The Multicore Awards: Phone of the Year 2024

A deeply subjective top five

Welcome back to the Multicore Awards.

Apologies for the sparse updates of late; it was a chaotic end to the year. But what better way to get back on track than by wrapping up the 2024 that was? That’s right: it is once again time for the second annual Phone of the Year awards.

This isn’t anything like an objective ranking — it’s more just locking in a subjective top five that feels right based on how various devices impressed me in particular ways over the course of the year. I’ll start off this time by mentioning a few contenders that didn’t quite make the cut.

• Right now I’m in the process of reviewing the Find X8 Pro, Oppo’s latest flagship. I’ll have more on it very soon, but I’ll just say now that if hardware design were the sole criteria it would definitely have made it onto this list. Its main problem is that in other areas it doesn’t match up to another Oppo phone released much earlier in the year.

• The iPhone 16 Pro Max is fine, but this was a boring year for the iPhone. Camera Control was more or less a bust, the camera hardware didn’t change at all and remains uncompetitive, and the phone is overwhelmingly being sold on Apple Intelligence features that range from mid to actively bad. On the bright side, the bigger screen pushes the literal boundaries of what’s possible with bezels and the new take on Photographic Styles is a solid antidote to Apple’s dubious taste in image processing.

• I’m not really an advocate for small phones, but if I were then I would probably have included the Pixel 9. This year’s Pixel phones were great, and I thought the Pixel 9 stood out as the best-value device in the lineup — you lose very little compared to the 9 Pro and in some ways I preferred the design. The Xiaomi 14 is also worth a mention as another really solid phone in a fairly compact package. Alas, I had to find space in my top five for bigger phones from both companies.

• The Boox Palma is not a phone, but it is definitely in my top five favourite phone-shaped Android devices of 2024. It’s helped me read a lot more books this year simply by virtue of existing in a smartphone-style design, so it deserves a shoutout here.

Okay, let’s get onto the list.

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#5. Nothing Phone 2(a)

I was honestly shocked by how much I enjoyed using this phone throughout much of 2024. It only costs $349 but has had more thought put into its design than many phones that sell for two or three times as much.

Although it’s entirely made of plastic, Nothing has achieved an iconic style with the Phone 2(a) — the translucent back panel feels like it was ripped from a Designers Republic lookbook. The light-up “glyphs” are toned down from Nothing’s flagship phones, but there’s enough here to allow for neat visuals and useful customisation. The Phone 2(a) also has a great 120Hz OLED screen with perfectly symmetrical bezels, which is unheard of in this price range.

The software design is also a standout. Nothing OS is an opinionated take on Android that’s heavy on unique widgets, near-monochrome colour schemes, and trademark fonts. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s very well-executed; I also find it refreshing to see something so confident in its own skin when most much bigger competitors are happy to tread iOS-adjacent waters.

I would not personally use the Phone 2(a) as my sole daily driver — the camera is only okay, the gaming performance isn’t great, and there’s no wireless charging. But I really don’t think there’s a phone I’d rather use for the price. It might not offer the absolute best specs in its range, but it feels like a balanced, coherent product in its own right.

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