Best smartphones for their time re-visited

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Shadowprice

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I usually like to make this thread as a fun discussion, I think we've had it a few times before but it's nice to review again.

What do you think is some of the best smartphones for their time? I'm talking devices that were extremely well at a given task for the period of time it was out, it doesn't necessarily have to be a flagship, but just all around solid phones. I'd love to hear inputs, as I'm sure i'd be missing on some I didn't pay attention to.

For me personally, as far as the iPhones go, I think the original iPhone 4 and iPhone 5S were Apples best models. The 4 was a full redesign, during the time it was really good. It finally gave the iPhone true all day battery, retina display, and a solid aluminum and glass build that was very high quality. The 5S was the first phone that really introduced the fingerprint scanner, and given the fact that it's been remade into the SE, I think the 5/5S/SE models have a timeless design and is just an excellent built model. I hope Apple keeps updating it. I'd also mention the iPhone SE.

I'd also want to reference Motorola's original Moto X. To this day I've never seen such a good use of screen real estate. It's literally the size of a iPhone 5S but has a 4.7" screen, it had great battery life, was extremely comfortable to hold, good with updates, it had great customization, active display at the time was cool and unique. You could also make a case for the Droid Maxx which was only on Verizon, it had lame bloatware, but it was virtually the same phone as the Moto X but had absolutely legendary battery life.

Nexus 5. Flagship specs at an affordable price, I think this was the first good Nexus on the map that didn't compromise too much. Just a solid all around device with no real glaring weaknesses.

Note 4. For 2014 this phone had killer specs, and still rocked a removable battery and SD card, fast charging, and a 5.7 inch screen.

HTC One M8 - The build quality and stereo speakers were crazy good.

Some honorable mentions just based on what I saw and heard, more input could be nice: First generation OnePlus One, Nexus 6/6P, HTC Droid Incredible (First Snapdragon SOC that was actually good?).

I'd love to hear others or if anyone agrees!
 
I would say that the HTC One M7 revolutionized the flagship styling for a few years. Its design was so great that even Apple copied it. Apple copied it so "well" that stupid ass editors on some phone/tech news blogs (such as BGR especially) kept promoting the BS that HTC copied Apple on phones like HTC One A9, which took design elements from its own HTC One M7 and HTC Desire ... But then because Apple did copy HTC so well, lots of other manufacturers started copying Apple in the antennae lines for aluminum cased phones.

The phones with front facing stereo speakers today have been influenced by HTC One M7. But HTC design influences are dying lately because the design is going toward having bezeless displays. HTC doesn't make their own displays and have to rely on Samsung and its affiliates to give them displays.
 
Blackberry Curve 9300 was my favorite of all their devices.
 
HTC HD2, the first really seriously good true smartphone IMO (not some mishmash of mixed hardware profiles like a Palm or Windows Mobile device). Big huge 4.3" display (the first one with that size, IIRC), incredible design, the way a smartphone SHOULD be made: removable battery and microSD slot, simply outstanding device and it's still relevant to this day because some very talented devs just keep creating ROMs for it.

I fully agree about the original Moto X, rock solid device, the Active Display aspect was brilliant and still is (and everybody else copies 'em but that was the first use of it), and I also agree about the Droid MAXX as I've owned multiple Moto X and MAXX devices and still love 'em to this day.

LG G2, what a fantastic device overall and I've owned a few of those as well over the years. The Snapdragon 800 is to this day one damned awesome SoC even in spite of it being a "lowly" quad core. LG perfected the double-tap-2-wake/sleep functionality (which should be a part of Android itself, really) and the rear-mounted controls are still my favorite place to have them located so the G2/G3/G4/V10 models just did it fucking right. Nowadays LG has backtracked and they're basically making big slabs like everybody else and there's nothing really unique about them anymore IMO, sadly.

The OnePlus One, Snapdragon 801 SoC powered, the smoothest - like Teflon on Teflon smooth - operating smartphone I have ever had the pleasure to use, period. Seriously, there's no device made to this point in time (not even the Galaxy S8 models, not the iPhone 7 models or the iPhone 8/X either probably, not the V30 either) nothing has ever been as smooth in operation as the OPO for me. I have like 212 TV shows in my Play Movies (I grab all the freebies whenever they become available, never know when I might find some new show that interests me) and I swear with just one or two flicks of my finger the OPO would scroll through the entire list beginning to end and no other phone has ever done that for me, it usually takes at least 8-10 flicks and it's slow as crap as data loads in the background.

I don't know what black magic was put into the OPO but if I ever find another one for purchase at a good price I'm damned sure going to do it. No removable battery and no microSD expansion but, considering how awesome that device is to this day, I'll forgive OnePlus for not adding those aspects. :D

And finally the BlackBerry Z10 - I never owned a BlackBerry device till that one came out and I got one used about 2 years after it was released and I still have it. It's very close to being as smooth as the OnePlus One in regular operation but since it runs QNX (a real-time OS) that's part of the reason. In 2012 having a smartphone with a 1280x720 display on it AND having 2GB of RAM in it was almost unheard of but the Z10 had both, in a fantastic package (very small nowadays), outstanding performance and with later versions of the BlackBerry 10 OS it even could run Android apps (not all of them but the vast majority was compatible). Removable battery? Check. microSD expansion? Check. 4G LTE in 2012? Check. Wolfson DAC for outstanding audio playback? CHECK. :)

Sadly BB10 OS is effectively dead now that BlackBerry has welcomed Android (something they should have done for the Z10 actually, I saw a video once leaked from BlackBerry Labs of them with a Z10 and Android KitKat on the bare metal hardware and it was awesome, I wish I could have gotten that build but it was never leaked itself). I still have my Z10 and always will, it's just that awesome.

Never cared for Nexus devices myself, I get why they were so popular with the pure Android aspect but, since I tend to get devices that have community support behind them that's never really an issue considering CyanogenMod over the years and now LineageOS taking up those reins and doing a great job of it.
 
Totally seconding the Galaxy Note 4, not just because I view it as the last true Note in terms of things like the removable battery and making edge screens optional secondary screens instead of crammed down our throats with the Note 7/8, but also because:
-the SD805 was formidable for its time (better GPU than the succeeding 808 and didn't cook itself like the 810)
-it introduced fast charging to the Samsung lineup
-it launched the Gear VR (which whet my appetite a bit for the Oculus Rift CV1 due the following year)
-it introduced pen tilt sensitivity (something Wacom had previously withheld to their very expensive professional products)
-and instead of taking after the cheap and tacky Galaxy S5, it instead modeled itself after the considerably more premium-feeling Galaxy Alpha with its aluminum frame - but still with a removable back that won't slip out of your hands!

I basically want a Note 4 with a sturdier metal frame, more modern SoCs, USB-C, FLAT screen and none of the features dropped (especially the removable battery, IR blaster to a lesser extent, and UNLOCKED BOOTLOADER FOR CRYING OUT LOUD) for the later generations, but that clearly isn't happening at this point. At least the Note 8 is still a pretty neat piece of kit if you can stomach the price or get a considerable discount somehow; I admittedly stepped up solely because an unofficially unlocked Sprint Note 4's performance on T-Mobile left a lot to be desired with all the missing bands. Getting dropped to EDGE (used to get 3G, it stopped a few months back) and having calls occasionally sound like garbage is not what I expect in this day and age.

Also, if I had the chance to actually get my hands on them, I'd want to try out a Nokia 808 PureView and its successor, the Lumia 1020. Both are set apart by massive (as in sensor size, not necessarily resolution), unequaled 41MP sensors with xenon flashes that laugh at what modern flagships call their best phone cameras ever, but both phones are gimped by the fact that they run Symbian and Windows Phone 8 respectively, with the 1020 even more gimped by its allegedly glacial image-saving speeds. Who would've thought that maybe processing 41MP images would've warranted some kind of co-processor?

Because of that, I like to think they're both point-and-shoot cameras that just happen to make phone calls on the side, but they also stand out as "statement" camera phones to me, bearing ludicrous specs AND manual controls well before Android brought the camera2 API to the stable with Lollipop.
 
The iPhone 3G was full-on amazing at the time. I don't think I've ever been as satisfied with any subsequent devices.
 
Domingo said:
The iPhone 3G was full-on amazing at the time. I don't think I've ever been as satisfied with any subsequent devices.
Click to expand...

Iphone 4s was it for me.

Another close condtender is the entire Google Play edition of phones. Galaxy s4 with stock android? Yes please.
 
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Moto X for sure! As others have mentioned, the Active Display was brilliant. But just as groundbreaking was the fact that it was the first voice activated phone, with a low-power chip for just this feature. I loved showing up Iphone users who thought their phones were so special. I'd just say hey, can your phone tell you the temperature while in your pocket? In general, it was more user friendly than any other phone I've owned. (Not to mention the unique customization options.) I still use mine, but it's long in the tooth -- way too underpowered.
 
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