It’s been a dismal year for tech, with hardly anything good being launched… nah, just kidding. We’ve had our usual marathon discussions/arguments/brawls to sort out the game-changingly fantastic from the merely brilliant, and here are the results. Congrats to all our winners!

BUDGET PHONE OF THE YEAR

GOOGLE PIXEL 6a

The letter ‘a’ can indicate many things, but if you see one on the end of a Google Pixel smartphone you can be pretty certain you’re getting an extremely good phone for a wallet-friendly price.

The Pixel 6a continues that tradition and then some, packing the same chic looks and Tensor chipset as the now succeeded but still very capable Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, meaning it crushes nearly all competition in this price bracket. There’s even IP67 waterproofing.

While a 12.2MP sensor won’t grab any headlines, Google’s algorithmic might is put to good use to produce some brilliant shots – with nifty editing tools such as the Magic Eraser, which banishes pesky photobombers in a matter of seconds, also on board. We weren’t so hot on its

60Hz display, but if Google hadn’t made a sacrifice somewhere then it might have found the 6a barging its own flagships out of the way. from £399 / store.google.com

HIGHLY COMMENDED Nothing Phone 1

ALSO SHORTLISTED OnePlus Nord 2T ● Moto G82

MID-RANGE PHONE OF THE YEAR

ONEPLUS 10 PRO

The days of OnePlus being seen as a plucky underdog might be long past, but it’s still great at undercutting the big boys just enough to give you something to think about when weighing up your options.

The 10 Pro is so good at just about everything that we can live with its massive ceramic-coated camera housing and mediocre low-light performance. With more lenses and megapixels than you can shake a selfie-stick at, a brilliant 6.7in AMOLED screen with dynamic refresh rate, great battery life with ridiculously fast 80W charging, and ace performance provided by its Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 CPU, the 10 Pro is a flagship phone in mid-range clothing.

It’ll still set you back up to £899, depending on which spec and colour you opt for, but sadly these days that very much counts as mid-range. OnePlus strikes again. from £799 / oneplus.com

HIGHLY COMMENDED Motorola Edge 30 Ultra

ALSO SHORTLISTED Google Pixel 7 ● Realme GT 2 Pro

● Asus Zenfone 9

PHONE OF THE YEAR

APPLE iPHONE 14 PRO MAX

At the beginning, you were either pro-notch or (usually more loudly) anti-notch. Eventually nobody really cared either way, but there’s no doubt that the camera cutout design introduced by the iPhone X was for a time one of Apple’s most controversial design decisions.

This year, it was finally ditched with the iPhone 14 Pro line. In its place, the shape-shifting

Dynamic Island. This pill-shaped addition to the iPhone experience is more than just a new home for the front camera: much of iOS 16 has been designed around its ability to house and display apps.

The 14 Pro Max also gets an always-on 6.7in display, an amazing 48MP main camera upgrade and, as you’d expect, a new chip so astonishingly powerful it’s almost comical. Quite simply, if you want the very best phone around, get an iPhone 14 Pro Max. from £1199 / apple.com

HIGHLY COMMENDED Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra

ALSO SHORTLISTED Google Pixel 7 Pro ● Sony Xperia 1 IV

● Oppo Find X5 Pro

MOBILE GAME OF THE YEAR

KNOTWORDS

It looks like a bunch of miniature crosswords, but play a few games of Knotwords and you’ll soon realise it’s something very different. Each puzzle is broken into pieces that resemble Tetris-style blocks, with scrambled-up letters provided for each section. Your job is to place each letter in a slot and make sure the entire crossword makes sense. Creator Zach Gage has form in rethinking newspaper-style puzzles for the touchscreen, and these simple-looking teasers will have you hooked for ages. The free version brings a daily challenge and a set of monthly puzzles, while a Wordle-style share system lets you post your successes online. Splash out on the full game and you unlock additional modes, along with the entire archive, making it much better value than puzzle books – and more fun too. from £free / Android, iOS

HIGHLY COMMENDED Horizon Chase 2 (iOS)

ALSO SHORTLISTED Otteretto (Android, iOS) ● Pawnbarian (Android, iOS) ● Automatoys (Android, iOS)

MOBILE APP OF THE YEAR

AFFINITY PUBLISHER 2

While Adobe continues to force software subscriptions on everybody, Serif has spent the past five years mopping up all the disgruntled creative types looking for an alternative. Affinity Photo rocked up on iPad in 2017 as 90% of Photoshop at a wallet-friendly price; a year later, we got the Illustrator-ish Affinity Designer. Both apps were full-featured on Apple’s tabs… and Affinity Publisher 2 completes the set with desktop-grade page-layout creation akin to Adobe InDesign. You might question why you’d want that on an iPad, but tactile control over layouts can be transformative – and the iPad’s distraction-free nature is a boon. Naturally you don’t need to subscribe, and there’s even a new cross-platform universal licence. Nice. £17.99 / affinity.serif.com