Smartphone Design Plateaued in 2024

Sorry to be that guy. Smartphone innovation has stagnated in favor of adopting artificial intelligence. Samsung, Google, and Apple made AI the primary marketing focus of each flagship phone in 2024. It wasn’t about svelte hardware or the smartphone’s ability to serve as a solid daily computing device. It was about preparing users for the AI onslaught that will inevitably force them to update their phones to avoid being siloed.

This year was marred by gimmicky feature add-ons and the rationalization that you’ll need a new smartphone to be compatible with what’s to come if you want to be on the same page as everyone else. Design-wise, that produced a batch of phones that didn’t move the needle. The Galaxy S24 Ultra looks just like the Galaxy S23 Ultra but with more square edges. Apple’s iPhone 16 Pro doesn’t look all that different from the iPhone 15 Pro—you can’t even tell them apart from the backside. As for the Google Pixel 9 Pro, it has a revamped camera bar on the back. Still, now it just looks like the iPhone from the front, and everything else about the Pixel lineup prioritizes Gemini over anything else.

I’m down for the idea of AI correctly clocking in, whether I’m trying to open up an app to get work done or disappear into doom-scrolling. But what will be the cost of prioritizing AI-enhanced performance over everything else? Can smartphones stay thin if power consumption is the priority? Won’t they have to make concessions for bigger batteries and additional components as AI becomes the main power draw? These are all questions floating around as we exit the year into 2025.

The Meteoric Rise of AI

Samsung started 2024 right out of the gate with Galaxy AI. It already did some of what Google’s Gemini purported to do, except this time, it also had a unique new feature to debut alongside: Circle to Search, which became the best thing to happen to Android this year, even before Android 15 went into developer preview. Samsung and Google combined forces for the Galaxy S24 launch event to keep the messaging honed, stating that Android would become a vessel for all that was happening with AI behind the scenes.

Google followed, peppering the year with prolific Pixel Drops that enabled features like Circle to Search, Call Screen, and, most recently, Gemini extensions. When its developer conference rolled around in the spring, it was apparent that the Android platform’s trajectory focused mainly on AI. Android was no longer the main event; instead, it was focused on explaining how Gemini would improve the user experience. The most significant indicator of this for me was when I booted up the Gemini beta and set it as my phone’s default assistant. It broke some of my Google Assistant-enabled hardware, like the Roav Bolt, which I use to command my phone hands-free while driving. Thankfully, whatever Google has done in the background since then has fixed it, though I had to wait half the year for Gemini to roll out fully. It was a harrowing reminder of what happens when the company behind your smartphone platform suddenly takes a left turn toward something new.

©Charles Anthony Davis/DreamSmith LLC

Some of us had hoped that Apple would be the one to hold out on AI. Typically, Apple will take what Google does and “neg” it, then explain how it’s not possible because it would ruin the integrity of its product. But Cupertino surprised us with Apple Intelligence at WWDC, announcing that it was adding AI to its platforms and doing it in the most Apple way: completely rebranding what everyone else is doing and presenting it as a one-of-a-kind, bespoke new technology, even though it still requires some help from ChatGPT to tackle more sophisticated commands. At least the company remains characteristic about it. As a result of the name “Apple Intelligence,” the style guide requires that I spell it out every so often when referring to it, which helps me avoid the overuse of “AI.” It’s not artificial intelligence; it’s Apple’s intelligence.

The Cost of Image Generation

Now, it’s months after all the new smartphones have debuted for the latest generation. We are stuck with a wealth of premium devices from Samsung, Google, and Apple, all focused on selling us this new way of predictive computing. Each platform also has an image rendering app for producing images: Image Playground on iOS and Pixel Studio on Pixel devices. Thanks, I guess, but this is hardly what people thought about when they asked for help with photos. Instead, I’d hoped to have better lenses added to the back of these devices since they already cost upwards of a mid-tier digital camera. I was even willing to eschew thinness, knowing the hardware had to get thicker if I wanted a larger screen. Instead, I got a generative AI suite that makes my photos look like a Hallmark movie poster.

© Florence Ion / Gizmodo

I’m not saying the cameras didn’t improve on Samsung, Google, and Apple’s devices. That happens every year with every new smartphone; everything gets a little bit better. But this time, all three seem wholly dependent on AI performing the magic to make the picture. The Pixel’s entire camera system is based on the premise that AI can automatically do what you would have attempted in an editing suite. Apple employs algorithms to ensure that any time you press the iPhone 16’s new Camera Control button, the photo does not blur.

Here’s the Catch-22 of image generation on the phone in this AI-forward era. While AI and algorithms can help with battery management, like reducing background processes and automatically optimizing settings based on what’s happening on screen, generating images within the apps takes up those same resources, even when pulling from the cloud. A smartphone also needs a whopping amount of memory to perform these tasks. That’s why we now see phones bundled with 16GB of RAM as the standard, including the Pixel 9 Pro. All that extra hardware to power AI will eventually increase manufacturing costs. We’re already seeing higher price tags on iPhones and Android devices. It’s not just the economy. 

That’s not to say that next year’s phones will be bulbous and cumbersome. They will likely still arrive in the same tempered glass chassis they came in this year. They will all have big, bright displays with high refresh rates and saturated colors. They will still fit into men’s pockets. They may even be thinner than they were next year, at least according to rumors about the iPhone 17 and the Galaxy S25 Ultra. There’s even talk that Samsung’s foldables might get bigger to cater to a different crowd. What will be interesting to see is how each manufacturer manages the demands of balancing what the industry says is essential for competition and what consumers want for utility. It doesn’t make the AI worth it if it means piping-hot smartphones that peter out halfway through the day.