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Welcome to the 3rd Annual Readers Choice Awards! We spend most of the year telling you how much we like or dislike certain things, but now it’s your turn. The polls opened for voting a few weeks ago. Our favorites have already been shared. Now It’s time to hear from you. Here are the 6 categories this year:
- Manufacturer of the Year
- Best Phone of 2016
- Best Smartwatch of 2016
- Best New App of 2016
- Best New Game of 2016
- Biggest Fail of 2016
The voting was very close in some categories and very lopsided in others. All of the votes have been tallied and the trophies have been polished. Here are your winners!
Manufacturer of the Year
For the first category, Google is your winner by a decent margin over Samsung. This is an interesting result. I assume most people voted for Google because of the Pixel, but Google didn’t actually make the Pixel. HTC was the manufacturer. However, Google did have their name on several other devices, including Google Home and Google WiFi. The “Made by Google” campaign worked.
Best Phone of 2016
To no surprise, you voted for the Pixel and Pixel XL as Best Phone of 2016. This result lines up with our own Editors Choice pick. It’s clear that people like the Pixel a lot. Not everyone is a fan of Google’s phones, especially the gear heads. It’s important to remember that the Pixel was made for the masses and the masses seem to like it.
Best Smartwatch of 2016
This category almost wasn’t included. There haven’t been many new smartwatches in 2016. Several of the options in this category were on the list last year. You chose the Samsung Gear S3 as the winner, which is easily the best Android-related smartwatch to launch this year. It runs Tizen, but it still works great with any Android device. Next year should have more Android Wear devices to choose from.
Best New App of 2016
Google released a couple of new apps this year, but neither one took home the prize. You selected Prisma as the Best New App of 2016. Prisma is a photo editing app that works on a much deeper level than photo apps like Instagram. It’s more about art and less about retouching. You can get some remarkable results with the included effects. It’s incredibly fun if you haven’t tried it yet.
Best New Game of 2016
No surprises in this category. Pokemon GO was easily the most popular game on the planet in 2016. I have never seen a game captivate the world so quickly and thoroughly. For the first month, you could walk outside and find numerous people playing the game. Popularity has died down a lot since then, but it’s still one of the most-played games in the world. Niantic has continued to add new features to keep people playing. What will 2017 bring to Pokemon GO?
Biggest Fail of 2016
This category ended up being the most lopsided of them all, but it’s still closer than I thought it would be. The obvious winner (or loser) of this award goes to the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 recall. Nothing like this has ever happened before. Similarly to Pokemon GO, everyone knew about this story. Even people who don’t normally care about technology. It was a massive failure and Samsung is still picking up the pieces. 2017 will be a very important year for them.
More Best of 2016 Lists
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