Grade: B
Android Central Labs is a weekly column devoted to deep dives, experiments, and a focused look into the tech you use. It covers phones, tablets, and everything in between.
Talk about a fantastic year for the North American smartphone market! While there have certainly been difficulties to endure — tariffs, rising RAM prices, and geopolitical tensions, to name a few — the innovation we've seen this year has led to better phones all around.
Of course, nothing good ever comes without something bad, from tariffs causing significant distribution and pricing problems to a record level of homogenization in smartphone design. What's all this spell for the year? Let's break it down.
The year our eyes were finally seen
Since I began writing about it in spring 2023, I've been fighting to get smartphone manufacturers to recognize the harm that flickering displays are causing customers. We've seen slow improvements as more people have become aware of this problem, but this year was the most successful year yet for genuine progress.
In August, Google launched a new accessibility feature that doubled the display's PWM rate. Apple followed a month later with a new accessibility feature that disabled PWM dimming at low brightness. While neither of these features solves the problem in its entirety, it marks a milestone for the flicker-sensitive community.
Most Chinese manufacturers continue to offer the best eye care solutions, but seeing Google and Apple begin work on this important topic is a massive deal.
People who are flicker-sensitive cannot use phones with flickering displays at all, and in a world where smartphones have become an indispensable tool, it's more important than ever for companies to employ eye-friendly settings.
Foldables got exciting again
Despite no follow-up to our favorite foldable of 2023 and 2024 (the OnePlus Open), the foldable market was better than ever, even if international markets still get the best choices. Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the foldable we've been wanting the company to make for years, even if it dropped S Pen support to get as thin as it is.
Then Samsung launched the TriFold in select international markets. While it's not officially available in North America right now, it will be soon.
Motorola and Google also finally gave Samsung some decent competition, launching the premium Motorola Razr Ultra and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. While Google's entry wasn't the best, it marked the first foldable to ship with MagSafe/Qi2 magnets built in and IP68 water- and dust-resistance.
Meanwhile, Motorola's Razr Ultra outclassed Samsung's Z Flip 7 in basically every way while teasing a potential new book-style foldable in the new year, ensuring the North American foldable market is starting to look very healthy.
In their own lane
At the beginning of 2025, the OnePlus 13 launched to glowing reviews, including our very first 5-star smartphone review. Two years ago, if you told me OnePlus would be the company to achieve this distinction, I would have been worried about your sanity. But the stars seemed to align perfectly on that release, as the OnePlus 15, which launched later in 2025, didn't make the same big impression.
Google's Pixel 10 launch wasn't quite as impressive as some had hoped, but its goal of making a phone for everyone gives it a unique leg up on the competition. Pixels have notably eaten into Samsung's market share, now accounting for 7% of phones sold. The Pixel 10 is also the first major Android phone series to feature MagSafe/Qi2 magnets inside.
This also marked the year of thin phones, or so Apple and Samsung thought. Both the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge launched with massive hype, and while Samsung beat Apple to the punch by several months, no one seems to have cared about the launches after the fact. Both Samsung and Apple have reportedly already canceled the follow-ups, but maybe something else will do better next time.
AI takes over
Every company adopted major AI platform features this year. Nothing launched a dedicated AI key on its phones, and plenty of other companies followed suit. OnePlus and Motorola pursued a similar approach, while companies like Samsung and Google repurposed the power button or used dedicated apps to achieve similar goals.
We also started seeing "AI hub apps," letting users pick their favorite AI assistant to complete system tasks. OnePlus launched Mind Space with Gemini integration, while Moto AI lets users choose between Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Perplexity for its AI tasks.
But Samsung and Google seem to be the only companies offering some kind of true offline AI functions. Some users may not care about this, but it's an important option for companies to offer in an era when cloud computing is ubiquitous and sensitive user information seems to leak from data centers constantly.
An improvement over 2024
The North American smartphone market remains heavily reliant on carriers and their influence over the brands sold in the country, but almost every other metric has shown improvement. We've got wider availability of models from companies, including important new additions to the U.S. market from companies like Nothing and Fairphone, strengthening competition in a year when fears over tariffs thought we'd see the opposite.
The situation in Canada is much better than in the U.S. overall, though. Canadians can buy all the best Chinese phones, which means they have full access to the very best Android phones. U.S. customers can technically buy them through third-party sellers on sites like eBay, but those phones are often more expensive and come with no warranty, making them a no-sale for most people.
If I had to grade the U.S. by itself, I'd give it a C- because of the absurdity of our carrier infrastructure and the government's arbitrary restrictions, but Canada's market brings North America's score up by a solid grade point overall.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
