Walk into any store that sells phones and you’re likely to see the same dozen handsets lining the walls, along with a few carrier exclusives and lots of accessories. That’s because Apple, Motorola, and Samsung make the majority of phones sold in the US.
Walk into a mobile store in China or Germany, on the other hand, and you see a much wider assortment of brands. Companies like Oppo, Realme, and Xiaomi offer exciting, innovative, and oftentimes cheaper alternatives to the phones we get here.
We review only those phones you can buy stateside, but we still get pitched on models available abroad and sometimes get to test them. While we would like to use a few of these phones as our daily drivers, doing so isn’t feasible. Even if you purchase a so-called global phone on Amazon, for instance, it likely won’t work properly in the US. You might get spotty service, for starters, and you almost certainly won’t get 5G coverage.
That said, it’s still worthwhile to explore the phones we can’t get or use here, because very often they have features that eventually make their way to phones we can buy. With that in mind, here are the best international phones you can’t get in the US:
Xiaomi 12
It’s difficult to find slim, premium Android phones nowadays, but the Xiaomi 12 is an exception—at 2.75 inches wide, it might be the narrowest one available. The phone is slim enough to easily hold in one hand, but packs a top-of-the-line Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. A Pro version of the phone with a bigger screen is available, but it’s the petite, regular version that stands out.
The Xiaomi 12 has a 6.28-inch, 2,400-by-1,080-pixel OLED display, a 50MP main camera, and a 32MP selfie camera. You also get a 5MP macro lens and a 13MP ultra-wide one. But the most impressive spec for this small phone is the 4,500mAh battery that supports 67W charging; in other words, the phone can last all day and charge back up very quickly.
The Xiaomi 12 just launched globally on March 15 at what Xiaomi says will be $749, but we don’t anticipate that it shows up on US shelves anytime soon. Xiaomi has said several times in the past that it would begin to sell phones in the US, but always eventually shied away.
Oppo Find X5 Pro
The mail appeal of Oppo’s Find X5 Pro is its design. It sports a classy and smooth ceramic back with a contoured camera bump, and looks unlike anything on the US market. At the equivalent of $1,365 in the UK, the Find X5 Pro is a direct competitor to the Galaxy S22 Ultra and the iPhone 13 Pro Max.
The 10-bit, 120Hz WQHD+ color screen is a pleasure to view both indoors and outside. The Hasselblad-branded camera app is reliable, fast, and responsive. And the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor performs much like the one in the Galaxy S22+, based on initial benchmarks.
Aside from its distinctive design, the Find X5 Pro offers tricks that aren’t available on Samsung’s and Apple’s flagships. For instance, the company claims that the 80W charging rate means you can fill the phone’s giant 5,000mAh battery in under 50 minutes. The battery should last 1,600 charge cycles even despite the super-fast charging, too.
The major downside here—and a big part of why it isn’t available in the US—is that Oppo’s ColorOS software is positively toxic to American tastes. It’s a heavy, bloated Android skin that reminds me of LG phone software from 2016. Americans typically prefer more minimalistic and Google-centric approaches, like Oppo’s cousins, Iqoo, OnePlus, and Realme all offer with their phones.
Iqoo 9 Pro
The BMW Motorsport-branded Iqoo 9 Pro costs only the equivalent of about $870 in India, but is an absolute powerhouse.
The Iqoo 9 Pro is the only phone I’ve encountered with Qualcomm’s 3D Sonic Max technology, a gigantic under-display fingerprint sensor with a target area many times larger than those on other phones—it’s possible to unlock the phone by vaguely mashing the correct part of it.
On the back, the camera module looks like a Death Star. It houses a 50MP main camera, plus 150-degree ultra-wide and 2.5x-telephoto sensors. The main camera is “gimbal-stabilized,” which enables an ultra-smooth, power-steering mode, as well as a sport mode. Both modes take all the jitter out of any videos you film while walking.
The 120W fast charger also fills up the phone in a mere 25 minutes, which is the fastest I’ve ever experienced. Other specs are in line with competing high-end handsets, including a 6.8-inch, 3,200-by-1,440-pixel, 120Hz OLED screen; a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor; up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage; Wi-Fi 6; and Android 12.
Realme GT 2 Pro
Realme’s GT 2 Pro starts at around $830 in Europe. When you buy this environmentally themed phone, Realme says it plants a tree somewhere in the world (it doesn’t specify where).
Right off the bat, the Realme GT 2 Pro distinguishes itself from other phones in the BBK portfolio (the Chinese conglomerate that also owns Iqoo, OnePlus, and Oppo) with an attractive back that Naoto Fukasawa, a Japanese industrial designer most famous for his work with MUJI, devised. The back feels kind of like cardboard, and Realme says it uses a more environmentally friendly material than, say, the ceramic one that the Oppo device above does.
Most of the other specs are on par with those from competing flagships, including a 6.7-inch, 120Hz WQHD+ display, and 65W fast charging. Realme’s most unusual design choice is foregoing a telephoto lens in favor of one that enables a microscope mode that takes close-up pictures at 20x or 40x.
Huawei P50 Pocket
Huawei’s foldable P50 Pocket is certainly a response to Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip3, but genuinely looks different—the outside face of the phone has a jewelry-like texture, while the external display and camera are circular, not rectangular.
Its massive 6.9-inch, 21:9 120Hz screen and Huawei’s Android-spinoff EMUI software run on a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 processor. The phone has a 40MP main camera and a 13MP ultra-wide-angle one, along with a 10.7MP sensor on the front. The 4,000mAh battery that powers the phone supports 40W fast charging.
You can configure the circular front display to show all of the usual info such as call controls, fitness stats, messages, the gallery, weather forecasts, and your calendar. One of the phone’s wildest features, however, is a sunscreen detection mode, which can (in theory) tell you if you missed a spot.
But really, the phone’s main appeal is its design, one that recalls some of the gorgeous “jewelry” phones from the mid-2000s. It’s a pity we won’t ever see this phone in the US because of the ongoing war between the US government and Huawei.
Honor Magic 4 Pro
Honor spun out of Huawei so that it could still use the Google Play Store. As a result, Honor’s phones are more amenable to global audiences that prefer Google services, despite featuring some older Huawei design and technology elements.
The Honor Magic 4 Pro has a Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor and a curved 6.81-inch, 120Hz screen. Like many other phones in this story, this one supports super-fast charging—in this case, a blazing 100W charging rate for the 4,500mAh battery.
A big circle on the back houses the phone’s many sensors. The main and 122-degree ultra-wide cameras are both 50MP, but you also get a 64MP, 3.5x optical zoom lens. Furthermore, the whole system works in tandem to take shots with 100x digital zoom. An infrared depth sensor, like the one that enables Apple’s Face ID feature, sits on the front.
Ayya t1
If the world continues to isolate Russia, its populace may have to fall back on phones that run neither iOS nor Android, such as the Ayya t1 (approximately $265), which runs on Aurora OS (an Android 11 version is also available). Aurora OS is a forked version of Jolla created by Rotstelecom, Russia’s majority state-owned telecom.
The Ayya t1 has a utilitarian aesthetic that resembles affordable models from Nokia’s recent lineup. On the front of the phone, a 6.5-inch LCD sports a small cutout for the 13MP selfie camera. The back includes a camera stack with 12MP and 5MP shooters, as well as a fingerprint sensor. What distinguishes the Ayya t1 from the competition are its physical buttons that turn off its cameras and microphones.
A MediaTek Helio P70 SoC powers the phone, along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. It has LTE connectivity and a respectable 4,000mAh battery.
Pyongyang 2428
We guarantee you won’t find this phone on Amazon. We believe the Pyongyang 2428 (approximately $350) is North Korea’s latest flagship, and while it may look like an iPhone, the similarities end there.
Introduced in 2020, the Pyongyang 2428 sports 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage. Either a MediaTek P60 or P65 chipset likely powers it, because those seem to be the predominant SoCs in North Korean phones. It has a 6.3-inch, 2,340-by-1,080 LCD; the selfie camera clocks in at 16MP; and the back includes both a 48MP primary lens and a 5MP secondary lens.
The Pyongyang 2428 works on North Korea’s 3G networks, and while it supports Wi-Fi, that feature has been turned off in previous models. The phone runs a highly customized version of Android 9 that allows access to the country’s Intranet system, takes random screenshots to monitor your activities, and uses AI capabilities to detect any profane speech on the device. It’s also limited to media and text files signed by the North Korean government. You also can’t download apps directly from the phone, but if you purchase apps from a local cell phone store, they can install them directly.
The Best Phones You CAN Get
While all of the phones here are certainly intriguing, none of them are practical if you live in the US. To help you choose a phone you can buy and use to its fullest extent stateside, check out our roundup of the best phones we’ve tested. If you’re looking to save some money, we also have a list of the best cheap phones. And if you’re a mobile shutterbug who envies some of the camera specs above, take a look at our picks for the best camera phones.
