Best mobile phones to buy in 2013

Smartphones have never been bigger. Soon enough every pocket will have a mini-computer, and the sheer variety of smartphones out there means there's something for everyone, at almost any budget.

Once you've used a smartphone every day, you'll never look back. Here's our pick of the bunch, from Android to iOS to Windows Phone

Our Expert Opinion

The Lumia 1020 is the first phone we've seen that can truly replace a compact camera. Its 41-megapixel sensor lets you take astounding shots in both daylight and dark conditions, and the live photo preview makes it a pleasure to mess around with the camera's settings.

Nokia has done some clever stuff with the huge sensor, too. When you're recording video, the extra pixels mean you can zoom into the image and still maintain Full HD quality. The phone can also use a technique called oversampling, where it examines the larger image and keeps only the pixels it things are the most accurate, leading to a smaller, high-quality picture.

You also get a beautifully-made Windows Phone handset with a gorgeous screen, so if you want a handset to replace both your phone and camera, the 1020 is the one to have.

Read our full Nokia Lumia 1020 review

SPECS
OPERATING SYSTEM Windows Phone 8
PROCESSOR SPEED 1.5GHz
NUMBER OF CORES 2
RAM 2GB
MOBILE DATA 4G
DISPLAY 4.5in 1,280x720 LCD
CAMERA 41-megapixel

INTERNAL STORAGE 32GB
MEMORY CARD SLOT none
CLAIMED BATTERY LIFE 19 hours talktime, 16 days standby
DIMENSIONS 130x71x10mm, 158g

BUY IT FROM Free on a £25-per-month contract from O2

Our Expert Opinion

The iPhone 5S is a better phone than its predecessor in almost every single way.

The new phone has a brand-new processor, the Apple A7, which makes the 5S the first 64-bit smartphone. It's far faster than the iPhone 5, and in some of our tests we saw double the speed compared to the previous model. In the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark, the 5S completed the test in 416ms instead of 709ms, for example.

The upshot is that iOS is even smoother than ever, with none of the slowdowns you see from Android handsets. There are some other fancy features, such as a motion coprocessor. This can sense when the phone isn’t moving, which is useful in situations such as sitting in a gym locker with no signal; the phone will know that it hasn’t moved in a while, and will stop hunting for a signal, so saving battery life.

Apple has also fitted a sensor in the 5S which is 15% larger than that in the 5. The resolution remains at 8 megapixels, but the extra space means the pixels are bigger and can capture more light. This should lead to more detail in situations with poor lighting. In our tests, we found the iPhone 5S's shots had better exposure and more accurate colours than the iPhone 5's images.

The new iPhone also ships with iOS 7, which is a cleaner, faster and much more flexible operating system than its predecessor. The iPhone 5S is a superb handset which brings Apple's smartphone right back up to the Android competition.

Read our full iPhone 5S review

SPECS
OPERATING SYSTEM Apple iOS 7
PROCESSOR SPEED 1.3GHz
NUMBER OF CORES 2
RAM 1GB
MOBILE DATA LTE
DISPLAY 4.0in 1,136x640 LCD
CAMERA 8-megapixel
INTERNAL STORAGE 16GB
MEMORY CARD SLOT none
CLAIMED BATTERY LIFE 10 hours talktime, 250 days standby
DIMENSIONS 123.8x25.6x7.3mm, 112g

BUY IT FROM Free on a £47-per-month contract from O2