The Multicore Awards: Phone of the Year 2025

And the winner is...

Welcome back to The Multicore Awards, where we put the best phones of 2025 head-to-head in an all-out battle for smartphone supremacy.

Or really, I just list my five favourites throughout the year. These are the phones that stood out to me as at the time I was testing them, and the ones I enjoyed using the most.

I’m writing this year’s edition from the UK, where I’m taking early winter holidays due to some family engagements. I’ll be back on a more regular posting schedule around Christmas.

This time around I decided to limit myself to one phone per brand. This is partly for the sake of variety and partly because one company in particular would otherwise have dominated the list.

Still, I think it’s been a good year for phones, all things considered; pretty much every company I cover had some really compelling efforts. Even Apple!

#5: Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is not a very exciting update, but it is nonetheless a better version of what I considered to be my favourite phone a year ago, so we’re working from a pretty high baseline here.

The slightly slimmer outer bezels make a bigger difference to the single-screen experience than you might think, and the inner screen is still very good. The Pixel software experience is better than ever this year thanks to the Material 3 Expressive UI refresh — it's more reactive and attractive than ever before.

Pixelsnap, Google’s take on magnetic wireless charging, is very welcome and represents probably the most significant single difference when it comes to actually using this year’s model. That said, Google is going to have to do better camera- and design-wise next year if it wants to stay relevant in this space, particularly with Apple set to enter the fray.

But in many ways I still enjoy using the Pixel 10 Pro Fold more than any other phone, so it deserves a spot on the list.