We like to close out the year with a look back at some of the trends and major events throughout the year. One great way to gauge the industry’s and fan interest in this year’s smartphone releases is to examine the most popular entries in our review section.

The first quarter of the year is usually quite packed with announcements, featuring the biggest event of the indrustry and some traditional independent launches. Of course, 2020 being what it was, MWC got cancelled, putting the release calendar in shambles. Amid all the commotion, Samsung came out strong in terms of interest, most-notably with the announcement of the Galaxy S20 family in February. Naturally, the S20 Ultra soaked-up most of the spotlight, with a lot of interest falling on Samsung’s 108MP main and 48MP 4x optical zoom periscope cameras. The 120Hz screen represented a major industry push at the time, as well. Samsung managed to achieve impressive feature-parity across the S20 trio, which meant that even the vanilla Galaxy S20 got to enjoy trendy features like the aforementioned 120Hz panel. A fact that likely helped it outpace the S20+ in terms of fan attention.

Beyond the S20 flagship family, Samsung also made some major splashes in its popular upper-midrange Galaxy A line. Technically, both the Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A71 came out in late December 2019, but their market availability and coverage spilled over into January. Both devices are remarkably similar and great examples of trend-setters for what eventually became the 2020 mid-ranger specs norm, including things like one of the ever-popular 48MP or 64MP Quad-Bayer main cameras, a beefy battery, solid display and a solid chipset, with current connectivity and capabilities.

Beyond the overwhelming Samsung presence in the Q1 Top 10 reviews chart, Huawei’s P40 mainstream flagship family made a notable appearance. In a rather expected development, the P40 Pro gathered more interest that its more-expensive P40 Pro+ sibling, by offering pretty-much the same core experience, including standout hardware like the 50MP main camera, at a lower price point.

And last, but not least, we would be remiss not to mention the original Xiaomi Redmi K30 – a fan-favorite budget banger that kicked the affordable handset competition into high gear and spawned a whopping seven additional variants within the Redmi family and across various markets.

Tune in next weekend as we look back at the second quarter in the second installment of this series!