The best Android smartphones with 4 inches screen – comparing 15 devices

Some years ago 4 inch phones were only premium phones. Today premium phones have more than 4 inches screens. 4 inches screens today belong to mid range smartphones.

I love 4 inches screens because they fit on your hand and at the same time the screen is big enough to watch a movie or browse the net.

4 inches is the ideal size for a smartphone that is extremely portable. A smartphone smaller than 4 inches is too small and a screen more than 4 inches is too big.

So here we compare 15 Android smartphones with 4 inches screens.

[bq_right]Winner: Sony Xperia P[/bq_right]

BEST SCREEN

All smartphones have a 4 inches screen so we have to take a look at the pixels per inch to see which one has the best screen. Sony Xperia P has 275 PPI and then we have 3 phones with 245PPI (Sony Xperia M, Huawei Honor U8860 and Sony Xperia J). The worst screen is on LG Optimus L5 (144PPI).

[bq_right]Winners: Sony Xperia P & Huawei Honor U8860[/bq_right]

BEST CAMERA

As these phones are mid range smartphones, they have 5MP and 8MP cameras. The two best cameras belong to Sony Xperia P and Huawei Honor U8860. We should also take a look at the 5MP cameras of the other phones that are good too as they have a lot of features as panorama and smile detection. For example the camera of Samsung Galaxy S3 mini is great and so is the camera of LG Optimus L5II.

[bq_right]Winner: ZTE Blade V[/bq_right]

FASTEST PROCESSOR

In this test we have smartphones with one, two and four processors. There is just one phone with quad core procesor at this category and that is ZTE Blade V. 7 out of 15 smartphones have a dual core processor. The fastest dual processor belongs to Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2, Sony Xperia E1 and Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2. Sony Xperia M is also fast and so is Huawei Ascend Y300, Samsung Galaxy S3 mini and HTC Desire X. We should also take into consideration the RAM of each phone. In the RAM field, ZTE Blade V, Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2, Samsung Galaxy S3 mini, Sony Xperia M and Sony Xperia P have 1GB of RAM. The slowest phone is LG Optimus L5 with a single processor and 512MB of RAM.

[bq_right]Winner: Sony Xperia E1[/bq_right]

NEWEST ANDROID VERSION

We find older Android versions and new ones. There is no 4 inches phone with the latest Android version, Android 4.4, but Sony Xperia E1 has Android 4.3 and Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 has Android 4.2 and a lot of these phones have Android 4.1 version. So the most recent Android version (on launch) belongs to Sony Xperia E1 (Android 4.3) and then Samsung Galaxyh S Duos (Android 4.2) and then Sony Xperia M, ZTE Blade V, LG L5II, Huawei Ascend Y300, Samsung Galaxy S3 Mini and Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 (Android 4.1). The oldest Android version is on Huawei Honor and Sony Xperia P. Let’s bet on which one will be updated to Android 4.2 first.

[bq_right]Winner: LG L5II[/bq_right]

LIGHTER & PORTABLE

Although all phones have the same screen size, they don’t have the same body size. There are lighter and heavier phones, bigger or smaller but only one is the slimmer. LG L5II and Sony Xperia J are the most slim phones with 9.2mm, Sony Xperia M and HTC Desire X with 9.3mm and at the end we can find Huawei Ascend Y300 with 11.2mm and the big fatty Sony Xperia E1 (12mm). The lighter phone is LG L5ii with 103gr and the heavier is Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 because it is made to resist falls and water.

[bq_right]Winner: Huawei Honor U8860[/bq_right]

BEST BATTERY

The battery is a hard spec to count. All the companies give some numbers but we cannot rely on them as they are not accurate. So let’s see the capacity of the battery on each phone. The smartphone with the biggest battery is Huawei Honor U8860 with a 1930mAh battery, ZTE Blade V with a 1800mAh battery, Sony Xperia M and Sony Xperia E1 with 1750mAh. The smallest battery can be found on Sony Xperia P with a 1305mAh battery. Some phones, like Samsung Galaxy S3 mini have some special apps to make the battery last longer but this is not enough when you compare numbers.

[bq_right]Winners: Sony Xperia E1[/bq_right]

LAST RELEASED

We like newer phones because they have the latest Android version and they have better specs. The newer 4 inch phone is Sony Xperia E1 launched January 2014 and then Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2 launched on December 2013. Then it is ZTE Blade V launched September 2013 and then Sony Xperia M launched in August 2013. Samsung Galaxy Xcover 2 and Huawei Ascend Y300 were released last May. The oldest phone on the market is Huawei Honor U8860 which was a premium smartphone back then (it’s almost 2 years old with its successor to be also on the market – Honor 2).

FINALLY

We have our own general rating method, the AVP rating method and based on that the best phone is Sony Xperia M, followed by Samsung Galaxy S Duos 2, ZTE Blade V, Sony Xperia E1 and LG L5II. We already compared all the phones in different specs on this post and here we are going to give the ranking of these phones based on our method

CompanyModelRated Sept.12"PPICAMCPURAMmAhWgAVDatePGBuy now
SonyXperia M40.44.024552 * 1.0100017509.31154.113-082Best price
SamsungGalaxy S Duos 239.94.023352 * 1.2768150010.61184.213-122Best price
ZTEBlade V38.34.023354 * 1.21000180010.91304.113-092Best price
SonyXperia E137.54.02333.12 * 1.25121750121224.314-012Sony Xperia E1
LGL5 II37.24.023351 * 1.051217009.21034.113-032Best price
SamsungGalaxy S3 Mini36.84.023352 * 1.0100015009.91114.112-113Best price
HTCDesire X35.04.023352 * 1.076816509.31144.012-103Best price
SonyXperia J32.74.024551 * 1.051217509.21244.012-102Best price
HuaweiAscend Y30032.34.023352 * 1.0512173011.21304.113-032Best price
ZTEBlade 331.14.023351 * 1.0512160010.01304.012-091Best price
SamsungGalaxy Xcover 231.64.023352 * 1.210001700121484.113-033Best price
SonyXperia P30.74.027582 * 1.01000130510.51202.312-053Best price
SamsungGalaxy S Duos30.44.023351 * 1.0768150010.51204.012-092Best price
LGOptimus L527.14.014451 * 0.851215009.51254.012-062Best price
HuaweiU8860 Honor24.94.024581 * 1.4512193011.01402.311-122Best price

Compare these phones with all Android phones.

In your opinion, which one is the best 4 inch Android smartphone?