2024 has been an exciting year for the smartphone industry, with massive changes and innovations reshaping the way we interact with our slabs of aluminium and glass.
From the introduction of on-device GenAI that brings wholly new features to improvements to the staples of the smartphone experience like improved battery tech and slimmer bezels, 2024 was a great year for smartphones – and here, we recap some of the most exciting innovations we’ve seen this year.
Generative AI on smartphones
There couldn’t be an article about exciting mobile innovations in 2024 without touching upon the biggest of them all; support for on-device generative AI.
It’s arguably the big thing for smartphones in 2024, with everyone from Apple to Samsung and Xiaomi getting in on the artificial intelligence fun in some form or another.
Depending on the smartphone you opt for, it can perform handy functions like rewriting emails to sound more formal, transcribing and summarising recordings, translating calls in real-time and way more.
The pinnacle of AI on smartphones arguably comes from Apple Intelligence, which with the release of iOS 18.2 in early December finally brings some of the biggest features to supported iPhones including integration with ChatGPT for a smarter Siri experience, the ability to generate your own custom emoji and even generate stylised portraits of yourself.
It’s a trend that shows no signs of slowing either, with companies like Samsung teasing more AI features coming to flagship smartphones in 2025, so we’re only really scratching the surface of what’s on offer from the various GenAI services.
Silicon carbon battery technology
This one might not sound that exciting, but it has a big knock-on effect on your smartphone experience; silicon carbon battery technology. It’s something we’ve seen a few times before 2024, but 2024 is arguably the year where it has seen mass adoption in smartphones, offering huge advantages over the lithium-ion alternative used up until now.
The biggest benefit of silicon carbon battery tech is the ability to create thinner, denser batteries compared to the lithium-based competition. This essentially allows smartphone manufacturers to cram larger batteries into the same size, or even thinner, smartphones for a serious boost to overall battery life.
It’s a feature of some of the best Android phones including the Honor Magic 6 Pro and Oppo Find X8 Pro, with the latter managing to squeeze a whopping 6000mAh battery within its chassis without being too thick or bulky.
There are downsides, namely that silicon carbon batteries can’t be charged quite as quickly as lithium batteries, but the difference isn’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 technology – for now, that is.
Better long-term software support
Apple has traditionally led the charge when it comes to impressive long-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 space – but that has slowly changed in 2024.
Admittedly, the trend started in late 2023 with the Google Pixel 8 collection and Google’s updated commitment to seven years of OS upgrades and security patches, but that was matched in 2024 by Samsung across its flagship and foldable lines.
While other Android OEMs haven’t quite gone to such lofty heights, there has been a massive uptick in improved long-term software commitments from the likes of Honor, Motorola and even Xiaomi in 2024, and this is only good news for consumers, keeping smartphones up to date and out of landfill for longer than ever before.
Now, we just need to work on getting those Android updates out in a timely fashion. Hey, maybe that’ll be the focus for 2025…
Massive improvements to foldable technology
While regular candybar smartphones have somewhat stagnated in the past few years, the same can’t be said for foldable tech, with every generation of foldable smartphones offering massive improvements to the underlying foldable technology.
That has been exemplified by pretty much every single foldable to enter the market this year; the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 offers a refined design while competing foldables like the Honor Magic V3 that’s both thinner and lighter than some regular smartphones, all while offering improved durability – particularly when it comes to the inner folding display.
That’s just as true with clamshell foldables as it is with book-style foldables too, with the likes of the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra offering a huge 4-inch cover screen that allows you to do way more without unfurling the phone, while elements like battery life and camera performance have also seen significant gains to close the gap between foldables and non-foldables.
The iPhone’s Camera Control button
This innovation is a bit like Marmite – you’ll either love it or hate it – but either way, it’s worth a mention in our roundup. It’s Apple’s new Camera Control button that made its debut on the iPhone 16 collection a few months ago.
Available across the entire iPhone 16 collection in a stark change to previous new features that start off life on the Pro models before migrating to the regular models, the Camera Control is essentially a touch-capacitive button that lives on the lower right of the iPhone.
This new button not only acts as a dedicated shutter button, allowing you to capture photos with a press rather than a tap of the screen, but its touch-sensitive nature also means that you can swipe to change shooting modes, zoom, exposure and more, all without fiddling around with the screen itself.
It’s not the perfect implementation – I found that the button’s placement was a little off, and the amount of force needed was a bit excessive – but it’s a handy addition if only to provide quick access to the Camera app.
And, with the likes 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 big impact on the overall experience on offer from flagships; seriously slim bezels.
We’ve seen a steady reduction in the thickness of the black bars surrounding smartphone displays for the past few years, but there seemed to be a bigger jump than usual in 2024 – especially in the best phone market.
The most impressive example is undoubtedly the iPhone 16 Pro Max, with bezels just 1.41mm thick giving it a near all-screen look that just looks way more clean and premium than those that came before it – but Apple isn’t alone in that advancement.
The Oppo Find X8, despite not being sold in the UK specifically, offers 1.45mm-thick bezels on all four edges, while the China-only Xiaomi 15 bests the thickness of the top-end iPhone’s bezels with 1.38mm bezels, and it’s seemingly going to continue over the next twelve months.
