Best flagship phones 2026 - buyer’s guide

The Apple iPhone 18 Pro Max is undeniably a top-tier flagship - combining a durable premium build, a sharp display with a smaller cutout, class-leading battery life, outstanding cameras, and fluid iOS performance. And while few people will feel the A20 Pro upgrade in everyday use right now, we do believe its extra performance and memory bandwidth will pay off in the years to come.

Despite the impressive achievement of Apple's redesigned chip, the iPhone 18 Pro Max remains one of the most incremental updates in recent years. This is somewhat understandable, given that the 20th anniversary iPhone 20 arrives next year and the new iPhone Duo took center stage as this year's "one more thing."

Just like previous iPhones, the iPhone 18 Pro Max can capture great video - especially in good light. And this year Apple has added some manual camera options to the camera app for the first time ever.

So, is the iPhone 18 Pro Max worth buying? Absolutely. It remains an exceptional flagship packed with top-tier features. If it fits your needs - or if you're upgrading from an iPhone 15 Pro Max or earlier - it's an easy recommendation. And it can stand tall against any Android rival, too.

Honor Magic V6 has a great foldable design - at least as far as protection and thickness are concerned - the most powerful chip, a versatile camera kit with superb quality, and long battery life with pretty fast charging options.

The Magic V6 design is impressive, no two ways about that. The same goes for the two OLEDs - they are bright, with incredibly dynamic refresh rates, and they support every popular HDR format.

We were happy to see the fully-fledged Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 inside the Magic V6, but we were surprised to see that Honor has capped its performance rather unusually. To get the maximum speed out of the chip, you will need to switch to Performance mode. But to get the best sustained performance, you'd be better off using the Balanced mode, where you'd be able to enjoy only half of the CPU's nominal power.

The battery life and the charging speed turned out to be impressive, and the speaker quality as well. And we do love what Honor has done with MagicOS; it's thoroughly powerful and looks great. And if you are not fans of the iOS-inspired translucency, you can tone it down in Settings.

Finally, the cameras did not disappoint either; just the opposite. They delivered Honor's true-to-life photo and video quality, which the maker has been known for across the board, no matter if it was day or night.

The Magic V6 seems to be an excellent foldable with a great balance between design, display quality, battery life and camera image quality. The thermal aspects of high-performance chipsets seem to be the Achilles' heel of super thin phones, and Honor has no way around it, though.

The vivo X300 Ultra is exactly the sort of device an "Ultra" phone should be. It is unapologetically ambitious, unapologetically expensive and unapologetically camera-centric. And honestly, vivo has earned the right to be confident here because the X300 Ultra delivers on nearly every front that matters in a modern flagship.

Starting with the obvious, the camera experience is once again the star of the show. Vivo's decision to stick with a single telephoto setup instead of chasing dual-telephoto trends might sound conservative on paper, but the implementation proves otherwise. The 85mm zoom camera remains one of the most versatile telephoto solutions around, while the new 200MP 35mm main camera is simply superb. The ultrawide camera also continues to stand out from the crowd thanks to its unusually large sensor. Add the extensive video feature set, excellent stabilization and the genuinely useful Photography Kit ecosystem, and the X300 Ultra feels closer to a compact camera replacement than most of its rivals.

But the X300 Ultra is far from a one-trick pony. The display is excellent, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 provides flagship-grade performance, charging is properly fast, and the battery life is noticeably improved compared to the previous generation. OriginOS 6 is also a major step forward for vivo's international software experience. It feels modern, polished and feature-rich in ways that older FuntouchOS releases didn't.

That said, there are still a few rough edges keeping the X300 Ultra from absolute perfection. Speaker quality is merely good rather than class-leading, and vivo's decision to remove the helper buttons like the Shortcut or Camera shutter key feels genuinely puzzling. We also expected better definition from the Portrait photo mode and the 4K videos.

Still, none of these complaints meaningfully change the bigger picture. The vivo X300 Ultra is one of the best Android flagships currently available and arguably one of the most complete camera phones ever made. If you are willing to stomach the asking price and can live with its rather massive camera island and hefty footprint, the X300 Ultra absolutely delivers an Ultra-grade experience.

Is the pioneer of foldable phones waking up from its slumber? It definitely looks like it. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra offers a big upgrade over its predecessor with higher-quality inner screen with a smaller crease and anti-reflective coating, a larger battery, faster charging, a new ultrawide cam. There's also a host of new software features that further refine the foldable experience in general.

On the other hand, the few years of stagnation mean Samsung is still playing catch-up with the rest of the competition, which overtook it in terms of camera, battery life and came close to matching the UI experience. And until the price settles, the Z Fold8 Ultra remains drastically more expensive..

It looks like Samsung has performed better under pressure from the rising competition in the last few years. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra proves that the Korean tech giant still has it and at the end of the day the Z Fold8 Ultra deserves a spot here.

There is no foldable that is outright better than the Motorola Razr Fold, but the Razr Fold is also not standing above the current crop. As far as we can tell - the modern book-style foldables are such great devices, versatile and powerful, with equally great hardware and software, that everything boils down to personal feelings and preferences.

The Motorola Razr Fold has it all - a signature design with a unique touch of class, a trait Motorola easily delivers across all its phones. Then there are two absolutely lovely OLED screens with great properties. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip is one of the most powerful on the market with acceptable sustained performance for a foldable phone.

Then there is the camera kit, which has been lifted straight from the Motorola Signature. And it's one of the best for stills, no matter the camera and its lens. Just don't expect it to be an Ultra bar phone-level camcorder, because while it's very good, it's not that great.

We want to praise the battery life and the charging speed, too. But most of all, we want to applaud Motorola on the clean interface with incredibly rich features including AI, foldable-exclusives, and stylus-rerated.

Overall, we wholeheartedly recommend putting the Motorola Razr Fold on your shortlists as it's one of the best phones out there. It may not be the most powerful, but it's easily one of the most likable and most versatile.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra remains one of the best flagship cameraphones you can get right now. Just like the rest of the flagship phones, the 17 Ultra has an excellent display, fast chipset, snappy charging and long battery life, although that last bit isn't a given.

However, the improved telephoto and selfie cameras, along with the exceptional main camera performance, make the device one of the best in its class. We also didn't feel the absence of the second 3x telephoto camera either, as the current 200MP telephoto shooter with continuous optical zoom and close-distance focusing covers all bases. The rotating camera ring on the 17 Ultra by Leica is a nice touch, but it's borderline gimmicky, and we had to turn it off to avoid accidental actuations.

All in all, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is one of the most capable flagship phones with little to no drawbacks. The exceptionally hefty price tag is the only thing you'd have to deal with. And on whether the Leica edition is worth the extra cost, it depends on how useful the rotating ring, the additional security chip and the dual satellite communication are to you. But no matter whether it’s the regular or Leica Edition, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is one of the best phones in year 2026 for sure.

Despite the relatively modest hardware upgrades, the Galaxy S26 Ultra still manages to bring a few meaningful improvements and get a spot in this flagship chapter. The new Privacy Display looks genuinely useful and doesn't noticeably compromise the viewing experience. Faster charging finally brings the phone closer to its rivals, while battery life sees a welcome boost.

And, as always, the S Pen remains a defining feature of the Ultra lineup – one that still sets Samsung apart from the competition.

Some of the new AI features, along with improvements to existing ones, are genuinely interesting. However, limited language support means not everyone will benefit from them, and many of these capabilities remain restricted to Samsung's own system apps.

Even with these improvements, the S26 Ultra struggles to stand out against its Android rivals in several key areas. For instance, the subtle camera downgrades we see this year are particularly puzzling, considering that the S25 Ultra was already trailing some competing flagships in camera performance.

It's an unexciting upgrade this one, but even as it is, the company has once again delivered a well-balanced device with no major flaws and a few standout features that the competition still can't quite match.

The Oppo Find X9 Ultra is an excellent piece of tech, albeit pricier than other Ultras. It's not just a great cameraphone, it's a great all-rounder, too. It has an extra-long battery life, fast charging, a great display, although the full 144Hz is rarely utilized, and offers a nice, customizable software experience, which will get about five major upgrades in the future..

It's too early to say whether it's the best camera-centric phone in the first half of the year, but it's definitely up there with the best, and honestly, that should be enough. If you are looking for the best, this may as well be the one.

However, if video quality is on top of your priority list, that may not be the Find X9 Ultra's forte. Videos are soft-ish across the board, or at least they are not on an "ultra" level.

But among the big cameraphones, the gaps are so small that it will probably boil down to preferences regarding design, software, your favorite focal lengths and features more than anything else.

In the end, we cannot but recommend the Find X9 Ultra if you're in the market for a high-end phone.