Tag Archives: phones

Nothing Phone (4a) Hands-on at MWC 2026: Here’s which color NOT to buy…

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Nothing has a flair for the dramatic – their MWC setup was no exception. Instead of a stuffy booth, they dropped a mysterious shipping container in an open square. It cranked open to reveal the Phone (4a) in its four colorways, a slick bit of industrial theater that gets people talking. We’d all seen the white and pink versions on YouTube, but seeing them in person alongside the brand new black and blue models changes the calculus entirely. It immediately became clear there are two versions of this phone you should absolutely buy, and two you should probably skip. The reasons are not what you might think, and it all comes down to the subtle interplay of material, color, and finish.

Lined up under glass, the quartet looked impressive. The initial reveal was just that, a visual presentation to let the press get their shots and build some hype. Nothing clearly knew which colors were their heroes; the white and pink that led their digital marketing campaign were positioned prominently. The black and blue felt like they were held back for this physical debut, and it makes sense why. In the controlled lighting of the display, they all looked sharp. But a phone isn’t a museum piece, it’s an object you hold and interact with in countless environments, and that’s where the story took a sharp turn later that evening.

Designer: Nothing

Later that night, the glass came off. At Nothing’s party, they had operational units for everyone to actually handle. First impressions… The device feels solid, and the overall form is a refinement of their established language. As I wrote last week, this is easily Nothing’s most confident design yet; it feels less like a startup experiment and more like a statement from a company that knows exactly what it’s doing. We cycled through the Glyph lights, pairing them with the classic and new generative ringtones, and the effect is still as cool as ever. But my focus was on how the materials felt, and how the colors held up in the real world.

Let’s get right to it: avoid the black. I know it’s the default safe choice for many, but it betrays the entire Nothing ethos. The earlier grey versions of their phones created a beautiful contrast, letting you peer in and appreciate the texture and layout of the components underneath. This new black is just pitch black. In low light, it becomes an amorphous blob, and under direct light, the glass back turns into a smudgy mirror, catching chaotic reflections that obscure any sense of depth. It loses all the nuance and visual intrigue that makes these phones special. You’re left with a simple black rectangle, and frankly, you can get that from anyone.

The blue is a more complicated story, and a more disappointing one. The shade of blue itself is fantastic, a vibrant choice that really stands out. The frame is the culprit here. Nothing uses plastic for its frames, which is fine, but the finish on the blue model makes it look and feel overtly like plastic. It has a certain sheen that reads as “budget-ish,” undermining the otherwise premium and considered design of the phone. While the frames on the white and black models have a finish that elevates them, the blue’s just doesn’t stick the landing. It’s a small detail that makes a huge difference in desirability. Thankfully, it’s a problem that can be solved with a good metal bumper case, if you’re truly set on the color.

This is why the white and pink versions are the ones to get. The white is the quintessential Nothing look; clean, architectural, and it showcases the internal components and Glyph system perfectly. The frame’s finish looks gorgeous and intentional. The pink is the surprise winner. It’s a fantastic, almost salmon-like shade that is both playful and sophisticated, and the finish on its frame works in harmony with the color. It feels fun without feeling cheap. Both of these colors feel like they were the primary focus of the design team, where the material choices and color selection are in perfect sync to create a cohesive and desirable object.

Of course, the phone is more than its colorway. The camera is genuinely impressive for this bracket. I took a few shots in the less-than-ideal lighting of the party, and while the processing takes a beat longer than you’d expect, the results are worth it. I was seriously impressed by the quality coming from the 3.5x lens; it’s sharp and holds detail well. The software felt snappy, and the screen is bright and responsive. It’s a proper smartphone experience, wrapped in a design that still turns heads and starts conversations, which has always been Nothing’s core strength.

This MWC party was just the appetizer for the main course. Nothing is holding another event on March 5th, where the full, official launch will happen. That’s when we’ll get the final specs, pricing, and availability. There is also a persistent rumor that the company will use that event to debut a more powerful Phone (4a) Pro model. Given the confidence on display in Barcelona, Nothing is clearly holding a few cards back for the big reveal. They got our attention with the hardware, now we wait to see the full strategy.

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iPhone 17e Gets MagSafe but No Dynamic Island or Gemini Apple Intelligence… Is It Worth Buying?

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Apple has a habit of making its budget phones more interesting than they have any right to be. The iPhone 17e packs the same A19 chip found in the standard iPhone 17 into a $599 body, with a 6-core CPU built on 3-nanometer architecture, a 4-core GPU with Neural Accelerators, and a 16-core Neural Engine optimized for large generative models. Live Translation, Call Screening, Visual Intelligence, and Hold Assist all run natively on a phone that costs $200 less than the base iPhone 17. That’s the real headline, even if Apple hasn’t framed it quite that directly.

The A19 here is a binned variant with a 4-core GPU versus the 5-core in the standard iPhone 17, but graphics performance is still around 30% faster than the A18 in the 16e. The Neural Accelerators embedded in each GPU core are new to this tier and allow Apple Intelligence to run efficiently on-device rather than leaning on cloud processing. For everyday tasks, the performance gap between the 17e and the standard iPhone 17 will be essentially invisible.

Designer: Apple

MagSafe finally arrives on the “e” lineup, and it’s one of the more consequential additions Apple has made to this tier in years. The 16e’s absence from the MagSafe ecosystem was a genuine frustration, and the 17e corrects it with 15W wireless charging, double the 7.5W of its predecessor. The full ecosystem of snap-on chargers, car mounts, battery packs, and wallet accessories now works as intended. Storage starts at 256GB, double the 16e’s entry point at the exact same $599 price. On a phone shooting 48MP stills and 4K Dolby Vision video natively, that extra headroom is genuinely appreciated.

The C1X modem delivers up to twice the 5G speeds of the C1 in the 16e while consuming 30% less energy, matching the connectivity of the more expensive iPhone Air. The single 48MP Fusion camera pulls double duty with an optical-quality 2x telephoto mode, next-generation portraits with adjustable post-capture depth, and improved low-light processing through the A19’s image pipeline. Ceramic Shield 2 brings 3x better scratch resistance than the previous generation, and a new antireflective coating makes the display noticeably more usable outdoors. Battery life sits at 26 hours of rated video playback, with a 50% charge in 30 minutes using a 20W adapter.

The honest part: the notch is still here in 2026, and the 60Hz display is increasingly hard to defend. The Gemini-integrated Apple Intelligence features remain locked to higher-end models for now, so the 17e gets the core AI suite but not the full picture of where Apple Intelligence is heading. For anyone on an iPhone 11 through 13, this is a clear, confident upgrade. For 16e owners, MagSafe and doubled storage are real improvements but may not justify a full cycle. At $599, the 17e is the most accessible entry point into Apple’s AI era, and that counts for more than the notch counts against it.

Pre-orders open March 4, units ship March 11, starting at $599 for 256GB.

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Motorola’s First-Ever Book-Style Foldable Has the #1-Rated Camera

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The RAZR name has always carried a certain drama to it. For two decades, it meant the thinnest thing in the room, often at the expense of everything else. The new motorola razr fold, first teased at CES 2026, takes the opposite approach, asking what happens when you refuse to give anything up, and the answer turns out to be a phone that unfolds into an 8.1-inch canvas you can actually work on.

This is Motorola’s first book-style foldable, a different animal from the clamshell razr that folds vertically. Open it up, and you get a 2K LTPO display that peaks at 6,200 nits, bright enough to use comfortably in direct sunlight, and wide enough to run three apps side by side without everything feeling cramped. Close it, and the 6.6-inch external screen handles most of what you’d normally unlock the phone for anyway.

Designer: Motorola

The physical design is harder to dismiss than the numbers suggest. At 4.6mm thin when open and 9.9mm when folded, it doesn’t read as a productivity device that tolerates being a phone on the side. A stainless steel teardrop hinge guides the fold, while a titanium inner plate distributes pressure across the crease so the display returns to its original shape after each cycle. The Pantone Blackened Blue version has a matte, textured surface; the Lily White option goes for a softer, more reflective hand.

Camera performance is where Motorola appears to have placed its biggest bet. The razr fold earned DXOMARK’s #1 ranking for foldable cameras in North America, backed by a 50 MP Sony LYTIA 828 main sensor, a 50 MP Sony LYTIA 600 periscope telephoto with 3x optical zoom, and a 50 MP ultrawide with a 122-degree field of view that focuses as close as 3.5 cm. The fold-forward form also doubles as a tabletop tripod, which is a minor convenience until you stop fumbling with a prop.

Inside, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 handles the workload with 16GB of RAM and storage of up to 1TB. The 6,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery is, by Motorola’s account, the largest in any foldable currently available. The 80W TurboPower charging is supposed to deliver 12 or more hours of use from under 10 minutes plugged in, though those results depend on usage conditions that are rarely as tidy as a manufacturer’s press release describes.

The razr fold also supports the moto pen ultra, sold separately, adding pressure sensitivity and palm rejection to the large display. For anyone already carrying a stylus with a tablet, the pitch is obvious. For everyone else, it leaves an open question about whether a phone at €1,999 for the European launch bundle actually replaces the tablet it resembles, or just occupies an expensive spot between the two.

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Leica and Xiaomi Built a Phone With a Rotatable Camera Ring

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Most of us carry a capable camera in our pockets every day, yet somehow the act of taking a photo still feels like wrestling with a piece of software rather than making an actual picture. You tap, swipe, wait for the AI to decide what the scene should look like, and end up with something technically perfect and faintly anonymous. That’s the frustration the Leica Leitzphone powered by Xiaomi is trying to address, arriving at MWC 2026 as a phone designed around the idea that shooting should feel deliberate.

The most telling detail is the rotatable camera ring around the lens module. It’s a physical control you can assign to focal length, focus, or bokeh depth, borrowing directly from the tactile language of Leica’s rangefinder cameras. There’s something telling about that choice: at a time when every interaction is a touch gesture, adding a ring you can actually turn is a quiet argument that the best interface for a camera might not be a flat sheet of glass.

Designer: Leica x Xiaomi

The hardware behind that ring is genuinely serious. The primary sensor is a 1-inch format with LOFIC HDR technology, which gives it a real optical size advantage over the smaller sensors in most flagship phones, particularly in high-contrast or low-light situations. A 200 MP telephoto covering 75–100 mm and a 14 mm ultra-wide complete the system, so the focal length range maps fairly naturally onto how photographers tend to think rather than how smartphone specs sheets tend to read.

Software is where it gets more interesting, and where you’re asked to trust the collaboration a little more. Leica Essential Mode simulates the output of two specific cameras: the Leica M9 and the M3 with MONOPAN 50 film. For people who know those cameras, that’s a specific and meaningful promise. For everyone else, it’s an aesthetic reference that requires some faith, and there’s a gap between “inspired by classic Leica lenses” and actually using one that the marketing doesn’t quite close.

The rest of the phone is exactly what a 2026 flagship should be. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 handles the processing, a 6,000 mAh battery supports 90W wired and 50W wireless charging, and the 6.9-inch 120 Hz OLED display hits 3,500 nits peak brightness. Leica also redesigned the entire UI, with custom fonts, icons, and two interface themes running across every system element, which is more thoroughgoing than a co-branded phone usually gets.

One feature that doesn’t make the headline but probably should is the built-in Content Authenticity Initiative metadata support, which embeds provenance data in every image to confirm its origin and integrity. As AI-generated imagery gets harder to distinguish from photographs, having a phone that can prove a picture is real starts to feel less like a niche feature and more like an actual need.

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If F1 Engineers Designed A Foldable Smartphone: HONOR Magic V6 Hands-On at MWC 2026

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Inside the engine of a high-performance car, components endure thousands of violent explosions per minute, resisting incredible friction and wear. The materials chosen for this environment are selected for one reason: absolute, uncompromising durability. One of the most resilient of these materials is silicon nitride, a ceramic used where extreme toughness is the only acceptable standard. It is a substance born from one of the harshest mechanical environments imaginable.

Honor has taken that same material and applied it to the screen of the Magic V6. This decision to borrow from the world of motorsport engineering is a telling one, and it is a philosophy that extends throughout the device. The hinge is benchmarked against the A-pillar of a modern EV, and the battery’s chemistry is pushed to new limits of silicon content. The 2026 F1 season starts in a few days, but apparently we are seeing F1-level engineering in the smartphone world already.

Designer: Honor

Certain objects feel like they should be impossible. A foldable phone that, when closed, is as thin as a conventional flagship, yet contains a battery that is larger than any of its thicker rivals, presents a genuine design paradox. The physics of space and energy density suggest that one of these goals must aggressively compromise the other. You can have a thin device, or you can have a big battery, but the laws of thermodynamics are usually quite firm about not letting you have both.

The Honor Magic V6 manages to exist in this paradoxical space. It resolves the contradiction by treating the inside of the phone like a three-dimensional puzzle, where core components were redesigned and relocated to accommodate its massive power source. This internal architecture is then wrapped in a shell of exotic materials, including that screen coating developed for racing engines and a hinge with the structural integrity of an automotive safety pillar.

The battery itself is the real story here, the anchor for the entire design. To fit a 6660mAh silicon-carbon cell into this chassis, Honor had to completely re-engineer the phone’s internal layout. They customized and moved key components, including the speaker, the NFC module, and even the USB-C port, all to carve out precious fractions of a millimeter around the battery. The result is a cell with 25% silicon content, giving it the highest capacity ever seen in a foldable. This is the kind of obsessive internal space management that you see in high-end watchmaking or, well, motorsport, where every single component is fighting for its place.

Then you learn about the version they are keeping for the Chinese market, and the engineering goes from impressive to just plain absurd. This model gets the next-generation Silicon-carbon Blade Battery, pushing the silicon content to 32% and the capacity to over 7000mAh. It uses a unique stacking technology, with each power-generating layer measuring a mind-numbing 0.15mm thick. This might be the thinnest, most energy-dense battery ever put into a consumer device. It is a quiet technological flex, a statement that Honor is not just competing, but is capable of producing battery technology that feels a generation ahead of what we see elsewhere.

That philosophy of extreme durability extends to the hinge, the component that carries all the mechanical stress of a foldable. The device opens and closes with a satisfying, confident action, backed by a rating for half a million cycles, which is a frankly absurd number. At their keynote experience zone, Honor even had a V6 operating completely underwater, its hinge cycling open and closed without a single issue. This is an interesting, if slightly dramatic, way to communicate long-term reliability. We have all seen foldables that delicately dance around IP ratings and overall durability claims, but this is a clear statement of intent to build something that feels solid and dependable from the first time you open it.

Fitting a 64MP periscope camera into a device this ridiculously thin is another piece of that engineering puzzle. People who own the V5 might not see a massive day-to-day difference in thickness, but in the grander scheme, the ability to shave off millimeters while adding complex optical hardware is where the real magic lies. This focus on miniaturization and strength is not isolated to the V6. We saw the same DNA in their Robot Phone concept, where this hinge technology allowed them to shrink the necessary micromotors by a staggering 70% to achieve its tiny, folding camera design. This is a company obsessed with pushing the boundaries of mechanical engineering.

This hardware obsession serves a very specific software strategy. The team seems to have built the V6 with the assumption that its ideal customer already owns a Mac, an Apple Watch, and AirPods. They have leaned into this, building in one-tap file transfer to macOS, full support for the iWork suite, and even iCloud integration. It’s a bold move, positioning an Android device as the ultimate companion for the Apple ecosystem, all accomplished using open interfaces. It’s safe to say that not only did Honor build a highly-engineered design-forward foldable that’s thinner than any other Android device, they ended up making a foldable phone that Apple users can buy and use LONG before the foldable iPhone comes out!

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From Magnetic Modules to Neon Lights: TECNO’s Wild Phone Concepts

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For years, smartphone makers have been quietly taking things away. The removable battery went first, then the headphone jack, then anything else that made a phone feel repairable or adaptable. TECNO showed up at MWC 2026 with a different idea, bringing a collection of concepts that go in the opposite direction, adding to the phone rather than stripping it down. Some of these ideas are genuinely practical. Others are just fun to think about.

The most developed concept is the Modular Magnetic Interconnection Technology, which lets you snap hardware modules onto the phone magnetically. Telephoto lenses, action cameras, extra battery packs, and over a dozen other components can attach and detach as needed. TECNO presented two design versions: ATOM, with a clean white-and-red palette built around the idea of efficient, intentional use, and MODA, which takes the same modular logic but wraps it in a bolder, more aggressive look. The phone stays slim by default, and you only add bulk when the situation actually calls for it.

Designer: TECNO

MODA

The POVA Ecosystem takes a more focused angle, targeting mobile gamers specifically. POVA Metal is the world’s first full-metal unibody 5G phone, and it pairs with a POVA Controller Slide that supports a 0 to 25-degree adjustable viewing angle and is optimized for both FPS and MOBA games. The controller also supports wireless charging, which is a small but welcome detail. A POVA Earphone with dot-matrix lighting rounds out the set, giving the whole ecosystem a consistent visual identity.

POVA Ecosystem

AI EINK is one of the quieter ideas in the lineup. The back panel reads colors from the camera and shifts its appearance to match, with further adjustments available through an app. How often someone would actually use this outside a case is a fair question, but the idea of a phone that responds to its surroundings rather than just sitting there is at least an interesting one to sit with.

AI EINK

POVA Neon is the concept that most clearly exists as a statement rather than a solution. It uses ionized inert gas lighting, the same technology behind neon signs, to create a glowing effect on the back panel. The renders show branching blue light that looks like something between a lightning bolt and a screensaver. It’s hard to argue that it solves a problem anyone has, but not everything at a concept showcase needs to. Sometimes a phone that looks like it’s charging from a thunderstorm is just fun to put on a table.

POVA Neon

These are all still concepts, which means most of them won’t ship in this form, if they ship at all. The modular system is the one worth watching most closely, since the core tension it tries to address, keeping phones lightweight while making AI and computing demands heavier, isn’t going away. We can only hope that TECNO will fare better than others who also tried to make the modular phone dream a reality.

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Xiaomi 17 Ultra Review: Lighter, Flatter, and Sharper Than Ever

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PROS:


  • Excellent main and telephoto photo quality

  • Big and bright 6.9-inch LTPO AMOLED display

  • Strong performance

  • Improved ergonomic and stylish design

CONS:


  • Limiting macro use with a minimum focus distance of 30 cm

  • Noticeable warmth during camera use

RATINGS:

AESTHETICS
ERGONOMICS
PERFORMANCE
SUSTAINABILITY / REPAIRABILITY
VALUE FOR MONEY

EDITOR'S QUOTE:

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is a camera-first flagship that finally feels balanced in the hand, and even more balanced in its image processing.

Within the renamed family, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is the boldest expression of what Xiaomi thinks a 2026 flagship should be. It arrives globally as a big, confident phone that refuses to blend into the background. It is unapologetically camera-centric, and it is packed with specs that read like a wish list.  

On paper, Xiaomi has the ingredients to back that up. You get a 6.9-inch LTPO AMOLED display, a Leica-tuned triple camera system with a 200 MP periscope telephoto, and Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5. The global model carries a 6,000 mAh battery with 90W wired and 50W wireless charging, which is still a serious setup even before real-world testing.

Designer: Xiaomi

The camera hardware also shifts in meaningful ways, with the main sensor switching from Sony to OmniVision, and the zoom strategy changing from two telephoto cameras to one lens with continuous 75 mm to 100 mm optical zoom. So does the Xiaomi 17 Ultra deliver ultra-level performance where it counts. After two weeks with it, here is what I found.

Aesthetics

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is not a phone that tries to disappear in your hand or your pocket. The gigantic circular Leica camera island still dominates the rear panel, just like on the previous model, but there is a subtle shift in design language. With a flatter back panel and flat side frame, the 17 Ultra leans into a cleaner, more minimal look than the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. The small Ultra logo with its red underline sitting above the camera bump adds a bit of character without turning the phone into a billboard.

The color palette for the global model leans into classic tones. Xiaomi focuses on black, white, and green for most markets, skipping the violet shade that appears in China. The Starlit Green unit I received is the standout, with a deep moss green base and speckling that catches the light like a dusting of stars, which makes the name feel earned. The black option looks stealthy, but the red accent on the camera ring keeps it from feeling flat, while the white version goes for a high contrast look with the black camera bump and a silver ring and side frame to tie it all together. If you are coming from the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, the evolution feels more like refinement than reinvention, yet the 17 Ultra looks more cohesive and more modern from the rear.

Ergonomics

The first thing I expected to notice when I pick up the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is the weight and thickness. The phone uses a large battery, a complex camera stack, and a sturdy frame, and all of that adds up in the hand. That said, I was pleasantly surprised. At 8.29mm thickness and about 219g, Xiaomi managed to make the 17 Ultra the slimmest and lightest among its Ultra series. The device is still big and not exactly a lightweight phone, but it feels a lot more comfortable to hold than your eyes perceive.

Ergonomically, the device feels well-balanced in the hand, which is a welcoming improvement from the top-heavy feel you get from holding the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. Xiaomi 17 Ultra adapts a flat display, for the first time for its Ultra line, and helps with the grip. Because it’s well-balanced, the camera bump becomes a natural resting point on the back, which can actually improve grip. At the same time, this is not a one-handed phone in any universe, and if you are coming from something smaller, you will need to adjust how you hold it, how you pocket it, and even how you reach for the top corners of the screen.

The global Xiaomi 17 Ultra uses a 6,000 mAh silicon-carbon battery instead of the 6,800 mAh cell in the China model. Even with the smaller capacity, it should still be enough for a full heavy day for most people. Charging is excellent with 90 W wired and 50 W wireless, and the 90 W wired mode supports PPS or Programmable Power Supply, so you can get true fast charging with any PPS-compatible USB-C charger, not only Xiaomi’s own adapter.

Performance

The display on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is built to impress at first sight. It is a 6.9-inch LTPO AMOLED panel with 120 Hz refresh, a 1.5K class resolution at around 1200 x 2608 pixels, and a claimed 3500 nits peak brightness. It looks sharp and vibrant, and the huge screen makes movies, games, and photo editing feel more immersive. Xiaomi also adds TUV Rheinland certifications for low blue light, flicker-free performance, and circadian-friendly tuning, which are designed to reduce eye fatigue during long viewing sessions.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, and the global configurations come with 16GB of RAM paired with either 512GB or 1TB of storage. It is genuinely nice to see a 1TB option offered globally, since that is still not something every flagship brings outside China. The phone flies through heavy multitasking, high refresh rate gaming, and demanding camera workloads without stutter. On the software side, it runs Android 16 with Xiaomi’s HyperOS 3, which is Xiaomi’s unified platform designed to feel lighter and more connected across phones, tablets, and other devices.

The camera system is where the Xiaomi 17 Ultra really tries to separate itself. Xiaomi drops the older quad camera approach and commits to a triple setup. The main camera is a 23-mm equivalent 50 MP unit with an f/1.67 aperture, OIS, and OmniVision’s Light Fusion 1050L sensor. The 75-100mm equivalent telephoto is a 200 MP periscope with OIS using Samsung’s HPE sensor, with a f/2.39-2.96 aperture. Rounding it out is a 50 MP 14-mm equivalent ultra-wide with an f/2.2 aperture using Samsung’s JN5 sensor.

23mm, Leica Authentic

75mm, Leica Vibrant

100mm, Leica Vibrant

On the main camera, Xiaomi pairs the Light Fusion 1050L sensor with LOFIC technology. LOFIC stands for Lateral Overflow Integration Capacitor, and it is designed to reduce highlight clipping by giving each pixel extra headroom before bright areas turn into flat white. In practice, it helps keep texture in skies and reflections while still holding onto shadow detail in high contrast scenes.

23mm, Leica Vibrant

200mm, Leica Authentic

Zoom is the other headline change. Instead of dual telephoto cameras, Xiaomi uses a floating lens structure to deliver continuous optical zoom from 75 mm to 100 mm, which makes it easy to pick between framing without obvious digital cropping. The limitation is that the range is fairly tight, so it is more about fine-tuning perspective than dramatically pulling faraway subjects closer. There is also a close-up trade-off, since the telephoto now focuses down to about 30 cm rather than the 10 cm I could get on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra, so it is less useful as a pseudo macro lens.

45mm, Leica Vibrant

100mm, Leica Vibrant

In real use, both the main camera and the telephoto produce excellent images with wide dynamic range, natural color, and strong detail in various lighting conditions. The images look clean rather than overprocessed or oversharpened. Portrait mode is especially flexible, offering eight focal lengths from 23 mm through 100 mm equivalents, with pleasant bokeh and strong separation, even if it can occasionally miss a fine strand of hair when I pixel peep. I also noticed the phone can get warm even after relatively short camera use, and hopefully Xiaomi can improve this with future updates.

75mm, Leica Vibrant

75mm, Leica Vibrant

100mm, Leica Vibrant

The ultrawide is solid but a step behind the main and telephoto in refinement. The upgraded 50 megapixel front camera with autofocus is a nice quality of life improvement, and it looks great in good light. In backlight or low light, selfies can come out a bit soft as the processing works harder to control noise.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra’s triple camera system can shoot video up to 8K at 30 fps, and it also offers 4K at up to 120 fps, although the ultrawide tops out at 4K at 60 fps. The front camera can record up to 4K at 60 fps, which is plenty for vlogs and high-quality selfies. Dolby Vision is supported across the cameras, and Xiaomi also includes creator-friendly tools like LOG recording up to 4K at 120 fps with stabilization on, plus LUT import for quicker grading and a more consistent look.

100m, Leica Portrait

100mm, Leica Portrait,

100mm, Leica Portrait, B&W Hig Contrast Filter

In performance, the 17 Ultra generally produces sharp, well-exposed footage with a fairly wide dynamic range, and stabilization stays strong when I am walking or panning. Low-light video also holds up well, with impressive detail for a phone, thanks in part to the large main sensor. Autofocus is usually smooth, but it can struggle in tricky conditions like backlit scenes or low light, where it may hesitate or hunt before it locks.

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra China version gets a 6,800mAh battery, but globally, it comes with a 6,000mAh battery. It should last you a full day, even with heavy use. It supports 90W wired charge and 50W wireless charge. 90W wired charge is PPS, so you can take full advantage of fast charging with a PPS compatible charger, not just with Xiaomi’s proprietary brick.

Sustainability

Xiaomi’s sustainability story for the 17 Ultra is mostly about longevity rather than eco materials. The phone uses Xiaomi Shield Glass 3.0 on the front, and it carries an IP68 rating, which should help it survive years of drops, rain, and daily wear without needing an early replacement. That kind of durability matters because the most sustainable phone is often the one you do not have to replace early.

Software support strengthens that long-life angle. Xiaomi promises five major OS updates and six years of security updates, which is not class-leading, but it is enough to make long-term ownership feel realistic at this price. It also makes the phone a safer buy if you plan to keep it for several years or pass it on later. What Xiaomi does not really emphasize, at least from what I can find, is the use of recycled or more sustainable materials in the phone itself.

Value

For global buyers, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra starts at EUR 1,499, which is roughly $1,620 USD, for 16GB/512GB, with the 16GB plus 1TB configuration expected around EUR 1,699, roughly $1,840 USD. That puts it directly in the same bracket as the most expensive Samsung Galaxy and iPhone models. If you look at what the Xiaomi 17 Ultra offers, it is easy to see the value in hardware alone, especially in cameras, battery, and storage.

The challenge is that Xiaomi is not only competing with Samsung and Apple, but also with other camera-focused Android flagships that are expected to land this year. That means the 17 Ultra has to win on the full experience, not just its spec sheet, especially when buyers are cross-shopping within the same premium price tier. Even so, the 17 Ultra can justify its price if you care most about its Leica-tuned imaging, huge display, and fast charging rather than ecosystem lock-in.

Verdict

The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is one of the most complete camera-first flagships Xiaomi has shipped for the global market. It nails the fundamentals with a huge, bright display, top-tier performance, and charging that makes most rivals feel slow and old-fashioned. The bigger story is how coherent the imaging experience feels, since the main and telephoto cameras deliver natural color, wide dynamic range, and consistent results across lenses.

Of course, there are real trade-offs, too. The new 75 mm to 100 mm continuous zoom is great for framing, but it is not a massive jump in reach, and the longer minimum focus distance makes the telephoto less useful for pseudo macro shots than the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. The global price also puts it in direct competition with the biggest names, so this is no longer a value flagship by default.  Still, there is no doubt the 17 Ultra earns its Ultra name. It delivers a huge, gorgeous screen, genuinely fast charging, and one of the most enjoyable still photo experiences you can get on a phone, with Leica-tuned color that looks natural rather than overcooked. If those are your priorities, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is an easy flagship to love.

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5 Best Galaxy S26 Ultra Features That Finally Fix Real Problems

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Samsung has a long tradition of cramming its biggest ideas into the biggest phone it makes. The Galaxy S26 Ultra carries the spiritual lineage of the Galaxy Note, a device that once seemed absurd for strapping a stylus to a phone the size of a small tablet. That absurdity became a template, and the Ultra line has inherited both the ambition and the expectation that comes with being Samsung’s flagship of flagships.

Sifting through the usual Unpacked fanfare and no small amount of marketing jargon, five features stood out as genuinely worth paying attention to. Some are brand new. Others are long overdue. And at least one raises more questions than it answers, which is sometimes the most interesting kind of upgrade to talk about.

Designer: Samsung

A screen that knows when to keep secrets

The standout feature of the Galaxy S26 Ultra is something no other phone has attempted at this level: a built-in privacy display. This is not a matte screen protector you peel out of a box or a software filter that dims your screen to a murky grey. Samsung has engineered this at the pixel level of the OLED panel itself, controlling how each pixel disperses light so that the display becomes unreadable from side angles while remaining perfectly clear head-on.

The practical appeal is immediate for anyone who has ever shielded their phone screen on a crowded train or tilted it away from a nosy seatmate at a coffee shop. Samsung gives users granular control over the feature, offering both partial and maximum privacy levels. It can be set to activate only for specific apps, so your banking app gets the full blackout treatment while your weather widget stays visible to everyone around you.

AI that does the boring stuff for you

Samsung is calling the Galaxy S26 an “Agentic AI” phone, which sounds like a term conjured by a committee, but the ideas behind it are surprisingly practical. The most compelling addition is Automated App Actions, where the phone handles multi-step tasks in the background while you do something else entirely. Ask it to book an Uber, and it will navigate through the app, confirm the ride, and notify you when it’s done. Screenshot Analyzer, meanwhile, sorts your chaotic screenshot folder into categories like boarding passes, QR codes, and web pages.

Audio Eraser also received a meaningful expansion, and it now works on third-party apps like YouTube, Netflix, and Instagram in real time. Watching a hockey game on your phone and can barely hear the commentators over the roaring crowd? Audio Eraser can strip away that background noise as the video plays. It is not perfect, and audio artifacts do creep in, but Samsung also upgraded Bixby to handle natural language commands for device settings, which makes it feel less like a forgotten assistant and more like a functional one.

Faster charging, finally (with a few asterisks)

Samsung has historically been cautious with charging speeds, and whether that conservatism stems from engineering prudence or the long shadow of the Galaxy Note 7 battery fiasco is a question only Samsung can answer. The Galaxy S26 Ultra now supports 60W wired charging, a 33 percent jump from the previous 45W ceiling, and it can bring the same 5,000mAh battery from zero to 75 percent in roughly 30 minutes. Samsung even ships a faster 3-amp cable in the box, though you still have to supply your own charger.

Wireless charging also got a substantial bump to 25W through the Qi2 standard, up from a modest 15W on the Galaxy S25 Ultra. There are caveats worth noting here, however. The Galaxy S26 Ultra has no built-in magnets, so reaching that 25W speed requires a magnetic case for proper alignment with Qi2 chargers. Samsung cited thickness concerns, but the phone is only 0.3mm thinner than its predecessor, which makes that reasoning feel a little thin itself. Pun intended.

Better cameras hiding behind the same specs

The camera hardware on the Galaxy S26 Ultra received subtle but targeted upgrades rather than a wholesale overhaul. The 200MP main sensor now has an f/1.4 aperture, widened from f/1.7, letting in 47 percent more light. The 50MP 5x telephoto camera also opened up to f/2.9 from f/3.4 for a 37 percent brightness improvement. These wider apertures directly feed into Samsung’s improved Nightography mode, which uses lens-specific noise reduction to produce cleaner photos and videos in low light.

On the software side, Photo Assist now accepts written prompts in natural language, so you can describe edits like “make this a night scene” or “remove the person on the left” without digging through menus. Samsung also introduced APV, a lossless video codec that supports 8K recording at 30 frames per second for users who need maximum editing flexibility. One odd wrinkle, though: the S26 Ultra has a hidden 24MP shooting mode that sits between 12MP and 50MP for balanced detail and color, but enabling it requires installing a separate Camera Assistant app from the Galaxy Store.

The pen that refuses to die

The S Pen remains one of the features that separates the Galaxy S Ultra line from every other flagship on the market. It still lacks the Bluetooth connectivity that Samsung removed with the Galaxy S25 Ultra, so there is no remote shutter or gesture control from a distance. The external design has changed slightly to match the S26 Ultra’s rounder corners, giving the stylus tip an asymmetric curve. This means you now have to insert it the correct way, or it will stick out awkwardly from the bottom edge.

None of that diminishes the fact that the S Pen earmarks the Galaxy S26 Ultra as more than a consumption device. Just as interest in handwriting, sketching, and analog-style note-taking is quietly resurging, having a built-in stylus with pressure sensitivity and palm rejection feels less like a legacy feature and more like a forward-looking one. Competitors like Huawei, Motorola, and TCL have tried to replicate this kind of stylus integration with varying degrees of success, which suggests the idea still has legs even if Samsung’s execution feels like it is coasting a bit this generation.

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5 Best Foldable Phone Concepts We’re Still Waiting To See At MWC 2026

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MWC 2026 is arriving in Barcelona next week under the theme “The IQ Era,” and the foldable conversation has never had more momentum behind it. The worldwide foldable smartphone market is forecast to grow 30% year-over-year in 2026, and with names like Samsung, Apple, and HONOR all moving pieces on the same board, the show floor feels electric. The race isn’t just about who ships first; it’s about who ships something worth keeping.

But the most interesting foldable ideas rarely make it to the keynote stage. Some live in patents. Some debut at design expos and disappear into concept archives. Others surface on design blogs and quietly accumulate a following of people who can’t stop thinking about them. These five concepts represent everything the foldable category could become if ambition and engineering ever fully agreed with each other. Barcelona feels like the right backdrop for that conversation.

1. Nothing Fold (1) — The Foldable With a Spine That Speaks

Nothing has always understood that a phone is a surface before it is a device. The brand built its entire identity on making the invisible visible — circuit boards through glass, notification patterns through LEDs, and the Fold (1) concept carries that thinking directly into foldable territory. The Glyph Interface, Nothing’s signature grid of programmable lights, doesn’t just live on the back panel here. It wraps around the spine, and at boot, it traces the number “1” across the edge like a signature being written in real time.

Once the phone is running, the spine transforms into something genuinely new: a monochrome ticker-tape display that scrolls live notifications along the fold without requiring the user to open anything or wake a screen. Inside, an 8.37-inch display gives the Fold (1) the kind of canvas that makes a book-style foldable feel worth carrying. A MediaTek Dimensity 9400 chip handles the processing alongside a dedicated neural unit for on-device AI, while a 5,500mAh battery keeps the whole system running well past a single day. Five cameras — split across the rear, the spine-side flap, and dual hole-punches on both displays — mean no shooting scenario goes uncovered. This is a concept that treats the fold itself as a feature rather than a compromise.

What We Like

  • The spine-mounted ticker display turns passive notification delivery into an active design statement that no shipping foldable currently replicates.
  • Pairing a 5,500mAh battery with a power-efficient flagship chip gives this concept the endurance its ambitions genuinely require.

What We Dislike

  • Five cameras on a foldable form factor raise legitimate questions about thickness — the hardware demands and the slim silhouette are in direct tension.
  • Nothing OS remains a compelling but narrow platform, and its app ecosystem still asks more patience from users than mainstream Android does.

2. 0/1 Phone — The Foldable That Knows When to Go Quiet

Most digital wellness tools are built on a contradiction. They ask sthe oftware to solve a problem that the software created. The 0/1 phone cuts through that logic by putting the solution in the hardware itself. Closed, the phone presents an e-ink display — customizable with analog clock faces, a calendar, a music player, or whatever belongs in a calmer version of a day. There are no feeds to scroll, no notifications engineered to demand attention, no app icons arranged to maximize tap frequency. Just the time, and whatever you decided mattered before distraction had a vote.

Open it, and the phone becomes something else entirely. A flexible display running at 1080×2640 resolution gives full access to every app, every platform, every habit the closed state was holding at arm’s length. The transition between modes isn’t managed by a screen time setting buried in a menu; it’s a physical gesture. Closing the phone is the act of choosing focus, and opening it is a deliberate decision rather than a reflexive one. That distinction sounds small until you’ve spent a week with a phone that makes you conscious of every time you reach for it. The 0/1 concept understands that people don’t want less technology. They want better control over when it starts.

What We Like

  • Mapping distraction-free mode to a physical action rather than a software toggle is a smarter and more honest approach to attention management.
  • Customizable e-ink clock faces give the closed state genuine personality, making minimalism feel like a choice rather than a penalty.

What We Dislike

  • E-ink displays still lag on refresh rate and struggle with colour depth, which could make the closed-state experience feel dated compared to what users are used to.
  • Building a dual-display device that stays genuinely slim is a serious engineering challenge, and added bulk would directly undermine the concept’s entire premise.

3. Samsung L-Fold Patent — The Tetris Block the Industry Wasn’t Ready For

Samsung’s patent library is enormous, and most of what lives inside it will never become a product. But occasionally something surfaces that reframes what a foldable phone could look like at a structural level. The L-shaped concept — which, unfolded, mirrors the elongated corner-piece of a Tetris grid — is one of those designs. The top section of the display extends to one side and then folds back on itself like a flap, bringing the phone from an asymmetric L-shape into a more conventional rectangle. It’s a transformation that takes about a second to understand and considerably longer to stop thinking about.

What makes the concept genuinely interesting isn’t the shape — it’s what the folded flap can do once it’s in position. Facing outward alongside the main cameras, it becomes a live viewfinder, letting users frame selfies through the primary camera array rather than a secondary front-facing sensor that typically offers a fraction of the optical quality. The curved strip of display wrapping the spine edge serves as an ambient information surface — battery level, the time, notification tickers — visible without waking the main screen. It draws an obvious comparison to the LG Wing’s T-shaped swivel design, but the folding mechanism introduces a layer of versatility that the Wing could never access. The L-fold isn’t trying to be novel. It’s trying to be useful in ways the rectangle hasn’t figured out yet.

What We Like

  • A folded flap that doubles as a selfie viewfinder for the main cameras is one of the most practically useful ideas to emerge from any foldable concept in recent memory.
  • The spine-edge ambient display strips away the need to fully wake the phone for low-stakes information — a subtle but genuinely valuable interaction shift.

What We Dislike

  • Asymmetric form factors demand new muscle memory from users, and history suggests the mass market is slow to warm to anything that doesn’t fit an established shape.
  • Samsung patents ideas prolifically, and the distance between a filed concept and a retail device is wide enough that this design may never leave the archive.

4. OPPO x nendo Slide-Phone — The Triple-Fold That Earns Every Stage

When OPPO partnered with Japanese design studio nendo for the slide-phone concept, the goal wasn’t to make a foldable that could compete on spec sheets. The goal was to design a phone that understood how humans actually move through a day — glancing, then engaging, then working — and matched each state with exactly the right amount of screen. The mechanism unfolds in three progressive steps, each one surfacing a different display area calibrated to a specific type of task. Nendo described the motion as caterpillar-like, and the metaphor holds. This phone doesn’t hinge open. It extends with intention.

The first stage reveals 1.5 inches of display, enough for a notification glance, music control, and an incoming call. The second opens to 3.15 inches, suited to photography, video calls, and light gaming. The third and final stage unlocks the full 7-inch widescreen panel, wide enough to run on-screen game controllers across both flanks simultaneously or to frame a proper panoramic shot. A stylus is included, pushing the concept firmly into professional productivity territory. What distinguishes this design from every other multi-fold proposal isn’t the screen count; it’s that each screen size exists for a reason. That level of purposefulness in a concept is rarer than it sounds, and it’s exactly the kind of thinking MWC 2026 needs more of.

What We Like

  • Three screen sizes, each assigned to a specific use context, is the most functionally coherent multi-fold proposal the category has produced.
  • The OPPO x nendo collaboration brings genuine design philosophy to a product type that has historically been defined by engineering decisions alone.

What We Dislike

  • Three-fold points mean three mechanical vulnerabilities, and the durability science around multi-fold hardware still hasn’t caught up to the ambition.
  • The credit card form factor, when fully closed, is irresistible in theory, but the real-world pocketability of a 7-inch unfolded device still requires a convincing answer.

5. TCL Fold ‘n’ Roll — The Concept That Refused to Choose a Size

Every other foldable phone on this list commits to a fixed set of screen configurations. The TCL Fold ‘n’ Roll doesn’t. Using a combination of the brand’s proprietary dragonhinge folding mechanism and a rollable panel that extends from the chassis, the device starts as a 6.87-inch smartphone, unfolds into an 8.85-inch phablet, and then rolls out fully to become a 10-inch tablet. Three screen sizes. One device. No trade-off required. As a concept, it reads less like a product proposal and more like a direct challenge issued to every manufacturer in the room.

TCL was candid about the technical specifications still being in development when the concept was first revealed — an admission that actually made the idea more credible, not less. It signalled a team working through real problems rather than rendering a fantasy. The rollable display space has since moved meaningfully closer to commercial viability, and with the broader foldable market accelerating sharply heading into 2026, the engineering distance between this concept and a shippable product is closing. The dragonhinge gives the Fold ‘n’ Roll a mechanical foundation most conceptual devices lack. What it still needs is a manufacturer willing to see the build all the way through, and a Barcelona stage to announce it from.

What We Like

  • Phone, phablet, and tablet in a single chassis is the most versatile screen configuration concept the foldable category has put forward to date.
  • The dragonhinge technology gives this proposal a legitimate engineering backbone, separating it from pure speculation.

What We Dislike

  • Combining folding and rolling mechanisms in one device layers mechanical complexity that no manufacturer has yet solved at the consumer scale.
  • TCL has introduced multiple foldable concepts across several years, and relatively few have made the jump from concept to shelf, which tempers excitement with reasonable caution.

The Floor Is Set — Now Someone Has to Build It.

MWC 2026’s “The IQ Era” framing is ultimately about intelligence meeting design, and these five concepts each demonstrate what that looks like when executed with real conviction. One bets on identity and spectacle. One bets on restraint. Another bets on geometric reinvention, one on human-centric layering, and the last on sheer configurability. The foldable market expanding 30% year-over-year isn’t a coincidence; it reflects a growing recognition that the rectangle-shaped smartphone has stopped being interesting.

Not all of these concepts will ship. Some may arrive in forms barely recognizable compared to the original vision. But the questions they ask…about how a phone should behave when closed, how many screens a device actually needs, whether a hinge can carry a brand identity, are already changing how the industry thinks.

The post 5 Best Foldable Phone Concepts We’re Still Waiting To See At MWC 2026 first appeared on Yanko Design.

Nothing Phone (4a) Is the Most Confident Phone Nothing Has Ever Made

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The best thing that can happen to a design team is that they stop trying to go viral. Early Nothing had an almost anxious energy to it, products that felt engineered for the screenshot, for the unboxing video, for the moment of surprise. That produced some genuinely striking work, and some choices that aged less gracefully. The Phone (4a) suggests the team has moved past that entirely.

The Phone (4a) is the clearest expression of that shift yet. The pink colorway, the refined glyph interface, the periscope camera quietly migrating down to the base model, none of it screams for attention. It rewards it. This is a phone designed for people who will notice things gradually, over weeks of use, rather than in the first thirty seconds of an unboxing video.

Designer: Nothing

The pink is the first thing people will talk about, and most of them will get it slightly wrong. The phone reads pink, but the back panel is technically white. The color comes from tint layered inside the transparency, sitting between the glass and the resin underneath, which means the light has to travel through it before it bounces back to your eye. That gives it a depth and a luminosity that solid paint physically cannot produce. Nothing’s designers described it as starting with the resin being nearly identical to white, then adding a small amount of tint, then letting the tinted glass layer do the heavy lifting. The result shifts depending on the light you’re standing in, giving you a phone that changes ever so slightly in different lighting scenarios. It’s clever, considering Nothing’s done this in the past by playing with depth, relying on textures and components casting unique shadows based on the light source. Now, the company’s adding color to that formula.

Apple has been doing a version of this for years. The iMac G3 in the late nineties used translucent colored plastic to create that same sense of depth, and modern iPhones apply color to the inside surface of the rear glass rather than painting the outside. It’s a technique with a real legacy, and Nothing’s designers actually had a pink iMac on their mood board. That’s worth knowing, because it reframes the colorway from trend-chasing to something with genuine design lineage. The difference is that Nothing puts the engineering on display underneath it, so the tinted glass is also a window into the hardware, which layers the effect further.

The glyph interface on the (4a) is a 1×6 LED strip, and for the first time on an A series device, it includes the red recording indicator that has been on the numbered phones since the beginning. The team is almost protective about that red square, describing it as deserving its place on every device because being recorded carries real consequence. The animations have been rebuilt from scratch rather than ported from Phone (3), which matters because the linear format demands different thinking. The timer, for instance, uses a single falling column of light instead of the hourglass matrix on Phone (3). Same idea, different grammar. Glyph Progress now runs on Android 16’s live updates API, which means broader app compatibility across the board.

The camera doesn’t get talked about much, but it’s clearly an important part of any phone’s design and spec sheet. For starters, its design relies on a format set by its predecessor, the (3a). No fancy changes, no weird alignment like the (3a) Pro, just homogeneity… with a few upgrades. The periscope module in the (4a) uses a tetraprism design, bouncing light through multiple internal reflections to achieve optical zoom in a package compact enough to fit the base model’s profile. The (3a) Pro had a periscope too, but this one is significantly smaller. Nothing has been careful to represent the internal hardware authentically through the cover panel design, so what you see through the back is a stylized but honest reference to what’s actually underneath, including the PCB boundary, the FPC connectors, and the wireless charging coil.

Nothing announced there will be no flagship this year, and that decision reframes everything about the (4a). The A series carries the full weight of the brand’s hardware story in 2025, which means this phone needed to be genuinely good rather than good for the price. The same core design team has been on the A series since the 2A, and that continuity is visible in the way the (4a) sits between its predecessors, borrowing proportions from both without feeling like a compromise. They’ve stopped performing and started building, and the (4a) is the clearest evidence yet that those are very different things.

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