2024 has been an exciting year for the smartphone industry , with massive change and innovations reshape the way we interact with our slab of aluminum and spyglass .
From the unveiling of on - gadget GenAI that brings completely new features to improvements to the staples of the smartphone experience like amend bombardment tech and slimmer bezels , 2024 was a great year for smartphones – and here , we recap some of the most exciting innovation we ’ve take in this class .
Generative AI on smartphones
There could n’t be an clause about exciting peregrine innovations in 2024 without touch upon the great of them all ; support for on - equipment generative AI .
It ’s arguablythebig affair for smartphones in 2024 , with everyone from Apple to Samsung and Xiaomi getting in on the hokey word playfulness in some form or another .
Depending on the smartphone you choose for , it can do handy functions like rewriting emails to sound more formal , transcribing and summarising recording , translating call in real - time and fashion more .
The height of AI on smartphones arguably come fromApple Intelligence , which with the handout ofiOS 18.2 in early December finally brings some of the grownup feature to supported iPhones admit desegregation with ChatGPT for a smarter Siri experience , the power to generate your own custom emoji and even give stylize portraits of yourself .
It ’s a tendency that shows no sign of slowing either , with companies like Samsung fluff more AI features coming to flagship smartphones in 2025 , so we ’re only really engrave the aerofoil of what ’s on fling from the various GenAI service .
Silicon carbon battery technology
This one might not go that exciting , but it has a big bash - on effect on your smartphone experience ; Si carbon battery applied science . It ’s something we ’ve escort a few times before 2024 , but 2024 is arguably the year where it has see aggregative adoption in smartphones , offering Brobdingnagian advantages over the lithium - ion alternative used up until now .
The swelled benefit of silicon carbon electric battery tech is the ability to create tenuous , denser batteries compared to the atomic number 3 - base competition . This basically grant smartphone maker to swot larger batteries into the same size , or even thinner , smartphones for a serious cost increase to overall battery liveliness .
It ’s a feature of some of thebest Android phonesincluding theHonor Magic 6 ProandOppo Find X8 Pro , with the latter manage to squeeze a banging 6000mAh stamp battery within its chassis without being too heavyset or bulky .
There are downside , namely that Si carbon battery ca n’t be charged quite as promptly as lithium batteries , but the difference is n’t too huge ; the Find X8 Pro and Honor Magic 6 Pro still charge at 80W , but that seems to be the limit for the engineering – for now , that is .
Better long-term software support
Apple has traditionally result the charge when it add up to impressive tenacious - term software support , with iPhones 5 + years old getting the latest software updates on the same day as the most recent iPhones – something that was traditionally unheard of in the Android blank – but that has easy changed in 2024 .
Admittedly , the trend pop out in late 2023 with theGoogle Pixel 8collection and Google ’s updated commitment to seven years of O upgrades and protection patches , but that was matched in 2024 by Samsung across its flagship and foldable lines .
While other Android OEMs have n’t quite get to such lofty heights , there has been a massive uptick in improved recollective - term software allegiance from the likes of Honor , Motorola and even Xiaomi in 2024 , and this is only good news for consumer , keeping smartphones up to appointment and out of landfill for long than ever before .
Now , we just want to wreak on get those Android updates out in a timely way . Hey , perchance that ’ll be the centering for 2025 …
Massive improvements to foldable technology
While even candybar smartphones have pretty idle in the preceding few geezerhood , the same ca n’t be said for foldable technical school , with every propagation of folding smartphones offer massive improvements to the underlying foldable technology .
That has been exemplified by reasonably much every single foldable to go into the market this yr ; theSamsung Galaxy Z Fold 6offers a refined blueprint while compete foldables like theHonor Magic V3that ’s both thinner and lighter than some regular smartphones , all while offering better durability – peculiarly when it comes to the inner folding display .
That ’s just as true with clamshell foldables as it is with leger - style foldables too , with the likes of theMotorola Razr 50 Ultraoffering a immense 4 - inch cover screen that allow you to do fashion more without unfurling the phone , while factor like barrage life and camera performance have also seen significant gains to shut the gap between foldables and non - foldables .
The iPhone’s Camera Control button
This innovation is a scrap like Marmite – you ’ll either love it or hate it – but either way , it ’s worth a citation in our roundup . It ’s Apple ’s newCamera Control buttonthat made its debut on theiPhone 16collection a few month ago .
usable across the full iPhone 16 collection in a stark variety to previous newfangled features that start off aliveness on the Pro models before migrating to the even models , the Camera Control is basically a soupcon - capacitive button that lives on the lower right of the iPhone .
This newfangled clit not only act as a consecrated shutter release , allowing you to enamour photos with a press rather than a dab of the screen , but its soupcon - sore nature also imply that you may purloin to change shot modes , zoom , picture and more , all without fiddle around with the screen itself .
It ’s not the staring implementation – I found that the button ’s location was a little off , and the amount of forcefulness needed was a bit excessive – but it ’s a handy accession if only to provide immediate access to the Camera app .
And , with the like of the Oppo Find X8 Pro offering something similar , I ’ve got a feeling we ’ll be seeing much more like this in 2025 .
Slimmer screen bezels
This might not seem significant , but it has a heavy encroachment on the overall experience on offer from flagships ; badly slender bezel .
We ’ve seen a steady reducing in the thickness of the bootleg bars ring smartphone displays for the past few age , but there seemed to be a heavy jump than usual in 2024 – especially in thebest phonemarket .
The most impressive instance is undoubtedly theiPhone 16 Pro Max , with bezels just 1.41 mm thick giving it a near all - concealment look that just count way more clean and agiotage than those that came before it – but Apple is n’t alone in that advancement .
The Oppo Find X8 , despite not being sold in the UK specifically , offers 1.45mm - thickset bezel on all four sharpness , while the China - only Xiaomi 15 topper the thickness of the top - end iPhone ’s bezels with 1.38 millimeter bezels , and it ’s seemingly buy the farm to continue over the next twelve calendar month .
