Best compact phones 2025 - buyer’s guide

Once an iPhone mini domain, nowadays the top pick in this category has been a reserved spot for the Moto Razrs. Indeed, the new Motorola Razr 60 Ultra offers a ton of flagship features in its super compact body.

The Motorola Razr 60 Ultra (or Razr Ultra in North America) is a thoroughly excellent small foldable that could very well be the best-performing specimen of its kind that we've seen to date. Its flaws are few, the most important being the aggressive CPU throttling. It robs the phone of some of the positives of having the best Android chipset currently available, and it's seemingly an inherent limitation of the model's thermal design.

Other than that, the Razr's showing is class-leading in most respects. Battery life is excellent across the board, and charging remains best-in-class, as last year. The displays can, actually, put out plenty of nits when the ambient light calls for it - also scoring higher than the rest in that test. The camera setup doesn't suffer too much from not having a telephoto, and its replacement with an ultrawide is actually beneficial in several ways. The Razr also remains the most functional small foldable if you'd prefer to keep it closed, thanks to a larger-than-most display and the software package to make use of it.

All things considered, as small-size foldables go, the Motorola Razr 60 Ultra is quite the enticing proposition.

The Galaxy S25 offers a nice little incremental upgrade over its S24 predecessor – the Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, which may not sound like much, but is in fact a big step over Exynos. More importantly, the Galaxy S25 is also one of the most compact Android flagships available and the small size didn't come at the cost of cut features.

It offers a great LTPO, 120Hz, Dynamic AMOLED 2X display and an iconic durable and no-nonsense design. We appreciate the slight bump in both battery capacity and actual battery endurance.

The Galaxy S25 is a solid all-rounder. It doesn't stand out, but it's somehow "good enough", especially if you are looking for a compact Samsung flagship. That's pretty much your only choice. You can rest assured that the display is excellent, performance is on point, the camera experience is just okay and battery life is dependable.

Going into wishful thinking for a bit here, we would have loved to see the vanilla S25 join its bigger siblings and get 45W charging and Ultra Wide Band (UWB). A 10-bit display would have been nice, too.

In keeping with tradition, the Galaxy S25 continues to be a mighty yet surprisingly compact package. It is one of the few small flagships left out there, and that alone will ensure its popularity with buyers. Also, as usual, it is the cheapest way to get into Samsung's latest flagship line and for better or worse, that appeals to a particular crowd.

Apple finally gave the most compact iPhone – the iPhone 17 - the two upgrades that matter most day-to-day: a premium 120 Hz LTPO display (with thin bezels) and usable base storage. A meaningfully better selfie camera, an upgraded 48 MP ultrawide (with AF for macro) and finally some progress in terms of charging speed make this the best rounded vanilla model Apple has ever made. It is also by far the easiest iPhone to recommend in the 2025 lineup.

It's not like it's flawless, but none of the downsides are actually deal-breakers. The A19's lack of a vapor chamber means noticeable heat and throttling under sustained load, but how often are you even going to push it that hard. The stereo speakers are quieter than last year's, the USB port still operates at 2.0 speeds, and Apple has effectively capped the brightness to 1,000 nits in what we assume is an attempt to extend battery life. iOS 26 brings Liquid Glass, but lacks polish.

Thus the overall package is very compelling: a phone with traditional Apple aesthetics, Pro-grade screen and performance, a capable camera and usable storage capacity was never this cheap. We'd be amazed if it's not by far the most popular option in Apple's 2025 lineup. Read full review

The Pixel 10 Pro doesn't bring a whole lot of improvements, instead iterating on what was sort of a good overall package. Predictably (no need to kid ourselves with unrealistic expectations), some classic Google pain points haven't been addressed - charging remains unacceptably slow, battery life isn't competitive, the chipset is behind the curve and throttles like few others. This year the phone is also heavier.

The Pixels aren't really moving forward much in terms of camera hardware, and they're outspecced by Chinese makers (and outperformed too). There's a glimmer of hope in the improved closeup shooting this year, which still remains hampered by a suboptimal camera app implementation (which is less than perfect in numerous other ways). All in all, the camera experience is reasonably nice, but it hasn't been nice enough to be the reason you'd get a Pixel for several generations now.

The super-bright displays have been a thing with Pixels lately, and the 10 Pro does score top marks there. Another hardware win is the Qi2 wireless charging with magnetic attachment capability that just might be useful for the right crowd. The wider-than-most selfies are also a welcome sight.

But it's really the software where the Pixel 10 Pro's main appeal lies. All the smoothness and attention to certain details that other makers overlook (once Google clears up all the early bugs), plus AI-based features that you can't quite get elsewhere (maybe on a Galaxy, but not really) - a Pixel phone is a showcase of the software company doing software mostly right. And the Pixel 10 Pro is one of the most attractive compact flagships right now, but a particularly heavy one, too.

The compact, yet heavy, iPhone 17 Pro is in many ways different from last year's model, yet it's also kind of the same - underneath and in principle. On the surface, you're getting a fresh redesign that was really needed after several years of minor tweaks. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but it's recognizable and comes with some practicality benefits.

It's a vehicle for getting heat out, and it appears to be helping, at least a little, in tandem with the new vapor chamber - but neither is a miracle worker and there's still a fair bit of throttling, particularly on the GPU side of things. Well, performance is also improved, of course.

In the same-but-different-but-same category, we'll have to file the new iOS 26 - it's looking fancier, but it's not gotten any more intuitive or user-friendly. There's a new charging standard being thrown around and indeed top ups are now speedier, but we can't help but wonder if that could have happened earlier, without the new abbreviation. The display is not as bright as before, but it also is as bright as before, only not so cooperative when it comes to our testing. It's less reflective, which is a welcome development.

Then there's the new telephoto camera which sounded exciting at first, but it's not a dramatic improvement over the old one. The every-which-way selfie camera is cool too, don't get us wrong, but it's also solving the most first-world problem - spending the extra effort to rotate your phone. It is higher-res and wider-angle - those are objective improvements, we'll give it that.

There's a lot of back and forth with the iPhone 17 Pro - you're getting this, but... that thing's improved, however... that other thing's changed, and it's not exactly better, but different instead. Ultimately, it's an excellent compact phone with a premium package with huge sales numbers in its future, but definitely not the most exciting one.

We didn't go in expecting dramatic changes and we didn't get those with the Galaxy Z Flip7. Perhaps the most notable development is in the physical appearance of the clamshell, and the slim body coupled with the new large cover screen make it that extra bit more of a looker than previous attempts. The fact that we've also gotten higher battery capacity and a meaningful improvement in endurance is also not to be overlooked.

Some of the Z Flip7's pros are as true now as they were true of the previous generation. One UI is about as feature-packed as there is and remains a key Galaxy selling point in every comparison despite, in this particular case, Samsung's continued refusal to unlock the full potential of the cover screen. The camera system may not exactly be top-cameraphone-grade, but it's pretty great for a clamshell.

Some of the Z Flip7's shortcomings aren't unique to it - whether it's the painfully slow charging that in one way or another is a problem for every Galaxy, or the high thermal throttling that comes with the form factor (or simply the high-end chipsets). We wouldn't call this making excuses, but rather establishing perspective.

In the end, the Galaxy Z Flip7 is an excellent compact foldable - but maybe not for everyone.

The Xiaomi 15 is more of an iterative upgrade rather than a colossal jump forward, but it remains a reasonably priced compact flagship phone. The notably larger battery is probably the most important change in our minds. The chipset swap to the new Snapdragon 8 Elite is nice and all, but just like last year, the Xiaomi 15 still struggles to keep it cool with prolonged loads. The camera changes are pretty minor. Last year, we did wish for autofocus on the ultrawide, but that didn't come to pass. Even so, this is one of the best and most capable camera setups you can currently get in a relatively compact phone.

Apart from the lackluster cooling performance, there are very few, if any, glaring issues we can point out with the Xiaomi 15. While it might not be a huge upgrade over its predecessor, we acknowledge that fitting so much premium hardware into such a small body is a really tough job and one that Xiaomi continues to excel at..

The bottom line here is that you can't realistically do much better than the Xiaomi 15 for a powerful, modern, compact flagship. If the price is right for you, you won't regret picking one up.

Motorola has found a successful formula with some of its Edge devices for the last couple of years, and we believe that the Neos stand out even more as delivering great value. Strangely enough, only a few brands offer compact mid-range solutions, so the Edge 60 Neo finds a very tight but comfortable niche for itself.

The Neo is based on a compact 6.36-inch LTPO OLED with hire resolution and high refresh rate, it offers MIL-STD-810H military standard, runs on a capable chip, supports wireless charging and adds a 3x telephoto camera.

Despite its size, the Edge 60 Neo is indeed well-equipped. You don't see many compact midrangers with a telephoto camera and wireless charging. The handset also offers a higher-end LTPO OLED panel, decently fast charging capabilities and long battery life. The design is ergonomically-sound and the finish is soft and grippy. It is a phone worth considering.