Tag Archives: Android

Hisense Just Made an E Ink Phone With a Color Screen That Snaps Off

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Every smartphone screen is a compromise, built to do everything reasonably well and nothing perfectly. The Hisense A10 Ultra rejects that premise outright. Instead of one panel stretched thin across every task, it pairs a 6.13-inch E Ink display with a 4.96-inch color touchscreen that clips onto the back magnetically, then walks away again the moment you don’t need it.

The E Ink layer is the phone’s permanent identity, a 300 PPI Carta 1300 panel that renders text with the same paper-like calm as a dedicated e-reader. A 36-level front light shifts between warm and cool tones without flickering, so a page read at noon and one read at midnight both stay comfortable on the eyes. Nothing about this half of the phone asks for your attention beyond what you came to read.

Designer: Hisense

Snap the color module onto the back, held by magnetic pogo pins, and the same device suddenly handles video, maps, and camera framing without fighting the E Ink panel’s slower refresh. A dedicated T2000 controller chip in the main display keeps scrolling responsive, but color and motion still belong to the LCD module. The two screens divide labor instead of splitting attention, which is a distinction worth sitting with.

Imagine spending a long commute finishing a chapter on the E Ink side, then arriving at a destination and needing turn-by-turn directions or a quick selfie. Rather than tolerating a grayscale map or waiting through refresh lag, the color module goes on for exactly as long as the task requires. Afterward, it comes right back off, and the phone returns to its lighter, quieter default state around 190g.

That detachability is the real design statement here. Most phone makers treat a second screen as permanent architecture, bolted in and powered whether you use it or not. Hisense instead treats it as optional equipment, closer to a lens you’d attach to a camera than a component soldered into a chassis. The color panel exists for exactly the moments that call for it, then disappears when it doesn’t.

An “Ink Smart Button” on the side backs this up practically, letting you switch modes, wake an assistant, or force a full refresh without digging through menus. Paired with a Qualcomm QCM6690 processor, up to 12GB of RAM, and a 4,000 mAh battery, the hardware underneath doesn’t feel like an afterthought bolted onto a gimmick. It reads more like a phone that happens to know when to get out of its own way.

There’s something clarifying about a device willing to admit that no single screen does everything well. The A10 Ultra doesn’t try to hide that tension behind clever software or a single do-it-all panel. It just hands you the two halves separately and lets you decide, task by task, which one earns a place on your phone that day.

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Cloud Gaming Handhelds Need Wi-Fi, so Lenovo Built One That Doesn’t

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Most cloud gaming handhelds are hostages to a Wi-Fi signal. No internet, no games. Lenovo’s new Legion Cloud Gaming Handheld, announced August 25 in China, skips the conventional approach entirely. It includes a USB dongle in the box that lets you stream games from a Windows PC over a local network with no internet connection required. That’s the headline feature, and it’s a genuinely novel one for the category.

The device runs on Android 16 with a MediaTek Dimensity 7400 doing the system work, not the gaming. There’s no discrete GPU here, which is precisely the point. Lenovo built this around Tencent’s START cloud gaming service for on-the-go use and around the bundled Legion Stream dongle for home use. The Dimensity 7400 handles menus, apps, and streaming protocols. The actual game rendering happens elsewhere.

Designer: Lenovo

Dropping the power-hungry local chip has an immediate physical consequence. The handheld weighs 556g and sits at 14.9mm thick across 292.9mm of width, making it a physically large device, but lighter than the Steam Deck OLED at 640g. That saving in grams comes directly from not needing a discrete GPU or the oversized battery that would be required to keep one running. The engineering tradeoff is explicit and intentional.

The 7.82-inch FHD LCD runs at 120Hz, which is adequate for streaming content and more than adequate for Android gaming. Active cooling keeps the Dimensity 7400 from throttling under sustained load. The 8,000mAh battery is rated for up to nine hours of cloud gaming, a figure that makes sense when the device’s processor isn’t rendering 3D scenes. Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, a USB-C port, and a 3.5mm headphone jack round out the connectivity side.

Controls are where the hardware investment shows. The thumbsticks use TMR (True Magnetic Resistance) technology, the same type found on higher-end controllers, and the triggers use Hall Effect sensors rather than conventional mechanical contacts. There are also two rear paddles alongside the standard shoulder buttons. For a device built around cloud gaming, the input hardware is taken seriously rather than treated as secondary to the streaming experience.

The dongle is the distinguishing argument. Plug it into the Windows PC you’re streaming from, pair the handheld over the local network, and the C700 becomes a remote display for whatever’s running on that machine. That covers the scenario where you’re at home with a capable gaming PC, you want to play from the couch, and your internet has dropped out or never existed in the first place. It’s a practical problem that cloud gaming devices have never previously addressed.

Lenovo partnered with Tencent on this, which is partly why it launched in China first. Pricing is set at CNY 2,199 (approximately $325) for the 8GB/256GB configuration. Sales begin September 8 in China; Lenovo has made no announcement regarding a global release.

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The Galaxy S26 FE Beats Samsung’s Own Flagships to One UI 9 at $700

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The “Fan Edition” label has historically meant a Samsung phone that trades some flagship firepower for a more accessible price. The Galaxy S26 FE keeps that tradition mostly intact at $699.99, but it comes with something the Galaxy S26 Ultra, S26+, and S26 don’t have yet: One UI 9 running on Android 17 out of the box. The FE getting there first is a small reversal of the usual order.

That software distinction matters because One UI 9 is where most of the new things actually happen. The hardware story is relatively familiar: a 6.7-inch FHD+ Dynamic AMOLED 2X display at 120Hz with 1,900 nits peak brightness, an Exynos 2500 chipset on a 3nm process, 8GB of RAM, and a 4,900mAh battery. The Exynos 2500 is a step up from the Exynos 2400 in the S25 FE, with a beefed-up AMD RDNA 3-based GPU and a more capable NPU.

Designer: Samsung

One of the new One UI 9 features making its debut here is My FanCam, which automatically tracks a person in a video by zooming in and keeping them centered in frame. It works with videos already in your gallery, not just footage shot in a special mode. Record someone’s performance or activity, pull it up afterward, and My FanCam can isolate the subject for a clean, social-ready clip without any manual editing.

Horizon Lock addresses a different problem: shaky handheld footage. It keeps video level even if the phone rotates up to 360° during recording, which is useful for any situation where you’re moving while shooting and can’t stop to stabilize the frame. Add that to Photo Assist’s AI editing tools, and you have a camera experience that does more of the grunt work automatically than any previous FE has offered.

The triple rear camera system uses a 50MP main sensor with OIS, a 12MP ultrawide at 123°, and an 8MP telephoto with 3x optical zoom and up to 30x digital zoom, all with OIS. The 12MP front camera handles video calls and selfies with a wide 85° field of view. The camera design itself has been updated to align more closely with the rest of the S26 series, which gives the FE a less immediately distinct look from the higher-end models.

Charging is 45W wired, which gets the 4,900mAh battery to 69% in approximately 30 minutes. Wireless charging tops out at 15W, and Wireless PowerShare is included. The build uses Gorilla Glass Victus+ on both the front and back, an aluminum frame, and IP68 water resistance. Connectivity covers Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, and 5G, along with an in-display fingerprint sensor.

Seven years of OS updates and security patches are promised, which extends the phone’s useful life considerably. In Pistachio, Blueberry, and Graphite, it goes on sale September 4, with select carriers beginning a day earlier. It’s the FE format doing what it’s always done, just this time with a software stack the rest of the lineup hasn’t caught up to yet.

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Rear Screens Were a Flagship Trick, so Honor Put One on a Budget Phone

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Secondary rear displays have been a flagship trick for a while, the kind of feature that premium phones use to justify their price tags. The Honor Play20A throws that logic out. It’s an entry-level 4G phone with a 6.9-inch main screen, a 6,000mAh battery, and a small secondary display built into the camera module on the back, at a price that isn’t anywhere near flagship territory.

The rear screen isn’t just decorative. It shows the time, incoming call details, and what’s currently playing, so you can pause or skip tracks without flipping the phone over. It also works as a viewfinder, letting you frame shots with the 13MP rear camera rather than the 5MP front camera inside the notch. In practice, that means group photos taken with the better lens rather than settling for the weaker front sensor.

Designer: Honor

That 13MP rear camera is the only functional one despite the module’s appearance. There’s no telephoto, no depth sensor, no second anything hiding behind the glass. It’s a single lens, and the design leans into the secondary screen to make up for the hardware economy. For everyday shooting, the combination works reasonably well, and it sidesteps the common frustration of front cameras that can’t match the quality of the back.

The main screen is a 6.9-inch IPS LCD running at 90Hz with an HD+ resolution of 1600×720. It’s a big panel with slim bezels and a waterdrop notch, and 90Hz makes scrolling feel noticeably smoother than phones still running at 60Hz. That refresh rate isn’t guaranteed at this price point, which makes its inclusion here more meaningful than it might look on a spec sheet.

The 6,000mAh battery is the other headliner. It charges at 15W via USB-C, which is modest given the capacity, so filling it up from empty takes some patience. The trade-off is that you’re unlikely to drain it before the day is done under normal circumstances. A battery this size in a budget phone tends to last considerably longer than comparable handsets that prioritize thinness over endurance.

Running all of this is the MediaTek Helio G81, an octa-core chip built on a 12nm process. It handles messaging, browsing, video streaming, and social media without issue. Intensive tasks aren’t what this phone is built for, and the chip doesn’t pretend otherwise. Paired with 4GB of RAM and up to 128GB of storage, expandable to 1TB via microSD, the Honor Play20A is configured for people who need a phone to do a lot of everyday things reliably.

Connectivity stays at 4G, with no 5G on board, which fits a budget positioning but is worth noting for anyone in a market where 5G coverage has become the practical standard. The triple tray accommodates two SIM cards and a microSD card at the same time, without asking you to choose between extra storage and a second line. The secondary rear display is the feature that makes this phone worth talking about, but the battery and the large screen are what most buyers will end up living with daily.

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The Xperia 10 VIII Has Rare Android Features, but £549 Is the Catch

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The Sony Xperia 10 VIII is a compact 6.1-inch Android phone with a 3.5mm headphone jack, a dedicated microSD slot, a 5,000mAh battery, and an IP68 water resistance rating. In 2026, that combination is genuinely hard to find on any phone, let alone a mid-ranger. It also costs £549, which is where the conversation gets complicated.

The display is one of the few areas where the 10 VIII makes a clear step forward. Sony says the OLED panel is roughly 50% brighter at maximum than last year’s model, and it pairs that with an automatic color-adjustment system that reads ambient light to keep text and maps legible in direct sun. For a compact phone that goes everywhere, screen visibility in bright conditions matters more than any benchmark.

Designer: Sony

The camera setup stays at 50MP on the main sensor and 13MP on the ultrawide, which is the same hardware as the Xperia 10 VII. The lens combination covers most of what everyday shooting actually demands, and Sony’s imaging tuning has always leaned toward natural color reproduction rather than the overly saturated processing that many phones default to. It’s a camera made for people who shoot, not people who want to appear to shoot.

Battery longevity is built into both the hardware and the software. The 5,000mAh cell comes with Sony’s battery-care system, which manages charge cycles to minimize long-term degradation. The company is also promising six years of software updates here, a notable jump from the four years offered on its predecessor. Getting six years out of a mid-range phone is a meaningful practical advantage.

The Snapdragon 6 Gen 3 inside is the same chip that powered the Xperia 10 VII, which launched a year ago. It handles social media, streaming, and everyday tasks without issue, but it doesn’t offer much over what existing owners already have. Sony added a Point & Pay shortcut for faster contactless payments, improved the speaker output, and redesigned the back panel with a translucent matte finish in Frozen White, Frosted Grey, and Misty Lilac.

The headphone jack and microSD slot are worth more than they might initially seem. Most phones at this price tier have dropped both, forcing wireless-only audio and fixed internal storage. For anyone who owns wired headphones worth actually using, or needs to carry large media libraries on a card, those two ports turn the 10 VIII into one of the few phones in this segment that doesn’t demand compromises to accommodate them.

At £549, the Xperia 10 VIII doesn’t have an easy answer to the competition. For similar or less money, there are phones with faster chips, bigger batteries, and more capable camera systems. Sony’s argument is that none of them are this compact and this fully equipped with legacy features in a single package. That’s a narrower pitch than it sounds, but it’s also a pitch that doesn’t have many other phones making it.

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Honor Pad 20 Pro Has a Version That Feels Like Paper, Not Glass

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Android tablets have spent years trying to establish themselves as serious productivity tools rather than large phones with expanded app drawers. The gap has closed considerably, especially as the software that matters most, document editors, video conferencing, creative apps, caught up with the hardware. The remaining friction, for many users, tends to be more physical: the glass surface of most tablet displays is smooth and reflective in ways that neither paper nor a dedicated monitor usually is.

The Honor Pad 20 Pro arrives with that tension already baked into its lineup. The standard version is a straightforward performance upgrade over its predecessor, while the Paperlike Edition adds a micro-textured anti-glare coating to the same display that changes the surface experience entirely. Both tablets run identical hardware, so the choice between them is essentially a question of what you’re actually going to do with the device most of the time.

Designer: Honor

The screen that both variants share is a 12.1-inch IPS LCD panel running at 3,000×1,872 resolution with a 165 Hz refresh rate. IMAX Enhanced certification and DCI-P3 wide color coverage give it enough visual credibility for media consumption, while hardware-level eye-care features, including anti-flicker and low blue light reduction, make longer reading or working sessions more manageable. Peak brightness tops out at 700 nits, adequate for indoor use under most ordinary conditions.

Power comes from the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4, paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, which covers the multitasking loads most tablet users will throw at it: running several browser tabs alongside a document editor, switching between a video call and a note-taking app, or handling light creative work. The six-speaker audio system with DTS:X Ultra makes the same device worth watching a film on at the end of the day.

The Paperlike Edition’s micro-textured coating isn’t just an aesthetic choice. Anyone who has tried to sketch or annotate seriously on a glossy glass display has felt the issue: the stylus slides too freely, and the surface reflects ambient light at exactly the wrong moment. The textured finish introduces enough friction to make strokes feel more deliberate and controlled, and reduces reflections in a way that makes extended reading or annotating sessions considerably more comfortable without sacrificing color accuracy.

Both variants support the Honor Magic-Pencil 4s stylus and run MagicOS 10.0 on Android 16. The software includes a PC Mode that offers desktop-style window management, letting the device behave more like a laptop when connected to a keyboard. For users who split their time between a tablet and a proper workstation, the cross-device features let the Honor Pad 20 Pro connect to a PC ecosystem without leaving the Android environment.

The 10,100mAh battery with 66W fast charging is the kind of spec that stops most conversation about battery anxiety in tablet form. A full day of heavy use doesn’t reach the kind of drain that makes you start watching the percentage. The metal chassis, at 6.29mm thin and 537g, puts it in a weight class that works for holding in hand, not just setting on a desk.

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Most Phones Last 3 Years, This $650 Fairphone 6+ Is Built for 8

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The smartphone upgrade cycle has been one of the more quietly destructive consumer habits of the past two decades. Most people replace their phone every two or three years, and most of the time the reason has less to do with the device failing than with the manufacturer stopping support for it, making it feel obsolete ahead of its actual lifespan. The waste this generates at the component and material level is substantial, and the industry has largely responded with recycling pledges rather than any structural rethinking.

Fairphone has spent the better part of sixteen years making a structural argument instead. The Fairphone (Gen. 6+) is the latest iteration of that argument, and it arrives with a notable addition to its story: it’s the first Fairphone sold directly in the United States. For a phone built around the idea that longevity and repairability should be standard expectations rather than premium options, reaching the world’s largest smartphone market is a meaningful step.

Designer: Fairphone

The Gen. 6+ carries twelve user-replaceable parts, from the battery and display to the USB-C port and back cover, most swappable with a single screwdriver in under five minutes. The phone has earned iFixit’s 10/10 repairability score, making it the fifth consecutive Fairphone to do so. Spare parts are guaranteed to be available until 2033, and the five-year warranty covers the device for as long as most people own a phone at all.

That repairability doesn’t come at the cost of ignoring performance. The Gen. 6+ runs on the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 paired with 12GB of RAM, which is a meaningful step up from the Gen. 6’s Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 and 8GB. The 6.31-inch LTPO AMOLED display runs at an adaptive 10–120 Hz with up to 1,400 nits of peak brightness, and the 4,415mAh removable battery delivers up to two days between charges, with fast charging reaching 50% in 30 minutes.

The camera system centers on a 50MP Sony LYTIA sensor with optical image stabilization, supported by a 13MP ultrawide and a 32 MP front-facing camera. It’s a capable setup for the mid-range segment it occupies, handling 4K video at 30 fps and slow-motion recording up to 1080p at 120 fps. What’s worth noting is that the camera module, like everything else in the phone, is replaceable. A damaged lens or degraded sensor doesn’t mean the device is finished.

The phone’s physical design includes a dedicated switch, called Fairphone Moments, that toggles between full functionality and a stripped-back mode that limits access to only what you’ve decided matters. It’s a small thing, but it addresses a real pattern: most of us don’t need every app and notification available every hour of the day, and having a physical switch to enforce that boundary is more reliable than navigating a settings menu under pressure.

The materials list is as deliberate as everything else. The phone uses 51% fair or recycled materials by weight, including Fairmined gold and tungsten, recycled aluminum, copper, steel, and plastics, along with Fair Cobalt Credits applied to cobalt sourcing. It ships in plastic-free packaging. The Gen. 6+ is available in Cobalt Blue, Forest Green, and Horizon Black, priced at €649 in Europe and $649.99 in the US.

For a device this thoughtfully constrained, the case for it doesn’t rest on outpacing the competition on any single spec. It rests on the idea that a phone lasting seven or eight years has more value, environmental and financial, than one that lasts three, and that keeping it alive should never require shipping it off to a service center.

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Tecno Camon 50 Ultra 5G Review: A $420 AI Phone With Built-in Gemini, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Grok

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PROS:


  • EllaClaw is one of the most impressive phone AI experiences available right now

  • Multi-model AI support, including Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, DeepSeek, Meta AI, and Ella

  • Strong 2-day battery life from the 6500mAh cell

  • Competitive value in the mid-range segment

CONS:


  • Single speaker setup sounds tinny and lacks bass

  • Curved waterfall display is prone to accidental palm touches

  • No wireless charging or Qi2 (MagSafe)

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The Camon 50 Ultra 5G feels like Tecno looked at the current AI phone race, skipped the walled garden nonsense, and built the first assistant experience that actually shows you why you’d want to use it in the first place.

Apple has Apple Intelligence. Google Pixel has Gemini. Samsung has Galaxy AI. Tecno has everything else. Packed into its EllaClaw agent is the ability to use Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, and DeepSeek, because a walled garden never benefited anyone. Tecno’s Camon 50 Ultra 5G is a great phone, but what makes it worth doing a double take for is EllaClaw, an agentic AI built into the phone that offers a phone AI experience I have yet to see on any smartphone so far. EllaClaw is currently an invite-only closed Beta feature limited to just this phone, but seeing it in action gave me everything I needed to understand where other phones are going wrong with their on-board AI, and where they can learn from Tecno.

The wild part is how approachable it all feels. EllaClaw does not sit around waiting for you to guess the perfect command like some moody genie. It actively shows you what it can do, which makes the whole experience feel far less intimidating than Gemini or Apple Intelligence currently do. Within minutes, I was jumping between message summaries, creative tools, settings help, and different AI models without feeling like I needed a tutorial or a prayer.

Aesthetics

The moment I unboxed the Camon 50 Ultra 5G, I was hit with a serious case of déjà vu. The green variant has a gorgeous satin finish that gives it a silky, metallic glow under the light, and it immediately sent me down a memory lane trip to my old OnePlus 8 Pro which I faithfully used from 2020 to 2024. The color, the texture, even the way the camera module is arranged, it all felt so familiar and, frankly, so premium. Tecno absolutely nailed the flagship-esque feel here. The back is smooth to the touch, resists fingerprints reasonably well, and has a subtle elegance that a lot of phones in this bracket just do not bother with.

The front is where the design language gets a little more complicated, at least for me. Tecno went with a waterfall display, which means the screen curves dramatically around the sides. It looks stunning when the phone is off or when you are watching a video, creating an immersive, almost bezel-free experience. But I have always had a love-hate relationship with these displays. They are beautiful, no doubt, but they can be a magnet for accidental palm touches. While the software does its best to ignore them, I still found myself occasionally tapping something I did not mean to. It is a classic case of striking aesthetics meeting the messy reality of how we hold our phones. I do have to say that Tecno’s Liquid Glass homage does look much better on a waterfall display than on a bezel-ridden iPhone.

Ergonomics

That waterfall display has a big effect on how the phone feels in your hand. The curved edges melt away into the frame, making the Camon 50 Ultra 5G incredibly comfortable to hold. There are no sharp, flat corners digging into your palm, which is great for long sessions of scrolling or gaming. The trade-off, of course, is that the phone can feel a little slippery if you are not paying attention. It has that smooth, polished-stone feel that is lovely to touch but always feels one careless gesture away from a gravity experiment. It is a phone that practically begs to be put in a case, even if it feels like a shame to cover up the design.

The button layout is personally feels a little little bit tricky. On the left, you have a dedicated AI key that summons EllaClaw, a shortcut I ended up using constantly. You can remap it, but having a one-press gateway to the AI is a smart touch. The right side, however, is where my muscle memory started to complain. There is a power button and a fairly short, single-piece volume rocker. Because the rocker is slightly compact, I often found myself fumbling, unsure if my thumb was on volume up, down, or about to lock the screen. It is a small pain, but a tiny indent in the middle of the volume button would have made all the difference. The buttons themselves are slightly sharp and textured, a necessary choice for a phone with curved edges, but it does not quite solve the problem of telling them apart by feel alone.

Performance

EllaClaw is where the Camon 50 Ultra 5G earns its stripes. The dashboard (which you access by swiping towards the left – where you’d see Google Discover on most Android phones) keeps surfacing prompts, shortcuts, and suggestions, making the AI feel alive and accessible rather than buried under three layers of settings. Most phone AI treats users like they should already know what they want. EllaClaw meets you halfway, and that changes everything about how you interact with the phone.

The deeper layer, EllaClaw Pro, is genuinely impressive. It reaches into the phone’s apps and system functions in a way that feels ahead of where the conversation currently is. I asked it to summarize my text messages without opening the messages app, and it did exactly that, handling the whole thing on its own. That kind of agentic behavior is the next logical step for phone assistants, and right now, Tecno seems to be ahead of the pack. Nothing reassured me that the AI wasn’t reading my messages to enhance its database though, so the privacy conscious might have a thing or two to worry about.

Tecno’s decision to build EllaClaw as a multi-model hub is one of the smartest software calls I have seen this year. My unit offered access to DeepSeek, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, and Meta AI alongside Ella’s own model, all in one dashboard. Claude is conspicuously missing, but everything else is here and free to use (at least during the Beta period). Daily limits are applied on AI use which reset every 24 hours, and you can buy extra credits in case you overshoot. In all my hours of testing, I never needed to purchase extra credits, which means image generation, video generation, and sketch-to-photo tools were all available at no additional cost.

EllaClaw is still being refined, though. The dashboard lagged occasionally, and the AI sometimes took longer to load than felt comfortable. Restarting the app always sorted it out, but it is a reminder that this experience has not fully grown into its ambition yet. Users in certain regions may also need a VPN to get the full experience running, which is worth knowing upfront.

The camera system is built around a 50MP Sony LYT-700C main sensor with OIS, paired with a 50MP telephoto lens offering 3x optical zoom (70mm equivalent) and an 8MP ultrawide. That telephoto is a proper standout for a phone at this price point, and the software leans into it with confidence. You get 60x hybrid zoom, which is mostly digital exaggeration past the 3x mark, but the results between 3x and 10x are still usable in decent light. The main camera performs well across a range of scenarios, especially in good light, and night mode is aggressive without getting too soupy. The front camera is a 50MP sensor with autofocus, which makes a noticeable difference in selfie sharpness compared to the fixed-focus cameras on cheaper phones.

Tecno stuffs the camera app with modes including dual-cam, underwater mode, document scanning, super night mode, and super macro. FlashSnap is the standout, though. It watches your scene and captures the most dramatic moment automatically, so if someone is mid-jump or mid-throw, the phone clicks at exactly the right time without you having to think about it. It made me look like a considerably better photographer than I actually am. Video recording tops out at 4K at 30fps, which is fine but not particularly exciting.

Battery life is one of the phone’s most quietly satisfying qualities. The 6500mAh cell pushed comfortably through two full days of use without needing a charge, which is more than my current flagship iPhone manages. At some point I just stopped thinking about charging altogether, which is the best thing a battery can do. The phone supports 45W wired charging, which is fast enough to feel civilized without being record-breaking.

The display is a 6.78-inch AMOLED panel with a 1.5K resolution (1208 x 2644 pixels, 429 ppi) and a 144Hz refresh rate with LTPO support for adaptive refresh. It is vibrant, sharp, and performs well in low light. The 144Hz refresh makes scrolling and gaming feel smooth, and the high PWM dimming (2160Hz) helps reduce flicker for those sensitive to it. The curved waterfall edges are a design choice I have already aired my reservations about, and this section will not relitigate that argument. It looks great. It catches accidental touches. Moving on.

Speakers are a weak spot, and a noticeable one. There is a single grille at the bottom right, so stereo is off the table, and the audio leans tinny with very little bass to speak of. For a phone this polished everywhere else, it feels like a department that got the budget cut.

Gaming held up well for everything I tried. Tecno’s dedicated gaming software manages frame rates and battery draw sensibly, and the Dimensity 7400 handled casual to moderate sessions without complaint. The 144Hz display helps make fast-paced games feel responsive, and the phone stayed well within comfortable temperature ranges throughout. Nothing I played caused any real issues, thermal throttling never became a concern, and the large battery meant I could game for extended sessions without nervously watching the percentage drop.

Sustainability

Tecno is promising 3 years of Android OS upgrades and 5 years of security patches for the Camon 50 Ultra 5G, which puts it roughly in line with brands like Motorola and slightly ahead of OnePlus, though still behind Nothing’s 6-year security support.That is a meaningful commitment for a phone at this price, especially if you are someone who plans to use the device well beyond the usual two-year upgrade cycle.

Tecno also claims the battery is built for durability, marketing it as a “5-Year Durability Battery” with TÜV certification and a 72-month lag-free guarantee. Whether that holds true in practice is something only time will tell, but the fact that the company is willing to stake that claim suggests they are at least thinking about longevity beyond the usual marketing fluff. The 6500mAh capacity itself helps, because the less frequently you need to charge, the slower the battery degrades. If you are getting two full days of use out of a charge right now, that headroom means the phone should still feel usable years down the line when the cell inevitably loses some of its capacity.

Value

The Tecno Camon 50 Ultra 5G is priced at $420 for the 8GB + 256GB variant (that’s based on its ₹40,000 Indian price, since the phone hasn’t officially launched in the US). For a phone with a 50MP telephoto, a 144Hz AMOLED display, and a 6500mAh battery, that positioning feels competitive in the under-40K segment, especially when you factor in the AI ambitions.

What feels less competitive is the setup experience. When I powered on the phone and began the initial configuration, India was not listed in the countries menu. Hilariously enough, Palestine was available as an option. The world’s most populated country, nowhere on the list. I eventually had to select a different region just to proceed, which immediately felt awkward for a phone launching in India. Later, I also needed a VPN to access EllaClaw, which could have been a software issue tied to my initial region selection, or it could point to broader availability constraints. Obviously this won’t be the case for everyone since mine was a review unit with the EllaClaw beta program probably tied to a certain region. Either way, it is a frustrating first impression for a feature that is supposed to be the phone’s main selling point.

As for EllaClaw Pro and its credits system, Tecno does offer a credit-based structure for premium AI features like image generation and video creation. In my testing, I never hit a paywall or needed to purchase add-on credits, which suggests the included allocation is generous enough for typical use, at least initially. How sustainable that remains over time, or whether Tecno tightens the limits later, is harder to predict. For now, though, the experience feels surprisingly open, which is a rare thing in the AI phone space.

Verdict

The Tecno Camon 50 Ultra 5G delivers a lot of value for $420. The camera is genuinely impressive, with super night mode shots and 60x zoom that feel bonkers for this price range, and the battery life makes it easy to forget about charging anxiety for days at a time. But I am not recommending this phone for its camera, or its battery, or even its design, as much as I enjoyed all of those things. I am recommending it for EllaClaw, because it is the closest I have come to using a phone AI that feels like it was built for actual humans.

EllaClaw is everything Gemini and Apple Intelligence hope to achieve, and a bit more. I did not think I would see a phone that lets me choose the LLM for its AI assistant, swapping between models depending on what I need. I definitely did not expect an AI assistant dashboard to genuinely give me so much insight and value into how I can use the AI, rather than just sitting through a keynote, nodding along to feature lists, and then forgetting half of them the moment I leave the room. Tecno has cracked something here that bigger brands are still struggling with, which is making AI feel approachable, integrated, and genuinely useful instead of intimidating or buried.

The phone has a few tiny flaws that feel manageable if you’re more driven by the AI chops. The speakers are tinny, the curved display catches palm touches, EllaClaw occasionally lags, and the setup process was a bit of a hassle given I needed a VPN to get EllaClaw to work (but that’s just my China-bound review unit). But if you are looking for a phone that shows you what AI on mobile should feel like when it grows up, the Camon 50 Ultra 5G is worth your attention. It is not perfect, but it is ambitious in all the right ways. Google, Apple, and Samsung could surely take notes.

The post Tecno Camon 50 Ultra 5G Review: A $420 AI Phone With Built-in Gemini, ChatGPT, DeepSeek, and Grok first appeared on Yanko Design.

The $499 E Ink Tablet That Runs Spotify, WhatsApp and Doesn’t Hurt

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Screens have been the unresolved tension at the center of productivity for years. LCD and OLED displays do everything well except the one thing that matters most during a long reading or writing session: they don’t stop being screens. The brightness, the blue light, and the glare accumulate into eye fatigue that most people simply accept as part of working on a device all day. E Ink tablets have addressed that problem, but historically at the cost of color and app freedom.

The Bigme B1051 Ultra is built on the premise that none of those trade-offs need to be permanent. Its 10.3-inch Kaleido 3 E Ink display is color-capable and glare-free, with an adjustable front light covering 36 levels of brightness in both warm and cool tones. The result is a surface that handles illustrated documents, annotated PDFs, and color-coded spreadsheets without sending the wearer reaching for eye drops an hour in.

Designer: Bigme

Color E Ink of any generation has historically been limited in brightness and saturation compared to traditional displays, and the Kaleido 3 panel doesn’t fully close that gap. What it does deliver is a dramatically more comfortable reading experience for long sessions, particularly in well-lit environments where conventional displays produce the most glare. For documents, annotations, and notes, the color rendering is more than sufficient to make the information readable without eye strain.

The hardware underneath is capable enough to run Android 14 without compromise. A MediaTek Dimensity 1080 octa-core chip running at 2.6GHz with up to 8GB of RAM handles third-party apps from Google Play without the sluggishness that plagued earlier E Ink Android devices. Spotify works. WhatsApp runs. The Google Play Store is fully accessible. A 6,900mAh battery supports the kind of all-day use the form factor implies.

Writing and sketching feel natural on the included stylus, which offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity and a surface friction designed to replicate paper. An annotated legal document, a fashion sketch with labeled callouts, or a watercolor illustration all sit on the display with the same kind of grainless, paper-like quality. Bigme’s auto ghosting elimination technology handles the visual artifacts that have historically made fast stylus input on E Ink screens feel laggy or muddy.

The optional keyboard folio cover turns the B1051 Ultra into something that reads more like an e-paper laptop. A trackpad is built into the keyboard, and the folio supports dual-angle positioning for desk and lap use. Connecting to an external keyboard and looking at a dashboard of charts and figures across the full 10.3-inch surface is a different experience from doing the same work on an LCD that competes with every other light source in the room.

Integrated AI tools extend beyond the display and stylus. Text extraction, text polishing, AI-assisted drawing, and composition features are baked into the software layer. Fingerprint unlocking handles access. The B1051 Ultra is available starting at $499 for the device-and-case bundle, with the keyboard configuration adding to that. E Ink has always been the right technology for certain kinds of work, and the Bigme B1051 Ultra is one of the more complete arguments that it doesn’t need black-and-white e-readers to make that case convincingly.

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This $549 QWERTY Android Phone Was Built to Give You Your Day Back

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Smartphones have never been smarter, but they’ve also never been more demanding. Bigger screens, algorithmic feeds, and relentless notifications aren’t design oversights. They’re deliberate, built to keep you engaged for as long as possible. The prevailing logic is that longer screen time is better, and most phones are optimized around that, pulling you back in every time you try to put them down.

The Minimal Phone 2 is a different kind of proposition. It’s a modern 5G Android phone built around the opposite idea: that a phone should serve you and then get out of the way. It pairs a compact AMOLED display with a full physical QWERTY keyboard and a custom OS called Minimal OS, designed to make daily interactions faster, more deliberate, and less compulsive.

Designer: Armen Youssefian

Click here to Buy Now: $599 $699 ($100 off). Hurry, only 657/1000 left! Raised over $1,009,000.

The keyboard is the phone’s most striking feature, and also its most considered. It’s a full QWERTY board integrated directly into the phone, about 69mm wide, with backlit keys whose legends are laser-etched into the keycap surface rather than printed on top, so they won’t fade with use. Each row fans outward slightly, and the keycaps are sculpted to guide your thumbs naturally.

What a physical keyboard really changes is the relationship between picking up your phone and doing something on it. When the keyboard is always there, typing becomes the default instinct instead of scrolling. You reach for the phone with something in mind, do it, and put it down. That shift sounds subtle, but over the course of a day, it changes how the device feels.

Minimal OS reinforces that instinct with its command bar, which lets you do most things without opening an app at all. Start with a symbol, type what you want, and the OS handles the rest. Typing “@jason on my way” sends a text. Typing “#lauren” places a call. A hyphen adds a to-do, an asterisk creates a calendar event, and an exclamation mark saves a note.

Communication is pulled together in something called the Minimal Hub. Swipe right from the home screen, and you get a single, unified list of everything that’s come in: emails from every account, texts, missed calls, voicemails, and calendar invitations. You can read and reply without opening a separate app, which makes a full inbox feel like clearing a short list rather than bouncing between five different places.

Two quieter features round out the software side. The Activity Bar puts 24 dots on the home screen, one per hour. Each turns white when your time stays focused, and red when the hour slips into social apps or media. The notification LED lets you assign colors and patterns to specific contacts and apps, so a glance at your desk tells you what’s actually waiting.

The hardware underneath makes it a credible daily driver. A 3.92-inch AMOLED at 1080×1240 pixels and 90Hz, a MediaTek Dimensity 8300 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB or 512GB of storage make up the core. Connectivity covers 5G, Wi-Fi 6E, and NFC. The rear camera is 50MP, the front has a 20MP shooter, and there’s both 27W wired and 15W wireless charging, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack.

The phone sits in an aluminum frame measuring 122.6mm x 72mm x 9.48mm, in three finishes. Pearl is a brushed light alloy in a warm off-white. Onyx is an anodized alloy in a deep near-black. Ember is an anodized minimal orange, offered as a launch exclusive. The design language is restrained throughout, with nothing calling for attention except the keyboard, which announces itself plainly.

What’s interesting about the Minimal Phone 2 is that its restraint doesn’t feel punishing. It still runs full Android, so banking apps, navigation, music, and messaging are all there. What changes is how you arrive at them. Rather than a phone that sprawls into your day uninvited, this one waits to be needed, which in a landscape of devices competing for attention, feels unusual.

Click here to Buy Now: $599 $699 ($100 off). Hurry, only 657/1000 left! Raised over $1,009,000.

The post This $549 QWERTY Android Phone Was Built to Give You Your Day Back first appeared on Yanko Design.