Technologies

Your Next Phone Will Likely Be Smarter, Faster and More Bendy

Annual phone upgrades often feel mundane, but in 2023, phone-makers found new ways to make mobile devices fresh and interesting.

Your phone could get a major upgrade in 2024 — and it could go beyond the routine camera and processor changes we’ve seen in mobile devices over the past decade.

New AI-fueled features could make phones much smarter, potentially turning them into capable personal assistants rather than pocket-sized portals to the internet. In addition, foldable phones are inching closer to their breakout moment thanks to clever design improvements, cementing their place in the smartphone market. Taken together, these changes could make your next phone feel like much more than just another rectangle made of glass and metal.

«That newness … is really key,» said Peter Jarich, head of mobile industry research firm GSMA Intelligence. «And I think folding form factors are part of that.»

While AI and foldable screens may be crucial to where smartphones are going, we’re also seeing notable leaps in areas that directly affect how you use your phone today. Charging speeds are faster, meaning you no longer have to carve out as much time to top off your phone. Tech companies are also making their products more sustainable in ways that could potentially make your phone last longer, lessening their impact on the environment and possibly benefiting your wallet.

These jolts of excitement are much needed for an industry that’s been in decline. In 2022, low demand combined with economic challenges resulted in a smartphone market that saw its lowest annual shipment total since 2013, according to the International Data Corporation. Data from insurance provider Assurant also suggests that phone owners are holding onto their devices for longer, although that could be a testament to how phones have improved over the last decade. Analysis from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners tells a similar story, indicating that more people upgraded from iPhones that were at least 3 years old in 2023 compared with 2019, when the majority of upgraders came from 2-year-old devices.

«People were really struggling to see the value,» said Aaron West, senior analyst for market research firm Omdia. «Why upgrade when my phone from two years ago is almost identical?»

Now that smartphones have become ubiquitous and are more utilitarian than novel, it takes more to impress audiences. That held true in 2023, when it became clear that smartphones were starting to regain their wow factor. More recent data from the IDC suggests smartphone shipments started picking up again as 2023 drew to a close, perhaps signaling that new phones are catching our interest again.

AI is coming for your phone in 2024

Artificial intelligence has played an important part in smartphones for years, particularly when it comes to features like facial recognition, photography and language translation. However, generative AI — the tech that powers ChatGPT and creates answers based on training data in response to prompts — brings new capabilities that go beyond unlocking your phone or blurring the background of a photo. Instead of working passively in situations like these, generative AI-powered features are meant to be used in more proactive ways.

«It’s not behind the scenes,» West said. «It’s really obvious that your phone is actually doing something and generating something new and original.»

Google showcased this with the October launch of its Pixel 8 lineup, which uses AI to power new photo editing tricks, like moving and resizing individual subjects and altering facial expressions. Google’s new phones can also generate fresh wallpaper based on specific themes from scratch, and the search giant is injecting Google Assistant with generative AI. Called Google Assistant with Bard, the upgraded virtual helper will be able to handle tasks such as summarizing important points from your email inbox and writing social media captions for your photos. It’ll be available for both Android devices and iPhones.

Qualcomm, which creates the chips that power phones from companies including Samsung and OnePlus, designed its new mobile processor around generative AI. The Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro, the latest flagship devices from the world’s third-largest phone manufacturer, according to IDC, are among the first devices to be powered by this new Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip. We’re expecting to see Qualcomm’s latest processor in more phones throughout the year.

A teaser video showing Qualcomm’s vision for generative AI on smartphones provides a few examples of how the tech could manifest in mobile devices, such as a virtual assistant that can extract key points from a phone call and create a bulleted summary.

The new chip will also make it possible to zoom out on an image taken on your phone and generate details to expand the frame, making it look like you took the photo using an ultrawide lens. Features like these are more than just photo-editing tools; they help create entirely new photos that weren’t possible at the time of capture.

«It changes how we think about the devices, the [operating system] and the apps, and how you actually define a user experience,» Cristiano Amon, CEO and president of Qualcomm, said on stage during the company’s Snapdragon Summit in October.

We could get an even closer look at how AI will change smartphones as early as this month on Jan. 17, when Samsung will announce its next major phone, presumably called the Galaxy S24. Samsung hasn’t said much about its future product lineup, but it did recently announce a new AI experience for phones called Galaxy AI and its own generative AI model. Galaxy AI will include a feature called AI Live Translate Call that can translate audio in real time, although the company hasn’t revealed many details yet.

Apple is expected to infuse its next major iPhone update, likely arriving in September, with new AI features too, according to Bloomberg. That could entail auto-generated playlists in Apple Music and more generative AI features in Messages and Siri.

If generative AI lives up to the hype, it could make phones more like smart personal assistants and less like tiny laptops with touchscreens, West said.

«It’s like actually being able to preempt your needs before you actually ask for them,» he said.

Foldable phones may be inching toward their breakout moment

It’s not just the brains of our phones that are evolving; it’s their shapes, too. Phones that can fold in half have been widely available since 2019, yet they still only account for a fraction of smartphone usage. But in the US, companies including Samsung, Google, Motorola and OnePlus made efforts to change that throughout 2023, resulting in a banner year for foldable phones.

While Samsung used to be the only major player in the foldable phone market, nearly every smartphone-maker now offers one. Google released its first foldable phone in June, while OnePlus introduced its inaugural foldable device in October, meaning those interested in foldables now have more than twice as many options as they did in 2022.

Beyond more choice, the quality of foldable phones improved in 2023, too — particularly when it came to flip phones. The Motorola Razr Plus and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 each gained a larger external cover screen, making them more useful when closed and further justifying their premium prices. As I wrote after reviewing both devices, these new flip phones prove the promise of having phones with two screens that can serve different purposes, which is more compelling than simply being able to fold your device in half.

The biggest barrier keeping foldable phones from wider adoption is their high prices, with the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Motorola Razr Plus each regularly priced at $1,000 in the US. If you want a foldable device that combines the experience of using a tablet and a phone, you’ll have to cough up an eye-watering $1,800 for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 or Google Pixel Fold.

But foldables took a step toward becoming more affordable in 2023, which could go a long way toward making them more accessible. Motorola launched a cheaper Razr this year that’s regularly priced at $700, putting it on par with nonfolding phones.

In 2024 and beyond, foldable phones are expected to grow in popularity, with shipments forecasted to surpass 100 million units by 2027, according to Counterpoint Research. That’s compared with roughly 20 million units expected to ship in 2023, as the IDC reports. The growth comes at a time when the overall smartphone market has been shrinking, with the IDC reporting a 0.1% decline in shipments in the third quarter of 2023.

«The industry had just been selling black glass slabs, with maybe a different back or a different color and different camera capabilities, but they were really very much similar devices,» Jarich said. «And for your average consumer, foldables give you a new reason to engage.»

Phones that can charge faster and last longer

Foldable screens and smarter AI assistants aren’t all that useful if your phone’s battery can’t make it through the day. While battery life largely remained the same in 2023 compared with previous years, some smartphone-makers shortened the time it takes to replenish your phone’s battery.

One such example comes from the new Xiaomi 14 phone, which has faster 90-watt charging compared with the previous version’s 67-watt charging.

Android cult favorite OnePlus typically stands out for its speedy charging, and 2023 was no exception. The OnePlus 11 supports 80-watt charging in the US and 100 watts in the UK, a significant upgrade from the OnePlus 10 Pro’s respective 65- and 80-watt charging speeds. The Lenovo ThinkPhone by Motorola also impressed us with its 68-watt fast charging that takes it from empty to 92% in 30 minutes, as my colleague Patrick Holland discovered when reviewing it.

Faster charging combined with more energy-efficient chips helped make up for any lack of progress in battery technology, Jarich said.

«And so from a battery perspective, it’s not like that’s no longer an issue,» he said. «But the same issues are being solved in different places.»

With new premium smartphones from companies such as Apple and Samsung costing upward of $1,000, brand-new mobile devices should be built to last. While there’s still a lot of progress to be made in this area, smartphones took small but important strides in 2023.

Apple and Samsung, for example, each expanded their self-repair programs. Apple broadened its program to include the iPhone 14 and 15 lineup while Samsung spread its program to countries including Brazil, Mexico and Korea. Samsung also added its latest foldable phones, the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Galaxy Z Fold 5, to the self-repair program in late 2023. It’s a positive sign even for those who aren’t tech savvy enough to fix their own phones.

«They recognize it’s probably a bit beyond them, but it does make it easier for third parties to do it,» Jarich said of self-repair programs and more repairable designs.

The iPhone 15 also has a new internal chassis structure that makes it more repairable.

Amsterdam-based sustainable tech company Fairphone launched a new phone in 2023 for the first time in two years, proving there are options out there for those who value repairability and sustainably sourced materials in a phone. With eight years of software updates and a five-year warranty, Fairphone is raising the bar for what it means to build a long-lasting phone.

Google also extended software support for its new Pixel phones and will now provide seven years of Android operating system and security updates. That’s a big jump from the three years of Android updates and five years of security updates it previously offered, and it could push other phone-makers to do the same.

We’ll have to wait and see whether technologies like generative AI and foldable screens will make a big impact on mobile devices. Before ChatGPT’s arrival in November 2022, the tech world was enamored with the metaverse, not generative AI. And before 2019, the idea of a foldable phone seemed like little more than a futuristic concept.

But if one thing is certain, it’s that phone-makers are thinking more broadly about how to push the smartphone experience forward beyond just improving the camera or increasing the screen size.

Editors’ note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see this post.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Friday, Nov. 28

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Nov. 28.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Happy Black Friday — and that’s a fitting theme for today’s Mini Crossword. Read on for the answers. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.

Mini across clues and answers

1A clue: Major tech purchases on Black Friday
Answer: TVS

4A clue: Hit the mall
Answer: SHOP

5A clue: When many arrive at stores on Black Friday
Answer: EARLY

6A clue: «Buy one, get one ___»
Answer: FREE

7A clue: Clichéd holiday gift for dad
Answer: TIE

Mini down clues and answers

1D clue: Number of days that the first Thanksgiving feast lasted
Answer: THREE

2D clue: Small, mouselike rodent
Answer: VOLE

3D clue: Intelligence bureau worker
Answer: SPY

4D clue: Traditional garment worn at an Indian wedding
Answer: SARI

5D clue: Movement of money between accounts, for short
Answer: EFT

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Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for Nov. 28, #431

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle for Nov. 28, No. 431.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections: Sports Edition is a pretty tough one. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Shoes.

Green group hint: Think Olympics.

Blue group hint: Kick the ball.

Purple group hint: Family affair.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Basketball sneaker brands.

Green group: First words of gymnastics apparatus.

Blue group: Women’s soccer stars.

Purple group: Basketball father/son combos.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is basketball sneaker brands. The four answers are Adidas, Jordan, Nike and Under Armour.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is first words of gymnastics apparatus. The four answers are balance, parallel, pommel and uneven.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is women’s soccer stars. The four answers are Bonmatí, Girma, Marta and Rodman.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is basketball father/son combos. The four answers are Barry, James, Pippen and Sabonis.

Technologies

I Love Using My Phone to Shoot Stunning Holiday Videos. Here’s How You Can, Too

These are my best tips for creating magical movies this festive season that you’ll cherish for years to come.

The iPhone 17 Pro is a superb video camera thanks to its glorious image quality, while its ease of use means it’s dead simple to quickly start shooting away. Then there’s the always fun 4K slow motion mode. Advances in mobile phone cameras mean It’s never been easier to shoot gorgeous footage of your family or your friends and the holidays are the perfect time to get creative with your videos. Don’t have an iPhone? Not to worry — other phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, Pixel 10 Pro or older iPhones and Android phones are also capable of capturing professional-looking video with very little effort on your part. But if you want to add some Hollywood flair to your videos, there’s a lot you can do to take things to the next level.

Read more: Best Camera Phones to Buy Right Now

It takes more than just a good camera to create videos you’ll want to watch again and again. You also need to know how to use that camera properly, how to capture the right moments and what makes for a good-looking shot. A creative eye and some planning will help too, taking you from a simple home video into something more inspiring that you’ll want to share with your family and watch again in years to come.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Here are my top tips that you should keep in mind when making your own family movies, whether you’re gathering for a holiday feast, journeying off to exotic lands on vacation or simply having some backyard drinks with friends.

1. Consider what you want your video to be

Before you start, you should give a bit of thought to what you want your video to include. While it could just be a full film of everything that happens over the holidays, or your child’s upcoming birthday, consider making it a bit more specific. Perhaps a video all about the games you play together, or them opening their presents.

Having a more focused story to tell — even a basic one — will help you consider what shots you’ll need to get, and it’ll help you shoot and edit only what you need, rather than having endless hours of footage to sift through. A Christmas day movie can be more straightforward as you’ll likely want to simply tell the story from the morning through to the drinking and games at the end of the day. Even so, try and consider how you can be selective and tell an interesting story rather than just filming every minute of the day you have together.

For my own festive-themed video (embedded above), I decided to show how I make my own hot mulled cider. By keeping it to a specific topic I was able to determine exactly the shots I needed and in what order, and even sketched out a storyboard of shots ahead of time. You don’t have to go that far, but having a rough idea in mind will help a great deal.

2. Set up your phone properly

Almost all recent smartphones can take great video, but it’s worth checking out the settings to make sure you’re ready to go. Your resolution settings are up to you, but full HD (1080p) is probably a good starting point, as it’ll look good but won’t fill up your phone’s storage too quickly. You can ramp it up to 4K if your phone allows it, or even drop it to 720p if you’re on an older device that won’t handle editing as well.

Read more: Best Camera Accessories for Your Phone

If you have an iPhone 14 Pro or later and plan on doing a lot of post-production on your footage in software like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, you can consider shooting in Apple’s ProRes format. This gives you the best image quality, but the file sizes are immense, so if you want to keep things simple then it’s better to shoot in the standard video mode.

If you have the latest iPhone 17 Pro or previous iPhone 16 Pro you could take things further and shoot in Log. Log is a color profile that looks very low-contrast out of camera, but gives much more flexibility for adjusting the contrast, colors and overall look of the footage in post. Applying these edits is a process called color grading and it’s often what separates professional, Hollywood movies from everyday home videos. If you want to create a truly cinematic, professional look to your video, then shoot in Log and color grade your footage in DaVinci Resolve on your desktop or iPad.

It’s worth keeping an eye on your storage though, especially if you’re away from home for a while; you don’t want to fill up your space on the first two days of your trip only to have no room to capture the rest of the vacation. Those of you shooting ProRes Log on your iPhone 15, 16 or 17 Pro can now attach an SSD using USB-C for saving those huge files directly to external storage.

3. Keep your video clips short and sweet

While it’s easy to stand and film a five-minute clip of someone peeling potatoes for dinner, the reality is that when you watch that back, you’ll realize it’s way too long to remain interesting. Instead, consider keeping each clip to around 15-20 seconds in length. You might be surprised at how long 15 seconds of video actually seems like when you watch it back, and having lots of shorter clips cut together will give the video a more engaging, more professional feel.

If you’re walking up through a beautiful mountain trail, consider shooting 20 seconds of footage at 5- or 10-minute intervals — or only at particularly scenic viewpoints — rather than just filming the whole way up. But make sure you’re ready to capture interesting or funny moments as they happen as it’s these personal moments that you’ll enjoy looking back on down the line.

4. Stabilize your phone

There’s nothing that can ruin a video quite as easily as shaky hand-held footage. If your phone has a stabilized video mode, make sure it’s turned on. If not, consider using a small tripod to keep your phone steady. This of course also allows you, the filmmaker, to be involved in the action as well, which is great if you’re the one doing the cooking, or handing out presents.

You could even consider carrying a small mobile gimbal like the DJI OM 5. It allows you to get rock-steady footage even as you’re walking along, while the built-in selfie stick lets you film yourself more easily or capture more interesting angles for your footage than if you were just hand-holding your phone. If you’re interested in taking your mobile movie-making a bit more seriously then check out some of the best accessories you can pair with your phone to improve your footage.

5. Get creative with angles

A great way to improve the cinematic qualities in your film is to experiment with different angles. Say you’re capturing the moment your child takes a present from under the tree at Christmas — don’t just film them from your standing position nearby, but instead consider how you can capture that moment in a more exciting way. Perhaps even put the phone inside the tree, among the presents, so you see your child reaching toward the camera to retrieve their gift.

There’s no end to the ways you can play with your angles, so have a think about how you can shake things up. You can always try to reshoot certain things from multiple angles (or set up a spare phone or camera for another angle) and then cut them together in your video editor afterwards. In my video, for example, I wanted to show the cinnamon and ginger being thrown into the pot, so I used two angles: one from a first-person perspective looking into the pot, and another where I’d positioned my phone behind the pot to show me throwing the ingredients in. It’s little elements like this that can make a big difference overall.

6. Improve the audio and lighting

If your video will include people talking to the camera — perhaps your friends telling the camera where you are in the world or explaining how badly they’ll need a beer after the long hike — you’ll want to make sure your phone can capture that audio clearly. For the best results, consider buying a small external microphone like the Rode VideoMicro, which plugs into your phone’s power port, via an adapter, and will dramatically improve the sound quality.

Read more: Best Accessories for Better Video

If you don’t want to invest in extra gear there’s still a lot you can do to help. Turning off or at least lowering background music or closing the doors to drown out kitchen appliances will make a huge difference in how clear those voices can be captured. Outdoors, your biggest enemy for good audio will be the wind. There’s not always much you can do about it but at least trying to turn your back to the wind and providing a buffer between it and your phone will go some way to minimizing the problem.

Lighting is crucial too, and if you’re filming indoors in dimly lit spaces, then adding in your own light well help keep your footage looking good. I’ve outlined various LED light sources in my guide to video accessories, but one of my favorites for video production is the Zhiyun Fiveray FR100C light stick, which is easily hand-held and can produce any color you want, making it easy to get creative.

7. Experiment with slow motion and time lapses

Most recent phones have modes for taking slow motion video and for time lapses and both can be great tools for your video. Of course, it needs to make sense to use them — slow motion to slow down fast-paced action, and time lapse to speed up a long sequence.

In my mulled cider video, I used slow motion when lighting the stove to give a cinematic quality to the flames erupting, and I also slowed down the footage of me throwing ginger into the pot to get a great slow-mo effect on the cider splashing up. As it’s a short sequence it didn’t make a lot of sense to do a time lapse, but if you want to capture the whole process of making dinner, for example, a time lapse from high up in your kitchen, videoing you moving around over maybe a couple of hours would be a neat addition to a holiday film.

8. Edit your video

Once you have your video clips it’s time to piece them together. This can be the most challenging part, especially for those of you who are totally new to video production. Thankfully, there are easy ways of doing things.

Some phones, like the iPhones, as well as recent Samsung Galaxy phones, have built-in auto video makers that allow you to select some clips and automatically cut them together into a film, complete with background music and transitions between clips. They’re not always the most elegant of productions, but they’re worth keeping in mind if you’re a total beginner and just want a basic video put together to send to your family or friends.

Alternatively, look towards apps like BlackMagic’s DaVinci Resolve, which is free on the iPad (as well as on Mac or PC), with only some advanced features requiring a paid upgrade. It’s an incredibly well-rounded video editor that’s used by creative pros around the world and is renowned for its great tools for editing colors. For a more basic approach, look towards Quik by GoPro. It’s free and also lets you drop multiple video clips into a project for the app to automatically turn into a finished film. iPhone users will also be able to use Apple’s iMovie for free, which is an extremely easy-to-use video editor, with a variety of presets and styles available. Adobe Premiere Rush has a wide variety of editing tools and is built to be mobile friendly. It’s a great app, but it does cost $10 (£9, AU$15) a month, so it’s only worth considering if you think you’ll want to do more video production.