Best Smartphones of 2019 in Nepal: Flagship to Mid-Range

2019 was another good year for smartphones. We saw plenty of new things; hole-punch displays, high-refresh-rate displays, quad-camera setups, foldable phones, and many more. It has been an amusing year for smartphone enthusiasts.

Well, new things do tend to be expensive. But, there were some amazing phones launched with an amazing price tag which has led expensive phone manufacturers to rethink their approach.

So, within this smartphone jungle, which phones were the best smartphones of 2019 in Nepal? Well, I’m going to give you my choices in this article. While things like display, performance, cameras, battery, and other features are the basic pillars, I value the user experience to be the utmost factor. Thus, the phones in the following categories are ranked with the mix of all the mentioned factors:

The Best Mid-range Smartphone
The Best Lite-Flagship Smartphone
The Best Flagship Killer
The Best Flagship Smartphone

Best Mid-range Smartphone: Redmi Note 8 Pro

Mid-range smartphones tend to be affordable smartphones that provide the utmost features and performances for the least possible price tag. There are lots of mid-range smartphones and it’s the most contested market for smartphone manufacturers.

So, the “Best Mid-range Smartphone of 2019” is none-other than the Redmi Note 8 Pro.

Redmi Note 8 Pro is the king of all mid-range smartphones available in Nepal. It’s got the looks, performance, and almost nails everything. It’s a beast when it comes to performance and provided it is available for Rs. 26,999, it’s absolutely unbeatable. It has a quad-camera setup with a 64MP main sensor and while the main sensor is good, the other sensors are just average. However, this phone is the best mid-range smartphone of 2019 in Nepal. Read our review for more detail.

As for the runners up, it’s Vivo S1 and Samsung M30s. Vivo S1 was a real surprise, I’ve never been impressed by Vivo phones before, but Vivo S1 is definitely a good smartphone for the price. It starts around 28k and for the price you get AMOLED display, good sets of camera and decent performance. And it looks good as well. The only gripe with the Vivo S1 is it’s OS.

Samsung’s new variants of A-series haven’t been received quite good but the M30s is a really good smartphone. It has a plastic build and doesn’t look as impressive but it functions really well. It has a huge 6000 mAh battery, good sets of camera, and provides good enough performance. It’s a very good package on overall.

Best Lite-Flagship Smartphone: Huawei Nova 5T

Lite-Flagship phones are the ones that are almost flagship. Usually, these phones rock some features from their flagship counterparts.

This year, the “Best Lite-Flagship Smartphone” has to go to the Huawei Nova 5T. It’s rocking a flagship Kirin 980 chipset, Sony IMX 586 sensor, and it looks stunning. The only complaint about this phone is the lack of an AMOLED display. Its camera is really good and I was very impressed with this phone.

After Nova 5T there’s Redmi K20. K20 provides a nice blend of everything a good smartphone has to have. It packs a punch with Snapdragon 730, then it has an AMOLED display, and then it has good set of camera as well. For 39k, it’s a very good package and you cannot go wrong with it.

Redmi K20 is followed by Samsung’s A70s. A70s is not an upgrade that I would have wanted. While it does have improved camera performance there’s not much change to call it an upgrade. It still rocks a Snapdragon 675, which is kind of old but if you look at it, the chipset performs quite good. A70s was overpriced when it launched at 49k and right now it’s 45k. Well, it still is slightly overpriced but I feel the phone deserved runners up place.

Best Flagship Killer: Redmi K20 Pro

I thought this category deserved a separate place so here it is. Lately, we have seen lots of flagship killers from various companies. But, the one that stood out the most was the Xiaomi’s Redmi K20 Pro. This phone rocked all of the flagship features for Rs. 50,000. This price tag is more than half of most of the flagships out there. It looks good, it has top-notch performance, and has decent camera performance as well. Thus, Redmi K20 Pro is the “Best Flagship Killer of 2019“.

Following K20 Pro is OnePlus 7T which was recently released in Nepal for Rs. 67,000. It features most of the features of OnePlus 7 Pro and is cheaper. So, yeah! it is definitely one of the best phones of this year. Had it not been for the K20 Pro, OnePlus 7T would have been the winner.

Best Flagship Smartphone: OnePlus 7 Pro

Flagship smartphones are the best phones available out there in the market. They have the best camera, performance, and everything else. For me, the “Best Flagship Smartphone of 2019” is the OnePlus 7/7T Pro. It doesn’t have the best camera among the flagships but the total experience of this phone is really enticing. The 90HZ display made the phone more smooth and the software experience on OnePlus phones are always the best. Even though it did not have the best camera out there, based on overall experience this phone is the best.

Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus is one of the runner ups for me. 90HZ display would have elevated its appeal but still, it has one of the best displays out there. Its camera is one of the best out there and the aura glow version is really cool. I would have probably gone with the Note 10 Plus as the best if it was slightly cheaper.

iPhone 11 Pro made a huge step up in the camera department and it has one of the best cameras but I have always preferred Android over iOS. Thus, for me, iPhone 11 Pro is one of the runner ups for the Best Flagship Smartphone 2019.

So, these were my picks for the best smartphones of 2019 in Nepal for related categories. Let me what are your picks for the best phone in all of these categories in the comments below!