Smartphone Awards 2025

Mobile Arena
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All right, welcome to the Smartphone Awards 2025.
It's all in front of us, all the smartphones of the year.
And, you know, somehow in a world of AI devices
and smart glasses and XR headsets, the smartphone is still OP.
Like this is still the center of our personal computing lives.
And we got a lot of stuff coming out this year.
We got folding phones.
We got really interesting high-end phones and budget phones
and weird accessories and modular designs and all sorts of stuff.
And I'm about to give them some trophies.
Every single phone on this desk in front of me
came out during the calendar year 2025.
And it's a bit of a tradition around here
to reward some of the best and most notable of them.
So that's exactly what I'm going to do.
As usual, we have a set number of categories.
And for each one of these categories,
I'm going to give one overall winner,
which I will also award this very nice premium trophy,
which I'll literally mail you if you're watching this,
if you're the company that made the phone.
And then, of course, I'll give some honorable mentions
and some runner-ups if there are others that are deserving.
And this is one of the most fun videos to do every year
because every year there's all sorts of interesting phones
that came out and storylines and different picks
that people are expecting for certain awards.
But these are, of course, my awards.
So the awards I give are the ones I deem worthy.
And without any further ado, let's just jump into it.
First category, Best Big Phone.
Now, I've been doing this show a long time.
And back when I first made this category,
it was when there were like several distinct sizes of phones.
Like there was normal phones, there were small phones,
and there was huge phones like phablets.
Nowadays, though, every phone is big.
But that's not stopping me from still awarding the huge phone
that makes the most of it.
So if you're going to carry a gigantic phone in your pocket,
you might as well make the most use of that space.
A runner-up that I want to give at least a mention to
is this one over here.
This is the Oppo Find X9 Pro.
This is a 6.8-inch screen size
and packs in a huge triple camera system on the back,
including a 200-megapixel telephoto sensor.
There's a ton of RAM and storage.
There's a custom button.
They put the camera control in there from the iPhone.
And there's a giant 7,500 milliamp hour silicon carbon battery,
which is ridiculous.
It's an awesome phone.
It's very big, but not enough to win this award.
The winner is going to go to this guy.
This is the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max.
This is a really big phone that is really loaded with features.
First of all, it's a 6.9-inch phone,
so basically as big as a phone gets before it's a tablet.
But it also feels like the most phone you can get
if you're trying to maximize everything.
Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5,
which has shaken out to be the most powerful chip of the year.
7,500 milliamp hour silicon carbon battery.
All of the RAM, all of the storage.
Triple 50-megapixel cameras.
And then a nearly 3-inch, 1,000-nit, 120-hertz screen on the back,
which is more useful than ever at this size.
You can get notifications on it.
It's your camera viewfinder.
It's everything.
This is one of those phones that made a statement for the design
and how well it used the massive thing
that is the camera bump on the back of the phone.
Really well done by Xiaomi
and well deserving of the best big phone of 2025.
So that brings us to the next category,
that small phone.
So like I said,
lots and lots of phones these days are huge.
And it's been a while since I killed a category,
but I don't want to do it with this one
because I feel like it's more important than ever
to reward the ones that are actually doing the most
with the least amount of space
because it's so rare now.
And so last year,
the small flagship phone basically went extinct.
There are no really good flagships
with an under 6-inch screen anymore.
So the winner last year was a 6.1-inch display.
Nowadays, even that is rare.
So now the phones that are shooting for that throne
are in like the 6.3-inch screen size territory.
So here's a good example.
This phone, I really liked.
This is the OnePlus 13S.
S for small, allegedly.
And it did a lot of things great.
Pretty simple, small, strong, and slick design.
Smooth and smart software.
Sorry, I'm overdoing the S thing again,
but that wasn't quite enough to win this award.
We also had phones like the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro,
which had 6.3-inch screens roughly.
That didn't win.
We had the Xiaomi 17 Pro, the smaller one.
But you know, I think it's about time
to make a bit of a statement with this category
because if slab phones aren't going to do it,
then I feel like we should reward the phone
that's actually trying to do something to be smaller.
And so the winner of the best small phone this year
is this, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7.
So Samsung has been on this path
where they're kind of slowly refining
all of their phones year over year now,
which makes the flagship phones kind of feel
like they're not really doing too much,
but that's paying off dividends for these foldables
because this phone is now a 6.9-inch full-size smartphone
when it's unfolded, which is massive.
But now more than ever,
you can use this phone when it's folded in half,
which doesn't just make it easier to pocket,
but it also lets you use the full 4.1-inch
corner-to-corner cover screen a lot more.
And I actually found myself doing that.
I was managing notifications, texting people back,
and handling critical stuff,
but not ever really getting distracted
into doom-scrolling or mindless smartphone usage
like I would on a normal phone.
It's like this was the perfect amount of useful
as a small phone, and then it always had
a full-size smartphone lurking underneath
if you needed it,
but definitely worthy of the best small phone.
I think you could argue all day
between the folding and flipping form factors,
like which one's better for most people,
which one's more utility.
I think for the average person,
I could argue for the flip phone a little more easily,
and it's also cheaper.
So I think really good phone,
long time coming, well-played Samsung.
So next category, best camera.
Now this has always been a very interesting category
for the smartphone awards,
because every year we get a ton of innovation
in smartphone cameras.
It's no surprise.
Matter of fact, a little inside baseball,
basically every single one of these phones
that comes out, it gets sent to the studio for a review,
along with like a 50-page PDF of a reviewer's guide
with all the facts and figures
and new features on the phone.
And sometimes like half of those pages
are just on smartphone camera features.
So we got new flagship phones this year
with 200 megapixel cameras.
We got brand new super advanced stabilization
in some of these, some new formats.
Almost everything actually in front of me here
has at least triple cameras,
usually three focal lengths,
sometimes two with like a sort of a cheap macro
or black and white third camera.
So there's lots of phones deserving to be recognized here.
But then you ask the people
who actually use the cameras here for a living
and it seemingly always boxes us in to one answer,
the iPhone, oh, oh wait, that's not.
Oh, would you look at that?
The 2025 camera winner is the Oppo Find X9 Pro.
This phone did basically everything right
in the camera department, in my opinion.
It's got, well, actually four cameras on the back here,
but a 50 megapixel main camera,
a 50 megapixel ultra wide,
a 200 megapixel telephoto camera.
And they put out consistently great photos,
great sharpness and dynamic range,
really good color calibration.
That was a really good base.
And then all the little intangibles too,
like a really quick responsive camera app,
quick focus and the confidence that gives you
to successfully get harder shots,
especially when punching way in with the zoom
thanks to the resolution on that periscope camera.
And then they just loaded it up
with a ton of extra features
that honestly sometimes work, sometimes don't,
but like, it's cool to have them if you want.
Like there's the stage lighting mode.
So if it detects you're taking a photo during a concert,
it can change the lighting to look kind of nice.
Also the fourth sensor back here is a true color sensor,
which does a lot of work to help you get accurate colors
in more challenging lighting situations.
And they also just straight up copied Apple's camera control
for what it's worth, not actually worth very much,
but it's there.
It also has good portrait mode and it has good night mode
and very respectable film emulation.
And also, you know how most of these on the table,
48, 50, 100 megapixel sensors
are mostly giving you bend down 12 megapixel shots.
Not this one.
This one's giving you, if the lighting is good enough,
50 megapixel shots from every shot, every time.
And somehow it doesn't sacrifice much
in the video department either.
It will do 4K, 120 FPS, Dolby Vision.
It'll do log and the microphones are pretty good too.
And then on top of all of that, they also made this,
which is an attachment lens,
a Hasselblad telephoto attachment
that you put the case on the back of the phone,
you attach this to the case
and then this turns into a 10X optical zoom
on this already really good 200 megapixel telephoto
that takes sometimes shockingly usable,
really good far zoom shots just for fun.
So yeah, this has the fundamentals and the fun,
the numbers and the look.
Like this is an incredibly well-rounded smartphone camera,
well-deserved and also happens to be a really good phone
in other ways too.
So Oppo Find X9 Pro, well-deserving, camera of the year.
And then my runner up is in fact the iPhone 17 Pro,
which also leveled up again this year,
both in the photo and video departments.
The larger main sensor looks really good.
They also bumped to a 4X telephoto,
which I think is the right move.
And these iPhones are still the undisputed king of video.
Like it's not even really up for debate.
If you want the most compatible, best looking,
easiest, most consistent video
in the biggest variety of situations,
especially with social media apps,
you just get the Pro iPhone.
Like the Pro iPhone's getting Genlock support this year
is all the proof you really need
that the target demographic for people
who shoot video with iPhones
is more locked in than anyone else.
They take it very seriously.
And that's why this is the king of video.
So that's my runner up for smartphone camera.
And I also want to give one more shout out
to the Vivo X300 Pro, came out late this year.
Also ridiculously good cameras,
really, really impressive sensors and huge sensors,
just not quite as refined
as I thought they were going to be.
The bokeh sometimes looks a little weird,
the backgrounds and the blur, a little off,
but like tons of detail in every shot
and really respectable performance,
again, because last year the X200 Pro was excellent.
So shout out to the X300 Pro.
All right, next category, the value award.
And yeah, here we are.
This is always one of the most competitive categories
because in the battle of giving you the most for the least,
that's where the customers are, of course,
but also that's the most challenging
as far as development.
And the thing about these phones,
like they're all really good.
You can't really get a terrible phone,
but when you go super, super low in price,
sometimes it feels like just trying not to get the phone
that sucks at the thing that you really like.
So like you might get a super cheap phone,
but at least the camera doesn't suck
because I like taking pictures.
But my winner is one that I found
didn't really suck at anything, which is really nice.
It was just a result of an extremely aggressive
pricing strategy from this company.
This is my winner.
This is the CMF Phone 2 Pro.
For $279, this phone is modular, cheap, and fun.
It's funny, this tends to be one of the harder phones
to explain because I'm already trying to explain to people
what nothing is, which is like a new brand
of kind of budget-y phones.
And then the nothing brand has the A-series phones,
which are even more budget.
But then nothing made a sub-brand called CMF,
which is even more budget.
But then this is the pro phone in the lineup.
But you can just ignore all that
because they built a phone that feels
like it's literally double the price.
This is a 6.8 inch, 120 Hertz screen
that's actually good looking and bright.
There's a 5,000 milliamp hour battery.
So the life is actually pretty good.
It also still has three cameras,
where lots of phones at this price tend to drop one.
The specs are solid,
and the software is probably its highlight.
It's really well optimized and feels pretty smooth.
Plus it's wrapped in this sort of fun design
with some bright colors
and some actually interesting attachable accessories
to really make it your own.
It's funny, I literally titled my review of this phone,
budget phone of the year, in May.
So some pretty intense foreshadowing there,
but I'd say well-deserved
and a nice trophy headed out to the folks
over in London for that one.
Now I also want to give a shout out to the Moto G Play.
Maybe it's because Motorola's
really not very good at flagships,
but this phone feels as good as anything they've made.
And that's a good thing.
Like it's got a huge screen.
It's got a really, really big battery,
decent cameras, decent software, headphone jack.
This is one of the best phones under $200.
It's like 180 right now,
and it will probably only drop from here.
Very much worth it.
And they've been killing it in this space for a year.
So this isn't a surprise, it's a really good option.
Among all the competition in that price category,
well done Motorola.
And also Pixel 9a has got to be on anybody's list
who's after a more compact option.
All these flagships are trying to feel like a flagship
and have a huge screen.
This is a 6.3 inch screen,
and they did a lot of things.
You can see that there isn't really any camera bump
because they sort of filled it out
and gave it a 5,300 milliamp hour battery
and a great battery life as a result.
Still great software from being a Pixel.
Really good cameras on the back.
So overall, if you're after something smaller,
this is $499, but I've seen it listed as low as like $399.
So shout out to the Pixel 9a.
And you know what?
Shout out to the base iPhone 17
for finally stepping up to the plate
and doing all the things that the base iPhone should.
Flagship chip, really good cameras,
great software obviously,
but also the new ProMotion display,
a massively upgraded selfie camera,
some kind of sweet new colors.
It's actually a good deal this time around.
Sick.
Love some good foreshadowing.
All right, next category, best battery.
It feels like we should just be marking this year
down on our calendars or the history books, I guess.
This is the year that smartphone batteries
finally took a meaningful leap up,
or some of them, I guess.
I feel like it started in January,
the beginning of the year,
with the OnePlus 13,
which launched with a 6,000 milliamp hour
silicon carbon battery.
And that's a number that was just unheard of
like a year or two ago.
And then suddenly with this silicon carbon advancement,
we can have all of that in a phone
that's actually just as thin as its predecessor.
But not every manufacturer has adopted it.
Now, whether that's a price thing or a yields thing
or a safety thing, a longevity thing,
we don't really know.
All I can really say is now it feels like
there's a pretty clear delineation
between just those that have it
and those that don't.
Like we have a bimodal distribution now.
It's like you're either Samsung and Apple and Motorola
and you're just kind of capped
at 5,000, 5,500 milliamp hours,
or you're just blowing the doors off of those numbers
with 7,000, 7,500, 8,000 milliamp hour batteries.
And by the way,
all of these now charge faster than the old ones too.
And I actually used a phone this year
that got me not two, but three full days
of like all day carefree, high brightness, mixed use,
like 10 plus hours of screen on time
from a 7,300 milliamp hour battery.
And that is the winner for battery of the year.
This guy right here, it's the OnePlus 15.
This phone has me so excited
about what the next years of smartphones
and what the next couple of generations
of the silicon carbon battery tech could turn into.
Like it was already crazy seeing the January phone
from OnePlus pushing 6,000 milliamp hours,
but now pushing over 7,000 less than a year later
is ridiculous.
Not only though, does this phone have the best battery
I have ever used in a phone,
but it also has 120 watt wired charging
and 50 watt wireless charging.
The only thing that's really missing
is like having the magnets in the back, you know?
So it's crazy good, best battery experience of the year.
And it really sets the tone for others
to either catch up or level up again in 2026.
I'm also give a shout out to the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max,
which had a 7,500 milliamp hour battery
stuffed into this phone.
But more incredibly, 22 and a half watt
reverse wireless charging, which is insane.
That's almost as fast as a regular iPhone
will regularly wireless charge.
And also honorable mention to,
it didn't even fit on this table,
the phone that I tested this year
with the largest capacity battery,
which is this chunk right here.
This is a Doogee S200 Ultra.
11,000 milliamp hour silicon carbon battery,
because of course.
So next category, the design award.
And this is always a fun one.
I kind of love this category.
I mean, look at this table.
Like at first glance, sure,
we've got a lot of phones that look pretty similar,
but the more you look at them,
the more interesting little details
as far as shapes and textures and materials
and colors all start to show up.
There were phones with modules you could,
there were phones with screens on the back.
There was even this,
this is the Realme GT 8 Pro.
And you see this camera bump,
which kind of looks maybe a little bit generic,
but there's two screws on it.
It came with a screwdriver,
so you could pop this camera bump off
and change it out to a different shape.
So you could have a circular
or a rectangular camera bump,
just because those are clearly
the two types of camera bumps you might want.
But the philosophy for which one to award
has actually changed a bit from year to year.
I remember back in the day,
this used to just be the best built phone
or the most durable phone.
And now it's kind of shifted to something
that has a little bit more of a story to it
and maybe takes more of a risk in design
to achieve something really, really cool.
And I want to keep it that way.
I mean, this is my awards after all,
there's a thousand ways that this could go,
but my award winner is gonna be this one right here.
This is the iPhone Air.
One of the most beautiful
and controversial products of the whole year.
So we've had a couple of months now
to get more clear-eyed on the iPhone Air
and a couple of things have become more clear.
One is it's not nearly as successful as a product
as Apple might've been hoping.
But two is it is clearly compromised
in some very specific ways
that you're either willing to live with or not.
It is clearly a worse battery
and it's dropped all the way down to a single camera.
But also what they've ended up with
is a phone that feels crazy.
It feels impossibly light.
It looks impossibly thin.
Kind of resembles a piece of jewelry in many ways,
but also really appeals to the minimalist in me.
Just the idea of rearranging basically all the internals
into the top section of this phone around the camera bump
is hilarious, but also surprisingly effective.
Nobody asked for this.
Nobody needs this.
In fact, I've been asking specifically for change
in the opposite direction.
But then you use this phone
and it starts to make other very normal phones
feel like tanks.
It's just one of those phones
that feels so good in the hand
and is so impressive
that like I want to be able to use it daily.
Like I wanna be the type of person
who could live with these sacrifices.
I tried.
I can't.
Like I need this to have dual cameras
and a silicon carbon battery
and they didn't do that.
But geez, just a ridiculously good looking,
awesome feeling piece of machinery this phone is.
So it's definitely getting the award.
I definitely have some runner-ups though
that I wanna give out.
One specifically, I have to.
The design of the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max
with the full-on usable screen on the back of the phone,
just awesome.
Awesome phone in general
and to have that design element
actually be super functional
was kind of a masterpiece.
So really well played.
Nicely done, Xiaomi.
And then the Galaxy S25 Edge is another one.
Again, not a product that anyone in particular
was asking for or needs,
but a much more brutalist,
really rectangular version
of the ultra thin smartphone.
And it actually has a flagship main camera
and a little bit more of a usable battery,
but just a really different take here.
Also, I cannot wait for them to make
a silicon carbon battery version of this phone.
It's gotta be around the corner.
And I'm also gonna give a shout out to this,
which is the Fairphone 6.
A phone that looks relatively normal,
but that's the point
because this just so happens to be
the most repairable,
the most sustainable,
and most modular phone,
basically, of all time.
And that is no small feat.
Definitely worth recognizing.
So then next category,
best foldable.
So I don't have them all here in front of me,
but there are definitely a lot of phones
that come out every year now
that have some version of folding and flipping.
And it seems like this is the year
that a lot of them got way thinner.
And obviously, thin is mostly an aesthetic thing,
but in a phone that folds in half like this,
where you mostly use it open,
but also sometimes use it closed,
it goes a long way to making it feel
a lot more like a regular phone.
That just happens to unfold into a tablet.
So that was pretty key for me.
And so it was close between two for me,
but I'm going to give my award for best foldable
to this guy,
the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
If you deleted all the slab phones in the world somehow
and made me daily drive something that folds,
it would be this one.
Not because it's the thinnest
or has the best specs or the best cameras.
It doesn't.
But it's just,
it's the most rock solid across the board
and usable as a daily in every way.
Like really great software,
very good battery life.
It has plenty of software features built in
to take advantage of the eight inch display canvas
when it's open.
But it's also, like we can see,
dramatically better to use while closed
than any previous Z Fold,
thanks to the new ultra thin form factor.
This is just another phone I'm hoping
for a silicon carbon version of
at some point in the future.
Samsung, please.
But like I said,
this one was actually close.
There were a bunch of other foldables that I saw
and one other one that actually daily drove this year
for an extended period of time.
And it was,
it was this one,
the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.
And this one is really nice again,
not because it's the thinnest thing in the world,
but while using it closed,
it's basically all the goodness
of just a regular Pixel 10 Pro.
But again, it is a little thicker,
so not as fun to hold and use closed,
despite having all the great software.
Silicon carbon battery version again,
maybe would be nice.
And I also will give a shout out to the Z Flip 7
for the same reasons that I talked about earlier,
which made it a good small phone,
you can actually use it closed.
So the outside cover screen,
the 4.1 inch corner to corner,
you can triage notifications
and do all sorts of full-time stuff out there.
And then of course,
use it as a regular full-size phone open.
But yeah,
other foldables did individual,
really interesting things
as far as like minimizing the crease
or, you know,
actually having a silicon carbon battery.
But as far as the overall package,
I'm happy with my picks.
Also, in case you're wondering,
the Samsung Galaxy Z Trifold,
the triple folding one,
it got announced this year,
but it's really coming out next year.
So I think we'll just make it eligible
for the 2026 awards.
So next category,
the most improved.
And man, I am so glad I made this category.
This is a good one.
And you know,
a lot of the discourse
and the talk about smartphones
on Twitter and comment sections
is that they hardly change from year to year.
They rarely actually take a big leap
from one generation to the next.
And for the most part,
I agree,
but it's worth recognizing
the ones that actually do.
And when you see some interesting technologies
or interesting new designs
or developments between generations,
sometimes people forget
how far they've come from the last generation
because a lot of phones come out
around the same time and look similar.
So I'm very happy I get to give this award out.
It's one of my favorites.
And this year's winner is this one.
This is the iPhone 17.
Apple just finally went ahead
and did what they should have done years ago.
They made the base iPhone a complete phone.
It almost felt shocking to see them finally do it.
And over the iPhone 16,
they of course are giving it the new chip,
but they also finally gave it
a high refresh rate display.
They doubled the base storage.
They gave it a massively upgraded new selfie camera
that's across the whole iPhone lineup.
And so this entry-level iPhone
has gone from being
the base placeholder iPhone
that I kind of hated recommending,
but it was fine,
to being all the iPhone anyone really ever needs.
It's the easiest to recommend one
in the whole lineup now.
And so, yeah, it's that big of a difference
from year to year.
Definitely award-worthy.
And I do have a runner-up as well,
which is going to be the OnePlus 15.
And it's crazy.
I was really liking the OnePlus 13,
like I said, which was earlier this year.
And so to have them come out with the 15,
they skipped the number 14 in between,
but this phone having more power,
way more battery,
way better design,
but then also having slightly worse cameras,
it was still a pretty impressive difference
between the phones
from less than 12 months apart.
Maybe if the next one has awesome cameras,
it can be a phone of the year contender.
Also, shout out to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
for moving to this ultra thin design,
but actually keeping the exact same size battery
as the previous one,
but feeling way better in the hand.
Good work.
All right, next category,
bust of the year.
The award that I hate to have to give,
but you know what?
We've been doing it for this long.
So every year someone has got to win,
win the bust of the year.
And the funny thing is there were a few phones
that came out this year
that didn't quite hit their mark.
Either they didn't land with their typical fan base
or they weren't quite what people are expecting
or they were confusing or they got worse.
Unfortunately, this year there was one phone
that did all of that.
So the trophy is yours this year, Apple.
It's the iPhone 16A.
The mission was actually pretty simple here.
Apple was looking to create a new entry-level iPhone
at the bottom of the lineup.
It's not for spec chasers.
It's not for people who want the best performance.
It's just for the basic buyer to get in the door
and get a smaller, less premium iPhone.
So they made a smaller, less premium iPhone.
Basically by taking things out of the base phone.
So we have a binned A18 chip in here.
Fine.
It's also a smaller 60 hertz display with a notch.
Fine.
But then they kept going.
They took the cameras out.
So it's a single camera on the back.
No telephoto, no ultrawide.
Fine.
Then they kept going.
They took all the color options away.
So it's just black.
Fine.
But then they kept going.
No Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7.
No ultrawideband.
No millimeter wave.
No camera control.
No MagSafe.
Okay, this must be like a super cheap iPhone then, right?
But no.
The starting price was $599.
And actually when I reviewed this phone a couple months ago,
the higher tiered storage version I was reviewing cost $900.
So just a crazy swing and a miss here.
It is the cheapest new iPhone.
But it is not a cheap iPhone.
And if anyone was considering buying one,
they were recommended to get a 16 or a 15 Pro instead.
Now I do actually have a runner-up too.
The Nothing Phone 3 was sort of a uniquely disappointing phone this year.
Not because it was a particularly bad phone,
but it was just a big delta between what their very passionate fans were hoping
and expecting from this phone and what they actually delivered.
It's kind of a wonky design.
And also really nuking one of their most popular features
and turning it into like a tiny pixelated display on the back.
Just didn't hit the way people like me were hoping it would.
So then last but not least, next category, MVP.
So, so, so phone of the year.
So many stories.
So many, so many options.
And so many well-deserving ones here.
I feel like every year when I talk about the MVP for this show,
I almost always use a sports analogy.
Like there is typically more than one deserving winner of the MVP.
It's almost never unanimous.
Unless their name is Steph, my goat.
But the point is there's a bunch of really good stories
and a bunch of really good phones to recognize here.
And to be clear, this is not the best phone of the year award.
Like I think it would actually be kind of boring to sit here
and just pick the phone with the highest benchmark scores
and the biggest numbers as the number one phone of the year.
Which I'm sure there is a phone that can qualify for that.
But this is more of the one that had the story that represents the year for me.
If you go back and watch previous winners, it'll make a lot of sense.
So of all the phones that came out during 2025,
the winner for MVP is this guy, iPhone 17.
This phone was a long time coming.
And what a story this year.
Hidden in the most expansive iPhone lineup we've kind of ever had
among the iPhone Air, the most interesting one,
and the iPhone Pro, the most capable one,
is this base iPhone that leveled up to be the most complete
and actually kind of a great deal.
Like aside from the obvious stuff that they can kind of sleepwalk through,
like a new chip, toss that in, new colors, whoop-de-doo,
slightly updated camera, they also did the bigger stuff.
They updated to a much brighter, but more importantly,
finally high refresh rate 120 hertz display.
Thank you.
Is this the only pro-labeled feature ever to come to a non-pro iPhone?
I think so.
Why was it ever called pro in the first place?
I don't know, but it's finally here.
And then they also gave it a really good new selfie camera upgrade.
This upgrade is across the entire iPhone lineup,
but it's this big square sensor that can take portrait or landscape selfies.
Huge underrated upgrade that I think a lot of people are going to copy next year.
And then they went ahead and doubled the base storage,
which was kind of the cherry on top because they kept the price the same.
So now this base iPhone is a better deal than the base S25 and the base Pixel.
It's about damn time.
I mean, it's not something I ever thought I would say,
but a phone with basically an 8 out of 10 in every category,
great battery, great cameras, great software,
and an eternity of software support.
It's just nice to see them finally coming through
and delivering what they should have a long time ago.
So shout out to the most improved and the MVP, iPhone 17.
Now, I do have a runner up as well.
Probably my favorite phone release of the year
because it kind of almost shamelessly rode on the back of the iPhone 17 Pro Max,
and that is the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max.
And just a treat to use, but also hilarious that they just copied the name
and then did a bunch of one-upping.
They one-upped the design, they one-upped the battery, they one-upped the power,
and they add this display on the back, which is actually super functional
and turned out to be an incredible design choice,
and they might as well keep doing it with this phone.
So really, really good phone.
And they undercut the price, by the way.
Just a lot going on here.
Very, very worthy of a trophy.
Just short.
Really well done.
And that is it.
People always want to know also what's the phone
that I used the most during the year,
which I mentioned in a previous video, but I will say
it was Galaxy S25 Ultra for a long time,
and then it was Pixel 10 Pro for a long time,
and now lately it has been OnePlus 15 in my pocket.
But there you have it.
It's the Smartphone Awards 2025.
Let me hear in the comments section,
let me hear what you would have picked for which category,
which ones you disagree with, which ones you do agree with.
I always look forward to that discourse in the comments section below.
But until next time, catch you guys later.
Peace.
