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Polling our panel of Android enthusiasts, the consensus is that not much has changed at the top of our Best Phones list. There’s a good reason: last year brought us perhaps the best crop of Android smartphones we have ever seen, and major manufacturers have been riding that success out, staying quiet in terms of earth-shaking announcements. That all changed last week with Mobile World Congress and the introduction of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and HTC One M9.
Those devices (along with the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge) promise to force us to rethink our rankings come next month. Both will be on the market by early April, and our initial time with the devices has us with one impression: it’s going to be hard to find a better phone than the Galaxy S6 or One M9 come next month.
We’ve got the lowdown on all of these upcoming devices, rumored phones like the LG G4, and, of course, our list of the best Android phones currently available, all as part of Phandroid’s Android phone guide.
I still disagree with the list. I have both an M8 and S5. The M8 feels better in my hand and is a hair snappier, but the S5 is a better workhorse as a smartphone because of its larger screen and physical home button (which is much more convenient for waking up the phone than a two handed double tap or hitting the button on top) and larger battery.
The M8 is good as a phone and for most mobile uses, but the S5 lets me leave my laptop at home for most business trips. For the same size phones (more or less) the screen on the M8 is just too small and the power button too inconveniently placed.
Isn’t the screen size nearly the same, 5.0″ and 5.1″?
lol yup, although it might be a tad narrow too so i dont know how that affects his work stuff, but it is crazy how .1 or .2 inches is the difference between leaving a laptop at home or not. I get so annoyed by having only my 15 inch laptop, i like to have at least one 23 inch monitor in my presence. Preferably two.
So a fraction of a difference in screen size and a physical home button make the Galaxy S5 more suitable for mobile work than the HTC One M8? Uwotm8?
EDIT — and even your arguments about the power button are somewhat weak when I can quickly double tab the display of the HTC One M8 to wake it up. Neither phone has an edge in the area of “workhorse” and your primary criteria for judging that aspect of the phone experience seems rather silly.
What about how horrible this list is tho? Come on Note 4 @ 5 on the list. This phone got more talk then the Nexus on most sites and the specs are sick. I had the slippery, poor picture taking, boring HTC M8. All it had was premium build and beauty going for it. I still managed to Crack the screen with one drop. Upgraded or jumped to the Note 4 and I have been loving the endless supply of features…..until note 5 drops. BTW I like your articles.
*patiently waits for Note 5 announcement*
Weak ass list.
Yeah, I’m not sure why they (along with Droid Life) keep putting Moto X at the top of the list. It’s not a killer when it comes to hardware specs, its camera is sub-par, and I hear the battery life ain’t great either. The DL guys even say the implementation of lollipop is buggy as hell. If this is the best out there right now, I guess that doesn’t speak much for the other Android phones that came out last year.
They just like stock android, that’s is the sole “advantage” the moto x has, which is not a plus for me.