The year 2018 was a busy year for OEMs and consumers as there was so much on offer at great prices. Flagship features arrived on budget phones and flagship phones got costlier.
The year 2018 has gone by, and it’s fair to say it was one of the most interesting years for smartphone lovers in India. While high-end phones became cheaper, premium handsets inched closer to Rs 1.5 lakh mark. Notch, among the key trends, was joined by the use of glass on the body. More phones ditched headphone jack, truly bezel-less phones became a reality, the in-display fingerprint is now a thing, and the power of AI still finds itself limited to the camera.
We saw phones with three and four cameras in a market where the best-rated camera phone still uses a single lens. Apple completely ditched the home button and phones across price range now have facial recognition. On the whole, we saw some more marketable features and design innovations on some phones in the flagship segment, but it was even better for India’s most populated under Rs 20K smartphone segment. We witnessed a great comeback from Asus with its Max Pro series, and new brands like Realme and Nokia gave tough competition to segment-leader Xiaomi. Notch
By the end, we got a taste of gaming smartphones like the Asus ROG Phone, which might leave a mark in history as it is the first true gaming phone to be launched in India.
While we were busy reviewing the crazy number of phones released in 2018, our friends at Phonecurry did some counting for us in their year-end data report. The report gives insights into the consumer and producer trends followed by the mobile phone industry in 2018.
