The days of one phone being the perfect phone for everyone are long gone. In 2025, phones come in all shapes and sizes. Bar-style phones with a touchscreen remain the most popular type for most people. But foldables—book-style and flip-style—continue to get better when it comes to thinness, lightness, and durability.
Choosing the right phone for yourself really comes down to what features are at the top of your checklist. Is it the biggest screen? Or maybe you need the most powerful chipset with a CPU that can handle whatever intensive apps or workflows you throw at it? Are you a mobile gamer who needs a beefy GPU? Maybe you need more cameras or the best cameras with image quality that’s as good as a mirrorless camera. Or, perhaps, you’re an early adopter and you want the best AI features.
All of this can be overwhelming, but it’s also really great—there’s so much choice. And importantly, phones are now priced at every level from budget to premium, which only means there truly is a device for everyone.
Android or iPhone?
In an ideal world, there wouldn’t be a duopoly for phone software. But that’s our reality, so before narrowing your features checklist, you have to choose between Android or iOS. The latter means you can only get an iPhone, and you’ll have to live within the constraints of Apple’s “walled garden.” Apple makes the rules about what you can and can’t do with your iPhone, and even controls the App Store to allow only “approved” apps. Going with Android gives you more flexibility if you’re the type of person who wants to customize your software how you like it or install apps from sources outside of the Google Play Store.
You may also want to look into software support long term. While Google and Samsung have committed to seven years of software and security updates, not all Android phone makers offer the same. Apple has only committed to five years of security updates for iPhones. For major software updates, it can be anywhere between five and eight years based on past calculations.
Best Android phone: Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra
There’s no denying that there are some Android phones with better cameras, larger batteries, or brighter screens, but in terms of feeling like the overall package has everything? Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra is still king. The flagship Android phone has a big and high-res 6.9-inch screen with an anti-reflective coating that cuts down on glare. The 5,000mAh battery lasts a full day with heavy use or almost two days with more moderate loads. And One UI 8 is smooth and responsive thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chip; in particular, 3D games run like a champ.
And although the cameras may be outclassed by phones from Oppo and Xiaomi that have larger sensors and superior image processing, the 200-megapixel main camera can still take some pretty damn good stills and 4K video (or 8K if you’re fine with 30 fps).
But what pushes the Galaxy S25 Ultra over the top and really earns it the “Ultra” moniker is the fact that it’s one of the last remaining phones—flagship or not—with a built-in S Pen. Read More —Raymond Wong
See Galaxy S25 Ultra at Samsung
Best iPhone: iPhone 17 Pro / 17 Pro Max
Apple pulled out all the stops to make the iPhone 17 Pro and 17 Pro Max an actually pro-level iPhone. Instead of going thinner, the iPhone 17 Pros are slightly thicker and heavier than the iPhone 16 Pros they replace. That extra space allowed Apple to cram more of everything into the aluminum frames, which, by the way, finally come in a vibrant color like Cosmic Orange.
The iPhone 17 Pros have the longest battery life of any iPhone, a 4x telephoto lens that can also zoom to 8x while retaining “optical quality,” and class-leading performance from its powerful A19 Pro chip. iOS 26 not only runs responsively, but apps for video editing and 3D gaming that really push the CPU and GPU cores to their limits can sustain their performance thanks to a super-thin vapor chamber that keeps the iPhones from overheating and throttling. Read More —Raymond Wong
See iPhone 17 Series at Apple
See iPhone 17 Series at Best Buy
Best budget phone: Google Pixel 9a
Google’s A-series Pixel phone holds onto its title for our pick for the best budget phone of 2025. This time around, the honor goes to the Pixel 9a. For the same $500, the Pixel 9a offers a slightly larger 6.3-inch 120Hz screen that’s also brighter than last year’s Pixel 8a, a faster Tensor G4 chip for handling Gemini and AI tasks, and a noticeably larger 5,100mAh battery.
Sure, the 48-megapixel camera is a downgrade compared to the 64-megapixel camera shooter in the Pixel 8a, but you’d be hard-pressed to actually tell the difference in image quality if you’re only posting to places like Instagram and TikTok. That’s because although the camera sensor is technically smaller, it actually has a larger aperture, which helps it capture better in low-light conditions.
You get so much in the Pixel 9a. Unless you’ll make use of the many Gemini features, like Magic Cue, in the Pixel 10 series, there’s little reason to spring for Google’s latest models. Read More —Raymond Wong
See Pixel 9a at Amazon
Best big phone: Xiaomi 17 Pro Max
If you really think about it, every phone is big now. It’s just a matter of deciding how big you can live with. We were set to crown Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Ultra the winner for the “best big phone” category, but then Xiaomi came out of left field with the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max.
Yes, Xiaomi is shameless with copying the iPhone 17 Pro Max’s naming convention, but its 6.9-inch Android phone has a unique screen built into the camera bump. We’ve seen phone makers put a second screen on the back of their phones, but the 2.9-inch one on the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max looks the best, while providing tons of utility. You could use it as a viewfinder for framing selfie photos, show notifications, display the clock, or access widgets.
Inside, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is a proper flagship phone, too. It’s got the newest Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip, up to 12GB of RAM, up to 1TB of storage, and a 7,500mAh battery that supports 100W wired charging (and 50W wireless charging and 22.5W reverse wireless charging). The cameras are respectable as well, with 50 megapixels for the main, ultrawide, and 5x telephoto. The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max also runs the latest Android 16 (with Xiaomi’s HyperOS 3).
Like so many Chinese phones, the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max is only sold in China (as of this writing). Still, innovation is innovation, and Xiaomi deserves props for going so hard and making the rest of the world salivate over what we can’t have. —Raymond Wong
Best small phone: iPhone 16e
With few actually small phones (read: smaller than six inches) being sold these days, it’s slim pickings. Our choice for best small phone of 2025 goes to the iPhone 16e. Its 6.1-inch OLED screen just narrowly qualifies it.
The iPhone 16e may not have the most up-to-date specs, but we’ve found it could hold its own against many more feature-packed midrange phones. At the center of the iPhone 16e is Apple’s A18 chip, which is no slouch and should be capable enough to handle at least three years of iOS software updates before things start feeling sluggish. The 48-megapixel camera, while only a single-lens, is a 2-in-1 shooter. You get the 1x photos from the sensor and also a 2x zoom with “optical quality.”
The only major downside is the phone doesn’t have MagSafe wireless charging, only Qi wireless charging. Still, if you want something that won’t feel like a brick in your pants, the iPhone 16e fits the bill. Read More —Raymond Wong
Best book-style foldable phone: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
If you can get over the fact that Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 costs a whopping $2,000, you’ll find a book-style foldable that is polished to near perfection. We can’t stop gushing over the Z Fold 7 primarily because it feels almost unreal every time we fold and unfold it. Samsung shaved off the fat until the foldable became nearly as thin and light as its flagship Galaxy S25 Ultra.
There are some tradeoffs—the battery could last longer and the triple-lens camera system on the rear isn’t quite flagship-level compared to the S25 Ultra—but that’s typical of virtually every foldable of this kind. What matters most is that the form factor finally feels refined, and it does here. The Z Fold 7 looks and feels just like a regular bar-style phone when folded and the inner folding screen is more spacious with a larger and wider aspect ratio than the previous model. Multitasking works really well and even the Samsung Galaxy AI and Gemini features are not overdone. Samsung knocked the Z Fold 7 out of the park this year. Read More —Raymond Wong
See Galaxy Z Fold 7 at Amazon
See Galaxy Z Fold 7 at Samsung.com
Best flip-style foldable: Motorola Razr Ultra
We have to hand it to the Motorola Razr Ultra: the flip-style foldable was too far ahead of the curve. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip 7 is a solid alternative, but the Razr Ultra beat everyone simply by throwing more hardware at the wall, for the most part.
The 7-inch folding screen is larger than the Z Flip 7’s, the battery is a bigger 4,700mAh, both the main and ultrawide cameras have 50 megapixels, and the chipset (Snapdragon 8 Elite) and RAM (16GB) lap Samsung’s flip-style foldable.
Even the software—Android with a few Motorola customizations—is clean. Not everyone will find the “Moto AI” key for activating certain AI functions useful, but the AI integrated into the software is, at the very least, not obtrusive. The prices for flip-style foldables still need to come down quite a bit before they can become mainstream, but if you’re looking for a phone that folds into a more compact form factor, the Razr Ultra is our top pick this year. Read More —Raymond Wong