Concept & rare

He rates it as the best of the three for attention to detail, with 3D artwork, earbuds in a mini backpack and a themed interface.

A collector's phone that took him two years to track down, packaged in a Pokédex with plenty of custom accessories.

Looks fairly plain at first, but the furry texture and colour-changing photochromic glass make it a proper limited edition.

Brilliant lunchbox packaging and a mostly well-judged fire theme, with a few over-the-top touches, scoring 92.

Impressively thorough Disney theming across software, back texture and even the camera, though large.

Very generous package for the price, with a clever LED leather back, earning 8 out of 10.

Dated 2012 phone, but the effort in packaging and theming is unmatched, earning a 9 out of 10.

His favourite smartphone of all time in an ultra-rare official gold version, beautiful though gold isn't practical.

Top-tier Pokédex packaging, but the phone is basically vanilla, so he gives it 6 out of 10.

The best Transformers phone he has seen, with intentional theming and wallpapers that avoid the usual software mess.

Great packaging and a charming story, but the phone itself is barely themed, so a 6.

Brilliant Harry Potter presentation with genuinely improved specs, and worth the effort of importing from China.

His favourite core phone design so far, with a smooth rounded body and clever photochromic glass.

Great finish and metal middle frame with a built-in fan, but over-sharpened wallpapers and cluttered icons feel cheap.

Stunning artwork, luxury experience and incredible display, but the invisible front camera quality is awful.

Premium, cohesive Genshin Impact packaging and theme with 160W charging, though the back design is only so-so.

Tiny enough to vanish in a pocket and surprisingly usable for web pages, but typing is fiddly and the camera is the weaker of the two.

Tests the phone with the world's biggest battery, which barely drops during an hour and a half of video and is claimed to last 94 days on s…

A remarkable proof of concept that gives real camera-style control and background blur, but it is bulky and inefficient to use as a phone.

A laser-etched art phone with excellent packaging and restrained software theming that he was really into.

A tasteful Naruto-themed phone with a brilliant scroll box and fast charging that stays neat for non-fans.

Packaging and extras are fantastic, but the phone inside is just a standard Oppo Reno 8.

A cheap phone that changes colour in sunlight, shown briefly as the cheapest of the eight.

Same low price, but it looked like an iPhone imitation and brought only small gains in power and photos.