2024 in Tech: AI dominates mobile, Vision Pro flops, and Xbox shares the love

OPINION: Another tech year is in the books and, while it was dominated by AI in some senses, there were also so big changes to the social media, streaming, gaming and wearable landscapes.

Traditionally, consumer technology has been about consumer demand. Bigger and better screens, longer battery life, faster performance, better graphics, more storage, better sound. At times 2024 didn’t feel that way. The advancement of generative AI in the mobile sector wasn’t driven by consumer demand, although it may have some consumer benefits in the long run.

AI permeated most of our favourite operating systems and apps in 2024, but there were areas where you could get away from it. The gaming, streaming, social media and wearable sectors had plenty of big happenings outside of the AI realm, while Apple’s biggest product launch in years struggled to find an audience to meet its lofty price tag.

Here are our highlights from the main tech sectors in 2024.

Mobile: Generative AI dominates

2024 was the year smartphones became AI devices, whether users liked it or not. With hardware advances becoming less prominent (screen, battery life, cameras, design), the biggest names are turning to artificial intelligence.

Samsung kicked things off with Galaxy AI on the Galaxy S24 range, introducing features like Google’s Circle to Search and real-time translation of phone calls, as well as a host of writing tools to turn notes into pro-sounding prose.

As the year progressed Google focused on bringing its Gemini assistant into every app, as well as launching a standalone Gemini app that introduced a remarkable conversational live chat function that appears like the next generation of Google Search manifest.

Apple also managed to, just about, get in on the act, with Apple Intelligence arriving before the end of the year, but there’s much more to come on that front.

OpenAI on the other hand is now testing Sora, which can create video from a text prompt. That’s not going to result in disaster for all humanity, is it?

Elon Musk’s continued perversion of X (fka Twitter) to suit his Lex Luthor-like thirst for global domination saw millions flee the social network.

I’m not sure Musk will be remotely bothered by this. The $44 billion he splashed on Twitter has helped him achieve his aims, even if it never makes another dime and continues to lose millions of dollars and users.

However, there was some late hope on the social media landscape with alienated Twitter users turning to the decentralised Bluesky platform, which kind of feels like the old Twitter in that you can shout into the ether without every thread descending into all-out war, and without an algorithm showing you things to deliberately fuel hatred and division.

There’s still a long way to go in terms of replicating things Twitter was good at – i.e. following breaking news, etc. However, there are finally some blue shoots from the social media hellscape.

Virtual reality: Vision Pro yet to make a mark

Apple debuted its Vision Pro headset in February 2024 and although the device was a technical marvel, it has failed to catch on with consumers. The $3,499 ‘spatial computing’ headset’s headline video is Immersive Video, which offers lifelike 8K recordings with a 180-degree field of view.

However, the content supply hasn’t been strong enough to justify the fee and Apple hasn’t done a great job of convincing users of other important use cases for work. So far, the potential remains unfulfilled.

At the other end of the price scale, the Meta Quest 3S arrived and continued Meta’s quest to make VR/AR accessible for a wide section of the tech-loving public as well high earners.

Wearables: Smart rings go mainstream

Samsung’s Galaxy Ring arrived in 2024 as tech users gravitated to wearables offering deeper health insights inside a minimalist package, without wearing another screen. The Oura Ring continues to lead the way on this front and the latest Oura Ring 4 brought useful new updates. It’s rumoured Apple could be next to embrace the form factor, although the company is typically late to the party when it has found a unique breakthrough.

Gaming: Xbox dumps exclusives, PS5 goes Pro

Having been trounced in the console hardware wars for a second generation running, Microsoft decided there was no sense in keeping its exclusive first-party properties exclusive any longer. Fears the company would keep Call of Duty all to itself after acquiring Activision were unfounded, because Microsoft wants to share everything now.

Games like Hi-Fi Rush and Sea of Thieves crossed the console divide in 2024, while the newly released Indiana Jones title will be available on PS5 in the spring.

It’s all part of Microsoft’s realisation that while PlayStation has won the hardware wars, Xbox Game Pass Ultimate can exist independently of Xbox hardware thanks to the Xbox app and cloud streaming.

Sony launched a PS5 Pro for enthusiasts who wanted less compromise between frame rate and resolution.

Nintendo, meanwhile, is keeping us all waiting for the Switch 2, which may arrive sooner rather than later in 2025.

Streaming: Netflix goes live, everything gets ads or more expensive

I say this all the time, but the more streaming changes, the more it gets like the linear TV it aims to replace. Netflix got into live boxing with the farcical Tyson vs Paul fight and offered live NFL games globally on Christmas Day. In a couple of weeks, it debuts WWE Raw every Monday.

Meanwhile, more streaming services embraced the ad-funded options to account for higher prices almost everywhere else. It happened too often for us to link to the story.

Not even Spotify Wrapped could rescue the audio streaming service from another wretched year where Daniel Ek got richer and most artists on the platform didn’t. And we’re still waiting for Spotify Hi-Fi while more podcasts and audiobooks flood our feeds.

Our own Thomas Deehan had finally had enough by the end of 2024.