Antoine Engels
My tech spotlight of 2024
Using Auracast know-how. It is a Bluetooth know-how that enables many alternative headphones, headsets and listening to aids to connect with a single audio stream, a bit like a radio 2.0. And the potential functions are fascinating. Silent events the place everybody listens to music or watches a film/collection collectively with out making any noise. An audio tour of a museum with out having to lug round an additional system. To not point out the impression on alternatives for the deaf and listening to impaired.
My tech disappointment of 2024
The depressing extension of Black Friday. Someday turned every week with Black Week and even a complete month with Black Month. I discovered that insufferable. Particularly because the tech media (and everybody else) nearly really feel compelled to play the sport and spam their audiences with “bargains”. As a journalist, I believe this makes you lose credibility.
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
Undoubtedly Tecno Pocket Go (hands-on). I used to be capable of take a look at the gadget at IFA 2024. It is a transportable console PC within the form of an Xbox controller—no built-in display screen, only a controller. However you may join it to any TV and even AR glasses to play anyplace on a giant display screen—bodily or nearly. That is THE product I am most wanting ahead to seeing launched.
Carsten Drees — Casi
My tech spotlight of 2024
My spotlight of the 12 months? Most likely the AI race, which has introduced us so many sensational instruments, AI-supported features and competing chatbots. I concern that this improvement will quickly fill the web with content material. However I attempt to see the constructive facet and the unimaginable potentialities.
My tech disappointment in 2024
The Rabbit R1 was presupposed to be a tool that heralded the tip of the smartphone period. A brand new stage of human-machine interplay was to be achieved, however it did not work out. Neither the AI nor the {hardware} itself lived as much as the hype and the damaging headlines piled up. For me, the loser of the 12 months.
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
For me, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Extremely (assessment) is the gadget of the 12 months. It is my private every day driver and combines every little thing I worth in a contemporary mobile phone: It seems horny, takes superb pictures, is highly effective and likewise has the very best Android overlay and AI combo presently accessible with Galaxy AI and One UI. The S24 Extremely is my fixed companion and my {hardware} gadget of the 12 months!
Dustin Porth
My tech spotlight of 2024
I can solely select Gamescom 2024 as this 12 months’s spotlight. Like yearly, it attracted 1000’s of holiday makers to Cologne and this 12 months it was as soon as once more an enormous nerd spectacle the place I felt completely at house. Along with quite a few new video games, absolutely the spotlight of the 12 months is the annual assembly of mates you often solely hear by way of your headset.
My tech disappointment of 2024
The 12 months 2024 held many surprises in retailer—each damaging and constructive. The most important flop, nonetheless, was the rollout of AI features in Europe. Many features of flagship units, such because the Apple iPhone 16 Professional (learn assessment) or the Google Pixel 9 Professional (learn assessment), may solely be used to a restricted extent for some time. They needed to undergo numerous cases earlier than we may even use them in Europe. Hopefully 2025 will pave a brand new means right here.
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
The system of the 12 months 2024 is for the Pixel 9 collection from Google. I have been a fan of the Google cult for years, and Gemini satisfied me to go straight for the compact Google Pixel 9 Professional. The AI features, the digital camera, and even the efficiency haven’t got to cover behind the competitors—though the costs have risen significantly this 12 months.
Jade Bryan
My tech spotlight of 2024
I consider that the Snapdragon X collection, together with the Snapdragon 8 Elite cellular processor, is among the standout highlights of 2024. The brand new Snapdragon X chips problem Intel’s dominance in client computer systems with its x86 processors. In the meantime, the Snapdragon 8 Elite for cell telephones has delivered vital leaps in efficiency to rival Apple’s highly effective customized chips.
My tech disappointment 2024
After appreciable delay, Apple’s Apple Intelligence did not reside as much as the hype with its new suite of AI options. The iPhone 16 was delivered with none AI instruments. Even worse, the primary wave of Apple Intelligence options solely included just a few additions, whereas the actually thrilling options proceed to be delayed.
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
The Meta Orion sensible AR glasses are nonetheless a prototype, however may very well be the very best gadget of this 12 months on account of its superior options similar to holographic micro-LED projectors and assist for an EMG wristband for management. As well as, they supply eye and hand monitoring. That is additionally a sign of how the favored Meta Ray-Ban sensible glasses may develop sooner or later.
Rubens Eishima
My tech spotlight 2024
Chip applied sciences! After a sluggish begin to the “3 nm” period with the Apple A17 Professional (which solely the iPhone 15 Professional duo is provided with), each Qualcomm in Hawaii and MediaTek introduced chips with the brand new know-how considerably much less glamorously in London in 2024. And that is not all: each firms took benefit of the improved areal density and higher vitality effectivity to make use of solely energy cores.
The consequence must be quicker and extra environment friendly chips within the flagships of 2025. Even in the event you’re not into flagship telephones, these chips switching to TSMC’s N3 course of ought to unlock capability within the earlier era N4 and N5 (4 and 5 nanometer) factories for higher mid-range chips. So all of us win.
My tech disappointment 2024
Qi2 wi-fi charging is my massive disappointment of 2024. After its introduction in 2023, there was just one Android telephone appropriate with the usual in 2024: the HMD Skyline (learn assessment). Certain, Qi2 makes smartphones pricier, and it takes time to develop, however I used to be actually satisfied that at the least just a few flagship fashions with this know-how would come onto the market in mid-2024…
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
Flagship motion cameras, anybody? After years of monopolizing the high-end motion digital camera market, 2024 noticed many fashions from Insta360 and DJI difficult the stagnant GoPros. The pioneers should reign supreme, and the low-end market remains to be dominated by generic throwaway crap, however each challengers are quickly constructing their {hardware}, software program and accent ecosystems to topple the market chief and its largely boring upgrades.
Stefan Möllenhoff
My tech spotlight of 2024
The rise of generative AI has despatched just about each trade right into a frenzy—particularly tech firms. Google, Amazon and Microsoft are shopping for nuclear energy vegetation for AI’s gigantic vitality necessities. On the similar time, the know-how is out there to (nearly) everybody, and so start-ups are arising whose merchandise usually really feel like magic. The advantages? Typically nonetheless as unclear as the place the entire AI journey goes within the first place. However there has hardly been a extra thrilling time in human historical past than now. And that, sadly, brings us to the following level.
My tech disappointment in 2024
Over the course of 2024, it turned broadly obvious how generative AI is altering the web. Psychedelic AI remixes of “America’s Obtained Expertise” scenes unfold virally and pandemically on brief video platforms. Whole subreddits are full of AI-generated texts—or had been they human in any case? And Character.ai, a service for creating AI-powered chatbots modeled on actual or fictional characters, has a whole era hooked and delivers a mind-boggling 20,000 messages per second. To place this into perspective: Google additionally “solely” has 100,000 search queries per second. The place will 2025 take us?
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
I had my gadget expertise of the 12 months with the Apple Imaginative and prescient Professional. Though I’ve already tried many VR/MR/XR glasses from Pico, Meta and the like, this was the primary time I had the sensation {that a} coherent system was actually being created. Even when the street to a mass product is definitely nonetheless a protracted one. However: Apple has the market energy to remedy the chicken-and-egg drawback of the brand new ecosystem across the glasses and VisionOS.
Thomas Kern
My tech spotlight of 2024
My spotlight of 2024 is the event of robotic vacuum cleaners. In my eyes, family helpers have developed extremely in only one 12 months. Whether or not it is extendable brushes and mops or the mixing of cleansing agent containers—the units are getting higher and higher. And at IFA, Dreame confirmed off a robotic that may climb stairs. Rather a lot is occurring within the trade, and we are able to get lazier and lazier.
My tech disappointment of 2024
After Google confirmed Gemini, as an iPhone consumer I used to be actually wanting ahead to Apple Intelligence. The truth that AI will not be accessible in Germany till April 2025 is the damaging level for me personally in 2024.
My gadget of the 12 months 2024
My gadget of the 12 months 2024 is the “Anker Prime 100 W” charger with a foldable design. By no means having to consider totally different plugs once more is known as a blessing for me. The truth that the charger can also be extremely compact is the cherry on the cake.
And now you!
What had been your tech spotlight and tech disappointment of the 12 months? And which gadget impressed you essentially the most in 2024? I look ahead to your opinions within the feedback!
