As the year comes to a close, it’s time to think about my personal smartphone of the year. 2024 saw the rise of generative AI as a key promotional point in the smartphone space, but it also saw a realignment of forms. The foldable shape issue is maturing, there is a renewed emphasis on physical size, whether giant or small, and brands are facing smaller profits while still standing out.
All of this has an influence on my choice, however, there is something else that is rarely stated in spec sheets or press releases: my own judgment. It’s not about the assembly with all the contritioners and staff to find a combined overall response. . . is my choice of Smarttelephones that talk to 2024 as a whole, the phone that made an effect and shines a soft the rare length
It is as much a question of emotion as of reference.
Before we come to my choice, let’s review the alternatives and at least one out-of-left-field option.
As at this time of year, I oppose the closed nature of iOS and the iPhone. What effect does this have on my personal choice? I believe that a healthy ecosystem requires festivals and innovation in all aspects. Apple’s iPhone has no festival in hardware, no festival in firmware, and consumers still have no option to adopt Apple’s whim and point of view.
For example, you still can not replace the time an alarm can snooze. . . the nine mins required through clocks in the 1950s is a fixed, unchanging era on iOS.
As Apple upgrades the iPhone, so do countless Android manufacturers. With specifications broadly similar across the board, the emotion and safety a device can create becomes vital to its success.
Apple’s general technique makes me suspicious. However, it is Apple’s generative AI technique and clumsily back-numbered intelligence that defines the iPhone 16 Pro. And this definition is “late and missing. “
Google announced generative AI for the Pixel series in October 2023 and introduced the Pixel 8 family. Samsung announced and introduced the Galaxy AI and Galaxy S24 in January 2024. Apple announced its plans in June 2024, unveiled the iPhone 16 Pro in September, and released the first draft of generative AI software in October. It is not expected to adjust to Google and Samsung’s bids before March 2025.
Late and lacking. Apple is one of the world’s biggest companies. The bar is incredibly high… when it makes a misstep that has a huge impact.
Apple is not following the curve of synthetic intelligence in general; IOS places significant emphasis on variants of AI other than generative AI. Machine learning can be discovered in the predictive keyboard to provide next-word capabilities, in interactions with Siri, in full photo search, and more. Neural networks develop ML routines, allowing for faster processing in certain camera applications and popularity routines for Faceid.
Plus, this is all taking place on-device, allowing Apple to continue its push to maximising user data protection.
Yet, with a constantly moving target of what consumers expect in their smartphones, Apple missed the moment to be in control of its own story around software.
The iPhone 16 Pro has the obligatory cards to correspond to the functionalities of other flagship products, however, Apple has played its hand badly and has not offered the most productive iPhone 16 pro imaginable. When your length demands perfection, missing a thumb is fail a kilometer.
Thanks to the January launch, Samsung has a year to identify itself as the phone of the year but also a year to forget. With the launch of the Galaxy S25 just around the corner, it’s worth remembering how much the Galaxy S24 family set the tone for the rest of 2024 with the launch of Galaxy AI.
Without a doubt, the most popular phone with artificial intelligence technology. Counterpoint Research reported in May that Samsung has a 58% market share of AI-enabled generative smartphones. It started a series of generative AI teams on the platform, adding an exclusive generation with Circle to Search. before extending to the entire Android platform.
Samsung also had an exclusive with Qualcomm, allowing the Ultra Galaxy S24 to be sent with an Over 3 Overclockeado Gen 3 chipset, which in turn had faster AI processing. Everything has accelerated as expected, but taking a step forward for the arrival of AI has resulted in a telephone that is more oriented to new technologies and exceeds the barriers than most.
Samsung’s focus on the S24 Ultra to carry all the specced hardware meant it could sell the Ultra as the ultimate phone, with the S24 and S24+ in supporting roles rather than ‘the same role but a bit smaller than the top of the portfolio.
However, the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s good luck is iterative. Strip away the AI and you’ve got a smartphone where everything is a little better than the previous year but without any significant tweaks in the package.
Unlike Samsung, Google has extended the strength and potential to several Pro devices. You had the Pixel Nine Pro Normal, the largest form of the Nine Pro XL pixel and the avant -garde design of the pixel nine pro fold (as well as the Vanilla Pixel nine, which only lacks some higher specifications).
The Nine Pro That is why I am opting for the Nine Pro Pixel here.
Much of that comes down to Google’s presentation of generative AI through Gemini. While there are many AI-driven features that are more technology demonstrations than day-to-day game changers, the conversational tone of Gemini AI and the different approach to search and research it offers is AI at its most flexible.
I have no doubt that Gemini AI features will appear on the wider Android platform in 2025, allowing Samsung to debut search on the Galaxy S24 instead of the Pixel 8 displays that Google absolutely values with crown jewels, but for now, best practice. The generative AI implementation is the voice interface with Gemini, which means that the pixel circle of relatives can compete for the crown.
If AI is the only metric, Pixel Nine Pro can take the crown. But some other phone seems a better option than the favorite of probabilities.
Before arriving at that, I need to deal with semantic consideration
The name is “smartphone of the year”, no “mobile technology of the year”, “
Trying to justify the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro as a smartphone is a tough sell. It lacks either a physical or embedded SIM card, does not support 5G connectivity, and demands a Bluetooth headset or earbuds to make a comfortable call. Yet there’s a spirited defence that you have audio and video calling through software, running over the internet, and that’s a far more prevalent way of making “calls” in 2024.
The Pocket Four Pro is a portable gaming device with analog sticks, face buttons, d-sticks, shoulder buttons, and triggers. Thanks to employing Android as its operating system, it has the Android gaming ecosystem to call itself, from popular titles like Fortnite and Genshin Impact to more esoteric titles like Sky: Children of Light. Except that the touchscreen that you have to rely on maximum, has a fully built-in controller.
The Pocket Four Pro builds on Retroid’s reveling in the non-fashion gaming space. Previously, old-fashioned consoles required OS tradition to build and a forged Linux lore to get up and running. The industry, adding retroids, has been toying with Android as an option for a few years, but in 202 FUTRO, the features and desires of Android gamers were met with a horny value that balanced prices and specifications. Retroid introduced the Pocket Five Pro in time for the holidays, however the Pocket Four Pro ultimately proved that the non-fashion market was mature and in a position for Android.
The Retroid Pocket Four Pro is arguably not called the smartphone of the year.
Since the Samsung Galaxy Fold launch in 2019, the idea of a foldable has been more appealing than reality. That has benefitted smartphone designs across the board, not just in the foldables. The upcoming push into “thin phones” during 2025 partially benefits from the technology required to thin out the two sides of a foldable device.
Which is where Honor appears. The Honor Magic V3, its third-generation foldable, was a home run for the form factor. It ships in the open state, so when you lift it out, the insane thickness of just 4.4 mm is evident. Closing it, you get a 9.2 mm smartphone with a 20:9 ratio outer display comparable to Honor’s then-flagship Magic6 Pro (which comes in at 8.9 mm). The bevelled edges make it comfortable to get a grip of a single side to help open the phone, and the design allows for an IPX8 protection rating… the Magic V3 is good to a depth of 1.5m.
Software-wise magicOS offers both ‘side-by-side’ apps or ‘floating window over a full-screen app’ for multitasking on the unfolded Magic V3. Still, it’s the option to lock an app to a specific Aspect Ratio if it is not designed for a foldable that I found useful—there’s no need for a very wide when you can lock it to a 3:4 view with some bars on the left and right.
Is it going to be the best-selling smartphone of 2024? Far from it. Will it be the most influential smartphone? Certainly, it will be in the foldables space, and arguably it demonstrates what 2025’s thin smartphones need to aim for.
The Honor Magic V3 takes all the potential of the foldable space and brings it to a single smartphone. It sits on the cutting edge of hardware and shines a light for every phone and manufacturer to aim for in 2025.
That’s why it’s my smartphone of the year.
Disclaimer: During 2024, smartphones, adding the Pixel Nine Pro and Honor Magic V3, were provided for review purposes.
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