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We asked, you told us: This was the worst year in smartphone history
June 05, 2025
There have been quite a few good years in the smartphone industry, with2014being cited as arguably the best year. It’s easy to see why, with the Samsung Galaxy S5, LG G3, and HTCOne M8 all being released in the same year.
What about the worst years for the industry though? We could definitely think of a few disappointing or even bad years for smartphones. Was there any particular year that stood out above (or below) the rest?
Well, we recently turned to you folks to find outwhich year was the absolute worst, and there was definitely one winner.
What was the worst year for modern smartphones?
Almost a third of the 2,229 votes went to 2019 as being the worst year in smartphone history, making for the “winner” by a big margin. We totally understand if you think there’s some recency bias in here, but there are plenty of reasons to vote for 2019.
For one, this was the year whenHuaweiwas placed on the US government’s Entity List, resulting inthe loss of Google support. This meant that most subsequent phones and tablets didn’t have Google Mobile Services. This was also the year of the firstfoldables(at least from major brands Samsung and HUAWEI), but theGalaxy Fold‘s original launch was delayed due to last-minute defects, while the lack of foldable glass made durability an issue. It didn’t hurt that foldables across the board were expensive.
Read:These 6 budget phones are the best OnePlus Nord alternatives
2019 also saw Google and Samsung faltering in some ways with thePixel 4series and vanillaGalaxy Note 10respectively. The Pixel 4 series offered smaller batteries (at least in the standard model), no fingerprint scanners, and gimmickyMotion Sensetech. It also missed out on the increasingly popular ultra-wide camera. Meanwhile, Samsung’s vanilla Galaxy Note 10 lacked a big battery, a headphone port, and microSD expansion, but had a crazy $950 price tag.
2016 was in second place, owing to the Galaxy Note 7 disaster, brands starting to ditch the3.5mm port, and the dud that was the LG G5. It was a tie for third place between 2010 and 2015. The latter was my pick, and for many reasons. Qualcomm’sSnapdragon 810processor disappointed, LG phones started boot-looping, theGalaxy S6traded plenty of functionality for a new design, and HTCstarted its downward spiral.
Finally, the “other” pick accounted for just over 6% of the votes. Readers left comments pointing to years such as 2020 and 2017. For what it’s worth, we thought about including 2020 as a pick on its own but decided against it as the year isn’t over yet.
Here’s what you had to say
That about wraps up this article. Thank you once again for the votes and comments. And you can let us know what you thought of this result in the comments below!
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