Here I'll borrow from MKBHDs five pillars of a good phone and give my own opinions and twist to each category.
I'll start off by saying I miss metal backed phones. Then I'll add on to that the fact that I also do appreciate wireless charging in certain situations, and especially love reverse wireless charging. These aren't fully functional with metal backs. Taking a look at today's phones, they (the high-end ones at least) all seem to be "glass sandwiches" which just means they have a glass front and back, with a metal framework around it. They look incredible, and scratch less easily than metal, but they also crack, and those repairs aren't easy. Now, I don't see a clear winner here, but if I had to pick, weighing in my lack of history in dropping phones as well as my almost-constant case usage, I'd pick the current landscape of iPhones and Galaxy phones.
Displays in phones have changed a lot in the past few years. Largely however, most of the changes at the beginning of this evolution were regarding the elimination of bezels. This took many different forms, but the most widely used ones were Apple's conspicuous notch, hole-punch displays, and completely bezel-less phones with pop-up cameras. My personal favorite has been hole-punch displays, but I see the argument for Apple's notch and the hardware that it houses for FaceID. Pop-up or swivel cameras, while innovative and interesting in concept, just provide another moving part that could potentially break, and honestly, no one wants that. Moving to the last year or so, display changes have been focused around not the shape or size, but the clarity and, specifically, the refresh rate. I remember hearing about it first with the OnePlus 7's 90Hz display, and then other phones began to follow suit quickly. Now, I use a Galaxy S20 Ultra with a 120Hz display and I love it.
This category seems to become much more important as time goes on. Phones now hold multiple cameras, with three seeming to be the sweet spot. A regular sensor, a wide angle, and a telephoto. Telephoto ranges anywhere from 2x to 5x optical zoom, with many companies touting their hybrid zoom, a mixture of optical and digital, that looks lossless up to 10x for the most part. I don't have too many thoughts here, as most cameras do a fine job by my standards, although Samsung does usually tend to overexpose and exaggerate colors. That being said, sometimes I enjoy that extra pop. One warning though, more megapixels does not necesarily mean better. A lot of phones do more with less.
This one seems simple, just look at the mAh in the phone's specs and bigger means better right? Honestly, for the most part that'll probably work, but mileage will vary greatly depending on screen size, resolution, brightness, refresh rate, and the type of usage you will be regularly taking part in. If there are any takeaways though, I personally don't mind a bigger phone if it means I can last a whole day with all of the things I mentioned above maxed out. What can I say, I love a good looking display!
This is another one that flagship phones have gotten down for the most part. Just throw in the highest end processor, probably the Snapdragon 865 for Android and whatever is the latest version of the Apple A series chips, currently the A13 Bionic. Add on to that heaps of RAM and odds are you have a pretty solidly performing phone. Although props to Apple for not needing more than around 4 GB to compete with Android phones that have up to 12 GB.
Apple and Samsung definitely dominate the phone market. Behind them, Google, Huawei, and Xiaomi. These companies consistently put out quality phones year after year and each have lower-tier phones as well as the big number flagships we're used to seeing. We all know that though. I want to take this section to talk about OnePlus, the flagship killer turned flagship? We'll get there. First, a quick intro about my own experience with them. I was introduced to the company by a friend in my AP Spanish Lit class my sophomore year of high school. This was back when buying the phone required an invitation from them. Skip to my graduation, when the OnePlus 6 was announced, and I, a long-time iPhone user wanted to make the switch to Android. It seemed so interesting at the time, as the specs were on par or above iPhones and other devices, but was about half the price. However, I chose the more "reliable" Galaxy S9 and kept the OnePlus in the back of my mind. Now, the OnePlus 8 Pro costs the same as any other flagship, and has just left me wondering what happened to the company that listened to their fanbase and "never settled."
I still can't tell if Samsung and Motorola are really just the firsts to start producing the next big thing or if foldables are just a fad, but I'm definitely interested to see the next iterations as well as Apple's attempt, if they make one. I can definitely see the appeal of having twice the screen available in the same form factor but until they become more practical, less delicate, and cheaper, I can't see them becoming mainstream.
My perfect phone would basically be my current phone (S20 Ultra) with some modifications. First, I still don't like Samsung's skin on Android, even though OneUI has improved it a lot recently. In a perfect world I'd switch that out with OxygenOS from OnePlus. Next, I'd want the camera hardware from my phone, but working with the camera software and post-processing from the Pixel lineup. For some reason, I'd also love to either see physical fingerprint scanners make a comeback (on the back of the phone obviously) or see drastically improved under-the-glass fingerprint scanners.