What’s the best smartphone of 2017? Which one beat out all the competition to rule them all? Which ones are the best of the rest? On Monday, we set out to answer this with Best of Android 2017, and across 7 features, we’ve dissected ten of the best phones this year.

Now it’s time to reveal the winner, but before we do that, let’s recap Best of Android 2017 as a whole.

Best of Android 2017 revisited

This year’s series was our biggest ever. We put each phone through 40+ grueling tests, looking at over 100 individual criteria, all to objectively find out which smartphone was the best. Some areas weren’t so simple.

The biggest of challenge was the camera. As we all know, it’s often the camera that looks the best, though may not be technically the best, that everyone loves. For this we turned to our readers and, over 4,000 votes later, were able to crown a winner in our first ever People’s Choice Camera of the Year award!

This was the most in-depth comparison we’ve ever conducted and now that it’s all done, it’s time to crown the overall winners.

How we calculate the winners

For those that haven’t been following along this week, we ranked the phones from first to tenth across each category—display, battery, camera, audio, and performance. The phone that came first scored 10 points, second place scored 9 points, and so on. For the User Experience section, we took the overall points each phone scored and added it into our calculations.

After all the testing, here’s a breakdown of the scores each phone received across all the categories:

There’s a lot of interesting results there which we’ve delved into in each of the individual posts, so all that’s left is to crown the various winners!

People’s Choice Camera of the Year

As part of Best of Android 2017, we asked our readers to vote for which device they thought took the best-looking pictures. For the camera, we looked at it both objectively and subjectively. After 4000+ votes, the results are in!





The Google Pixel 2 XL came out on top, taking 36.5% of the vote. It was followed by the Galaxy Note 8 (22.7%), OnePlus 5T (12.8%) and Huawei Mate 10 Pro (8.2%). The rankings of each phone were also added to the rest of the Best of Android results and attributed points in a similar manner to the other tests.

Best bang-for-your-buck smartphone

This award is one of the hardest to calculate. Which phone on our list offers the most value for the money? Given that value for money is subjective to each user, we decided to tackle this by looking at the total points each phone scored and dividing it by its U.S. price (or equivalent) divided by 100. We ranked all the phones by the resulting value scores to find which one offered the best value!

The Best bang-for-your-buck smartphone of 2017 is the OnePlus 5T! Scoring 59.22, it narrowly beat out the Nokia 8, which scored 56.83, and the Moto Z2 Force, which scored 44.84. The Mate 10 Pro came fourth, followed by the BlackBerry KEYone, Galaxy Note 8, and LG V30.

The Phone of the Year 2017 is…

This has been an incredible year for smartphones and Best of Android 2017 showed all of us just how close they all actually are. However, after 40+ tests, only 1 device deserved to be crowned Phone of the Year!

Congratulations to our 2017 phone of the year, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, which took the top spot from the Galaxy Note 8 by just a few points! The OnePlus 5T placed a very respectable third. The folks over at Nokia deserve a special mention as well for the Nokia 8, which beat out a lot of illustrious competition to take fourth spot overall!

The two biggest surprises were the results for the LG V30, which came sixth overall, and the Pixel 2 XL, which placed eighth. Both devices look great on paper but failed to deliver in our tests. The Moto Z2 Force was also a surprise, ranking fifth overall and taking the title “best of the rest.”

The Mate 10 Pro is a pound-for-pound champion. Nirave

The Mate 10 Pro proves that excellence isn’t just about standout features but rather consistent quality across the board. Simply put, the Mate 10 Pro is a pound-for-pound champion.

Like the two previous years, the overall winner was consistent across each category. The Galaxy Note 8 won two categories and came in the top 3 in a further two, but the Mate 10 Pro just barely beat it, winning only one category, but ranking in the top 3 in a further four categories.

Huawei’s flagship also progressed from previous years. Its performance wasn’t the highest ranking and its the software may not be perfect, but there’s no denying that this smartphone is a worthy winner of Best of Android 2017!

People’s Choice Smartphone of the Year 2017!

Throughout this week, we’ve been asking our readers to vote for the phone they think is the best. The poll is open through the end of Saturday, so you still have time to vote for your favorite device!

Remember, you could win one of the three smartphones that placed first, second, and third overall! As we’ve found out here, these are now the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, Samsung Galaxy Note 8 and the OnePlus 5T!!! To enter, check out all the details in the widget below and for five extra entries, use this unique code: BOAPOY.

Best of Android 2017 3 Phone Mega Giveaway!



Credits

Series Contributors: Rob Triggs, Gary Sims, Edgar Cervantes, Sam Moore, Oliver Cragg, David Imel

Series Editors: Nirave Gondhia, Bogdan Petrovan, Chris Thomas