OPINION: 2023 has been an awesome yr within the smartphone area with a flurry of improvements that push the market ahead and ship new and attention-grabbing options for shoppers – and 2024 is gearing as much as be a lot the identical.
However earlier than we delve head-first into a brand new yr of tech in 2024, let’s first take inventory and pay homage to the developments within the smartphone area in 2023, from spectacular digicam tech to really speedy quick charging and far more.
1-inch digicam sensors
Smartphone digicam tech has been steadily bettering over the previous few years, and we’re lastly nearing some extent the place most smartphones can take respectable pictures.
Nevertheless, meaning producers should go even additional to tempt shoppers in the direction of their top-end flagships – and that comes within the type of 1-inch digicam sensors. True, one or two telephones had the tech in late 2022, however it was solely in 2023 that we noticed it catch on in an enormous manner.
Although a 1-inch digicam sensor isn’t truly an inch huge (it’s a throwback to early digicam {hardware}), it’s considerably bigger than people who got here earlier than it. That signifies that 1-inch digicam telephones just like the Vivo X90 Professional and Xiaomi 13 Professional have an edge within the digicam division, notably in the case of low-light images.
The Vivo X90 Professional exemplifies this completely for me; utilizing its 1-inch sensor, it might take pictures at night time that seize extra mild than I can see with my very own eyes, even in close to pitch-black circumstances. It’s additionally in a position to seize surprisingly detailed pictures of stars. The truth that the telephone can do all this with out the necessity for a tripod or a gentle floor makes the tech all of the extra spectacular.
It isn’t a characteristic universally utilized by producers – Samsung went down the high-megapixel route for the 200MP digicam of its top-end S23 Extremely – however it’s actually extra available now than it was a yr in the past.
240W quick charging
Quick charging is one other characteristic of smartphones that has improved exponentially over the previous few years, with smartphones just like the 120W Xiaomi 13 Professional regaining a full cost in simply 24 minutes – however it pales compared to the 240W quick charging of the Realme GT Neo 5, revealed at MWC earlier this yr.
Although the smartphone by no means formally made it to Europe regardless of its MWC reveal, the tech powering it was nonetheless spectacular. The mix of 240W charging tech and a 4,600mAh battery meant the telephone may cost from flat to full in simply 9 and a half minutes, with a 50% cost taking simply 4 minutes.
That delivers a brand new degree of freedom in the case of charging, now not having to plug it in in a single day. As a substitute, you can theoretically plug it in whilst you make a cuppa and have sufficient cost to final all day. It stays alone in its high-wattage charging for now, however hopefully we’ll see others utilising the tech in 2024.
Higher foldable know-how
This one is an umbrella of tech moderately than one particular part, however foldable tech has taken nice strides in 2023. In comparison with early foldables that first hit the market in 2019, 2023 foldables have solved an awesome many points.
The essential hinge mechanism inside foldables, usually talking, is now stronger, extra strong and permits for a totally gapless fold. That’s a little bit of a double whammy, because it not solely makes for a cleaner look total however it stops mud and different detritus from increase on the inside show whereas it sits in a pocket or bag.
It additionally permits for a totally creaseless foldable expertise – in some instances, anyway. Whereas the likes of the Pixel Fold and, to a sure extent, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, nonetheless have a notable crease, it’s onerous to identify on competing foldables just like the OnePlus Open and Huawei Mate X3, and it’s not likely a difficulty on clamshell foldables just like the Motorola Razr 40 Extremely both.
There have additionally been significant upgrades to foldable digicam tech in 2023, with the OnePlus Open and its three cameras designed particularly for foldable tech delivering outcomes you’d count on from a daily flagship. That simply wouldn’t have been potential earlier than 2023.
Positive, there are nonetheless points with sturdiness and the all-important value, however it’s nice to see the foldable market start to correctly mature in 2023.
Spectacular AI photograph enhancing
Picture enhancing has been a staple of the smartphone expertise for years, with an ever-growing variety of built-in instruments to assist improve your snaps.
Nevertheless, Google has stood other than the competitors with its suite of AI-powered enhancing instruments unique to its Pixel assortment. This yr’s Pixel 8 assortment took that AI enhancing prowess to a wholly new degree, with options like Finest Take that robotically analyse faces in a collection of snaps and mean you can choose a ‘greatest take’ the place everyone seems to be posing.
It negates the problem of individuals blinking, trying away, pulling humorous faces or absolutely anything else in group pictures. That’s cool sufficient, however I used to be actually impressed with Magic Editor, a GenAI-powered photograph editor that allows you to drastically change photographs with spectacular outcomes.
It allowed me to take away a major quantity of scaffolding from a photograph I took through the assessment interval with out the apparent blurring and artefacting we’ve seen from picture elimination instruments till now.
In one other, I eliminated all parked vehicles from a street and adjusted the time of day from night to morning, and it took seconds.
It’s tech that we would see broaden to different smartphones in 2024 with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset and its assist for GenAI, permitting for ChatGPT-style duties all on-device. It’s fairly cool stuff.