1. DOOGEE V Max

The top Chinese smartphones of 2024 opens with a model with a huge capacity battery – 22,000 mAh. The manufacturer promises up to 2300 hours or 36 days of standby time. With normal use, battery life is about 3-4 days. You can play games for up to 25 hours and watch videos for up to 40 hours on a single charge. This is a very good battery life for today, even if you select suitable options from among rugged smartphones.

Doogee V Max also supports reverse charging, so you can use it as a power bank. The smartphone also has support for fast charging with a power of 33 W, but even with it, the device will charge for several hours.

Another feature of the Doogee V Max is its durable design. The smartphone has protection classes IP68, IP69K and MIL-STD-810G. Neither water, nor dust, nor even a fall from a height of up to one and a half meters will harm it.

If you are wondering about the thickness and weight of the Doogee V Max, they are 27.3mm and 490g respectively. Yes, this is a really thick and massive smartphone.

The display has a diagonal of 6.58 inches, Full HD+ resolution and a screen refresh rate of 120 Hz. It is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass 5.

The Doogee V Max also offers very good performance thanks to the Dimensity 1080 processor and 12GB of RAM, which can be expanded up to 20GB via virtual memory. Built-in memory capacity is 256 GB, you can use a microSD memory card.

The AnTuTu score is almost 510 thousand points. Doogee V Max can be called a gaming smartphone because it can run all modern games without any problems.

Finally, let’s turn our attention to the cameras.

The main camera features a 108 MP Samsung sensor, a 20 MP Sony night vision sensor and a 16 MP ultra-wide-angle sensor with a 130° field of view. The front camera has a resolution of 32 MP. The quality of images from both the rear and front cameras is excellent, with correct white balance and a wide dynamic range. Supports 4K video recording.

Realme is known for regularly introducing feature-rich smartphones at an affordable price. And with the release of GT 2 Pro, the company entered the premium segment. Obviously, the higher the amount you pay, the more you expect from the device’s performance, battery life, cameras, and interface. And GT2 Pro meets all these conditions, which is why it was included in the ranking of Chinese smartphones in 2024.

GT 2 Pro features a flat 6.7-inch 2K AMOLED display with LTPO 2.0 technology, a 150-degree ultra-wide-angle camera, and the smartphone industry’s first eco-friendly bio-based polymer body. The latter was developed in collaboration with Japanese industrial designer Naoto Fukasawa. You can even write on the back panel (with a pencil, of course!) and then erase it. The matte finish does not attract fingerprints or dust. The brand claims that the production of the biopolymer reduces carbon emissions into the atmosphere by 35.5%.

The back of the phone houses a triple camera setup with a 50-megapixel main lens, a 50-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens, and a 3-megapixel micro lens. At the front, the phone has a 32-megapixel selfie camera.

Whether it’s daylight photography, night photography, street photography, or shots taken with the 150-degree ultra-wide-angle lens and 40x micro-lens, every shot looks beautiful. Images are crisp, with near-accurate colors and excellent detail. My only gripe is that the images may look a little brighter than usual.

With a high-performance Snapdragon 8 Gen1 processor and plenty of RAM, the phone gives tough competition not only to smartphones in its price range, but also to the more expensive ones.

To save you from long waits for battery charging, Realme has included a 65W SuperDart charger in the box that can charge the battery from 5 to 100 percent within 40 minutes.

3. Vivo Y35

This inexpensive model has an eye-pleasing design, a capacious battery with fast charging, and an NFC module for contactless payments.

The IPS screen with a diagonal of 6.58 inches and a resolution of 1080 x 2408 has a high refresh rate for a budget device, which means that you can smoothly scroll through the news feed and comfortably play mobile games without jerking or image tearing. And the anti-glare properties are excellent – even in the bright summer sun you can safely read the text.

The smartphone includes 3 photo modules, of which only one is “working” (the main one, 50 MP), the rest are just for show (this is a macro and a 2 MP depth sensor). I recommend shooting in the default mode; at maximum resolution, the pictures come out blurry.

The processor is eight-core, Snapdragon 680, but is far from the fastest – it can handle heavy games only at medium and low settings. But the interface and applications work like clockwork. Another nice feature of this model is a slot for a memory card, which can be installed without removing one of the SIM cards.

4. Realme C33 2023

The new 2023 model has few differences from the popular previous version of the C33. You no longer have to choose between the younger version with 3 GB of RAM and the older one; the only option is 4 GB.

The unicover design evokes warm sand, a vast blue sea or a night sea, depending on the colour. In the sun, the “back” of the smartphone becomes even more beautiful – thanks to the sparkles, it shimmers beautifully.

As for the characteristics of the screen, processor, graphics processor (Mali-G57), battery capacity with support for 10 W charging and camera capabilities, they remain the same as the previous model.

The device copes with opening several banking and email applications at the same time, but can slow down in demanding games at high settings. Set it to medium or low and you will be happy.

The photo and video capabilities of the C33 2023 are quite good for a budget phone. Good detail, there are panorama, portrait, HDR, beauty modes, as well as a night mode. Using the CHDR algorithm, AI tries to eliminate overexposure in the photo to produce clear, backlit images. All this concerns the main camera. It is complemented by a 0.3 MP depth sensor. The front camera takes mediocre pictures and this is not surprising, because its resolution is only 5 MP.

The screen has an average brightness of 400 nits, and has a sampling rate (not refresh) of 120 Hz.

5. TCL 408

One of the cheapest models among the best Chinese smartphones of 2024 in this review. An ideal choice for a gift for a schoolchild or preschooler. Although the screen cannot boast of high resolution, it is bright (maximum 400 nits), supports a reading mode with imitation of paper texture, as well as a blue filter so that the user does not strain his eyes too much.

Despite its low cost, the new product received a separate slot for memory cards up to 512 GB. There is also a 3.5 mm audio output for headphones. To protect the user’s privacy, facial recognition and a fingerprint scanner, which is located in the lock button, are used.

The autonomy of the device is quite decent, enough for a couple of days. But there is no support for fast charging.

The main camera with a resolution of 50 MP is enough to photograph a school schedule or other document/static object. It’s better not to shoot at night – the detail is near-zero. At the front there is an 8 MP selfie camera.

The performance of the TCL 408 is enough for working with applications and casual games.