Phandroid Reader’s Choice Awards 2015 [Results!]

Earlier this month we opened up voting for the 2nd annual Reader’s Choice Awards. This is the time of year where everyone likes to wrap up the past 12 months with a bunch of “Best of” lists. However, we do things a little differently. Instead of us picking the best of 2015, we let you decide!

The categories this year were:

• Manufacturer of the Year
• Best Phone of 2015
• Best Smartwatch of 2015
• Best New App of 2015
• Best New Game of 2015
• Biggest Fail of 2015

We received over one thousand votes throughout the month of December. The voting was very close in some categories, and very lopsided in others. Here are the results from your voting!

Manufacturer of the Year

In a race that was excruciatingly close at times, Huawei beat out Samsung for Manufacturer of the Year. As we stated several times throughout 2015: Huawei, so hot right now. They knocked it out of the park with the Nexus 6P, and the Huawei Watch was an elegant Android Wear device.

The most shocking result from this category is the embarrassingly low amount of votes for HTC. Sony and OnePlus both received more votes than the once massively popular phone maker. HTC has a lot of ground to make up in 2016.

Best Phone of 2015

The results for the Best Phone of 2015 were unsurprisingly lopsided. Huawei’s Nexus 6P received almost half of the total votes. The Samsung Galaxy Note 5, Motorola Moto X Pure Edition, Samsung Galaxy S6, and LG V10 followed far behind. Our Best Android Phones rankings have nearly the same order.

2015 was Huawei’s year. They went from being a largely unnoticed manufacturer (receiving just 11 votes last year), to Manufacturer of the Year and making the Best Phone of 2015. Huawei is always talking about having a bigger presence in the US. It appears that could finally happen in 2016.

Best Smartwatch of 2015

For the second year in a row, the Moto 360 is your choice for the Best Smartwatch. The second version of the Moto 360 improved upon last year’s smash hit and stayed atop the rankings. Huawei nearly swept the device categories, but the Huawei Watch fell just behind the Moto 360.

This was a big year for smartwatches. Last year, the original Moto 360 had barely any competition for the title of Best Smartwatch. The voting was much closer this year. It will be interesting to see if Motorola can maintain their smartwatch dominance in 2016.

Best New App of 2015

As you would expect, voting for the Best New App was very spread out. Over 20 different apps received at least one vote. Android Pay came out on top as the Best New App of 2015. Google finally gave Android the mobile payment solution we’ve been waiting for, and you guys love it.

Other apps that received a decent amount of votes include Periscope, YouTube Music, Samsung Pay, HBO Now, Robinhood, and Microsoft Cortana. There were a surprisingly few write-in votes. In fact, no app was written in more than once. It’s very hard to choose one app.

Best New Game of 2015

The Best New Game of 2015 is Fallout Shelter. The voting in this category was extremely close. With Fallout 4 being such a big deal this year, it only makes sense that Fallout Shelter would win. Lara Croft GO came in just a step behind at second, followed by Star Was: Galaxy of Heroes and Crossy Road.

Voting for Best New Game was even more spread out than the voting for Best New App. Over 30 different titles received votes. There are many different games and many different types of gamers. It’s really hard to point at just one game as the best. Last year the award went to Monument Valley, a very different game than Fallout Shelter. Next year it will go to an equally unique game, we’re sure.

Biggest Fail of 2015

The last, but probably the most fun category, is Biggest Fail. This is where you get to choose who really screwed up in 2015. In a landslide, the unwanted award goes to the OnePlus “flagship killer’ campaign. OnePlus hyped up the OnePlus 2 as a “flagship killer,” but then the device lacked basic features like NFC. Once again, a slogan comes back to bite OnePlus.

Second place goes to the HTC One M9. We already mentioned how HTC received so few votes for Manufacturer of the Year, and this shows why. HTC has a lot of work to do in 2016. Coming in at third place is Motorola’s lack of updates for the Moto X 2014. The hilariously bad hands-on demo by the BlackBerry CEO also received a lot of votes.

The Biggest Fail category received a lot of good write-ins. Some people simply wrote “Apple.” The “flat tire” on the Moto 360 2nd Gen got a couple of votes. Lack of wireless charging in the new Nexus devices was mentioned. In the span of a year, a lot of mistakes are made.

Thanks to everyone who participated in this year’s voting! It was interesting to see how the voting changed from last year’s results. Do you agree with the voting of your fellow readers? What results would you change?