Author Archives: JC Torres

REDMAGIC Astra 2 Review: The Gaming Tablet That Finally Keeps Its Cool

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PROS:


  • Distinctive visible liquid cooling design

  • Gorgeous and responsive 9.06-inch 2.4K display

  • Impressive performance across the board

  • Dual USB-C ports for charging while playing

CONS:


  • Modest IP54 dust and water resistance

  • Very basic camera performance

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The REDMAGIC Astra 2 is the rare gaming tablet that makes its engineering the most interesting thing about it.

Gaming tablets have long chased desktop-class performance, but thermal throttling has always been the real ceiling. The more demanding the session, the more heat builds up, and the more the chip has to dial back to protect itself. Vapor chambers and cooling fans have helped, but none has fundamentally changed the equation. The gap between peak specs and what a device can actually sustain has remained difficult to close.

REDMAGIC’s answer is the Astra 2 Gaming Tablet, which brings liquid cooling to a consumer tablet for the very first time. It pairs that with a 9.06-inch OLED display running at 185Hz and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, all in a design that’s as visually interesting as it is capable. And rather than just a bullet item on a spec list, the Astra 2 makes that defining feature visible for everyone to see. But does it deliver on its promise, or is it just another design gimmick to woo gamers? We take it for a spin to find out.

Aesthetics

Most gaming tablets announce themselves loudly, with aggressive angles and bold branding that leave little to the imagination. The Astra 2 takes a different approach. Its body is flat matte aluminium in dark charcoal Eclipse or light silver Starfrost, with a subtly embossed REDMAGIC trident at the center of the rear panel. There’s no camera bump, no competing surface details, nothing vying for attention against the one element the design clearly prioritizes.

That element is the transparent cooling strip along the top edge of the rear. Beneath it, serpentine liquid cooling channels glow in blue RGB, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 badge and “COOLING SYSTEM” lettering etched into the surround. It reads like a nod to gaming PC culture, where lit, windowed hardware has long been a mark of serious intent. Here, that reference is earned.

The front face is equally considered. With 4.9mm bezels and a 90.1% screen-to-body ratio, the display fills almost all of the face, and the front camera is practically invisible at 1.9mm in diameter, the smallest on any tablet. A red Magic Key provides the only real color accent, small but deliberately placed. Between colorways, Starfrost makes the blue cooling strip more dramatic, while Eclipse keeps things precisely controlled.

The REDMAGIC Astra 2 offers a tasteful middle ground between loud gaming gear and professional tech gadget. It has a head-turning design that doesn’t distract constantly, letting that first impression last even when you’re no longer paying attention. It has that character of maturity that gamers of this generation are looking for in their gear, especially when they’re out and about.

Ergonomics

At 363g and 6.9mm thin, the REDMAGIC Astra 2 is genuinely comfortable to hold through extended sessions. The flat back sits flush on any surface without rocking, which matters more in practice than it sounds. The 9.06-inch size puts on-screen controls within natural thumb reach in landscape mode, and the rounded corners distribute the weight evenly enough that the tablet doesn’t become a burden during a long session.

The dual USB-C layout is the real game-changer here, pardon the pun. A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port on the short side and a USB 2.0 on the long edge means a charging cable is always accessible regardless of orientation without blocking your hands, allowing comfortable play while charging. The Magic Key is customizable beyond its default GameSpace launch, and both fingerprint and face unlock work in wet conditions, a practical benefit for a device regularly used during intense gaming sessions.

Performance

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 runs on a 3nm architecture with a peak clock speed of 4.6 GHz and notably lower power consumption than its predecessor. Alongside it sits REDMAGIC’s RedCore R4 co-processor, which dynamically allocates CPU, GPU, memory, cooling, and touch resources in real time based on what each game demands. You also get 12GB or 16GB of RAM, depending on your configuration, which is plenty not only for games but for some heavy-duty multitasking.

The AquaCore Cooling System 2.0 is what makes extended performance possible, with REDMAGIC being the first mass-produced tablet brand to pioneer liquid cooling. A piezoelectric micropump circulates fluorinated liquid through micron-laser-cut channels inside the device body. Liquid Metal 3.0 transfers chip heat rapidly to a large vapor chamber, which distributes it across the entire device. Together, these three components maintain stable performance during prolonged gaming sessions in a way conventional cooling simply can’t match.

What all these mean in practice is that you get higher FPS stability and faster responsiveness with lower power draw and less heat. Performance is stable and optimized, whether you’re gaming, enjoying a video binge, or, on rare occasions, being productive thanks to the plethora of apps available on Android 16. As with gaming PCs, good gaming hardware tends to result in good performance across the board, and the REDMAGIC Astra 2 proves it.

The 9.06-inch H5 OLED panel runs at 185Hz, currently the highest refresh rate on any OLED gaming tablet. Resolution sits at 2.4K, or 2400×1504, and peak brightness reaches 1,600 nits. These deliver a screen that is bright, vibrant, and a joy to look at, both for gaming and other visual content. The next-gen custom Synaptics touch controller delivers 300Hz average and up to 2,000Hz instantaneous touch sampling, making the screen feel immediately precise and responsive even with sweaty hands.

The battery is rated at 8,500mAh and supports fast 75W charging, though it eschews wireless charging for that feat. On regular tablets, that’s definitely enough to last for a day or two, but gamers know how fast you can burn through that in just a few hours of gaming, especially at max settings. Thankfully, the Astra 2’s dual USB-C design and safeguards not only allow but even encourage you to charge while playing, minimizing downtime as long as you’re near a wall socket.

While the REDMAGIC Astra 2 excels in most cases, it doesn’t have much to show when it comes to mobile photography. The single 13MP camera is, for the most part, decent, while the 9MP front camera is clearly intended for video calls and live streaming more than taking selfies. None of these is surprising, of course, as this is a tablet that’s laser-focused on delivering a super gaming experience first and foremost.

Sustainability

The Astra 2 is built to handle daily wear without fuss. The aviation-grade aluminium frame resists flexing, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protects the display against scratches and impacts, and an IP54 rating covers dust protection and water splashes from any direction. That’s the appropriate level for a device that lives on desks, in bags, and in hands, covering the real conditions a gaming tablet encounters day to day. That said, it’s not exactly what you would expect from a device at this price point.

The Astra 2 ships on REDMAGIC OS 11.5 running Android 16, starting on the current version of the OS rather than entering the market already a software generation behind. Unfortunately, the brand has not made any commitment to future software updates, which does raise some concerns about its longevity in that department.

Value

The 12GB/256GB Astra 2 starts at $749 in North America and €699 in Europe. At that price, it’s the only tablet available with both a 185Hz OLED display and liquid cooling. Comparable gaming tablets in this range use LCD panels at lower refresh rates with conventional cooling, making the REDMAGIC Astra 2 the clear leader in terms of specifications that define sustained gaming performance.

The 16GB/512GB tier goes up to $849, and the software platform adds real value to both configurations. Frame Rate Boost uses interpolation to smooth gameplay on titles that cap their native frame rate, intelligently inserting extra frames for more fluid motion, while the system upscales games to 2K resolution for a visually impressive experience. The Astra 2 is Wi-Fi only, which is standard for gaming tablets at this level and accurately reflects where serious mobile gaming actually takes place.

USB On-The-Go support means keyboards, mice, and external drives connect directly without needing a computer as a host. DisplayPort output supports external displays at up to 8K resolution at 60FPS, and the Gravity X desktop mode enables full keyboard-and-mouse PC-style play directly from the tablet. It may not have a Switch-like modular design, but the capabilities allow the Astra 2 to meet gamers where they are, be it while waiting in line, in the comfort of their bed, or on an extended session on their desk.

Verdict

What makes the REDMAGIC Astra 2 interesting as a design object isn’t any single specification but how well the decisions relate to each other. The dual USB-C ports, the 185Hz OLED, the flat profile, and the vapor chamber geometry all feel purposeful rather than assembled from a spec sheet. There’s a coherence here that suggests these components were conceived together, not independently justified and bolted on.

The cooling strip is worth one final note, particularly for design-minded readers. Most consumer electronics go to considerable effort to hide their internal complexity behind smooth, opaque surfaces. The REDMAGIC Astra 2 puts a window in the back panel and lets the working hardware be the visual centerpiece, a straightforward and honest position, and one that’s genuinely satisfying to see in a product at this level.

The post REDMAGIC Astra 2 Review: The Gaming Tablet That Finally Keeps Its Cool first appeared on Yanko Design.

nubia Just Built the World’s First Phone That Does Things on Its Own

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Smartphone makers have been adding AI features for a few years now, and at this point, the marketing language around them has become fairly predictable. A phone summarizes your messages, suggests reply text, cleans up your photos, and maybe transcribes a meeting. These are genuinely useful tools, but they’re still responding to individual requests. The phone doesn’t actually do anything on its own. Someone still has to ask.

The nubia NaviX Ultra is making a more ambitious claim. Unveiled at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, it’s being positioned as the world’s first AI agent smartphone, and the distinction matters. An AI agent doesn’t just respond to prompts; it operates across apps and services on behalf of the user, handling multi-step tasks without being asked to execute each one individually. Nubia is calling this system-level integration rather than a feature layer.

Designer: nubia

That distinction isn’t entirely hypothetical for nubia. The NaviX Ultra’s predecessor, the nubia M153 with Doubao AI assistant, debuted earlier this year in partnership with ByteDance and sold out its initial 30,000-unit batch on launch day in China. The NaviX Ultra is the commercial follow-up to that limited run, now carrying the Doubao assistant at a system level that nubia describes as enabling autonomous cross-platform operation. The phone also received the 2026 SAIL Award ahead of its unveiling.

The hardware specifics haven’t been fully confirmed yet. What nubia has revealed ahead of launch is the design: a metal-framed body with exceptionally narrow bezels, a triple rear camera arranged in a horizontal Pixel-style bar, and a dedicated AI button on the frame. The phone comes in four colorways: Blue Horizon, Black, Dreamscape, and White. Whether the internal hardware matches the ambition of the software positioning is still an open question until full specs are released.

What’s interesting about the NaviX Ultra’s framing isn’t just the technical claim. It’s what the AI agent model implies about how people actually use their phones. The friction of switching between apps, re-entering context, and manually chaining tasks together is real, and it’s something that feature-level AI has only partially addressed. A phone that can hold that context across apps and act on it changes the interaction model rather than just adding a new tool to an existing one.

Nubia’s Doubao partnership with ByteDance gives the NaviX Ultra’s AI ambitions a specific cultural and software context. Doubao is one of the most widely used AI assistants in China, which gives this particular agent integration a large user base to learn from. Whether the system-level AI agent lives up to the label is something that will only be testable after the full device is in hand, but nubia is at least asking a more interesting question than most of its competitors have been willing to pose publicly.

The post nubia Just Built the World’s First Phone That Does Things on Its Own first appeared on Yanko Design.

IKEA Finally Made Furniture You Can Carry Out When You Move Apartments

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Moving furniture in a city without a car involves a lot of improvisation. You carry what you can, leave what you can’t, and replace what got lost somewhere between the last three apartments. For a lot of renters in their twenties, heavy furniture isn’t something you accumulate. It’s something you abandon. IKEA designers sat with that problem after visiting a series of London homes of young renters and watching the improvised solutions people were actually living with.

The result is KOMPISHÄNG, a collection of 11 portable pieces launching in the US in August 2026, built from solid pine, powder-coated steel, and durable canvas. The brief was direct: design furniture that can be moved with your body alone, without needing a car. Everything in the collection takes that constraint seriously, and the problem-solving starts the moment you pick something up.

Designer: IKEA

The desk assembles with two pulls and two clicks, no tools required, and has a built-in handle underneath so it can be carried from one room to another without putting anything else down. The side table folds almost completely flat and can be carried over the arm like a handbag. The mattress and pouffe have adjustable shoulder straps and travel like a backpack, then unfold into a guest bed or collapse into an extra seat when no one’s visiting.

The two stackable stools, priced at $60 for a set, are probably the most quietly clever pieces in the collection. They nest into each other for storage, but their legs also interlock to form a tiered shelving unit, turning two stools into a small display surface for a plant, a lamp, or a stack of books. It’s the kind of dual-function logic that feels genuinely thought through rather than incidental.

The accessories follow the same thinking. The canvas wardrobe organizer converts to a carry bag with one zip, so clothes travel already sorted rather than packed from scratch. The jute plant pot has large handles and a built-in rolling cover that protects whatever’s inside during transit, removing the usual anxiety around moving a plant. The red metal bookend with handles is one of IKEA’s more self-aware pieces: a bookshelf that knows most rentals don’t have one.

The pieces are priced between $9.99 and $99.99, which keeps the stakes low enough that replacing a piece or passing it to the next tenant isn’t a loss. The creative team behind the collection put longevity on the brief, too: the textiles can be washed, the wood furniture can be sanded and repainted, and the stated hope is that pieces move from one person to the next rather than ending up discarded. For furniture designed around the reality of constant change, the expectation of a long life is a telling detail.

The post IKEA Finally Made Furniture You Can Carry Out When You Move Apartments first appeared on Yanko Design.

Infinix HOT 70 Series Review: Designed Like a Flagship, Not Priced Like One

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PROS:


  • Eye-catching designs that deliver a strong visual identity

  • Color-changing Thermo Orange opens DIY possibilities

  • Clous de Paris-inspired button makes AI more tactile and personal

  • Decent performance and strong value for its price

CONS:


  • No dedicated telephoto or ultra-wide cameras

  • Infinix HOT 70 (non-Pro) is limited to 4G networks only

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The Infinix HOT 70 is proof that expressive, design-forward smartphones don't have to cost a fortune.
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The affordable smartphone market has long operated on an unspoken rule: you get your camera, your processor, and a solid battery, but genuine design ambition is a luxury reserved for pricier tiers. Walk into any mid-range phone aisle, and you’re likely to face the same predictable cycle, gradient blues and purples on glass-and-plastic slabs that look almost indistinguishable from one another, functional but rarely intentional.

Infinix is trying to challenge that assumption with the HOT 70 series with its Industry-First 12-Colorway Dynamic Shine Design. It comes in two distinct flavors: the HOT 70 and the HOT 70 Pro 5G. Both arrived for this review, the HOT 70 in Quiet Violet and the HOT 70 Pro 5G in Thermo Orange and Mirage Green, and all announced themselves as something genuinely

Designer: Infinix

Click Here to Buy Now: HOT 70 | HOT 70 Pro 5G

Aesthetics

Infinix has long understood something that a lot of phone brands still haven’t fully caught on to: young users aren’t shopping for specs alone, they’re buying something that reflects who they are and what they’re about. The HOT 70 series is the brand’s clearest statement on that front, organized around a “Colorful, Versatile, Fun” philosophy that treats aesthetic identity and personal expression as core design priorities, not afterthoughts.

Both phones share a design language Infinix calls the Dynamic Shine Aesthetic Design, and the common thread across both models is a Baby-Smooth Finish, a surface with an advanced anti-fingerprint coating. That silky, finely soft in-hand texture genuinely holds up in practice. After time with both phones, fingerprints and grease smudges are noticeably less of a nuisance than on most others in this price category, which counts for a lot.

Infinix HOT 70

The HOT 70 arrives in six colorways: Thermo Orange, Night Pulse, Silver Dancer, Dive Blue, Green Texture, and the Quiet Violet reviewed here. Where most phones at this price simply pick a color and commit to it, the Quiet Violet does something more considered. The Lumina Flare Dynamic Flame Texture layers micro-textures beneath the surface, creating a shifting light-and-shadow effect that reads differently depending on where you are.

The Crystal Mood Island camera ring is where the craftsmanship gets more deliberate. It sits around the camera bump as a decorative ring that catches light and bends it into iridescent gloss, shifting tone with every viewing angle. On paper, that sounds like a marketing detail, but in practice, it adds genuine visual contrast between the ring and the rest of the panel behind it.

Then there’s the Active Halo, the light ring surrounding the camera area that pulses softly for calls, messages, charging status, and game launches. It’s tempting to dismiss this as a gimmick, but there’s a genuinely useful case for it: the phone is face down, silent, and the Halo quietly signals an incoming call without making you reach for it every few minutes.

Infinix HOT 70 Pro 5G

The HOT 70 Pro 5G is available in six colorways: Thermo Orange, Mirage Green, Silk Glow Purple, Night Pulse, Dive Blue, and the limited edition Depth Ring White. The Thermo Orange commands the most attention, and rightly so. Its Dual-way Thermo Sensing Skin technology physically shifts between a deeper orange below 0°C and a lighter tone above 65°C, and crucially, holds that state until the temperature resets it.

What the Thermo Orange also enables is DIY customization: cool the phone to its deep state, then press a heated stamp or trace with a hot glue pen at around 65°C to create patterns directly onto the back. The concept is genuinely novel for this price tier, and it’s quite fascinating to see the phone come out of the freezer with a different shade of orange. It also opens up possibilities for DIY designs with the stencils and the careful use of a glue gun to heat up only certain areas, creating eye-catching contrasts of light and dark areas you’d think the phone was designed with originally. Given that you are exposing the phone to extreme cold and hot temperatures, however, proper care should still be taken.

Mirage Green, exclusive to the Pro model, offers a more subtle yet equally stunning color-changing effect. Nearly-invisible luminous particles embedded in the leather-like finish on the back of the phone absorb light during the day. Once the sun sets, these dots glow like stars dots scattered against a dark green night sky. It’s a visual that is both premium and calming, perfectly reflecting its design.

The remaining hero finishes deserve more than a footnote. Silk Glow Purple builds its color from nano-scale structural layers rather than pigment, which means the purple actually shifts and travels across the surface as the angle changes. The Limited Edition Depth Ring White goes further, using a micro-lens array to create what reads as a floating 3D ring against an otherwise flat back panel.

The Active Matrix Cube is the Pro’s most distinctive rear-surface detail, a programmable light matrix that’s a flagship-level feature from Infinix’s premium product lineup. It handles status alerts, ambient lighting, mini-games, and custom pattern displays, and can even share those creations via NFC with a single tap. It turns the back of the phone into a secondary surface that communicates something, even when the screen is dark.

Ergonomics

At just 7.49mm thin and 195g light, the HOT 70’s pocket-favourite design offers effortless portability, slipping easily into pockets or small bags and ensuring smooth one-handed handling for commuting, travel, and everyday use. The HOT 70 Pro 5G is marginally heavier at 204g and slightly thicker at 7.85mm to 7.95mm, depending on the colorway, differences that don’t read as particularly significant in everyday handling.

The One-Tap AI Button on both phones is inspired by the Clous de Paris design, with a three-dimensional textured surface that delivers a refined, premium tactile feel. Its customizable shortcut logic enables One-Tap AI FlashMemo with a short press and activates Folax AI assistant with a long press, allowing intuitive control and more efficient smart interaction by streamlining everyday tasks. That physical anchor makes AI feel genuinely accessible rather than buried in software menus.

Both phones use punch-hole displays with narrow bezels, giving a clean, open canvas for everyday use. The HOT 70 and HOT 70 Pro 5G have very similar screen sizes at 6.78 and 6.76 inches, respectively, so the real ergonomic difference lies in the refresh rate. The HOT 70 Pro 5G’s 144Hz high refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate deliver ultra-smooth scrolling without ghosting while browsing and streaming, while the HOT 70’s 120Hz panel handles daily navigation comfortably. The smooth visuals help ease eye strain while also improving the overall user experience.

Performance

AI is quite the trend these days, and Infinix isn’t one to be left behind. The HOT 70 Series delivers a full AI experience upgrade featuring a physical One-Tap AI Button, with a dedicated AI Button that supports intelligent intent recognition, enabling one-tap capture of ideas, meetings, emails, and more, with auto archiving and smart schedule creation based on content type. Long-pressing the button activates Folax, Infinix’s custom AI assistant, which answers questions based on whatever is on screen, from displayed text to a live camera view, with access to five or more AI models simultaneously. Between FlashMemo’s capture-and-organize logic and Folax’s any-screen contextual awareness, the two together cover most of what people actually reach for their phones to do throughout the day.

Battery anxiety is real, especially among the younger generation, so Infinix naturally has a solution. Both models offer a 15% larger battery capacity than the previous generation, featuring a 6,000 mAh single-cell design or 5,600 mAh in certain regional markets, a capacity difference driven by local regulatory requirements rather than any hardware compromise. Fortunately, both capacities support 45W Lightning FastCharge, and in Super Fast Charging mode, which allowed us to hit 50% in half an hour and fully charge in an hour. Bypass charging routes power directly from the charger to keep the phone cooler during heavy use, a critical safety measure when gaming or using the phone for navigation.

The Infinix HOT 70 runs on a MediaTek Helio G100 Ultimate, a powerful octa-core gaming processor designed for smoother daily use, multitasking, and light gaming. That said, the Helio G100 is a 4G-only chip, which means the HOT 70 can’t connect to 5G networks. The HOT 70 Pro 5G steps up to a MediaTek Dimensity 7100 with 5G support, a meaningfully stronger chip that pushes AnTuTu V11 scores above 780,000, delivers up to 90 fps in supported games, and brings faster 5G connectivity tuned for crowded real-world conditions.

The display difference between the two models is more significant than the size gap suggests. The HOT 70’s 6.78-inch 120Hz Eye-Care Display reaches 700 nits of HBM brightness for sunlight readability. The HOT 70 Pro 5G’s 6.76-inch FHD+ panel pushes that to 950 nits of HBM brightness, a genuine sunlight-legibility advantage, and the jump to Full HD+ resolution adds sharpness that becomes particularly noticeable when reading text or watching video.

Camera setups share a foundation but diverge meaningfully at the Pro tier. Both phones use a 50MP main sensor, with AI Live Photo on both automatically filtering out shaky frames from a burst. The HOT 70 Pro 5G’s imaging toolkit, however, rests on a 50MP Sony IMX882 with a large 1/1.95-inch sensor, f/1.8 aperture, and full-pixel autofocus, plus a 2x lossless zoom shortcut, giving it stronger low-light performance.

In both cases, both images and videos come out clear, detailed, and vibrant, punching above their price tier. Sadly, the lack of a dedicated telephoto or ultra-wide cameras will make you miss out on decent close-ups and breath-taking panoramas. It isn’t the series’s strongest suit, but it at least won’t let you down when you need to preserve important moments and scenes.

Sustainability

The HOT 70 carries an IP65 rating, featuring six-level full dustproofing and IP65 splash resistance, blocking dust, rain, and sweat effectively for safer daily commutes and outdoor use. It also boasts military-grade durability with an SGS-certified 5-star drop protection. The HOT 70 Pro 5G steps up to IP68, Infinix’s highest rating to date, rated for up to 2 meters of fresh water for 30 minutes, with screen and camera protected throughout, and further adds MIL-STD-810 military-grade certification for durability across more demanding conditions.

Both phones deliver long-term OS support, keeping the device smooth, secure, and reliable for years, with guaranteed three years of major XOS version upgrades (only for models with 6GB RAM or more) starting with factory-installed XOS 16, continuously updating to XOS 17, XOS 18, and XOS 19. Three OS upgrades aren’t quite on par with what some flagship brands now offer, but it’s a genuinely generous commitment for this price tier, where software longevity is rarely treated as a selling point at all. One caveat is that certain XOS features only apply if your configuration has 6GB of RAM or more.

Value

The Infinix HOT 70 starts at around $120, depending on configuration and market, and the package it delivers at that price is hard to dismiss. Tactile finishes, a physical AI shortcut, a generous battery, and a sunlight-readable display aren’t common at this tier. The Lumina Flare texture and Crystal Mood Island add visual differentiation that most competitors simply don’t bother attempting.

The Infinix HOT 70 Pro 5G starts at around $200, and the step up from the base HOT 70 is justified on multiple fronts. A faster 5G chip, a sharper and faster display, a more capable Sony camera sensor, full IP68 waterproofing alongside military certification, and the Active Matrix Cube add up to a meaningfully more capable and expressive package.

Neither phone asks for a premium price to deliver a premium-feeling design, and that’s genuinely rare. At comparable price points, the alternatives in this category tend to compete primarily on camera megapixels or battery size, without investing much thought into what the phone feels like to hold, look at, or interact with. The HOT 70 series treats those questions as worth answering, which puts it in a different conversation entirely.

Verdict

The HOT 70 makes a case for what affordable phone design can look like when treated as an actual discipline. The Lumina Flare texture, the Crystal Mood Island camera ring, the Active Halo, and the Baby-Smooth Finish come together in a device that rewards closer attention. It gets noticed on a table or out of a pocket, not because it’s loud, but because it clearly has a point of view. The HOT 70 Pro 5G takes that design ambition further into something genuinely experimental, with four optical behaviors across its colorways, a 5G chip with real gaming headroom, a Sony camera sensor that performs above expectations, and IP68 waterproofing for more demanding conditions.

Together, both phones say something interesting about where considered, expressive design is heading at the more accessible end of the smartphone market. At a price tier where “design” usually means picking between black, blue, or midnight black, the Infinix HOT 70 series is quietly raising the bar for what a phone at this price is allowed to look and feel like.

Click Here to Buy Now: HOT 70 | HOT 70 Pro 5G

The post Infinix HOT 70 Series Review: Designed Like a Flagship, Not Priced Like One first appeared on Yanko Design.

The $8 Steam Cartridge Every PC Gamer Has Always Wanted

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PC gaming has never had a proper physical media equivalent. Console players have always had something tangible to hold and shelve, a disc or cartridge that represents one specific game. On PC, games live in a library on a platform that’s only yours as long as the platform stays up. It’s convenient, but a lot of PC gamers quietly miss the ritual of picking something physical off a shelf.

A post on Reddit recently took a direct swing at that gap. A gamer picked up a handful of secondhand 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, each 128 GB and priced at around €7 ($8) a piece, and built a cartridge system for Steam. Each drive holds a single game alongside a script that auto-navigates Steam to that game’s page once the drive is plugged in. Auto-launching the game directly is also possible.

Designer: Jibril-sama (images courtesy of Tom’s Hardware)

What really sells the effect is the presentation. Rather than leaving the drives as bare hardware with labels stuck on, each SSD sits inside a colorful protective case with custom game art on the cover. The result looks genuinely like a cartridge collection, not a pile of storage drives. It’s the kind of detail that makes the idea land visually rather than just functioning as a clever technical trick.

The system runs on Linux. When an SSD is plugged into a SATA dock connected to the PC, a udev rule detects the mount event and triggers a systemd daemon, which finds the script on the drive and executes it. Valve’s Steam URL Protocol handles navigating to the game’s page or launching it. The hardware side requires nothing more unusual than a standard SATA dock.

There are genuine practical limits. Steam still needs to be installed, and the game needs to be in your library, so this isn’t a workaround for ownership or a way to share games. Updates are the bigger friction point, since multi-gigabyte patches push regularly even to older titles. The creator’s approach is to keep cartridges for games worth replaying occasionally rather than live-service titles that need constant updating.

The reaction ran heavily nostalgic, with comparisons to NES cartridges, Switch game cards, and the general ritual of pulling a game off a shelf. Some commenters want the system extended to GOG libraries. Others are already planning their own versions, with several suggesting 3D-printed cartridge shells to push the aesthetic even further.

What the project surfaces is how much the ritual of physical media matters, separate from convenience or ownership. These drives don’t give you anything you couldn’t already get by clicking a game in your Steam library. The Linux requirement narrows who can replicate it directly, but at €7 ($8) per drive, the cost to build a collection of ten or fifteen games is still less than a single new release.

The post The $8 Steam Cartridge Every PC Gamer Has Always Wanted first appeared on Yanko Design.

At $270, ASUS’s New Chromebook Has No Business Being This Good

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The budget laptop category has a long reputation for disappointing displays, short battery life, and builds that feel provisional rather than considered. Most sub-$300 machines get you to the internet and not much further before something creaks or slows down. It’s a price bracket that tends to ask buyers to accept tradeoffs that shouldn’t really be necessary in 2026, and ChromeOS devices have historically been no exception.

The ASUS Chromebook CM15 and Chromebook CM32 Detachable take a different approach to that bracket. Both run on the MediaTek Kompanio 540 processor with up to 8 GB of LPDDR5X memory, pass 24 MIL-STD-810H military-grade durability tests, and come with a three-month Google AI Pro trial bundled in. They aren’t trimmed-down machines trying to look complete. They’re designed to cover the full range of what most people actually do on a laptop.

Designer: ASUS

The CM15 is the larger of the two, a 15.6-inch clamshell with an FHD anti-glare panel, a 180-degree lay-flat hinge, and a chassis that weighs 3.26 lbs and comes in four colors: Pure Grey, Fabric Blue, Cream Pink, and Misty Green. Each has a washi-paper-inspired texture that gives it a bit more character than the usual matte plastic. The port selection includes HDMI alongside two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C ports and a USB Type-A, and ASUS specifically flags HDMI as an unusual inclusion at this price point.

The CM32 Detachable is smaller and considerably more flexible, at 1.41 lbs without the keyboard attached. Its 12.1-inch, 2.5K 120 Hz touchscreen is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass, and it comes with a magnetically attached stand, a detachable keyboard with 1.35 mm key travel, and a wirelessly charged stylus shaped like a traditional ballpoint pen. The whole system connects and disconnects cleanly without any of the fussiness that detachable keyboards often carry.

Both devices boot in under ten seconds, handle background updates automatically, and run Android apps from Google Play, which in practice means Netflix, Adobe Lightroom, Zoom, and Microsoft 365 are all accessible out of the box. The Google AI Pro trial includes NotebookLM and Gemini integration across Gmail and Docs, adding genuine productivity value without requiring a separate subscription to access.

Where the two models diverge is in their use case and price. The CM15 starts at $269.99 and suits anyone who wants a wide screen with a full-size keyboard for daily tasks at home or school. The CM32 at $579.00 is the pick for people who need the flexibility of a tablet one moment and a laptop the next, particularly given the stylus and the 120 Hz display. The CM15 body is also made with 30% recycled plastics and sustainable packaging, a commitment that extends the value of the machine beyond its shelf life.

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Motorola Just Built the Android Phone Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Almost Was

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Wireless charging on Android has been a bit of a mess. Most phones support it, but the speeds tend to lag behind proprietary fast-charging standards, and the Qi2 situation has been particularly awkward. Samsung’s Galaxy S26 series supports Qi2 speeds but skips the built-in magnets, meaning you still need a special case to get the alignment right. Other Android phones that did include magnets weren’t hitting the full 25W Qi2 ceiling. It was always one or the other.

The Motorola Edge 70 Max closes that gap. It’s the first mainstream Android phone outside of Google’s Pixel line to offer true Qi2 wireless charging with built-in magnets and the full 25W MPP25 speed, no magnetic case required, no extra ring to stick on the back. Drop it on a Qi2 pad, and it snaps into position and charges at the maximum rate the standard allows. That’s a more meaningful distinction than it might sound.

Designer: Motorola

For anyone who keeps a charging pad on a nightstand or desk, alignment has always been the friction point of wireless charging. Miss the coil slightly, and speeds drop, or charging stops entirely without any notification. Built-in magnets solve that by locking the phone into position automatically, the same way MagSafe works on an iPhone. Android users have had to use workarounds for years to get the same result, and most still don’t bother.

Beyond the charging story, the Edge 70 Max arrives with serious hardware throughout. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip delivers a 36% CPU improvement and 11% GPU improvement over its predecessor, and a vapor chamber cooling system with liquid metal and a 5,500 mm² chamber keeps temperatures in check during sustained loads. Up to 12 GB of LPDDR5X memory and up to 1 TB of storage round out the platform.

The 7100 mAh silicon-carbon battery earned a DXOMARK Gold Label with 160 points, and 90W TurboPower wired charging adds enough for a full day in just six minutes. The 50MP Sony LYTIA 710 main camera handles photography with AI-assisted processing, and the phone debuts Motorola Qira, a unified AI system shared across Lenovo PCs and tablets that carries context between devices.

The Quad HD+ (2K) display is rated as the brightest in its category, and the build is aircraft-grade aluminum framed with matte premium glass and MIL-STD-810H certification. Motorola has also made clear that the packaging is fully recyclable and printed with soy-based inks, a detail that reflects the broader Lenovo sustainability push rather than just a spec-sheet line.

The Android wireless charging ecosystem has needed a phone willing to commit fully to Qi2 rather than taking the halfway approach that most manufacturers have favored. The Edge 70 Max is the first non-Pixel Android flagship to do it without compromise, and with the rest of the hardware backing it up, the charging system stops being a headline curiosity and becomes a genuinely practical reason to pick one platform over another.

The post Motorola Just Built the Android Phone Samsung’s Galaxy S26 Almost Was first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nobody Expected a $28 Folding Clipboard to Be This Well Thought Out

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The clipboard is one of those objects that hasn’t changed much because the problem it solves seems too simple to revisit. It holds paper flat while you write, and that’s essentially the brief it’s been fulfilling for decades. The rigidity that makes it useful is also what makes it awkward to carry. Most are sized for A4, and that footprint doesn’t get smaller just because you’re done with it.

Lihit Lab’s A-2068 Foldable Clipboard addresses that directly. It’s an A4-sized clipboard that folds in half at the midpoint, reducing its footprint to A5 for transport, then locks back open flat and rigid when you’re ready to write again. A slider on the side controls the fold, and the result is something that behaves like a proper clipboard when you need it and a compact document folder when you don’t.

Designer: Lihit Lab.

The slider is the mechanical decision that makes the whole thing work. Once the board is open, it locks both halves flush and stiff, so there’s no flex in the writing surface while you’re standing or moving around. That matters on a jobsite, at a site survey, or anywhere you’re filling out forms away from a desk. Clipboards flex when they shouldn’t, and this one addresses that specifically.

The clip is a lock-function type that can be loaded while the board is open, so clipping down a stack of pages doesn’t require holding the board shut with one hand while fumbling with the other. A paper stopper at the bottom keeps document edges flush when the board is folded closed, and a rubber band wraps around the outside during transit so nothing comes loose inside a bag.

The body is polypropylene, with the binder and slider made from ABS resin, and the elastic band from polyester and polyurethane. Open, it measures 234mm x 339mm and is just 14mm thick. Folded, the height drops to 165mm. The clip holds up to 15 sheets of copy paper, which covers most field documentation. It comes in three colorways: Terracotta Orange, Slate Blue, and Ivory.

Most people who regularly carry clipboards to fieldwork have had to choose between the convenience of a flat writing surface and the awkwardness of a full-sized board in a bag. Storage clipboards try to solve this by adding internal compartments, but they tend to get thicker rather than smaller. The A-2068 takes a different route by reducing the form factor through folding rather than adding more material around the sides.

The A-2068 retails for ¥1,300 in Japan and is available internationally through specialty stationery shops at around $28. It’s the kind of update to a familiar object that’s easy to overlook until you’ve actually had to carry a full-sized clipboard across a job site and back again. The writing surface, the clip, and the capacity are all exactly what you’d expect. It just happens to fold in half.

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Lift This Handblown Glass and Find a Smile Left Behind by Your Drink

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Condensation on glassware is typically treated as a design problem to be contained. Coasters exist to hide what cold drinks leave behind, and most glasses are designed to minimize the effect where possible. The ring a cold drink leaves on a wooden table is just physics doing its job, and the standard response to that for decades has been to put something between the glass and the surface.

GRINN takes a different position. It’s a handcrafted glassware collection from Bangkok that doesn’t fight condensation but engineers the base to direct it, turning the moisture that forms around a cold drink into a smile-shaped mark on the surface beneath. Lift the glass after it’s been sitting long enough, and the outline of a curve appears beneath it. Not printed, not etched, just water behaving as water does.

Designer: Mooque Sarunphon Boonto (MOOQUE, Elmtoli)

The trick is in the base geometry. Each piece is mouth-blown from soda-lime glass using traditional glassblowing techniques, and the base is precisely engineered to guide condensation along a specific curved path. As a cold drink cools the glass and warm air does its work, moisture collects and follows the curve built into the structure. No stickers, no added decoration; the smile arrives entirely through physics.

The process has three steps: fill the glass with a cold drink and plenty of ice, wait 15 to 30 minutes at room temperature, then lift to discover what’s formed underneath. The sharper the temperature contrast between the drink and the surrounding air, the cleaner the impression. Timing varies with airflow and ice quantity, and smooth, non-absorbent surfaces produce the clearest marks.

Mouth-blown glass carries its own signature, and GRINN leans into that rather than apologizing for it. Slight variations and small bubbles are inherent to the process rather than defects, and no two pieces are identical. The collection is designed for cold and room-temperature beverages only. Hot liquids and sudden temperature changes should be avoided, a constraint that comes with the soda-lime material rather than any compromise in craftsmanship.

The collection spans five pieces: a Classic Glass, a Highball Glass, a Mug Glass, a Beer Mug, and a Carafe. Each applies the same engineered base geometry to a different vessel, which means the condensation smile works just as well on a glass of morning cold brew, a tall iced cocktail in the evening, or a sweating pitcher set at the center of a table.

The smile isn’t decoration in any traditional sense. It’s a consequence of structure, temperature, and time, a moment that only exists because someone put a cold drink down and waited long enough. Making an ordinary act worth noticing turns out to be a harder design brief than it sounds.

The post Lift This Handblown Glass and Find a Smile Left Behind by Your Drink first appeared on Yanko Design.

Kids’ Tech Has a Screen Problem: This $139 Button Is the Fix

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Getting kids through morning and bedtime routines is one of those parenting problems that never quite gets solved. Apps on tablets and phones have tried, but the device that’s supposed to help with brushing teeth is the same one that can pull up YouTube. Most parents end up nagging anyway, just now with a screen involved. The category of kids’ tech hasn’t really made mornings easier. It’s made them busier.

Skylight Buddy takes a different approach. It’s a purpose-built bedside device for children ages 4 to 10, with a touchscreen, a speaker, a built-in nightlight, and a physical action button. What it doesn’t have is just as deliberate: no internet access, no browser, no downloadable apps, no camera, and no microphone. It launched in June 2026, and its first production run sold out within a week.

Designer: level Design

The core interaction is simple. Buddy guides kids through their morning, after-school, and bedtime tasks one at a time, showing each with clear on-screen visuals. When a task is done, the child presses the action button on top to confirm, advance to the next step, and collect stars. The design team pushed hard to keep that physical button rather than defaulting to a screen-only approach.

The button is yellow across all three colorways, which serves a functional purpose. It’s the brightest thing on the device, a deliberate visual signal that reads as “press me” from across the room. Buddy comes in blue, sage, and lavender, each with a soft silicone case that wasn’t designed as an accessory but as part of the form. With the case on, the side speaker sits flush with the body.

The integrated light handles two things that parents often buy as separate products: a nightlight for bedtime and an OK-to-wake signal for mornings, so younger kids know when it’s actually time to get up. Add a sound machine for winding down at night and an alarm clock for starting the day, and Buddy replaces a collection of single-purpose devices that typically end up crowding a child’s nightstand.

Buddy works as a standalone device right out of the box, covering routines, chores, the alarm clock, and all core features without any additional cost. Families who already use Skylight Calendar can link the two through the same parent app, syncing a child’s tasks and rewards automatically. A Buddy Plus subscription unlocks additional tools, including rewards tracking, visual timers, and nudges for transitions that are harder to manage.

At $139, it isn’t a cheap clock, but it’s also not competing with tablets or general-purpose screens. That’s the point. Kids can’t download apps on it, can’t open a browser, and can’t drift into videos once their tasks are done. For a category of products that’s gotten very good at capturing children’s attention for all the wrong reasons, Buddy’s restraint is its most compelling feature.

The post Kids’ Tech Has a Screen Problem: This $139 Button Is the Fix first appeared on Yanko Design.