I’ve owned a lot of phones over the years, some of which were my own personal devices, and some were long-term reviews for How-To Geek and its sister outlets. There are five that stand above the rest, though. Some were rock-solid reliable devices, or a design I loved, or just a substantial upgrade from whatever I was using before that.
I thought it might be fun to revisit my five favorite phones from over the years, all of which I used as my primary device for at least a year.
5
LG Nexus 5
Google’s flagship smartphone for 2013 was the Nexus 5, part of the Nexus lineup that later evolved into the Google Pixel series we know and love today. This model was built in collaboration with LG, complete with a Snapdragon 800 chipset, Android 4.4 KitKat, a 5-inch 1080p IPS display, and an 8MP rear camera.
The Nexus 5 was the first phone I bought with my own money, and it was seriously impressive for the time, especially since I was coming from the Wi-Fi-only Samsung Galaxy Player 5 with a partially-working custom ROM. It was fast, and the camera quality was great. Android 4.4 KitKat is probably still my all-time favorite version of Android, and the phone also shipped with Google Now, a basic voice assistant (before Google Assistant) and home screen information page. I miss that era of toned-town Holo interface design, and the Google Now page is a lot more useful than the Google Discover page on modern Android phones.
Unfortunately, the Nexus 5 was prone to many different hardware issues, and mine eventually died and refused to boot up. Why must the good die young?
4
Motorola Moto G 4G
I also had the Moto G 4G, which was a 2014 4G-compatible version of the original Moto G budget phone. It was small, with a 4.5-inch IPS LCD screen, and under the hood it had a Snapdragon 400 chipset with 1GB RAM. It was fast, but I remember the official Android 5.0 update causing some memory leaks—later 5.1 updates and custom ROMs helped fix that.
My favorite part about the Moto G was the swappable plastic backplates. It shipped with a black cover, but I also had bright orange and white ones. That customization wasn’t as advanced as the Moto Maker that Motorola offered for its flagship phones, but it was still great.
3
Apple iPhone 15
The iPhone 15 is my current phone, and admittedly, it’s not an interesting or unique device. I wrote How-To Geek’s iPhone 15 review after pre-ordering it in 2023, and it has lasted me a year and a half with no real issues. That’s really the most I want from a smartphone these days—folding screens, custom Android ROMs, and Linux devices have too many compromises for me to use them as my main phone.
The 6.1-inch OLED screen on the iPhone 15 is fantastic, though I do wish the phone was a bit smaller. The USB Type-C port is still great for using the same chargers and cables as all my other devices, and the cameras are excellent. The 12MP 2x telephoto lens works surprisingly well as a macro camera, though I still need to take out my Sony Alpha a5000 when I need most professional-quality photos. The dual-eSIM functionality is also great for travel, and I have used the satellite connectivity to update my Find My location a few times.
The iPhone 15 might be a boring phone, but it does exactly what I need and hasn’t suffered from hardware issues, which makes it one of the best phones I’ve ever owned. I’ll probably pay for a replacement battery later this year and keep using the phone for the foreseeable future.
2
Samsung Galaxy S10e
Samsung released the Galaxy S10e in 2019 as an affordable and compact flagship smartphone, much like the previous year’s iPhone XR. I bought one for two reasons. First, I wanted a smaller phone. Second, the dual-SIM model that Samsung built for international markets allowed me to use my primary phone number while using another line for cheaper data.
This was the little phone that could do it all. It had a great 5.8-inch AMOELD screen, IP68 water and dust protection, a headphone jack, multiple cameras, a super-fast fingerprint scanner on the side, and a microSD card slot. I still miss that fingerprint sensor every time I have to wait a second or two for Face ID on my iPhone, or my face mask causes it to fail entirely—the S10e instantly unlocked as I took it out of my pocket.
My time with the Galaxy S10e wasn’t perfect, though. Battery life is worse on smaller phones, as the laws of physics prevent them from using larger battery cells. The cameras also weren’t great, especially with Samsung’s camera processing at the time—everything was just a bit too vivid, like turning grass in outdoor photos to neon green.
1
Google Pixel (1st Gen)
The original Google Pixel is still my all-time favorite phone, and it’s the one I used for the longest amount of time. I bought the smaller model (not the Pixel XL) at release in 2016, after my Nexus 5X had a hardware failure. Yes, both the Nexus 5 and 5X died on me—I do not mourn the death of LG’s smartphone division.
The original Pixel had a great hardware design, with an aluminum and glass build, a headphone jack, a decent fingerprint reader, and a USB Type-C port—seven years before Apple finally made a USB-C iPhone. The real standout quality was the camera, which was frequently cited as one of the best smartphone cameras at the time, and I was constantly impressed with the quality on my own photos and videos.
The Google Pixel served me well for a long time, especially with a replacement battery around the second-year mark. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fast, reliable, had a great camera, and was bootloader-unlockable—what more could you ask for in a smartphone?
I’ll end this list with some honorable mentions for phones I liked, but not quite enough to earn a spot in my top five. I still have my extremely orange ZTE Open with Firefox OS, though I never used it as a primary phone for an extended period. The OnePlus 5T and iPhone SE 2022 served me well for a while, but the former had abysmal camera quality (even for the era), and the latter device’s Lightning port and LCD screen prompted me to upgrade to the iPhone 15 as soon as it was available.
