It’s December, and that means we can expect a slew of end-of-year awards features–which is usually good news for big companies like Apple. But not all awards, it turns out, are positive.
The hugely popular tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee, also known as MKBHD, this week posted his Smartphone Awards 2025, and Apple topped four out of 10 categories. It’s just that one of those categories is not a category you want to be in.
On the plus side, there was plenty of praise for 2025’s iPhone lineup. The iPhone Air picked up the award for Best Design, with Brownlee describing it as “one of the most beautiful and controversial products of the whole year.” The iPhone 17 was a spectacular success, winning Most Improved and the overall Phone of the Year award (“All the iPhone anyone really ever needs”), and even receiving honourable mentions in the Best Value and Best Small Phone categories. And while the iPhone 17 Pro didn’t win any awards, it was also singled out for praise in the Best Small Phone and Best Camera categories, in the latter of which it was referred to as the “undisputed king of video.”
Unfortunately, the iPhone 16e received only negative attention, winning the “award” for Bust of the Year and a scathing diatribe about its litany of compromises and insultingly mid-market price tag. “So they made a smaller, less premium iPhone, basically by taking things out of the base phone,” Brownlee explained. “So we have a binned A18 chip in here. Fine. It’s also a smaller, 60Hz display with a notch. Fine. But then they kept going…”
Ultimately, he concluded that the iPhone 16e was “just a crazy swing and a miss.” (We’re inclined to agree.)
The awards, like all of Brownlee’s videos, are extremely well produced and presented, and well worth a watch. I’ll post a list of winners below, but the real value of the video is the explanations of why each phone was selected, and their significance within wider industry changes. I recommend you give it a watch.
Best Big Phone
- Xiaomi 17 Pro Max
- Honorable mention: Oppo Find X9 Pro
Best Small Phone
- Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7
- Honorable mention: OnePlus 13S, iPhone 17 and 17 Pro, Xiaomi 17 Pro
Best Camera
- Oppo Find X9 Pro
- Honorable mention: iPhone 17 Pro, Vivo X300 Pro
Best Value
- CMF Phone 2 Pro
- Honorable mention: Moto G Play, Pixel 9a, iPhone 17
Best Battery
- OnePlus 15
- Honorable mention: OnePlus 13, Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, Doogee S200 Ultra
Best Design
- iPhone Air
- Honorable mention: Xiaomi 17 Pro Max, Galaxy S25 Edge, Fairphone 6
Best Foldable
- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7
- Honorable mention: Pixel 10 Pro Fold, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7
Most Improved
- iPhone 17
- Honorable mention: OnePlus 15, Samsung Galazy Z Fold 7
Bust of the Year
- iPhone 16e
- Dishonorable mention: Nothing Phone 3
Phone of the Year
- iPhone 17
- Honorable mention: Xiaomi 17 Pro Max
Author: David Price, Editor, Macworld
David has been writing about technology for well over two decades, and got on board the Apple hype train when covering the original iPhone launch in 2007. He is an enthusiastic Apple Watch evangelist and feels that the HomePod is misunderstood.