The S8/S9 grabbed the top spot in our poll of the best Galaxy phones

Probably not what you expected, is it?

What you need to know

• Earlier this week, we asked AC readers which era of Samsung Galaxy phones was their favorite.
• More than half of the respondents chose recent models from the S8 to the S21.
• The older the Galaxy S phone, the less love it received in the poll.

Just a few days ago, the iconic Samsung Galaxy S series of smartphones celebrated its 12th birthday. That’s right, the crown of the Android world is now officially a tween! In honor of this occasion, we thought it would be fun to ask our readers which version of the Galaxy S was their favorite. Because there are so many variants, we decided to simplify things a bit by grouping them into distinct design eras.

The top vote-getters in our poll were the Galaxy S8/S9 era with nearly 29%, followed closely by the most recent devices — the Galaxy S10/S20/S21 — with approximately 28% of the votes. Coming close behind was my personal favorite era with the Galaxy S6 and S7, getting around 24% of votes. Next came the Galaxy S3/S4/S5 era with just 12%, the Galaxy S1/S with a little over 4%, and the Nexus Galaxy phones at under 4%.

As you can imagine, such a question brought up a lot of nostalgia from our readers. Here is a brief sample of the vibes they shared with us.

Twitter readers @Supercars_13 and @Abhishek echoed the prevailing sentiment when speaking of their love for the Galaxy S8.

S8 all day everyday ❤️

— Fri5ky (@Supercars_13) June 29, 2021

Samsung S8 was the phone which changed the way I see Samsung.

The “Unbox Your Phone” motto, Infinity Display were ?

I still remember holding it for the first time and thinking “I’m holding just the screen”

— Abhishek (@2kayat) June 29, 2021

On Facebook, Mark Jarrett told us that while he loved the S8, he was happy with his more recent upgrade. “I had my S8 Plus for 4 years, great phone. Just now upgraded to the S21 Ultra.” Rj Achacoso similarly extolled the virtues or more recent phones:

My current phone, the S10+. It was Samsung’s first set of flagship that introduced a proper notchless edge-to-edge displays, and under-display ultrasonic fingerprint sensor, and had a triple camera setup with both a telephoto and wide-angle lens, yet was the last to have the headphone jack and the second to last to have a microSD card slot. It was pretty much their most feature-packed phone and one of the most beautifully designed, too. Best part is that thanks to Samsung’s new software update promise, my phone managed to get Android 11 with Samsung’s One UI 3.1.

Reader sledgehammer was one of the few fans of the original designs and told us that they “liked the S2 so much, I ended up buying three of them over time.” And finally, jsabo reminded us of a forgotten gem when they said the “S4 Google Play Edition… So little cruft…”

What about you? If you didn’t get a chance to vote in the poll or comment previously, now’s your chance. Let us know what your favorite Galaxy S version was!