By 
As the finals days of 2014 slip away, it is time to name the best Android smartphone of the year as voted on by your fellow Phandroid readers. Voting in this category was tight, and each of the top three phones could have easily taken home the award, but only one prevailed in the end.
Our 2014 Readers’ Choice Awards wrap up when we name the winners for Biggest Fail and Manufacturer of the year in the coming days. You can see all the winners so far by clicking here.
Honorable Mention: HTC One M8
With 265 total votes HTC’s 2014 flagship scores an honorable mention in this year’s awards. The One M8 was the first of the flagship releases from major Android manufacturers to be announced, but its quality design and slick software updates have made sure it has stayed foremost in many a user’s mind.
Read our HTC One M8 review
Runner-up: Nexus 6
The Motorola-made Nexus 6 edged out HTC One M8 by one vote to land in second place. A total of 266 votes were cast in favor of the Android 5.0 Lollipop flagship device. While it’s massive display size doesn’t appeal to every user, the prestige of the Nexus line makes the Nexus 6 a desirable smartphone for the Android purist.
Read our Nexus 6 review
And the winner is: Motorola Moto X (2014)
The second-generation Moto X took the top spot, but it was less than 20 votes that made the difference. The Moto X has been praised for its appealing design, powerful hardware, and unique approach to sales that offers consumers the chance to customize the look of their device.
Read our Moto X review
Here is the breakdown in voting for Best Smartphone 2014:
Samsung fan boys are gonna be highly upset!
I doubt it. Samsung sells millions more devices than Motorola
Moto lost me when the Bionic came out.
Moto completely changed their smartphone business after they were bought by Google, you can’t really compare their new lineup to the old.
True, but haven’t taken the plunge on another yet.
I’d say it is worth a shot the next time you’re in the market for a new phone.
like Bryan Kolb said, totally worth the shot next time you’re looking to upgrade. Even the 1st gen Moto X still holds it’s own.
Could’ve been worse with a CLIQ.
http://phandroid.com/2013/08/26/worst-android-phones/
Samsung lost me with horrible plastic phones loaded with touchwiz.
Yup, they lost me early.
Ah, don’t use Touchwiz..great with Apex/Swiftkey if stock, CM if rooted/modded.
Understood, but its not number one on the list. So yeah, they’ll be up in arms!
I’m thinking about getting the LG G3 to replace my Droid Maxx.
Don’t do it…
Problem is I can text & make calls, but the Maxx won’t answer most calls & reboots itself during 70% of calls I’m on; or randomly reboots when it wants to
I got a G3 to replace my 2013 Moto X Dev and couldn’t be happier. I rooted and unlocked and installed G3 TweaksBox. I use Nova so with that combo, my G3 looks like AOSP (besides settings) but with some super useful additions. If you can’t wait for the next gen phones to come out in May, then I’d highly recommend the G3.
1 and 2 need to swap out greatly in part due to battery. Well at least Moto hardware got the top 2.
That’s not a large sample size to begin with… I believe Droid Life has thousands of people voting…
But with the same result…
The M8 is the real winner. “Moto” gets bandwagon votes.
Note 4 won me over from Moto X.. Had original Moto X but it was to damn slow, camera sucked and like everything else just slap Nova on my Note 4 and bingo… it looks and acts just like I had my Moto X…Plus I love having my 64GB MSD card with tons of movies!! I couldn’t do or can do that with the Moto.. Plus you can’t argue against the stylus…
Note 4 wins. End of story!
“Best Smartphone That You Can Actually and Easily Buy Without Wasting Time Currying Favor and Begging For a Damn Invite of 2014”
Corrected that for you ;)