Ask any Zoomer what one of the best 12 months of all time was, and there’s probability they’ll say 2016. For my technology, 2016 was the period of Pokémon Go, Vine, nice new music, Snapchat filters, and the beginning of meme tradition as we all know it in the present day.
It’s now 2026 – 10 years since 2016 – so it’s no shock that nostalgia for the web’s favourite 12 months is surging. According to the BBC, searches for “2016” are exploding on numerous platforms, from TikTok to Spotify.
What I think a lot of people – Gen-Z or otherwise – miss when discussing the impact of 2016 is just how much of our fondest memories revolve around our phones. While the world wasn’t quite as reliant on smartphones 10 years ago as it is today, we’d certainly started to lean on the computers in our pockets for daily activities and entertainment.
Furthermore, a lot has changed in the world of smartphones in the last decade. So, let’s pop on our rose-tinted glasses and take a stroll down memory lane, for old time’s sake – here’s a recap of the biggest phone releases of 2016, plus a few TechSwitch favorites.
Apple: iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus, and iPhone SE
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Launched in September 2016, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus dwell in infamy as the primary iPhones to launch with no headphone jack. Equally infamous is Apple’s reasoning for ditching the helpful port – at that 12 months’s launch occasion, Tim Cook gave an notorious one-word clarification: “Courage”.
Despite the following storm of controversy and a few mockery from Samsung, Apple turned out to be forward of the curve. Today, headphone jacks are a rarity on fashionable flagship telephones and are most frequently reserved for the best gaming phones or different specialist handsets.
Headphone jacks apart, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus had been fairly respectable smartphones. Though not a big step up from the still-popular iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S households, the iPhone 7 bought the brand new A10 Fusion chipset, a 4.7-inch display (within the then-standard 16:9 side ratio), and a single 12MP rear digital camera. The iPhone 7 Plus was the primary iPhone to launch with a second digital camera, a 2x telephoto lens. Both got here with big bezels and a Touch ID-enabled residence button, and ran iOS 10 at launch.
As effectively as the brand new flagships, Apple launched the primary iPhone SE in March 2016, giving followers of the iPhone 5’s 4-inch kind issue the possibility to get their arms on the newest A9 chipset. This wasn’t as a lot of a ‘budget’ cellphone because the generations that adopted, because it was an homage to the outgoing design, a ultimate salute to really small handsets.
Samsung: Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, and Galaxy Note 7
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While Apple started to simplify the iPhone in 2016, Samsung kept thinking big – literally. At 5.7 inches, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was one of many greatest broadly accessible telephones on the time, with a spec sheet to match. Its 1440p show was razor sharp, and with 4GB of RAM, it supplied twice as a lot reminiscence as its Apple counterpart. And after all, this was the beginning of the built-in stylus, which we stil see in the present day within the Galaxy S25 Ultra.
The commonplace Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge each had 5.1-inch shows and some inner boosts over their predecessors. Samsung revived the Edge branding for the Galaxy S25 Edge final 12 months, however again in 2016, the time period meant one thing utterly totally different – moderately than being a slimmer model of the usual mannequin, the Galaxy S7 Edge had a wraparound show that lined the edges of the cellphone.
Curved shows have since gone out of vogue, nevertheless it’s price remembering that Samsung was the one to popularize them and actually thought exterior the field when it got here to benefiting from the additional area. Notifications and numerous indicators may flash up on the perimeters of the cellphone, making them straightforward to learn from, say, a bedside desk.
All three of 2016’s Samsung flagships ran Android 6 at launch, and all three had expandable storage through microSD. Take me again!
Google: Pixel and Pixel XL
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After a successful run of Nexus phones made in collaboration with various phone makers, 2016 saw Google step out by itself for the primary time. The Google Pixel and Google Pixel XL had been the primary telephones made by Google and solely Google, giving the Android working system a bit of flagship {hardware} to name residence.
The Google Pixel had a 5-inch display, a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, and a 12MP rear digital camera. The Google Pixel XL supplied an analogous expertise, simply with a 5.5-inch display and an even bigger battery. However, neither of the telephones had been notably weatherproof, with simply an IP53 ingress safety score – this was earlier than the times of IP68 being a given for flagship smartphones.
The actual promoting level of the cellphone was principally the identical as in the present day’s Google Pixel flagships – it ran a really light-weight, bloat-free model of Android 6 at launch, optimized for the {hardware} by Google itself. Though Google Pixels more and more lean on AI instruments to supply worth, it is nonetheless this software program simplicity that brings some customers to the platform within the current.
OnePlus 3
Once considered an underdog brand, OnePlus has shot up through the ranks of the smartphone world in recent years. Its latest flagship, the OnePlus 15, earned a uncommon 5 stars in our evaluate and now holds the title of the best Android phone, whereas additionally showing on our record of the best phones.
Rewind ten years, although, and OnePlus wasn’t almost as well-known as it’s now – however the firm was nonetheless placing out telephones that put the massive manufacturers within the crosshairs. In 2016, OnePlus launched the OnePlus 3, which we referred to as a “genuine flagship killer” in our 4.5-star evaluate.
It’s not stunning that the cellphone earned such excessive reward whenever you check out its spec sheet. The OnePlus 3 launched with a 5.5-inch show, a 16MP rear digital camera, an above-average 6GB of RAM, and a 3,000mAh battery with assist for 20W charging – very speedy for the time. It was additionally the primary all-metal OnePlus cellphone and got here with the model’s iconic ringer change, which was solely retired from its flagship telephones in 2025.
The OnePlus 3 is likely to be outdated now, nevertheless it’s cool to see that OnePlus has, the truth is, been pushing its flagship-fighting philosophy for fairly a while. It makes the model’s win with the OnePlus 15 really feel much more earned.
HTC 10 and LG G5
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Back in 2016, there were a couple of brands on the scene that seemed like they’d be heavy hitters for years to come, but have vanished in the years since.
For example, HTC launched the HTC 10 in 2016. This was the successor to the much-loved HTC One collection, and like its predecessors had a premium design, with a 5.2-inch show and 3,000mAh battery (each massive for the time); it scored 4.5 stars in our evaluate.
In the identical 12 months, we noticed the LG G5 handset, which launched alongside a crop of separately-sold modules, corresponding to a 360 digital camera and devoted DAC.
HTC’s concentrate on luxurious finally couldn’t safe its place within the race in opposition to Apple and Samsung, and the corporate now produces low-end smartphones, primarily for Asian markets. LG, then again, stored getting weirder and wilder, however the firm’s cellphone enterprise closed in 2020 attributable to poor gross sales.
Which phones were the TechSwitch team using in 2016?
I asked the TechSwitch team which phones they were using in 2016 – as the list shows, plenty of the crew were still rocking phones from 2015 or earlier.
- Rowan Davies, Editorial Executive: iPhone 6S
- Mark Wilson, Managing Editor, News (UK): iPhone 6S
- Matthew Bolton, Managing Editor, Entertainment: iPhone 6S
- Jacob Krol, Managing Editor, News (US): iPhone 6S / iPhone 7 Plus
- John-Anthony Disotto, Senior Writer AI: iPhone 7 Plus
- Josephine Watson, Managing Editor, Lifestyle: iPhone SE
- Timothy Coleman, Cameras Editor: iPhone SE
- Matt Evans, Senior Editor, Fitness Wellness & Wearables: iPhone SE
- Becky Scarrott, Audio Editor: iPhone 5S
- Jamie Richards, Staff Writer, Mobile Computing (hey, that’s me!): iPhone 5S
- Roland Moore-Colyer, Managing Editor, Mobile Computing: Samsung Galaxy S6
- Catherine Ellis, Homes Editor: Samsung Galaxy Note 2
- Matthew Hanson, Managing Editor, Core Tech: Google Pixel XL
- Dashiell Wood, Gaming Editor: Moto G4 Play
- David Nield, Freelance Contributor: Google Nexus 6
Was 2016 a great year for phones?
Even if you think 2016 was a great year overall, it was a mixed bag for phone launches.
The iPhone 7 was widely criticized for ditching the headphone jack and delivering less of an upgrade than the iPhone 6, but it was still a solid Apple handset. Samsung’s mainline Galaxy phones were also built around incremental upgrades. But we did get some excitement from the launch of the Google Pixel brand and weirder handsets from smaller brands.
What I personally remember about phones in 2016 was the ways we were encouraged to get outside and connect in a way that doesn’t seem so common now – whether that was stepping around the neighbourhood looking for Pokémon in Pokémon Go or getting a few friends together to film a Mannequin Challenge video (remember that?). In that way, it was a good year for phones, possibly because we weren’t using them quite so much.
But from a purely technological perspective, I think we’re still in a position to see better years for phones than 2016 – I think we’re currently getting close to peak phone design, which means the best year for phones could literally be around the corner.
2026 is set to be a very exciting year for mobile tech, with new developments expected in battery tech, phone materials, and mobile photography. Keep an eye on our mobile buying guides for the newest new fashions, and you should definitely tell us which cellphone you had been utilizing in 2016 within the feedback beneath.
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