Forget The iPhone 16 Pro, Skip The Pixel 9 Pro, This Is My Smartphone Of 2024

Because the 12 months involves an finish, it is time to consider my private smartphone of the 12 months. 2024 has seen the rise of generative AI as a key promoting level within the smartphone house, but it surely has additionally seen a realignment in type components. The foldable type issue is maturing, there’s a renewed give attention to bodily dimension, each going giant and going small, and producers are dealing with smaller good points whereas nonetheless needing to face out.

All these have a bearing on my selection, however there’s something else that is not listed on the spec sheets or the press releases: my very own judgment. This isn’t sitting down with all of the contributors and employees to discover a mixed mixture reply… that is my selection of the smartphones that talk to 2024 as an entire, the telephone that has made an influence and highlights the long run.

That is as a lot about emotion as it’s about benchmarks.

Earlier than we come to my selection, let’s evaluate the options and at the least one out-of-left-field possibility.

Apple iPhone 16 Professional

As at all times presently of 12 months, I come up towards the closed nature of iOS and the iPhone. How a lot of an influence does which have on my private selection? I do imagine {that a} wholesome ecosystem requires competitors and innovation throughout the stack. Apple’s iPhone has no competitors in {hardware}, no competitors on the firmware, and shoppers don’t have any possibility however to embrace each Apple’s capriciousness and viewpoint.

Living proof, you continue to cannot change the time that snoozing an alarm might be… the 9 minutes demanded by clockwork timepieces within the Nineteen Fifties is a set and immutable interval on iOS.

As Apple upgrades the iPhone, so do numerous Android producers. With specs broadly related throughout the board, the emotion and security a tool can create turns into important to its success.

Apple’s common method makes me cautious. But it is the appraoch to generative AI and the awkwardly backronymed Apple Intelligence that defines the iPhone 16 Professional. And that definition is”‘late and missing.”

Google introduced generative AI for the Pixel sequence in October 2023 and launched the Pixel 8 household concurrently. Samsung introduced and launched Galaxy AI and the Galaxy S24 in January 2024. Apple introduced its plans in June 2024, launched the iPhone 16 Professional in September, and launched the primary tentative generative AI software program in October. It isn’t anticipated to match the Google and Samsung choices till March 2025.

Late and missing. Apple is among the world’s largest corporations. The bar is extremely excessive… when it makes a misstep that has a huge effect.

Apple is not behind the curve of synthetic intelligence on the whole; iOS locations important emphasis on flavors of AI apart from generative AI. Machine Studying might be discovered within the predictive keyboard to supply choices for the subsequent phrase, within the interactions with Siri, in looking out thorough images, and extra. Neural nets enhance the ML routines, permitting for quicker processing on some digicam features and recognition routines for FaceID.

Plus, that is all going down on-device, permitting Apple to proceed its push to maximising person knowledge safety.

But, with a continuously shifting goal of what shoppers count on of their smartphones, Apple missed the second to be accountable for its personal story round software program.

The iPhone 16 Pro has the playing cards to match the performance of different flagships, however Apple performed its hand badly and did not provide one of the best iPhone 16 Professional it might. When your dimension calls for perfection, lacking by an inch is nearly as good as lacking by a mile.

Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely

Because of a January launch, Samsung has each a 12 months to determine itself because the telephone of the 12 months but in addition has a 12 months to be forgotten. With the Galaxy S25 launch simply across the nook, it is value remembering how a lot the Galaxy S24 household set the tone for the remainder of 2024 with the launch of Galaxy AI.

It was undoubtedly the most well-liked AI-powered handset. Counterpoint Analysis in Could reported Samsung as holding a 58 per cent market share of generative AI-enabled smartphones. It debuted a raft of generative AI instruments throughout the platform, together with an unique interval with Circle To Seach earlier than that expanded to your complete Android platform.

Samsung additionally had an unique with Qualcomm, permitting the Galaxy S24 Ultra to ship with an overclocked 8 Gen 3 chipset, which in flip supported quicker AI processing. Every thing stepped up as you’ll count on, however stepping as much as help the introduction of AI allowed for a handset that felt extra targeted on new expertise and pushing the envelope than most.

Samsung’s give attention to the S24 Extremely to hold all of the specced {hardware} meant it might promote the Extremely as the last word telephone, with the S24 and S24+ in supporting roles reasonably than ‘the identical function however a bit smaller than the highest of the portfolio.

But the Galaxy S24 Extremely’s success is an iterative one. Strip away the AI, and you’ve got a smartphone the place every little thing is a bit higher than the 12 months earlier than however with none important adjustments within the bundle.

Google Pixel 9 Professional

In distinction to Samsung, Google unfold the ability and potential throughout a number of 9 Professional units. You had the common Pixel 9 Pro, the bigger type issue of the Pixel 9 Professional XL and the revolutionary design of the Pixel 9 Professional Fold (in addition to the vanilla Pixel 9, which simply misses out on a number of prime specs).

The 9 Pro XL is a shade too giant and isn’t helped by the transfer to a extra boxy design that maximises inside quantity and the perceived bulk, whereas the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a contact ungainly in common use. That’s the reason I’m choosing the Pixel 9 Professional right here.

A lot of that comes all the way down to Google’s presentation of generative AI by means of Gemini. Whereas there are a lot of AI-driven options which are extra expertise demonstrations than day-to-day recreation changers, the conversational tone of Gemini AI and the totally different method to go looking and analysis it affords is AI at its most versatile.

I am in little question that the Gemini AI capabilities will present up throughout the broader Android platform throughout 2025 – permitting Samsung to debut Circle to Search on the Galaxy S24 as an alternative of the Pixel 8 exhibits that Google will not be fully treasured with the crown jewels, however for now, one of the best sensible implementation of generative AI is the vocal interface with Gemini, and which means the Pixel household can problem for the crown.

If AI had been the one measure, the Pixel 9 Professional might take the crown. However one different telephone feels a better option than the odds-on favourite.

Earlier than I get to that, I need to tackle a semantic consideration

Retroid Pocket 4 Professional

The title is “Smartphone of the Yr” not “Cell Tech Of The Yr,”

Attempting to justify the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro as a smartphone is a troublesome promote. It lacks both a bodily or embedded SIM card, doesn’t help 5G connectivity, and calls for a Bluetooth headset or earbuds to make a snug name. But there is a spirited defence that you’ve audio and video calling by means of software program, working over the web, and that is a much more prevalent manner of creating “calls” in 2024.

The Pocket 4 Professional is a transportable gaming machine with the requisite analogue sticks, face buttons, d-pads, shoulder buttons and triggers. Because of the usage of Android because the working system, it has the Android gaming ecosystem to name on, from standard titles reminiscent of Fortnite and Genshin Impression all the way down to extra esoteric titles reminiscent of Sky: Youngsters of Gentle. Besides reasonably than the touchscreen most should depend on, you’ve gotten a totally built-in controller.

The Pocket 4 Professional builds on Retroid’s expertise within the retro gaming house. Beforehand, retro consoles required customized OS builds and a strong information in Linux to rise up and working. The business, together with Retroid, has been toying with Android as an possibility for some years, however in 2024, the capabilities of Android and the wants of players had been met at a pretty value level that balanced value and specs. Retroid launched the Pocket 5 Professional in time for the vacations, however the Pocket 4 Professional lastly proved the retro market was mature and prepared for Android.

The Retroid Pocket 4 Professional is not going to be known as the Smartphone Of The Yr… simply keep in mind that it is one good argument away from the trophy.

Honor Magic V3

For the reason that Samsung Galaxy Fold launch in 2019, the thought of a foldable has been extra interesting than actuality. That has benefitted smartphone designs throughout the board, not simply within the foldables. The upcoming push into “skinny telephones” throughout 2025 partially advantages from the expertise required to skinny out the 2 sides of a foldable machine.

Which is the place Honor seems. The Honor Magic V3, its third-generation foldable, was a house run for the shape issue. It ships within the open state, so once you elevate it out, the insane thickness of simply 4.4 mm is clear. Closing it, you get a 9.2 mm smartphone with a 20:9 ratio outer show akin to Honor’s then-flagship Magic6 Professional (which is available in at 8.9 mm). The bevelled edges make it comfy to get a grip of a single aspect to assist open the telephone, and the design permits for an IPX8 safety ranking… the Magic V3 is sweet to a depth of 1.5m.

Software program-wise magicOS affords each ‘side-by-side’ apps or ‘floating window over a full-screen app’ for multitasking on the unfolded Magic V3. Nonetheless, it is the choice to lock an app to a particular Side Ratio if it’s not designed for a foldable that I found useful—there is not any want for a really broad when you may lock it to a 3:4 view with some bars on the left and proper.

Is it going to be the best-selling smartphone of 2024? Removed from it. Will or not it’s probably the most influential smartphone? Definitely, it is going to be within the foldables house, and arguably it demonstrates what 2025’s skinny smartphones must goal for.

The Honor Magic V3 takes all of the potential of the foldable house and brings it to a single smartphone. It sits on the chopping fringe of {hardware} and shines a lightweight for each telephone and producer to goal for in 2025.

That is why it is my smartphone of the 12 months.

Disclaimer: Throughout 2024, varied smartphones, together with the Pixel 9 Professional and Honor Magic V3, had been equipped for evaluate functions.