Covering the world of tech is like living through multiple simultaneous hurricanes. There's always some new product getting leaked or launched, some company trying to grab attention with its latest promotions, or some new catastrophe that threatens the safety of the world as we know it. We at Gadgets 360 publish dozens of stories every day and it can be a challenge to keep up with it all. Every so often, such as at the end of the year, we get to step back a bit and take stock of the bigger picture. Several distinct themes and trends emerge, and we see how all these stories come together as individual pieces of a much larger narrative.
Here are our perspectives on the best and worst things to come out of the consumer technology space in 2018. Which is which? We'll leave that to you, the reader, to decide.
1. Apple is getting beaten at its own game
It was inevitable that hordes of Android[1] smartphone manufacturers would copy the iPhone X's notch[2], and sure enough, we saw our first example[3] early in the year at the Mobile World Congress[4] in Barcelona, with the unveiling of the Asus ZenFone 5Z[5] (Launch[6], Review[7]). In less than a year, every single manufacturer (with the sole exception of Samsung[8]) has jumped aboard, bringing the notch to every rung of the price ladder.
More importantly, these same companies have already moved on. Chinese manufacturers have no problem with rapid refreshes and obsoletion, and they have not been content to wait for the next trend to copy. Thick, wide notches like we saw on the OnePlus 6[9]...