Did You Buy a New Phone This Year?

There aren’t many days left in 2023, so to reflect on parts of the year we wanted to get personal with you. We want to know, dear friend, if you bought a new phone this year. And after you answer that – assuming you said “yes” – we want to know which phone and why. Why? Because as a year comes to a close, it’s always going to be fun to talk tech shop, hopefully as we chill and prepare for 2024.

I’ll go first!

Even though we still review quite a few phones for this 14-year old site, when done with those, we send them back or move on to personal devices that we actually buy. Yep, we still buy phones quite often even if Internet Comment Bro will have you believe that we aren’t bought and paid for with never-ending free devices. For 2024, I bought two phones that took up the bulk of my time in the pocket: the Galaxy S23 (the small, regular one) and the Pixel 8 Pro.

Galaxy S23 for size and battery

For most of early 2023, the Galaxy S23 won me over. I called it the “Small Phone King” and then said later on that it was “My happy little phone,” because of its impressive battery life and incredible size. While I moved on throughout the year to other review devices and then the Pixel 8 Pro, I’m now sort of missing that little guy as I type this out. It might be time to revisit my favorite Samsung phone of the year.

Should you be in the market for a small phone, especially if you were saddened at the death of the Pixel 5, the regular Galaxy S23 is the phone to look at. Well, unless you want to wait a month or so to see what the Galaxy S24 has in store. Actually, yeah, do that – just continue to be patient and get the next-gen, unless the S23 falls to some ridiculously low, flash sale-level price.

Pixel 8 Pro is soooooooo good

The other phone I spent a good chunk of change on this year was Google’s biggest and most impressive phone to date. The Pixel 8 Pro is designed so well, with rounder corners and a flat display. It isn’t the fingerprint magnet like previous models, comes in a wonderful blue, and somehow manages to not be a handful all while being a handful.

I’m currently taking a short break from the Pixel 8 Pro to play with the smaller Pixel 8 for a bit, but I can tell you already that I miss it too. The Pixel 8 Pro is a big ass phone, yet it ticks so many boxes and then some. We know the camera is amazing, but so is the display, performance, software, battery life, and feature set. And with Google telling us that it’ll keep improving things with this AI thing, it always feels like something new might be around the corner. That’s a pretty cool feeling to have about a phone.

What about you? What’d you buy?

OK, so now it’s your turn. What’d you buy this year? Tell us why too.