On the calendar on December 25, there is less than a week left until the New Year, it’s time to sum up the results of 2012. We decided to start with the top of the best mobile devices of the outgoing year.
Let’s decide right away: we offer a top of not the best, most beautiful or most powerful gadgets, we will talk about the main mobile devices of the outgoing year. You should not look for Motorola RAZZ MAZZ with its giant battery, a very technologically advanced Note II, an insanely beautiful HTC V and a dozen more amazing gadgets that delighted us in 2012. We have collected the five most resonant devices of the last 12 months. Those that have become trends themselves, those that other companies and the market as a whole will focus on next year.
1. Samsung Galaxy S III
Let’s start with the numbers. From May to November, Samsung shipped 30 million of these devices. This is very decent for such a period. Many of our Western colleagues believe that at the moment the third Galaxy is the fastest selling gadget of the Korean company. However, this is not the “trick”, or rather, not only in this.
This is the first device that made the iPhone a real competition. Last year, interest in Samsung flagships only grew. The second Galaxy was considered a stylish corporate device, it was compared to the iPhone, but the choice was given to the creation of Apple. This year, the Galaxy S is also being compared to an Apple smartphone, but the choice is not obvious.
A small BSN portal even conducted a survey among its readers on the topic: are there smartphones that can be a reason not to buy an iPhone. Only 30% answered that there are no such, 38% called Samsung Galaxy S III a possible reason
Actually, because of this paradigm shift, we put the Galaxy S III in the first place. This is the first smartphone that “spoke” with the iPhone on an equal footing, and it’s worth a lot. In a sense, it can even be called one of the main events of the year.
2. Nexus 7
One of the main surprises of the last 12 months is the release of a budget tablet from Google with Asus. The “tablet”, which the company’s engineers created in a wild hurry in just a few months, turned out to be a very decent device that still has no Android competitors on the world market.
Thanks to the Nexus 7, it was possible to forget about Honeycomb tablets, as well as incompatibility with most applications from the then Android Market, eternal lags and holes, which at that time were still taken for granted on tablets with a “green robot”.
The Nexus 7 has turned the idea of what an Android tablet is. It is convenient, comfortable to work with, does not slow down, everything works fine on it, there are games for it, there is software. In addition, it is inexpensive and beautiful. The version of the device for a meager 8 GB of flash memory cost only $199 in the summer.
When buying it, users do not have the feeling that they are making any sacrifices, as it was a year ago if someone started choosing an Android tablet. The device is no worse than the iPad, it’s just different. An alternative.
3. iPad 3
It wasn’t the iPad 3 that started the permissions race. In January 2012, there were already many mobile devices on the market, whose screens pleased with a much larger number of pixels than the second iPad. But the third generation of Apple tablets has taken this fight to a whole new level. 2048 by 1536 pixels, even after almost a year since the release of the iPad 3, is not yet a standard, but the aspiration of most manufacturers of “tablets”.
Another thing is that right now the struggle of smartphone permissions is unfolding before our eyes. One company after another announces that it is going to release a gadget with an astronomical pixel density. Actually, we have a feeling that in a year the resolution of 1280 by 800 pixels of a 4-inch gadget will become an anachronism.
Here, of course, it’s not only and not so much about the iPad 3. The capacity of Apple’s competitors has grown, which finally in the third year after the appearance of the iPhone 4 at a piece-rate price were able to “do as in Cupertino”. However, the line between HD and super HD was drawn by the “apple tablet” of the third generation.
It’s funny, but this is not the only merit of the gadget. The iPad 3 was Apple’s first retarding gadget. The A5X turned out to be far from the company’s best choice in terms of performance.
4. iPad mini
We’ve been thinking for a long time whether to include another Apple tablet in the top. This is a very strange device. It is successful, it is beautiful, thousands of users love it, millions are satisfied with it, but there is one thing: the iPad mini is not an innovation, it is following a trend. And so, starting from the latter, we placed the “tablet” in the top.
After five years of bringing original, revolutionary products to the market, Apple, in fact, changed the old principles, acting on the basis of market requirements, and not contrary to them. That’s what, in fact, is the iPad mini.
5. iPhone 5
The main disappointment of the year. Why this is so, we wrote immediately after the announcement on September 12.
The excitement around the new presentation was huge. The new Apple device was expected, and at the same time they were waiting for a small revolution. With the current frenzied pace of market development, any major event in hi-tech is no longer expected to evolve, personified by a race of characteristics and sizes, but to jump to something completely new.
But the miracle did not happen. Apple demonstrated the device, which is a logical continuation of the previous line of devices, not going far from the origins.
Moreover, a departure from the usual concept was optional. It was enough to introduce the so-called “killer feature”, something special, new, breakthrough, something that could be focused on in the presentation itself. Instead, they talked about new Wi-Fi, sapphire lenses in the camera, more microphones.
So the company stepped on the dangerous road trodden by Nokia and Motorola. Recall that the presentations of new products from both companies turned out to be devoid of surprises, breakthroughs (this is not very fair for the Finns, they showed wireless charging), and the devices presented at them were only the development of ideas embedded in the companies’ devices much earlier. And although such forward movement is acceptable for Apple (it does not stand over the abyss), it is alarming.
The number of glitches, roughness faced by the first buyers of the new smartphone also made them forget that the label was at one time synonymous with high quality.
Despite all this, the iPhone 5 is flying like hot cakes, it is the center of a small “apple universe”, a phenomenon, which means you can’t ignore it, you can’t forget about it, but, as you can see, there is no, conditionally, prize-winning place.