WIRED's Top Gadget Stories of 2016

In the super fast-paced world of gadgets and tech

12 months is basically an eternity.

Don't believe me?

Facebook Live didn't exist 12 months ago.

A year ago everybody thought Hoverboards

might still be the next big thing

and the only VR you could really get your hands on

was a crappy cardboard headset.

Clearly, 2016 was a big year.

Here are just a few of the big stories

from the last 12 months, the ones we'll still

be talking about next year and the year after.

Starting with the fact that this was the year

video became central to our social networking lives.

Snap's had a bigger year than anyone,

it released the fun Spectacles glasses

and firmly cemented itself as a way people communicate now

and it also pushed Facebook, Twitter, and others

to really get in on the video game themselves.

Stories are everywhere, live video is on everyone's minds

and Snap's riding it all to an IPO

and it's going to get more money and more legit.

While cameras were becoming even more important

to everything we do online,

headphone jacks kind of went out of style.

A few other phone makers did it first,

but when the iPhone 7 came out with no headphone jack,

that was really the first nail in the coffin.

Now there's a booming industry in wireless headphones

and we're all starting to ask,

What happens when there are fewer ports on every device

and then after that, maybe no ports at all?

Here's what I can tell you,

you're gonna have to buy a lot more dongles.

Okay Google, what am I thinking?

(Google Assistant) You're thinking,

If my Google Assistant guesses what I'm thinking,

I'm going to freak out.

Then there's Google Assistant, which was

just one of a slew of a new kind of tech,

tech we talk to that talks back.

2016 was the year everyone bought Amazon Echos

or some other device with Alexa inside.

Siri got better and got a lot of new competition.

These devices and the incredible artificial intelligence

inside, makes it possible for us to use the internet

without using our hands, that's gonna be

more powerful than we realize.

All of which is great, except for when it explodes,

and this year it seemed kind of like everything

was on fire all the time, both metaphorically and literally

The Samsung Note 7, for instance, was a great phone

until it's battery started exploding.

The GoPro Karma was a great drone,

except it's battery would just die mid-flight.

Boosted boards had battery problems,

people's vapes had battery problems.

Maybe 2017 will be the year we finally figure out

a better solution for batteries,

because 2016 was the year we pushed the one's we had

just a little bit too far.

Okay, so it was a big year.

Go get some sleep this holiday season

and then come back, buckle up that seatbelt

in your self-driving car and things are going

to get even crazier next year.