The best alternatives to the iPhone 7
Ignore the hype surrounding Apple's latest, these are the smartphones you should be buying
Yesterday, Tim Cook and his developers – band name, anyone? – captivated both the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium in San Francisco and scores of live stream viewers around the world as they launched the Apple Watch Series 2 and the much-anticipated iPhone 7.
Boasting such features as an improved 12 megapixel camera, stereo speakers and wireless headphone capability, the new iPhone is undeniably impressive – Cook proudly told us that the company have now sold over 1,000,000,000 of their signature handsets – but if you don’t feel like leaping on the billion-unit bandwagon, what Apple alternatives should you be eyeing?
As the third biggest smartphone manufacturer in the world, Huawei are still underrepresented in Britain – but they deserve more exposure. Although the P9 may be their premium model, the new Huawei Nova and Nova Plus are beautiful to look at, perform well on a Snapdragon 625 processor and include a handy ‘hybrid’ SIM tray – something almost unheard of on a mid-range smartphone.
Also unveiled this week, the successor to LG’s V10, the V20, is the first Android Nougat phone out of the box. With Bang & Olufsen headphones, 64GB of storage, and up to 2TB expansion possible through microSD, the V20 boasts some impressive specs. And the inclusion of a fingerprint scanner and Quick Charge 3.0 mean that it isn’t too far behind the iPhone.
Released in late September, this 5.5 inch screen smartphone from Motorola runs on Android and is available in chic graphite, gold or the less-gentlemanly pink. With a 16 megapixel back camera, it outranks the iPhone, but the 5 megapixel front camera falls short of Apple’s new, selfie-improving seven.
The OnePlus, a little-known and underrepresented smartphone, is also a 5.5 inch handset, also runs Android and also boasts an iPhone-beating 16 megapixel back camera. But, getting one up on both the Motorola Moto Z and Apple’s latest, the OnePlus also boasts an impressive 8 megapixel front camera – the same as the main rear camera on an iPhone 5.
The Xperia XZ is scheduled for release in early October, and although a little smaller than many of the handsets on this list – at 5.2 inches – the blue, grey, silver or pink colour choice makes it aesthetically much more striking. Running Android, it also has the most impressive camera specs, with a 13 megapixel front camera (more than the iPhone 7’s rear) and a huge 23 megapixel back camera.
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