Best T-Mobile Phones for 2024

The $450 Samsung Galaxy A54 5G proves you can get a phone with solid performance for a very reasonable price. It packs a 6.4-inch display, an octa-core processor that offers enough power for daily essentials (including light gaming) and a camera that does a decent job of handling your out-and-about snaps. Its 128GB of storage will be enough for most people, and those who need more space can expand it with microSD cards up to 1TB in size.

The $300 OnePlus Nord N30 5G includes a lot of features for the money, but its 50W charging speed is the standout feature. The phone can charge from 0% to 100% in 45 minutes. Its large 6.72-inch 1,080p display runs at a 120Hz refresh rate making apps, games, websites and streaming video animate smoothly. It's worth calling out that the 108-megapixel main camera -- despite having an astounding megapixel count -- takes photos that are only marginally better than other $300 phones.

Go to a T-Mobile store: The best way to know if you'll like a phone or not is to try it in person.

Android or iOS? Pick one: If you've been on an Android phone and are thinking about getting an iPhone, ask your friends and family what they have. If the people you communicate with most are tied into Apple's ecosystem, it benefits you to stay on team iPhone. If your family is all on Android phones, it might be worth staying with a Pixel phone or Samsung Galaxy phone. Otherwise, it's simple enough to switch platforms.

Look at last year's phones: Phones released last year still have many of the same features as a brand new one, often at a discounted price.

Don't discount cheaper handsets: Features of last year's flagships always trickle down to this year's midrange handsets. You can get a great phone that does almost everything that a premium phone can do for $500 to $700.

Buy a phone case: Protect your new phone from wear and tear and even serious damage.

We test every phone in real-world scenarios, focusing on its features, design, performance, cameras, battery life and overall value. We document our findings in an initial review that is periodically updated when there are new software updates, or to compare it against new phones from competitors such as Apple, Samsung, Google and OnePlus.

Photography

Photography is a major focus for most phones these days, so we take pictures and videos of various subjects in a variety of settings and lighting scenarios. We try out any new camera modes, such as Action mode that debuted with the iPhone 14 line, or the Unblur photo tool that launched with the Google Pixel 7 series.

Battery life

Battery testing is conducted in a variety of ways. We assess how long a phone lasts during a typical day of use and note how it performs during more focused sessions of video calls, media streaming and gaming. We also conduct a video playback test, as a simple, replicable measure of pure battery life, which isn't always included in the initial review but sometimes added later in an update.

Performance measuring

We use benchmarking apps to measure each phone's performance, alongside our own anecdotal experiences using the phone for our review. Of note are how graphics and animations look. Are they smooth? Or do they lag or stutter? We also look at how quickly the phone switches between horizontal and vertical orientations, and how fast the camera app opens and is ready to take a photo.

We perform processor-heavy tasks like editing photos, exporting videos and playing games. We evaluate whether a newer version of a particular phone includes enough features to make it worth upgrading from older models.

Read more: How We Test Phones

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• Best Phones Under $500
• Best Prepaid Phones for 2024
• Best Phone to Buy for 2024
• Phones Under $200: Top Picks and New Budget Phones