2016 Smartphone Comparison Guide

Your process of buying a new phone doesn't always have to start and end with one or two brands. Sure, Samsung and Apple are the commercial leaders, and makers of some of the best phones out there, but our Best Smartphone of 2016 pick so far comes from HTC, a company that doesn't even do much (if any?) TV advertising these days. No matter which phone you go with, make the best possible decision by starting with this latest installment of our biannual Smartphone Comparison Guide.

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In this latest version of The Guide, we whittled our pool down to eight flagship (or, in one case, pseudo-flagship) smartphones:

• HTC 10
• Samsung Galaxy S7
• Apple iPhone 6s
• Samsung Galaxy S7 edge
• Apple iPhone 6s Plus
• LG G5
• Huawei/Google Nexus 6P
• Apple iPhone SE

We left out some still relevant phones from late 2015, including the Galaxy Note 5 and S6 edge Plus, Moto X Pure/Style and OnePlus 2. While they're still worth a look, they're also all likely be supplanted by successors within the next three or four months. So, unless you get one hell of a deal, this isn't the best time to buy those.
The same could go for the iPhones 6s and 6s Plus as well. If you've already decided on an iPhone and can hold off until September, you might want to do that.
Enough jibber-jabber, let's jump into the 2016 Smartphone Comparison Guide.

Size

One of these things is not like the others. The iPhone 6s isn't exactly a huge phone, but it looks like it next to the tiny iPhone SE. It's a throwback to smartphones from four or five years ago, when the pairing of tiny smartphone with big tablet meant buying twice the mobile devices you "need" to buy today.