Best iPhone Alternatives 2024: Get a Great Android Phone Instead

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a fantastic Android phone that truly stands out as a great alternative to an iPhone. One of the most impressive aspects of the Galaxy S24 Ultra is its stunning display. The phone boasts a large, vibrant AMOLED screen with a high refresh rate, making everything from browsing to gaming incredibly smooth and visually striking.

Under the hood, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is powered by the latest Snapdragon 8 3rd Gen processor, delivering lightning-fast performance that can handle anything you throw at it. If you enjoy taking photos on your smartphone, then there’s a lot to love about the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s camera system. With its advanced quad-lens setup, including a powerful telephoto lens and ultra-wide capabilities, you can capture stunning photos and videos in any setting. The camera software is loaded with features to enhance your shots, from AI scene optimization to pro-level manual controls.

For those who value productivity, the S24 Ultra’s integration with the S Pen offers a unique advantage. You can take notes, draw, or navigate your device with precision, adding a layer of functionality that’s perfect for both work and play.

The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra is a powerful, feature-packed smartphone that offers a lot of what makes the iPhone great, plus a few extras that make it a standout choice in its own right. If you’re looking for a high-performance device with a beautiful display, excellent cameras, and a host of features designed to make your life easier, the Galaxy S24 Ultra is an Android phone that deserves serious consideration.

Google has always had a knack for photography with its Pixel line of smartphones, and the Pixel 9 Pro is the current height of its prowess. You get a great looking phone capable of excellent photography thanks to a three-camera array on the back that provides considerable flexibility in how you approach subjects.

While many phones have one camera that I’d call “the star of the show” as it does the best shooting and is flanked by less impressive sensors that just complement its capabilities. But the Pixel 9 Pro has three powerful sensors that really work together wonderfully. The 50MP main sensor captures loads of light and detail with a fairly wide angle. When you need to get even more into your shot, the 50MP ultra-wide zooms out for a broad field-of-view while keeping great color that matches the main sensor closely. And with a 48MP telephoto sensor offering 5x optical zoom, you can get extra close to subjects without having to move from where you’re photography from. This camera system is easily a worthy alternative to what’s on offer from an iPhone.

The Pixel 9 Pro comes running on the new Tensor G4 SoC, which is an upgrade over the prior model and further boosts speed. It also avoids some of the heat from everyday uses that affected earlier Pixel phones. It has ample performance for most tasks and can keep up with bigger mobile games, like Zenless Zone Zero at 60fps, quite well. It may not match the iPhone 16 Pro’s A18 Pro chip in sheer performance, but Google has put an emphasis on AI capabilities with the Tensor G4, and it’s readily able to power some AI generation, including supporting a live virtual assistant that can converse naturally.

Google has also upped the ante for Android phones by offering seven years of OS updates and security patches for the Pixel 9 Pro, a promise that more effectively aligns its phone with the kind of long-term software support Apple provides for its phones.

All of this comes in a beautifully designed phone. Google packs in a great display that’s both sharp at 1280x2856 and stunningly bright with a peak of 3000 nits. It also gets a 120Hz refresh rate. There’s little more to ask for out of this compact, 6.3-inch display. And any folks who want all that the Pixel 9 Pro has to offer but want a bigger screen can bump up to the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and they’ll get everything just about the exact same except a bigger 6.8-inch screen.

Right now, the cheapest iPhone you can get from Apple is the 2022 iPhone SE, which I found a fairly bad bargain at the time given how incredibly dated its design was even then and how accessible the iPhone 12 mini and 13 mini were — sometimes with cheaper prices. And Apple still wants $429 for that iPhone SE. Meanwhile, you take your money over the Android side of the market, and you can get something much closer to a modern-day flagship in the $499 OnePlus 12R.

OnePlus builds a classy phone. An aluminum frame wraps around the phone, and the front is covered in Gorilla Glass Victus 2, a tough version that’s found its way onto plenty of even more expensive phones. That glass is protecting one of the biggest upgrades the OnePlus 12R offers over the iPhone SE: its display. The OnePlus 12R packs a 6.78-inch stunner of a display. It’s plenty sharp at 1264x2780, so no sacrifices for budget there, and it boasts a 1-120Hz refresh rate thanks to the LTPO AMOLED panel used, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision support, and extreme brightness levels alongside the per-pixel dimming of AMOLED.

Taking advantage of that screen calls for some serious speed, and the OnePlus 12R has that covered with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC paired with 8GB of memory. It may not be the latest flagship SoC, but it’s hardly lagging behind performance-wise and readily keeps up with some heavier gaming. You also get a base storage of 128GB, double what the iPhone SE offers.

OnePlus doesn’t quite match Apple’s long-term support, but it promises three major Android updates and four years of security updates, which is a pretty good showing for a lower-cost Android phone and helps stretch the value you can get from the phone over time. If you’re after a good-looking, performant phone with a display to rival Apple’s best at a price competing with Apple’s cheapest, the OnePlus 12R is where you should look. If you’re looking for even more alternatives, see our overall Android phone recommendations.

So far, iPhones don’t fold. There was a year when they bent, but that’s the closest they’ve come. If they did fold, they’d have to contend with the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6. This is a device geared up to compete with Apple. Whether it’s opened or closed, the Galaxy Z Flip 6 has the looks. A flat-edged aluminum frame wraps around the phone, and sturdy Gorilla Glass Victus 2 covers the back of the phone. When it’s folded shut, the Z Flip 6 still provides a 3.4-inch AMOLED display ready to provide quick access to notifications, shortcuts, widgets, and apps. In this position, the Z Flip 6 is also ready to slip into just about any pocket or purse.

When a bigger screen is called for, you just have to fold the Z Flip 6 open to access its 6.6-inch internal display. This is also a gorgeous AMOLED panel offering rich contrast and vibrant colors. Appropriate to the class of device, the Z Flip 6 has a 120Hz refresh rate on the panel, so you can get smooth visuals as you interact with the phone or play games. And game you can — the Z Flip 6 packs in a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC, the same powerful chip found in many flagship Android phones for 2024. It’s able to keep up with demanding games and AI tasks alike, especially thanks to the 12GB of RAM onboard.

While the Galaxy Z Flip 6 isn’t stocked with Samsung’s top-of-the-line camera systems, it gets a respectable setup ready to snap quality shots with both wide and ultra-wide sensors. An internal selfie cam is available (and perhaps most convenient for video calls), but you can actually just opt to use the main rear camera or ultra-wide as your default selfie-shooter since the small external display can serve as an ideal viewfinder.

The Z Flip 6 provides a lot and is ready to go toe to toe with the iPhone. And thanks to its folding design, which lets it shrink down dramatically, it has tricks up its sleeve that no Apple device has matched.

The RedMagic 9S Pro is a gaming powerhouse. It’s no small task to rival the performance of Apple’s in-house chips, but the 9S Pro takes the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading version — an already souped up variant of the chip — and makes it work. The key here is a combination of out-of-the-box overclocking and an advanced, active cooling system that lets the RedMagic 9S Pro sustain performance even while it’s driving the SoC hard. Running Genshin Impact or Zenless Zone Zero with maxed out settings is no sweat for the RedMagic 9S Pro. Even in 3DMark’s Steel Nomad Light Stress Test, the phone was able to complete 20 runs back-to-back with stable performance and scores that all beat the OnePlus 12’s best single-run score, and the OnePlus 12 is no slouch itself.

Gaming performance isn’t all that the RedMagic 9S Pro has to offer either. The phone comes with a massive 6.8 AMOLED display that’s gorgeous for gaming and entertainment. It goes right to the corners and actually hides the selfie camera underneath active pixels, so you get an uncropped, uninterrupted view of games and movies alike. That display is both sharp and smooth as well. The screen is tucked away behind Gorilla Glass, and RedMagic wrapped the phone up in a matte aluminum frame that just looks great. Around the back, RedMagic offers a number of styles, including a transparent cover that may appeal to gamers and non-gamers alike. The industrial design is stylish and practical, with the cameras even sitting flush with the rear cover.

RedMagic has a number of features suited to gaming, such as its capacitive shoulder buttons and increased touch sampling rate. And boosting performance with the air cooler is just a switch away thanks to a toggle on the side of the phone that fires up the cooler and a special games launcher.

It’s really quite the phone, and it’s all the more impressive that RedMagic offers it for just $649 (though the more stylish models come in at $799 and include more memory and double the storage of the base model).

What to look for in an iPhone alternative in 2024

While the iPhone is the most popular smartphone brand, more than half of the phones on the planet are Android devices. People seem to like Android’s open platform instead of Apple’s rigid ‘walled garden’. Android gives its users the opportunity to customize their experience with various themes, wallpapers, launchers, and apps.

Heck, there are more apps available to download through the Google Play Store than with the Apple App Store. In fact, you’re not even limited to the Google Play Store for apps. You can use the Amazon Appstore, Samsung Galaxy Store, Aptoide, and others for different types of app utilities and experiences.

With more and more people flocking to Android, it may seem tough to pick a great iPhone alternative.

Phone Size and Design

One of the best things about iPhone alternatives is they come in various shapes and sizes. Apple is pretty set with making phones that are about 6 inches in size. However, you can find Android phones that are bigger at 7 inches or smaller at 4 inches. It’s really up to you on which size fits your hands better, or how much screen real estate you want.

In fact, there are a number of smartphones that are foldable like the Motorola Razr+. You can choose to have a small design in your pocket or purse, but then fold them out to be bigger when they’re in use. Now that’s something you can’t do with an iPhone.

Storage Capacity

For the most part, Android smartphones start out with 128GB of on-board storage, which is the same as the iPhone 16. However, there are many Android phones that are built-in with a microSD card expansion slot for even more storage up to an additional 1TB.

A general rule of thumb when it comes to Android is you can get more for less. This means you can get more storage options, memory, power, screen sizes, features, megapixels, and cameras than your average iPhone for less money.

Price

Speaking of money, Android smartphones are often less expensive than iPhones, with prices starting as low as $50 for bottom-of-the-barrel picks like the BLU C5L. There’s no shortage of cheap Android phones out there. However, you can get a good quality wallet-friendly smartphone like the Poco X5 5G starting at $220. Compare this to Apple’s cheapest phone, the iPhone SE, which starts at $429.

On the high end, you can get a totally maxed out Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 with 1TB of on-board storage for a whopping $2,160.

Additionally, if you consider that you can get more features with an Android phone than an iPhone, then you’re actually getting more bang-for-the-buck. For example: The Samsung Galaxy S24 goes for about the same price as the iPhone 14, but you get a three camera system and 8GB of memory with Samsung, compared to a two camera system and 6GB of memory with Apple.

Overall, if you’re looking for an iPhone alternative, there are plenty of great Android smartphones out there for different types of people and use cases. For most people, however, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra or Google Pixel 9 Pro are the best picks. Samsung has the premium design for speed and style, while Google has the better camera for sharper and more natural photos.

How Often Should You Upgrade Your Phone?

There are new Android phones coming out every year, but you don't need to be upgrading to a new phone every year. Now that smartphones have become a lot smarter, you really only need to upgrade ever 2 or 3 years to avoid falling behind in terms of processing power and battery life. All-in-all, if you're current phone still works fine for everything you need it to do, there's no need to upgrade at all.

Mark Knapp is a contributing freelancer for IGN covering everything electronics and gaming hardware. He has over 10 years of experience in the tech industry with bylines at PCMag, Reviewed, CNET, and more. Find Mark on Twitter @Techn0Mark or BlueSky at @Techn0Mark.

Originally posted:

Sep 27, 2024 9:50 pm