The first round of voting, that began on December 5 2022, we put 32 smartphones up against each other. The fight was bloody. Around 28% of phones failed to garner enough votes to get over the 1% threshold which left just 23 in the battle. From the total of 23 just four of them were able to make it through the round unharmed and go to the semi-finals. There were more than 3300 votes in this round.

In addition to those four winners there was significant support for a few less-known models. While they won’t be the top smartphone of 2022 and beyond, the Asus Zenfone 9, Samsung Galaxy S22 Plus and Google Pixel 6a as well as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 won 3percent of the votes each. The Zenfone 9’s performance particularly is impressive when you consider Asus its relative standing in the mobile industry.

Its Nothing Phone 1 also garnered just 2% of the votes that is an amazing achievement for a phone that is a first. The standard Galaxy S22 getting 2% of the votes is noteworthy, especially considering how it is superior to it did than the Galaxy S22 Ultra did.

There is a list of the various percentages below. Note that the numbers do not necessarily add to 100 percentage because of rounding.

The elimination round is over with the elimination round over, we began the semi-finals on the 6th of December 2022. Four heavyweights battled each other for the chance to win the most powerful handset of 2022. These phones were four of them: the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra, Google Pixel 7 Pro, Apple iPhone 14 Pro, and Google Pixel 7.

A lot users were in no doubt shocked at the fact that they were surprised that the Apple iPhone 14 Pro made it to the semi-finals. It not only made it to the semi-finals, but it also made it into the semi-finals third with a respectable 15% of votes. It was well ahead of the fourth-place contender and that of the Pixel 7, which landed with 12percent of the votes. It’s evident that a lot of our readers love iPhones!

Of of course only two phones can win this round The two phones that did included both the Galaxy S22 Ultra in first position in first place and Pixel 7 Pro in second. We believed that we could say that the Galaxy S22 Ultra was a sure-fire winner, given that it had risen to the top in both elimination rounds as well as the semi-final round. Samsung was also the winner of six of the last seven Reader’s Choice awards dating back to 2015. So certainly another victory was a given surely?

We had whittled down the competition to just two devices: the Galaxy S22 Ultra and the Pixel 7 Pro. So far, the Galaxy S22 Ultra was two-for-two in wins with the Pixel 7 Pro relegated to second place each time. Naturally, we expected that trend to continue and for the Samsung device to emerge victorious.

Amazingly The Pixel 7 Pro skirted by the Galaxy S22 Ultra to become the reigning champion. While Samsung’s Galaxy S22 Ultra won the voting for the most popular social media platforms, Instagram and Facebook but it fell short at Android Authority by quite a large margin — 11% actually. When we tallied all votes, the advantage helped it remain in first place by a narrow margin, receiving only 52% percent of the total votes. This left the Galaxy S22 Ultra with just 48% of the vote, which gave the title to Google.