Each year, we often get new features on phones. Some will sometimes be pretty unremarkable. Others, though, will often be transformative, marking a remarkable change in how you use your smartphone.
Throughout this year, we have gotten tons of new phones, each coming with a raft of new features.
In this article, we take a look at some of the best features on phones in 2023.
iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max Action Button
The Ring/Mute Slider on the iPhones has been a significant part of the phone’s brand for many years.
However, this year, Apple decided to try something different, replacing the slider with an all-action button on their Pro and Pro Max phones.
This new button defaults to silent and ring mode, but you can customize it to at least seven other modes: Focus (like DND), Flashlight, Voice Memo, Magnifier, Shortcut, Accessibility, and No Action.
This change has been welcomed by many Apple users and is proving to be a very useful feature.
Pixel 8 and 8 Pro 7-Year OS Update
Okay, this is not technically a feature, but it is still a new addition to the Pixel phones, which have previously not been there.
In their announcement of the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro phones in October 2023, Google said that they would give the new phones seven years of full software update. This is major leap from the previous policy of three years of major OS update and five years of patches.
S 23 Ultra S Pen
We had come to associate the S Pen with the Galaxy Note, but it seems Samsung might be getting rid of the Note Series with the introduction of the S Pen on the S 23 Ultra.
But the best thing isn’t the S Pen on a Galaxy S phone. Rather, it is in the myriad of things you can do with it.
With the S Pen, you can draft quick notes on your lock screen and pin them there, ensuring that you see them each time you look at your phone; you can use it for Air actions, meaning you use it on the phone without the pen touching the screen and much more.
Xiaomi 14 and 14 Pro new AI features
Xiaomi has been causing a stir in the phone world and for good reason, as they are a company not afraid of packing the latest tech into their devices.
This year, Xiaomi released their 14 and 14 Pro phones with the ability to run AI foundation models on-device. This model will summarize webpages for you and do videoconference transcriptions for you. Nothing mightily impressive, but you have to admit, they are useful.
Xiaomi plans to make these AI models more impressive in their future models, for example generating AI portraits that put you in different scenes across the world.
I would have included Pixel 8 Pro’s temperature sensor, but so far, no one has been able to find any useful use of it, so it isn’t useful, then it can’t be impressive.
That said, 2023 has been an excellent year for phones, and we hope to see more new and useful features on phones in 2024.