Picking the perfect smartphone in 2019 is tricky. We all want a great camera that’s capable of perfectly capturing our holiday adventures, and a long-lasting battery is essential, but what about performance?
No matter how good your brand-new smartphone is, it’s rendered entirely useless if its performance isn’t up to scratch. A slow phone is cause for a premature upgrade, but don’t worry, we’ve put in the hard work so you can avoid any disappointing purchases.
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We rigorously test every smartphone that passes through our doors, so we know which phones are worth buying in 2019 if speed is at the top of your checklist. We’ve gathered the top 20 fastest smartphones on the market into one handy place, to save you the guesswork when considering your next purchase.
Fastest smartphone 2019: How we test
We’ve added the fastest phones from our individual smartphone performance tests into one easy-to-use graph. We put hundreds of phones to the test every year, with the best coverage in the UK – so we’ve got all the bases covered.
To measure a phone’s performance, we use Geekbench 4, a third-party benchmarking application that assesses an individual CPU’s single- and multi-core capabilities. A score is provided for each test, which we then use to compare a phone’s performance with its competitors. GFXBench also provides a variety of GPU tests, which give an indication of the phone's gaming capabilities.
The best thing about these benchmarks is that you can try them for yourself and see how your phone stacks up against the very best. Both GFXBench and Geekbench 4 are completely free, and can be found on Google Play and the Apple App Store.
Fastest smartphone 2019: Results
As you can see from the graph, there isn’t much difference between the phone in pole position and the handset coming in at number 20. Current-generation chips are all performing equally for the most part, albeit with a few exceptions.
Apple’s latest smartphones are occupying the top six slots, with the latest A12 Bionic chip (which powers the iPhone Xs , Xs Max and XR ) sitting firmly on the podium. This particular CPU is the best-performing mobile chipset we’ve seen so far. If you’re craving the fastest phone on the market, these are the smartphones to get.
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Elsewhere, Huawei’s own 7nm Kirin 980 chip is found just underneath Apple’s phones. This octa-core chipset is clocked at 2.6GHz and powers Huawei’s Mate 20 Pro and Mate 20X , as well as the Honor Magic 2 and Honor View 20 .
Finally we reach Qualcomm’s flagship mobile processor, the Snapdragon 845. This 10nm chip is clocked at 2.8GHz, and is found powering the majority of flagship Android phones, such as the Vivo Nex S , Sony Xperia XZ3 and the Razer Phone 2 .
The cheapest phone on this list, if you’re curious, is the OnePlus 6T (£529). This mid-range Android phone actually provides roughly 79% of the performance of the most expensive smartphone, the iPhone Xs Max (£1,100). This isn’t a difference you’ll notice. You really don’t need to spend upwards of four figures on a reliable smartphone, no matter what Apple tells you.
