Top 5 Best Android Phones?

[Birk]

My boss has asked me to provide him with a list of the top 5 android phones for my company to purchase as testing units for our Android department.

What do you guys suggest makes the list?

[Eldonko]

Galaxy Nexus should be on there and Galaxy S3 should be out in May I think.

[Behemoth-]

Galaxy Nexus, soon to be galaxy S III , Maybe HTC One X or XL. The One S is quite similar to the XL tho. Maybe the Moo Razr ?

[Jake_HT]

Samsung: Galaxy nexus, galaxy note, galaxy S2(x), S3 is out soon
HTC one
Motorola Droid Razr

[Eluder]

I think it's best to just wait for the GS3 if it's out in the next couple of months. It will definitely be the best Android, otherwise, the Nexus is a solid device.

[Mars]

If you're looking for 5 phones for testing purposes, getting the 5 best Android phones probably isn't your best option, you want options that cover the largest possible amount of Android's install base, which almost certainly won't be the 5 best phones.

I haven't done any significant Android development, so can't give real good answers, but I suspect you'd want to get a Galaxy Nexus and a Nexus S for sure, at least one device that runs Froyo and one device that runs Gingerbread, one device with the lowest possible hardware specs you expect users to be using your app with, with as many different screen resolutions as reasonable. Probably worth getting at least one tablet too, probably a Motorola Xoom running Honeycomb depending on how well you plan on supporting Honeycomb.

[b1lk1]

ICS (Ice Cream Sandwich) has been total garbage on most things that use it so I would not waste much time on it as it is in need of major refining before it can be considered mainstream. Gingerbread and Honeycomb are very good versions so I would suggest focusing on them.

[GT7R]

Galaxy II (Soon to be III) and Moto RAZR are top for me. Never liked HTC :P

[enaberif]

From a business perspective I would look at the Galaxy Note and a variation of the S2 and perhaps upcoming S3 over the Galaxy Nexus as they are better fitted for business based off the size and shape of these phones.

Galaxy Nexus has a strange shape like the Nexus S

[Eluder]

I disagree about the shape of the Nexus, it's actually more ergonomic than the GS2 lineup.
But, if this is from a development standpoint, you probably want the Bell GS2 (Exynos), the Rogers GS2 LTE (Qualcomm), a Galaxy Nexus for ICS, Galaxy Note and probably a Honeycomb tablet such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1.