The Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is your Reader’s Choice for best phone of 2025

After three straight days of voting across multiple platforms, thousands of fans have selected the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra ($1299.99 at Samsung) as the best phone of 2025 and the winner of this year’s Reader’s Choice award! Out of all the amazing smartphones you could buy, our readers say this one is at the top of the heap.

Now that you know the Reader’s Choice award winner, you might be curious how that came to be. Although the winner was pretty predictable based on past years, the voting process was a WILD ride this year in multiple ways. We’ve got all the data for you below!

Our first round of voting happened here at . This year, we started with a very long list of 38 phones, which is even more than we saw in 2024, and that was even more than we saw in 2023, and THAT was even more…you get the picture. As with previous years, we correctly assumed the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL ($899 at Amazon) and the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra would shoot to the top four, but there were a few surprises we didn’t expect.

However, out of nowhere, the iPhone 17 ($799 at Apple) started getting a ton of voting love, pushing it past the Galaxy Z Fold 7. The OnePlus 13 ($849.99 at Amazon) and the OPPO Find X9 Pro ($1515 at Amazon) also made good gains late in the voting process, but not enough to overtake the iPhone. In the end, the iPhone ended up in the final four, making the second round of voting very similar to previous years.

Check out how the elimination round votes tallied below.

Looking at the data, there were a few other notable surprises. First, the OnePlus 13 got nearly twice as many votes as the newer OnePlus 15 ($899.99 at Amazon). This heavily suggests that readers were just as disappointed with OnePlus’ newest flagship as we were. Also, the iPhone 17 destroyed the iPhone 17 Pro ($1099 at Apple), despite the latter being, by all measures, a better device. The value proposition of the iPhone 17, though, really resonated with readers. Finally, note that the iPhone 17 beat the OnePlus 13 by just two votes. Two votes! If the OnePlus 13 had made it to the final four, I think things would have panned out much differently than they did.

Outside of these few tidbits, though, the final four was pretty much par for the course with the Reader’s Choice voting: Galaxy, Pixel, and iPhone. What happened next, though, was pretty unexpected.

At the end of the elimination round, we had four phones left: the Google Pixel 10 Pro, the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, and the iPhone 17. With these four selected, we expanded our voting pool to our social media platforms, namely Threads, X, and YouTube (note: we’re on Bluesky, too, but polling is a bit trickier on there — give us a follow anyway!). This gave everyone up to four chances to vote, including the vote at itself.

With more people interacting than before, we saw a major shift in how people voted. Where the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL was the clear front-runner during the elimination round, the Galaxy S25 Ultra overtook it handily during the final four round. What we didn’t expect at all was for Google to completely drop out of the race and the iPhone take the second slot!

The chart below shows you a summary of the vote percentage across all four voting platforms:

As you can see, the Galaxy S25 Ultra handily beat the other three. However, as with last year, the obvious problem here is that readers are splitting the vote for the Pixels. If readers rallied behind the Pixel 10 Pro XL, for example, it would have nearly matched the Galaxy S25 Ultra, and we would have had a Galaxy/Pixel face-off in the final round, as usual. But because some were voting for the 10 Pro and others for the 10 Pro XL, neither stood a chance.

We saw this exact same scenario last year. However, last year the Pixel 9 Pro still earned enough to beat the XL model and the OnePlus 12, which was in fourth place in 2024. This year, though, that’s not the case, and the Galaxy S25 Ultra went to the final stage next to the iPhone 17. This is the first time in the history of doing Reader’s Choice Award events at  that any iPhone made it this far.

Of course, you already know how the last stage of voting panned out. What you probably don’t know, though, is just how badly the iPhone 17 lost.

With an unprecedented final showdown between Samsung’s mightiest slab of the year and Apple’s base model flagship, it didn’t take a genius to figure out how readers of a site called  would swing. What was most surprising, though, were the reactions of people who must have missed the earlier rounds.

“What is this choice?” one person exclaimed on YouTube, which basically summed up what everyone was thinking. Some people said they voted for the Galaxy on principle alone, exclaiming that they would refuse to ever vote for an iPhone. Others said they wouldn’t vote, because they felt neither was worthy of the title. However, some did say they voted for the iPhone because it was the better value between the two and brought more upgrades than the Galaxy S25 Ultra did when compared to the previous model.

Regardless of the sentiment, the data below tells a clear story: the iPhone 17 was obliterated on all four channels.

Ultimately, this outcome isn’t surprising in the slightest. Our readers have loved Samsung’s Galaxy S Ultra phones since even before they were Ultra phones. Prior to the first Galaxy S Ultra device, the latest Galaxy Note phone would almost always win the Reader’s Choice Award of that year, and those were basically spiritual predecessors to the Ultra line. In fact, in 2022, when the Google Pixel 7 Pro won both the Reader’s Choice Award and the Editor’s Choice Award, that was a truly unexpected outcome. This year, though, it’s business as usual.

What was truly crazy about this round, though, was the lack of any Pixel at all. Looking back on the history of the Reader’s Choice voting, the last time there wasn’t a Pixel in the final round was in 2020, when we saw the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra go up against the OnePlus 8 Pro (the Note won, naturally). And if someone said to me, “Hey, a Pixel won’t be in the final round this year, what phone do you think will replace it?” the absolute last phone I would pick would be the iPhone 17. But, here we are. Man, 2025 has been a weird one.

We’re excited to see what happens next year. Will our readers continue to prefer Samsung, or will the tides change? Until then, congratulations to Samsung for your well-deserved win!

Now, it’s time for you to let us know how you feel about the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s win! Was it well-deserved, or should the iPhone taken the gold? Was there another phone that should have made it further into the event before getting voted out? Sound off in the comments with your thoughts!