pictures better than anyone competition at
the same price. Even Carl Zeiss optics and optical image stabilization have
reached the mid-range Lumia 830.
Windows 10 After the
summer will begin to get the upgrade to Windows 10, and is an update that
Microsoft will all current phones with Windows Phone 8.1. No Lumia will be left
behind and outdated.
Of course,
since Microsoft ensure that phones with 512 MB may suffer a cut in the support
some features, but are determined by concrete terminals rather than a
limitation depending on the amount of memory on the phone.
Economic The
advantage of Windows Phone on Android is that the operating system allows a
maximum advantage of the hardware, and in comparison, a terminal with
"only" 512MB of RAM work as fluid as a 1GB Android phone. The
difference lies in developing applications in C, a programming language
optimized, Java against his feature "same code multiple platforms"
has always weighed her performance.
The Lumia
532 is a pretty complete phone for the low end. With Windows Phone fluidity
that provides this type of phones, with 1 GB of RAM and Snapdragon 200
processor has more than enough not to disappoint any user who wants a cheap
phone for calls, surf the Internet, use WhatsApp and other tasks basic.
The camera
has a good quality despite being 5 megapixels, and autonomy allows you to take
a day with heavy use. It is a complete phone, without great fanfare but
economic.
Qualcomm
Snapdragon 200 1 GB / 8 GB 4 '', 800 x 480 pixels (234 dpi) D 1560 mAh 118.9 x
65.5 x 11.6 mm Yes 5MP / VGA amazon
flag-ES99 EUR
The Lumia
630 is a great terminal with which to enjoy Windows Phone 8.1, with the most
useful assistant Cortana and other improvements. It is a fluid terminal, and
that being Windows Phone hardware works best with a "less" powerful.
A great phone for beginner’s smartphones or Windows Phone.
It is quite
ergonomic, has a design that I like Nokia, housing and high quality plastic
comes in multiple colors (usual in the Finnish company). It is suitable for
those who want a safe and secure terminal and access to the services of
Microsoft. Currently has little to envy of Android or iOS.
We know why you're here: you want to find out the best smartphone
2015. Come on, it makes sense: we've all got at least one mobile phone,
right? We've probably got about three or four nowadays, and that counts
giving your old Nokia 3310 to your Mum a few years ago.
But now
the world has changed, and from Apple to Samsung to HTC to a host of
up-and-coming names, choosing your next greatest smartphone is a tricky
task.
This is where we make it easy: we thoroughly test hundreds
of top smartphones and have found the ten best you can spend your money
on. It needs to be good, after all, given it will reside in your pocket
for the next two years.
Our ranking of the best mobile phones
available in the UK today celebrates the brilliance of the smartphone.
We only feature the latest handsets available (unless an older model has
become hyper-cheap and still offers decent functionality) as the newer
models will stay serviced with software updates for longer, safeguarding
you from having a broken phone with no hope of updates in a year's
time.
We're just beginning 2015, and at the end of the year the Apple iPhone 6 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus challenged the heads of state in the smartphone world - namely the LG G3 and the HTC One M8.
But if you're currently considering your next mobile phone, don't forget we're not far away from the next crop: the HTC One M9 and Samsung Galaxy S6
are tipped to be coming at Mobile World Congress in March, so it might
be worth waiting to see what appears then before making your decision.
MWC 2015: What to expect
If that still doesn't help, well, there's always our extensive mobile phone reviews pages as well.
When you've decided which new phone to buy (and checked out the best mobile phone deal), why not cash in your old one with our phone recycling price comparison service?
Here are our rankings for the best mobile phones around, currently available in the UK.
You've
probably never heard of OnePlus... but if you have, you'll know why
this unknown brand is suddenly sitting in our list of best smartphones
in the world.
The reason is simple: it's a phone that has all the
power, specs and functionality of the top dogs, adds in
super-customisable software and does it at nearly half the price. We're
talking big savings on cost (£229 for the 16GB version and £269 for the 64GB variant) without much in the way of compromise.
In
fact, the only things it's really missing are a microSD slot and
removable battery, and those are elements more for the purists than
absolutely necessary.
If we're being super picky, it's not got the
greatest camera set up and the design is a bit... efficient, but at
this price point it really doesn't matter. And given the target audience
is those that care about raw power over style, it makes sense that this
is where the costs could be saved.
Quick verdict
We love
the fact that a new contender can maintain such a high place in the
ranking of the best phones in the world - it means that it's not just a
case of 'big budget means best phone'.
We were debating whether
the OnePlus One could even have gone higher, but there's one big problem
that you'll have if you want to get your hands on one: they're
impossible to find. Numbers won't ramp up for a while, and probably
never to the level of availability of the better-known names.
But
if you want a phone that offers supreme power at a really low cost: the
OnePlus One is it. It's what the Nexus range used to be, and if Google
ditches that program, then thankfully OnePlus has shown there will be
brands to pick up the slack.
The GoodThe Sony Alpha a99 SLT-A99V
has a lot going for it, including excellent photos and very good video,
a well-constructed and well-designed body, solid performance, and a
great feature set.
The Bad For
some folks, things like the lack of CompactFlash, poor battery life, and
compromises on video autofocus may not be reasonable trade-offs.
The Bottom LineThe Sony Alpha SLT-A99V is a generally great camera that's equally adept at both stills and video, but with a few caveats.
I admit, I really didn't like Sony's first full-frame cameras, the DSLR-A900 and its stripped-down sibling, the DSLR-A850.
I used to use them as examples of poor noise reduction and for
before-and-after examples for the virtues of third-party raw-processing
software. But that was almost four years ago, and just before Sony had
its "aha!" moment and started churning out excellent sensors, like the
one in the Alpha SLT-A99V. The company's flagship (and at least for now,
only) full-frame model delivers excellent photos and very good video,
and has a well-constructed and intelligently designed body, solid
performance, and a great feature set. Despite all the excellence,
though, there are some caveats to consider before shelling out the
not-inconsiderable amount of dough it costs. Image quality
The photo quality is great -- pretty much what you'd expect from a
full-frame camera -- with well-resolved detail, accurate color (as long
as you use the Neutral Creative Style setting), and a broad tonal range
with very good latitude in the highlights. Though it doesn't have an
antialiasing-filter-free model, the sensor in the A99V incorporates a
new selectively applied low-pass filter as a compromise for increased
ability to resolve detail.
According to Sony, the sensor also has new noise-reduction algorithms
designed to reduce noise only where you need it, but I still find that
(oddly) the Nikon D800 outperforms the A99V in this respect, especially
around ISO 1600 and above. For JPEGs, photos are extremely clean through
ISO 400, and you can start to see some slight edge artifacts appearing
at ISO 800. There's a noticeable jump in noise suppression between ISO
1600 and ISO 3200, regardless of how bright the scene is. But I couldn't
gain any better noise reduction below ISO 3200 by processing the raw;
at ISO 3200 and above I did manage to get some better results, enough to
gain about a stop of latitude. Overall, though, while the SLT-A99V is
extremely good at ISO 1600 and below, if you need the cleanest-possible
high-sensitivity results, the Nikon D800 and Canon EOS 5D Mark III are probably a bit better.
The camera also does an excellent job of preserving highlights in
seemingly blown-out areas. I was less impressed with recovering clipped
shadow detail, in part because it inevitably introduces a lot of color
noise, significantly more so than with the D800.
I was especially
impressed with the auto white balance. For one, it handled cloudy
shooting conditions properly; a lot of cameras I've tested recently have
not. Same goes for balance under our tungsten studio lights. Normally I
don't comment on the tungsten results because every camera handles it
miserably. On the flip side, though, Sony's default Standard Creative
Style pushes hues slightly, throwing off color accuracy. Switching to
the Neutral setting delivers the kind of results I expect from a pro
camera, though some people might want to tweak the sharpness (like most
manufacturers, Sony assumes if you want neutral colors you want no
processing at all).
The video quality is very good as well, though
here I admit I'm still partial to the warmer tonality delivered by the
Canon 5D Mark III and Nikon D800 and the sharper, less noisy low-light
video of 5D Mark III. Performance
Most of the
time, the A99V feels responsive and fluid to shoot with. Yes, there's
the occasional bout of reluctant autofocus lock and battery death -- for
decent battery life you really need the multibattery grip, though that
kind of defeats the purpose of making the camera lighter -- and the
menus take just a hair longer to come up than I'd like while the
camera's processing images. But overall I was happy with the camera's
speed.
By the numbers, the A99V offers performance competitive
with other full-frame cameras. (Our benchmarks for the 5D Mark III and
D800 used different methodology, but our numbers for the Nikon D600 and Canon EOS 6D
are comparable.) It powers on and shoots in just under a second -- a
little on the slow side. In good light, it takes about 0.4 second to
focus, expose, and shoot, which rises to 0.5 second in dimmer
conditions; that's relatively good, and partly held back by the somewhat
slow-driving but optically excellent lens we used for performance
testing, the Zeiss 24-70mm f2.8. Two sequential shots run about 0.3 second for either raw or JPEG, also decent times.
The
camera excels at continuous shooting. Sony seems to have rated it
pretty conservatively; as long as you stay below the buffer threshold,
20 JPEG shots or 17 raw shots, it can maintain a clip of roughly 6.2
frames per second (at least with a 95MBps SD card). Once you've exceeded
the buffer, it slows considerably and erratically, below 3fps. In
practice, shooting raw+JPEG, the buffer was less than 10 shots but
overall adequate for small bursts.
Despite the tons of
technological R&D it sounds like Sony put into the autofocus system,
I didn't feel always feel the magic. It has a dual phase-detection AF
system, which the company claims improves tracking AF considerably, and a
new AF Range control that lets you specify near and far distance
limiters for the focus range. I really like the tracking AF interface,
with the big green box that follows your subject around the screen, but
found that the focus lock just didn't keep up with the promise during
continuous shooting, and even with the range limiter enabled I found
that tracking box a little too fickle, willing to hightail off after any
bigger object that enters the scene. Nonetheless, I had no issues with
the AF system that I haven't had with other cameras.
In fact, I think the camera has too many
autofocus options, making figuring out which settings you should use a
bit too complicated. There are four AF mode choices: single, continuous,
auto (which selects between single and continuous), and dynamic (Depth
Map Assist Continuous AF), which seems to fine-tune the continuous AF
phase-detection focus lock by expanding to the assist the areas. Then
there are four AF area options: wide, zone, spot, and local. But the
options or combinations that automatically choose the focus areas never
seem to choose the correct ones, making it difficult to select the
option with any confidence. This isn't a Sony- or A99V-specific issue;
it's a problem with most AF systems that still remains despite all the
effort.
I'm not sure if I've complained about this elsewhere, but every time
you stick a card in, Sony cameras check it for an "Image Database" (a
Sony-compatible file-system structure). But if it doesn't find the
database, it pops up a message asking if you want to create one. Now, I
don't know about you, but every time I stick a card in the first thing I
do is format it and Sony's, um, helpfulness gets between me and the
format operation, requiring an extra few button presses before I can
start working. So no, Sony, I never want to create an image database. Get out of my way!
I can sort of understand this on point-and-shoots where people might
not realize the need to format, or if they never remove the cards, but
on a pro camera it's intrusive and unnecessary.
Both the
viewfinder and back display work very well, with no visibility issues in
direct sunlight or refresh issues while shooting action, and though I
still think that OLED displays are a little too cool and contrasty for
cameras -- photos never look better than on those displays, and that's
not necessarily a good thing -- Sony lets you adjust the color
temperature of the viewfinder. Design and features
For the most part, the camera body is very well designed and built,
with a great grip -- one of the most comfortable I've used -- and an
intelligent control layout. It's weather-sealed, though keep in mind
that as far as I know Sony only offers two full-frame weather-sealed
lenses to match. Yes, the body is also lighter than the competition, but
I find once you stick a good lens on it that roughly 6-ounce advantage
becomes moot.
All the controls are easily accessible and
distinguishable by feel, the mode dial has a central lock button (not my
favorite place for it), and everything is as configurable as you'd
expect from a camera in its class. I don't think it's the snazziest
design -- I'm not crazy about the bulbous look of the buttons boiling up
from the surface on the back -- but it's effective and that's more
important.
While I think competitors produce better video quality than the A99V, this is my favorite camera for shooting
video. It's one respect in which the fixed-mirror SLT technology gains a
huge advantage over SLR. The articulated OLED display, great EVF, and
manual-focus peaking make it extremely easy and comfortable to shoot
without having to Frankenstein the camera out with a rig, loupe, and
other accoutrements. The one, somewhat huge, exception to the love: you
can't adjust shutter speed or aperture for video while autofocus is
enabled. A lot of videographers use manual focus exclusively, so it
won't faze them, but it irks me to no end. And if you don't know this up
front, you can spend hours trying to figure out why the camera won't
let you adjust those settings.
While
the Silent Controller is intended to allow you to avoid introducing
noise while changing settings during video shooting, it's also really
nice for simply changing settings without having to drop the camera from
your eye. It offers a lot of the same settings as the function menu,
but it has a different interface that takes up far less space in the
viewfinder.
Rated estimated max HD video length at best quality
29 minutes, 59 seconds
20 minutes
n/a
Audio
Mono; mic input; headphone jack
Mono; mic input; headphone jack
Stereo; mic input; headphone jack
LCD size
3.2 inches fixed
1.04 megadot
3.2 inches fixed
921,000 dots
3 inches articulated
921,600 dots
Memory slots
1 x CF (UDMA mode 7), 1 x SDXC
1 x CF (UDMA mode 7), 1 x SDXC
2 x SDXC
Wireless flash
No
Yes
No
Battery life viewfinder/Live View (CIPA rating)
950/200 shots
(1,800mAh)
900/
n/a shots
(1,800mAh)
410 shots
(1,650mAh)
Dimensions (inches, WHD)
6.1 x 4.6 x 3.0
5.7 x 4.8 x 3.2
5.9 x 4.5 x 3.1
Body operating weight (ounces)
33.5
35.1
29.2
Mfr. price
$3,499 (body only)
$2,999.95/ $3,299.95 (body only)
$2,799.99 (body only)
$4,299 (with 24-105mm lens)
n/a
n/a
Ship date
March 2012
March 2012/ April 2012
October 2012
In
addition to the complete set of essential features for a pro camera,
the A99V has a couple of unique features for this class, including
built-in GPS (which strains the already lackluster battery life a bit),
in-camera image stabilization (both Canon and Nikon use lens-based IS),
and a built-in stereo microphone (which is nice to have in a pinch). On
the downside, some folks may quibble with the decision to incorporate
two SD card slots instead of an SD and a CompactFlash; while it would
likely make little difference during shooting, CF is still the faster
technology for moving files to your computer in a time-sensitive
workflow.
If you're a Sony A series shooter disgruntled by the
company's lack of tethering support for most of its modern models, the
company has updated its Remote Camera Control software
to support the A99V. And one note about accessories: the A99V uses the
new Multi Interface Shoe, but ships with an adapter if you want to use
your old accessories.
For a complete account of the A99V's features and operation, download the PDF manual. Conclusion
The A99V is a powerful, complicated camera that may simply exceed the
needs (or budget) of most photographers, and since Sony doesn't offer a
cheaper full-frame model a la the Nikon D600 or Canon EOS 6D, the
company's missing out on an opportunity. If you need a single model that
can handle both stills and video with equal aplomb, and are willing to
make some trade-offs -- sacrificing a little on the video and high-ISO
quality as well as video AF -- it's a great choice.