If 2025 taught us anything, it’s that the gap between “flagship” and “affordable” has become a win for everyday buyers.

Looking at our analytics for the year, the distinction matters less than ever. You weren’t necessarily hunting for the cheapest phones, nor were you blindly clicking on the most expensive ones. You were looking for outliers.

That’s the only way to explain a top five list where a budget king sits right next to a premium compact flagship. Whether it was a wallet-friendly unit that finally nailed 120 FPS gaming or a high-end one that actually fits in a pocket, the reviews you read most last year were about devices that solved a specific problem, regardless of the price tag.

Below are the five most-read reviews on REVU in 2025. A quick note on the data: We’re ranking these purely by unique pageviews. This naturally favors devices released earlier in the year — our March and April reviews have had months to rack up hits that the August releases haven’t — but the sheer volume of traffic these five generated makes them definitive.

Here is what defined 2025 for REVU readers.

1. Infinix NOTE 50 Pro review

Published: April 23; The verdict: Premium build, blazing charging, budget price

It’s no surprise this is sitting at the top spot. The Infinix NOTE 50 Pro made waves when it dropped in April. For years, buying “budget” meant accepting plastic backs, large chins, and charging speeds that felt like watching paint dry. Infinix looked at that standard and threw it out the window.

The NOTE 50 Pro arrived with a premium metal frame and 90-watt fast charging that topped the smartphone up in under 40 minutes –specs that were strictly reserved for the 30,000 Philippine peso bracket just more than a year ago. When we reviewed it, we called it a “game-changer” not because it was perfect, but because it compelled rivals to step up quickly. If you bought a budget model in late 2025 that didn’t feel cheap, you probably have this phone to thank for raising the bar.

2. Xiaomi 15 review

Published: March 10; The verdict: 2 weeks with Xiaomi’s new compact flagship

Amidst a sea of value-focused smartphones, the Xiaomi 15 stands out as the only true, no-compromise flagship on this list. There is a loud, passionate subset of you who simply refuse to carry a tablet-sized device in your pocket, and this was your champion.

Compact flagships have historically forced you to choose between hand-feel and battery life (physics is physics, after all), but Xiaomi managed to cram a silicon-carbon battery into this 6.36-inch chassis that defied logic. In our review, we found ourselves ending days with 30% battery left — a sentence we’ve almost never written about a small phone. Combined with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite and those Leica-tuned optics, it proved you don’t need a big footprint to get serious performance.

3. HONOR 400 Pro 5G review

Published: Aug. 6; The verdict: A hidden gem in the sub-flagship space?

The “sub-flagship” category is usually a confusing mess of recycled parts, but the HONOR 400 Pro 5G clarified things beautifully. HONOR took the best DNA of 2024’s top-tier smartphones — specifically the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip and studio-level portraits — and packaged them into something accessible.

The reason everyone paid attention, though, was the Photo to Video AI feature. Being able to take a static portrait of a friend and have the AI subtly animate the wind in their hair or the background movement wasn’t just impressive technology; it was genuinely fun. It turned boring gallery scrolls into living memories, and based on your feedback, it’s the one feature you couldn’t stop showing off to your friends.

4. Infinix GT 30 Pro review

Published: June 22; The verdict: Your gaming companion for all-day 120 FPS action?

If the NOTE 50 Pro was for the generalist, the Infinix GT 30 Pro was for the spec-sheet obsessives. This review traffic spiked every time a new graphically demanding gacha game updated, and for good reason. Infinix aggressively targeted the “frame rate per peso” metric here.

With the MediaTek Dimensity 8350 Ultimate and dedicated display chips, this model promised 120 FPS stability in titles that usually choke standard handsets. Our review found that while it ran hot during marathon sessions, it never throttled hard enough to ruin the fun. The “Mecha” aesthetic is divisive — you either love the cybernetic look or you put a case on it immediately — but the raw throughput was undeniable.

5. TECNO CAMON 40 Pro 5G review

Published: April 25; The verdict: Smart AI, capable cameras, unbeatable value?

Rounding out the top five is TECNO, a brand that has successfully shed its entry-level skin. The CAMON 40 Pro 5G was all about democratizing AI. While Samsung and Google were locking advanced AI editing tools behind flagship paywalls, TECNO brought capable object erasure and generative AI features to the masses.

If anything stole the show, it was the sensor consistency. The main 50-megapixel shooter with optical image stabilization produced images that were dangerously close to phones double its price. It was more about color science that finally felt mature. For creators on a budget who needed their TikToks to look crisp without grading footage for hours, this was the toolkit of choice in 2025.

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That’s a wrap for our 2025 coverage. If these numbers tell us anything, it’s that 2026 is going to be an absolute bloodbath in the mobile space — and we can’t wait.

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