The best smartphones of 2026 are elite — and expensive

Every year, Apple, Samsung, and Google grace us with plenty of great handsets across the price spectrum. This year is different in one notable way, however. Thanks to RAMageddon, even budget phones are getting more expensive.

If you want something good for under $500, you can still get that. But if you want a true flagship device or a bendy screen, you'll have to set aside $1,000 to $2,000 and up.

The year is almost halfway through, so we thought we would celebrate the greatest smartphone achievements of the year to date. Here are the five best smartphones of 2026 so far, in no particular order.

Best flagship: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra

Putting together a "best smartphones of the year" list in June is a bit difficult because most companies wait until the back half of the calendar year to unleash their flagships. Samsung is not most companies.

The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra is the best flagship of the year so far, almost by default, but that doesn't mean it's undeserving. This is a powerhouse of an Android handset, with a huge 6.9-inch display with a 120Hz refresh rate, an excellent camera array, and a massive 5,000mAh battery that keeps it chugging all day long. It's also chock full of Samsung's latest AI features, if you're into that, and it stands out from the competition by including an S Pen stylus for your note-taking needs. Yes, $1,199 is a lot for a phone, but you get what you pay for, in this case.

Best iPhone: Apple iPhone 17e

Apple is one of those companies that waits until later in the year to play its best cards, but the iPhone 17e is quite a nice phone for its modest $599 price tag.

This year, Apple upgraded its budget option with MagSafe support, an A19 chip, and a new starting 256GB storage capacity. That means it can run all the latest AI apps and won't fill up right away, which are both great qualities for a budget phone to have. It's also got respectable battery life for a phone in its price range. The only real disappointments here are the cameras and the 60Hz display, two things that some other budget phones are better at. Still, if you live in Apple's ecosystem and don't have a ton of money to spend, this is a very good phone.

Best budget Android phone: Google Pixel 10a

Every year, the Google Pixel A-series represents some of the best value in the world of smartphones. They're usually about 90 percent as good as the flagship Pixel that comes out about six months prior, with some corners cut to reduce the price. That was not necessarily the case with the Pixel 10a this year, but it's still a solid device that's easy to recommend to anyone who wants a $499 Android phone.

Sure, it's missing some of the high-end AI features and didn't get a processor upgrade over last year's model, but the totally flat back means it won't wobble on your desk, which is nice. Google's typical high-quality camera trickery is also at work here, which is no surprise. Google also packed in some more charging options and a brighter display, all for $100 less than an iPhone 17e.

Best foldable: Motorola Razr Ultra

We're still waiting for Samsung's next batch of foldables, as well as the rumored iPhone Fold, but Motorola has our back with the best foldable of 2026 so far: The Razr Ultra.

Aside from its name being a nostalgia trap for elder millennials who remember the old Razr flip phones fondly, this is a very good foldable. Unfortunately, it also starts at $1,499. Still, if you can afford it, you'll get a cool clamshell design, two excellent AMOLED displays, one of the best mobile processors money can buy in the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and a 36-hour battery life. Yes, the price is a lot, but it's not entirely unwarranted. Our tech editor loved this Android foldable, and we think you will, too.

Most ambitious: Samsung Galaxy TriFold

Our last phone on this list is, unfortunately, one you can't really buy anymore. Samsung released the Galaxy TriFold earlier this year for a very limited window of time before pulling it off the shelves forever. Normally, that'd disqualify it from a list like this, but the TriFold was so cool that we want to pay our respects to it before its memory is lost like tears in rain.

As its name suggests, this was a foldable with two creases instead of one, meaning it had a massive internal display that made it more like something from Star Trek than a regular phone. That kind of display is simply better for things like gaming and reading books than a normal one, but it also meant the phone was probably tricky to manufacture and was never going to be long for this world. Still, it was a really cool experiment, and we're glad Samsung got it into some of our hands, however briefly.