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Our favorite games of 2018
It didn't take long for us to declare 2017 a pretty great year for games, with a spectacular roster that included Super Mario Odyssey, Wolfenstein: The New Colossus and Assassin's Creed Origins. In our roundup last December we also listed what we were looking forward to in 2018 and, while very few of those titles made our final list this year, we can still confidently declare these past twelve months pretty awesome in the world of gaming. We got a new God of War title and possibly the best Smash Bros. installment yet, while a few indies like Into the Breach and Celeste knocked it out of the park as well. Rather than try to come up with a simple "best of" list, the editorial team here at Engadget proudly presents the games that made the biggest impact on us this year, whether they were technically impressive, emotionally engaging or just flat-out fun.
2018 is the year AI got its eyes
Computer scientists have spent more than two decades teaching, training and developing machines to see the world around them. Only recently have the artificial eyes begun to match (and occasionally exceed) their biological predecessors. 2018 has seen marked improvement in two areas of AI image processing: facial-recognition technology in both commerce and security, and image generation in -- of all fields -- art.
Tech isn’t coming to save us
It's easy to believe that something new is naturally better than what we've already got, with the exception of the second Darrin on Bewitched. It's the Silicon Valley mind-set, that you've gotta move fast, break things and pay no attention to what's come before. And it's a problem. It's taken me 30 years to go from very fat to just quite fat, and this idea of the beginner mind is something I can sympathize with. I've tried every visualization technique, self-help book and fad diet on the market to know none of them work. There's no oat drink, vibrating belt or meditation tour of Asia's genocide hotspots that can cure the tedium of dieting.
Smart displays came into their own in 2018
When Amazon first debuted the Echo Show last year, plenty of people, us included, mocked its unusual design. More than that, we wondered if adding a display to a smart speaker makes sense, or if it was just another one of Amazon's gimmicks. It turns out, however, that being able to see the result of your queries is actually quite helpful; it's easier to glance at your entire shopping list than it is to have Alexa read it line by line. Amazon later followed up with the Echo Spot bedside clock, which offers the same features in a smaller design.
2018 was the biggest shakeup in years for the camera world
If you're a photographer who fears change, 2018 might've shook you up. First Sony launched the A7 III, arguably the world's best full-frame camera, then Fujifilm released the X-T3, the top APS-C model you can buy right now. Right after that, Canon and Nikon launched all-new full-frame mirrorless systems with three new cameras, the EOS R, Z6 and Z7. To top it off, mirrorless video champ Panasonic announced it was diving into full-frame mirrorless as well with two new models, the S1 and S1R.
Headphone jack fans lost out to fullscreen smartphones in 2018
Throughout 2016 and 2017, it was hard to fathom why Apple, Motorola and other smartphone makers were so eager to drop headphone jacks. There weren't any huge leaps in battery life or other features to make it worth losing the most widely supported port ever made. When Google removed it from the Pixel 2 last year, I figured all was lost. Even OnePlus, perhaps the most geek-friendly brand out there, gave up on the headphone jack with the 6T this year. But now, it's at least clear why the entire industry is jumping on this bandwagon: everyone wants to make bezel-less all screen phones.
How Google software won 2018
Google is relatively new to the hardware game -- at least compared to rivals Apple and Samsung. Its latest devices have been a mix of hits and misses. The Home Hub and the Pixel phones are excellent, while the Pixelbook has become something of a cult favorite. But then you have disappointments like the Pixel Slate, Pixel C and the Clips camera, each quirky in its own way. The Pixel phones still only sport single rear cameras. And while the Slate certainly has one of the best screens in its class, that tablet has an otherwise generic design. Other than the Home Hub and Pixel phones, we've tended to score Google's devices somewhere in the 70s -- and that's true even today. Those ratings are middling at best, and terrible compared to the competition.
The year in strange tech stories
"Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral," said the historian Melvin Kranzberg. What technology often is, however, is weird. As we watch tech pervade society and alter our basic ways of living, let's also not forget the plethora of bizarre trends and profound incompetence it's spawned, too. Looking back at 2018, the editors decided to round up a few of our favorite examples from Engadget and beyond of a peculiar year in tech news. We're sure there's more to come.
Faraday Future had the worst year possible for an EV startup
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Faraday Future is almost out of cash. At the tail end of 2017, the much-hyped EV startup was sliding toward financial oblivion. But then a crucial round of funding from a then-mysterious benefactor gave the team a lifeline. Faraday planned to finish its first car, the FF 91, and start production before 2019. Like Tesla, the company wanted to usher in a new wave of electric, autonomous and "seamlessly connected" vehicles. But unlike its closest rival, Faraday hasn't spent the past year building and shipping transformative cars. Instead, it's been fighting the investor that decided to bail it out.
Huawei in 2018: Smartphone excellence and strained relations
Huawei has become one of the most recognizable consumer-tech brands in the world in a relatively short period of time. It's among several Chinese companies that reaped the rewards of an explosion in smartphone sales in its home nation, taking that momentum and branching out internationally. Still, Huawei's felt sort of like the New Balance of the smartphone world -- a tier-two brand that isn't quite as cool as Adidas (Samsung) or as desirable as Nike (Apple). But in 2018, something changed.
Bitcoin's terrible 2018 doesn't bode well for the future of crypto
If someone approaches you saying that they have a way to get rich, quick, without any effort, then they're scamming you. If you don't believe me, then ask yourself this: If someone gave you a winning lottery ticket, would you hand it over to someone on the street? People get itchy when it comes to paying their taxes, let alone handing out bagfuls of cash on the sidewalk.
Xbox is poised to dominate the next console generation
Well, this is certainly a surprise. Xbox has been the bumbling underdog of the eighth console generation, playing catch-up to Sony's PlayStation 4 and watching from a distance as the Nintendo Switch reignited the passion of video game fans worldwide. However, over the past five years, Microsoft has doggedly climbed its way out of a PR and reputation pit with items like the Xbox One X and the Adaptive Controller as well as its public support of cross-console play. Today, Microsoft is better positioned than any other video game company to take control of the coming hardware cycle, which is expected to kick off in 2020.
Consumer privacy made losers of us all this year
It was a rough year to be a customer of Marriott, Facebook, Reddit, Google+, Quora, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Orbitz, Ticketfly, Under Armour, OnePlus or any of the other numerous companies which were revealed this year to have cumulatively lost hundreds of millions of users' personal details.
2018 brought the electric car to everyone
It's easy to look at a luxury automaker like Jaguar and declare 2018 the year the automotive industry caught up with Tesla. But like the Model X and Model S, the I-Pace is out of reach for most folks. It's great that people with large bank accounts can get behind the wheel of a vehicle that runs on electrons instead of dead dinosaurs. What's better is that 2018 showed that the rest of us can do the same thing.
2018: The year Amazon became even harder to avoid
It's been ages since Amazon was just a place to buy books. But even now, it's still easy to think of the company as a big online store. Resist that urge. Amazon's size and scale mean it's almost preternaturally good at selling and delivering things, but the company's real job is to find ways to make itself indispensable. If you let it, Amazon will sell you groceries and entertain you. It will make clothes and appliances to fill your home with. It will give you a full-time, part-time or super-part-time job, depending on your circumstances. At this point, it seems perfectly feasible to live a life enveloped completely by Amazon. And while the idea of a single company having this many hooks into our lives can be (and for some, absolutely is) alarming, Amazon still found ways to broaden its reach in 2018.
Facebook’s terrible 2018
2017 wasn't great for Facebook. The company spent most of the year explaining how it exposed 126 million Americans to thousands of Russian-linked pages, which were part of the Kremlin's efforts to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election. As a result, Facebook's reputation took a major hit, and it put the social-media giant under the US government's microscope. Talks of tougher federal regulation suddenly grew in Congress, which doesn't bode well for Facebook. If the company thought 2017 was bad, well, the following year turned out to be a nightmare.
2018: The Winners and Losers
You'll see a lot of "best of" lists around this time of year. But "best" is a limited word. What if the ideas and people that dominated weren't, in fact, very good? Conversely, what happens when the products or concepts that showed the most promise didn't ultimately prevail? As Engadget looks back on the year that was, we prefer to think of the world using a different binary: winners and losers. In 2018 the headphone jack basically became extinct on smartphones even as many people were still using it. Huawei is making great phones, even though its devices are nearly impossible to obtain in the US. Cryptocurrency made headlines, but not always for the right reasons.
The worst gadgets of 2018
We've had the winners. Now that this dumpster fire of a year is finally coming to a close, it's time to look back on the disasters (real, political and humanitarian) we've survived and heave a sigh of relief. We made it, guys. But not everything came out unscathed at the end of 2018. We saw some real doozies of products this year -- from deeply disappointing chipsets and completely useless phones to a wearable baby monitor that caused eczema outbreaks. Then there are the gadgets that wouldn't have made this list if they hadn't been emblematic of their company's mindblowing inability to read the room. Sigh. Let's take a break from shaking our heads and walk through the garbage alley of 2018's biggest tech fails.
The best gadgets of 2018
It's difficult to think of 2018 as a year with anything worth celebrating. But despite all the bad news the year dealt us, there were successes -- if you know where to look. In all corners of tech, we saw wins big and small. There were advances in obvious categories like laptops, smartphones and the connected home, but we also looked outside the mainstream for some of the more surprising gems. Think mini synthesizers for music nerds, retro emulators for nostalgic gamers and e-readers for modern book snobs. Humanity also collectively triumphed, as our space exploration programs broke new frontiers this year and we began to confront the increasingly real question: Should we all just move to Mars? 2018 may have been a stinker of a year, but many of its developments laid the foundation for improvements next year. We're just two weeks away from what is hopefully a much better 12 months, and the Engadget team took some time to commemorate our favorite gadgets and trends in tech.
