Best of Android 2019 Readers' Choice: Your favorite phone of 2019 is...

This year, our Best of Android series is a triple crown: there’s one award for raw performance based on our battery of objective tests; an Editor’s Choice award that takes into account performance combined with all those intangibles that are impossible to measure objectively (like value for money, availability, and software support); and one decided solely by the most passionate and informed audience in tech: you.

After three days of voting and over 55,000 votes cast, our readers and viewers have crowned their ultimate winner. This is the Best of Android 2019 Readers’ Choice award.

The voting

Before we jump into which device came out on top, let’s take a look at the voting split during each 24-hour round. As we’ve discovered in the past, audience opinion is not always consistent across the site, social and YouTube, so we had no idea what to expect with our new approach to voting. Here’s how it played out.

First up, we asked you to narrow down a field of 12 contenders to the final four via a poll on the site. Only one phone cracked 20% of the vote in that survey, with our ultimate champion being the frontrunner for 22.3% of voters. Our eventual runner-up came in second there with 18% of the vote.

Next, we took it to YouTube and Twitter, where more than 30,000 votes were cast. Interestingly enough, our original top two maintained their lead, even finishing in the same order. Our eventual winner surged ahead in this round though, securing 45% of the vote to our second-place winner’s 29%.

Finally, we turned to Instagram and Facebook to decide the ultimate winner. To our surprise, first and second place were consistent again, with our champion securing the round with 57% of the vote versus 43% for second place. I can’t remember another survey on Android Authority where the votes were this consistent across three social platforms, YouTube and the site… crazy.

With all the votes tallied across five surveys, our 2019 Best of Android: Readers’ Choice winner took the crown with a grand total of 59% of the vote vs our second-place winner’s 41%.

The winner

So what was the fan favorite that remained the frontrunner from the get-go? It was none other than the mighty Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus!

• Check out our Galaxy Note 10 Plus review

The runner-up

With our winner crowned, it should come as no surprise either that the second-best smartphone of the year according to our audience was the OnePlus 7T Pro!

• Check out our OnePlus 7T Pro review

And that’s a wrap! 2019 is almost done and we’ve crowned the three best phones of the year. The realme X2 Pro stole the show for raw performance, the Google Pixel 3a XL won us over for the Editor’s Choice award and you voted the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Plus as your pick for Readers’ Choice.

(You might recall Samsung also took out our Readers’ Choice: Summer Edition vote as well with the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus.)

We wanted to thank you all for reading, voting, sharing your opinions and fighting the good fight to make sure your favorite phone came out on top. We’ll be kicking off 2020 in style at CES in Las Vegas so until then, stay safe, be happy, and have a Happy New Year!