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00:00All right, so a lot of smartphones came out in 2019, some of them were awesome, some of
00:06them were less so, but I wanted to do a video that focused on what I felt were the most
00:11important phones that came out this year.
00:14So not like the best features, not my personal favorites, but phones that I think were important
00:18and influential in the market space, both for this year as well as going forward.
00:23So the first phone I want to talk about is the Samsung Galaxy Fold.
00:26This was a phone that launched in the spring of 2019 and it was a device that drew a lot
00:31of attention to the folding screen technology.
00:33It was the world's first kind of brand name phone that had a screen that could be bent
00:38in half.
00:39And even people that weren't interested in phones at all were interested in the Galaxy
00:42Fold because it did something new.
00:43It did something that was so refreshing and different in the smartphone market.
00:48But the launch was rough.
00:49There were issues with the screen and there were issues with the hinge in terms of its
00:52durability and it felt like they launched this product a little bit too early, as if
00:56they rushed this product to market to try to beat competitors.
00:59And because of that rougher launch, it feels like it poisoned or tainted the idea of what
01:06folding phones were all about.
01:08Because for a lot of people, that initial impression was not great.
01:11But it turns out, months later, once they'd fixed it and once they tweaked it, this phone
01:16is very good for a first-gen foldable.
01:19And people are clearly interested in this product.
01:21People are interested in folding screens and it's largely in part to this phone.
01:26The second kind of important and influential phone I'd say this year was the Samsung Galaxy
01:32Note 10.
01:33This phone was the first Samsung flagship to get rid of the headphone jack.
01:37Now, Samsung released a lot of phones this year and they showcased their new hole-punched
01:41OLED screens, which were really cool in their own right, but the removal of the headphone
01:45jack on the Note 10 was, in my opinion, the most important and most influential thing
01:49that they did this year.
01:51By removing it from the Note, as well as the upcoming S11 next year, I really feel like
01:55it marked the end of the headphone jack.
01:57The only way to get jacks at this point is to go with brands that are less popular or
02:01with mid-tier phones.
02:02It's like, that's it.
02:04Headphone jack is done.
02:06Okay.
02:07Now, to me, the most important phone from this year was actually the Pixel 3a.
02:13This was a device that launched at $400 and they designed this phone to be different from
02:19every other smartphone at the $400 price point.
02:22Because these guys focused on having a good camera, like a really good camera, while still
02:26being a very affordable $400 phone.
02:28So all the other things, like the specs and the build materials and, like, all the stuff
02:32that really doesn't matter too much to the end user, they skimped on it, but they focused
02:37on having a really good camera and a really good price.
02:40And that feature of a great price with a great camera was something that no one else did
02:44before.
02:45And because of this, because of the existence of the Pixel 3a, they saw a big jump in their
02:50US sales figures, something that none of the Pixel devices had been able to do before.
02:54And so I think Google realized the importance of pricing when it came to the Pixel brand.
02:59And then they launched the Pixel 4, a device that I'm assuming isn't going to sell nearly
03:04as well as they had hoped or had anticipated.
03:07And I think the combination of these two phones, like a super expensive phone that just didn't
03:11move as well as they would hope, and then a cheap phone that just sold like gangbusters,
03:16I think Google learns from this.
03:17I think Google sees this and says, people really care about things that actually matter.
03:23And I think next year when we see the Pixel 4a and the Pixel 5, I think the pricing and
03:28kind of effects of the Pixel 3a are going to play into that quite nicely.
03:31And I think this phone also affected the pricing on this phone, the iPhone 11.
03:39They priced this phone at $699, which was $50 cheaper than what they launched the previous
03:44generation of this phone.
03:45It is so unlike Apple, so uncharacteristic of Apple to drop the price of anything, let
03:51alone one of their best selling products.
03:53So I think they did this because of market pressure, because of companies like Pixel
03:57making phones like the Pixel 3a, which were really, really well valued at $400.
04:03And then it affects stuff like that.
04:04So to me, Pixel 3a, one of like, one of the best phones that you could get for 400 bucks,
04:08but beyond that, just super influential and super important in our industry, because we
04:14are surrounded by so many super expensive smartphones.
04:17And to have an option like this, I think this plants a seed in our industry of like, this
04:23is the stuff people want.
04:25Cheap phones with one or two features that are really important that people actually
04:29care about.
04:30And this guy led the charge.
04:32Okay.
04:33These are the phones that I think are most important from 2019.
04:36What do you think?
04:37Do you agree?
04:38Do you disagree?
04:39Are there other phones that you think are kind of more influential than these ones?
04:42Let me know.
04:43Give this video a thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
04:45See you guys next time.