Is this list what you expected it to be? Seeing some of these phones make it in the Top 20 is certainly no surprise, but a few unexpected models snuck in. Also, there are industry trends around 4G/5G and foldables that we need to talk about.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra claimed the top spot by a wide margin and we expected that – this was the most popular Galaxy S generation of the last few years and the Ultra, as it usually does, outsold its siblings. Not “outsold them combined” this time, but it still makes up the bulk of the sales. Similarly, the Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max being in the Top 5 was to be expected. It brought a major redesign and the old Pro design was getting stale. The upgraded telephoto and selfie cameras were good reasons to upgrade, though the scratch-prone aluminum body gave some people pause.
Samsung’s mid-range A-series is as strong as ever and having the Galaxy A56 occupy the second spot is a testament to that. The Galaxy A36 in #6 and the Galaxy A16 in #9 show that Samsung successfully serves several price segments. This is the 4G Galaxy A16, by the way. There were two more – the Redmi Note 14 4G and the Infinix Hot 50 Pro+ 4G. Three 4G phones in the Top 20 for 2025 feel like a lot, doesn’t it? This was one of the things that we didn’t expect. All three phones have OLED displays (6.67” to 6.78” in size), have an IP54 rating and use pretty much the same chipset (Helio G99 and G100). All three have microSD slots, but only the Redmi has a high resolution camera (108MP) and 3.5mm headphone jack. Here’s the other thing that we didn’t expect – the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is #14 and the Apple iPhone 17 Air is #18. Neither company has shared official sales results, but reports from the industry suggest that they both sold poorly. And we don’t have to tell you about the negative online response to these two. There was only one other iPhone in the Top 20 and it’s yet another surprise – the iPhone 16e. Normally, the vanilla iPhone of the year is one of the most popular as it is a good intersection between price and capabilities. But this year it’s nowhere to be seen, replaced by the not-much-cheaper and clearly-less-capable 16e.
We knew from reading the comments that the Poco X7 Pro is a popular device and having it at #3 is a huge achievement. It exemplifies the value-for-money philosophy that Poco is known for very well and has been selling below MSRP basically this entire time.
The Samsung Galaxy S25 is the only small phone on this list – there’s no iPhone 17/17 Pro, no Pixel 10 Pro, no vivo X200 FE or OnePlus 13s. Are small phones popular? Or is the S25 just the cheap Galaxy S model? To be fair, at #4 it was quite popular and its size must have been a factor – we don’t see the S25+ on this list despite not being much more expensive. The OnePlus 13 may go down in history as the last great OnePlus flagship. Or maybe the 15 will overcome the doubts it was met with at launch and win people over in the next 12 months.
The Redmi Note 14 Pro and Redmi Note 14 Pro+ were not quite as popular as the Poco X7 Pro, but that 200MP camera sure drew in a crowd. The more powerful Redmi Turbo 4 Pro attracted interest with its Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset and 7,550mAh battery instead. Was the Xiaomi 15 Ultra the best camera phone of 2025? It was certainly better than the Galaxy S25 Ultra and it is the most popular among the other Ultra phones. The Honor X9c took its curved 6.78” OLED display and 108MP camera all the way to the #11 spot – it is the only Honor on this list, edging out its more prestigious siblings in the Magic series.
The Tecno Camon 40 Pro also deserves a shout-out – the Camon series focuses on premium-feeling phones on a budget, hence the curved 6.78” OLED display (a 144Hz panel at that). Finally, the iQOO 13 may be in the #20 spot, but we believe that it would have been higher than that had iQOO released it in more markets. It’s a Snapdragon 8 Elite phone that doesn’t break the bank and it has a decent set of cameras on it. OnePlus would be sweating if iQOO had a wider market presence.
That’s it, that is all twenty phones in this year’s Top 20. Did you notice what’s missing? Well, Android’s favorite child, the Pixel, is nowhere to be seen, but that is to be expected. But there isn’t a single foldable phone on this list. Not one.
You’d think that with all the promos that Motorola has been running on the Razr phones, Samsung’s first Z Flip FE, the hugely improved and hugely popular Z Flip7 and Z Fold7, at least one of them would be on this list. Not to mention the foldables from Xiaomi, Honor, vivo and others. The foldable market was up 14% in Q3 and Samsung set sales records. Foldables are still a niche, it seems. Credit : GSMARENA.com
