The phablet term has been around for a while now, but this year it has really come into its own, thanks to plenty of phones with giant displays launching left, right and centre.
Holding said devices to your ear might not give you the best street cred, but they are brilliant for a number of two-handed tasks, like watching movies via Netflix or playing games. We've seen Samsung add to its Note range with the Note 3, Sony launched its very large yet thin Xperia Z1 Ultra, while Nokia brought a Windows Phone to the phablet gang with the Lumia 1520.
Unlike the previous nine years of Awards, this year we've split the mobile phone category into two to cater for the super-sized devices. To qualify for this category, nominations had to feature a display over 5.3-inches - but under 7-inches, tablet fans.
After much thought, we give you the lowdown on the five devices up for Best Phablet 2013.
HTC One max
The latest addition to the HTC One family, the HTC One max launched in October with a £600 price tag and brings with it a great display and the same wonderful design principal of the HTC One.
Essentially you get the HTC One experience, but on a bigger scale and with the addition of a fingerprint reader and microSD support for storage expansion. The BoomSound speakers are excellent, the aluminium finish still looks great and the user interface is nicely refined, making it a strong contender in this category.
Huawei Ascend Mate
The Huawei Ascend Mate was announced in January and will cost a cool £335, the cheapest option in our phablet shortlist. It comes with a 6.1-inch display, which not only comes in handy for gleaning visuals from its giant size, but is also of good quality.
READ: Huawei Ascend Mate
With a great build, epic battery capacity and a powerful enough processor to play most games, along with microSD support, the Huawei Ascend Mate impressed us from the moment we took it out of the box. In our eyes, it is one of Huawei's finest devices.
Nokia Lumia 1520
The Nokia Lumia 1520 was announced in October, set to be priced at $749 (no UK price as yet), and it is not only the biggest phone to come from Nokia thanks to its 6-inch high-resolution panel, but also the first Windows Phone 8 device to use a quad-core processor.
READ: Hands on: Nokia Lumia 1520 review
It has the typically solid Nokia build intact, the display is beautiful, its power makes it a speedy performance and there's a great camera that comes with some brilliant new features like StoryTeller. In our opinion, if you want the fastest, most visually appealing Windows Phone on the market, then this one is the one to set your sights on.
Samsung Galaxy Note 3
The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 was announced by the South Korean company in September and will set you back £600 for the hugely powerful device. It features 4K video capture capability which looks outstanding, alongside a beautiful 5.7-inch display and improved looks over its predecessor.
READ: Samsung Galaxy Note 3
It also comes with a stylus, better known as S Pen, that's great for handling the new air command interface and the handwriting recognition function is more accurate than ever before. We thought the photo processing could do with a little attention, but we really loved this device and believe it is a very worthy contender in this category.
Sony Xperia Z Ultra
The largest of our phablet nominees, the Sony Xperia Z1 Ultra packs in a 6.4-inch screen. When it was announced in September, it was the sheer physical size of the device - not the £600 price - that got tongues wagging. But the display is brilliant and this handset packs a huge amount of power into its super slim design.
READ: Sony Xperia Z Ultra
The build of this waterproof phone is impressive, plus it provides a decent battery life which is always a bonus. If you are a lover of more tablet-sized than phone-sized devices then the Sony Xperia Z Ultra is a fantastic phablet contender.
Voting for your favourite
Voting in the 10th annual Pocket-lint Awards is now open. You can let us know which one of these great devices should win the Best Phablet 2013 award and give us your verdict about all the other tech across the 12 select categories. To vote, all you have to do is visit pocket-lint.com/awards.
Winners will be announced at the exclusive event in London on 28 November in association with O2 and Hotwire. For now, keep an eye on the Pocket-lint Gadget Awards 2013 hub for all the latest on how the voting works, who the elite judges are and the complete 10th Pocket-lint Gadget Awards shortlist.
No comments:
Post a Comment