Tag Archives: phones

Interchangeable emoji camera covers give smartphones more character

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The back of our phones is always visible to the people around us, which makes it the most expressive part of the smartphone. That’s why manufacturers spend a lot of time and resources on the design of the phone’s rear, using a variety of materials for the cover and designs for the camera. Those designs, however, are decided by companies and never change once production starts. They don’t always reflect the owner’s tastes, and definitely not all the time. Being able to change your phone’s “face” to fit your mood offers a lot of freedom of expression, and it all takes is putting a different emoji on top of your camera.

Designer: Yifan Hu

Smartphone cameras are becoming more powerful and with that power comes bigger enclosures. What were once just two eyes looking at you from the back of the phone has become a large circle that adds a face to those eyes. It’s just a metaphor, of course, but one that can actually be used to design a set of accessories that turn your mobile partner into some sidekick character, complete with a face and a personality.

These emoji-inspired accessories simply put a smiley or one of its comical variants on top of the camera circle of a smartphone. It takes advantage of how most of these cameras are designed, with two of the cameras placed side by side and near the top of the circle. It’s a perfect location for eyes and a face, one that perhaps more accurately expresses your own personality or just your mood for that day.

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Of course, there are obvious limitations to this design, the biggest of which is how not all camera bumps are circular. And those that are circular aren’t always located in the middle of the phone, making it a bit awkward but not entirely unattractive to put an emoji in the corner. That said, this camera design is actually becoming more popular these days as manufacturers try to figure out the best location for the growing number and sizes of cameras on a phone.

There’s also the consideration that a smartphone might have more than just two cameras, and their locations might not perfectly align with a smiley face. That simply needs a bit of creativity to design around those restrictions, like adding mouths to the face or having asymmetrical eyes that convey even more facial expressions than a traditional smiley. It’s really a simple concept that goes a long way in adding fun to the smartphone experience, while still giving you the freedom to go back to a pristine and “normal” look from time to time.

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Experience a combination of minimalism and productivity with an E-Ink QWERTY Minimal Phone

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Some people opt for a minimalist smartphone to reduce distractions and enhance productivity. These devices typically offer only essential features, such as phone calls, messaging, notes, calendars, internet browsing, and key Android apps. This setup allows users to focus on what’s crucial without interruptions from numerous app notifications. Furthermore, these simplified phones often have extended battery life due to their limited features. If you’re drawn to a minimalistic device, the Minimal Phone could be ideal for you. It’s the product of an experienced team with a combined 60 years in design, engineering, and technology entrepreneurship. Their vision is to deliver a product that eliminates all unnecessary features.

Designers: Andre Youkhna and Armen Youssefian

Click Here to Buy Now: $325 $450 ($125 off, exclusive perk for YD Readers only). Hurry, only a few left!

The Minimal Phone is equipped with a high-performance MTK 6769 CPU and 4GB RAM, ensuring a smooth user experience. It has 128GB of storage space for apps and data and operates on Android 13, which features the latest security and system updates. The display is a 3.5” E-Ink touch screen with a resolution of 300 PPI and a high refresh rate for clear images and smooth transitions. It has an 8MP front camera and a 16MP rear camera for photography. The phone supports 802.11 a/b/g/n 2.4GHz/5GHz WiFi Direct and Bluetooth 4.1 and is compatible with AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon networks. It features a sizeable 4000mAh battery with QC 18W and wireless charging support less than 20W. The most appealing feature is the integrated tactile QWERTY keyboard.

The e-ink display of the Minimal phone offers users a comfortable, glare-free reading experience, significantly reducing eye strain even during prolonged use.

Incorporating a tactile, responsive QWERTY keyboard into a smartphone design can be complex. However, the team behind the Minimal Phone has tackled this challenge directly. The ergonomic design of the keyboard has been carefully considered to provide a comfortable user experience. The team has analyzed various factors such as keyboard layout, key size, and key travel distance to ensure they meet the expectations of a wide range of users. They understand that speed and accuracy are crucial for a satisfying typing experience, so they’ve strived to optimize these factors in the design.

The team has selected high-quality materials for the phone, considering durability and regular use over its lifespan. Recognizing the need for the keyboard to maintain its quality and responsiveness, they’ve carefully chosen the construction materials and methods. As a result, the keyboard must feel comfortable to the touch and built to last. Other standard features include NFC, GPS, A-GPS, a side-mounted fingerprint sensor, face unlock, a G sensor, a compass, a gyroscope, a proximity sensor, and a light sensor. Additionally, it also includes a 3.5mm headphone jack located on the top left-hand corner.

The Minimal Phone, thoughtfully designed for ease of use and comfort, measures 121 x 72 x 10mm (4.74″ x 2.83″ x 0.39″), akin to the ergonomic shape of a passport. Its well-proportioned layout makes it extremely comfortable to hold and type on the physical keyboard. The microphone at the bottom left of the device complements the central USB-C plug-in port flanked by speakers on its right. The phone’s left side hosts the volume control buttons—up and down—with an e-ink refresh button nestled between them. The power button is on the phone’s right side, just above the conveniently placed SIM card slot, contributing to a well-balanced and intuitive design. Plus, its slim profile allows it to disappear into a pair of jeans pocket or slip easily inside a suit coat.

The major advantage of the Minimal Phone is its e-ink display, which provides a reading experience that closely mimics reading from physical paper. The display uses ambient light to illuminate the text, reducing eye strain associated with backlit screens found in tablets and smartphones. Furthermore, e-ink displays are easier to read in bright sunlight, making the Minimal Phone perfect for outdoor reading. Additionally, e-ink displays consume significantly less power, leading to the Minimal Phone’s longer battery life, which is ideal for extended reading sessions.

Click Here to Buy Now: $325 $450 ($125 off, exclusive perk for YD Readers only). Hurry, only a few left!

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Sandmarc’s new iPhone lens gives you a bonkers 6x optical zoom AND an adjustable focus wheel

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You call that a camera bump? Hold my beer…

The smartphone camera is officially the most popular camera in the world today, accounting for a staggering 92.5% of all images taken in any given year. Conventional photographers (who make up the remaining paltry 7.5%) will argue that smartphone photography isn’t ‘real photography’, but that’s only because digital cameras offer tonnes of more variety in terms of being able to shoot on multiple types of lenses. Batting for the mobile photography team, however, is SANDMARC with their newly unveiled whopping 6x telephoto lens for the iPhone. Not only does it boost your smartphone camera’s existing zoom (which is around 30x for the iPhone 15 Pro) by an additional 6x, it also gives you the benefit of an adjustable focus wheel – probably the first for any smartphone camera lens – bridging the gap between phone and traditional camera photography.

Designer: Sandmarc

Even though a smartphone camera is ridiculously powerful for its small size, there are certain things you really wouldn’t do with it, like take wildlife shots, telephoto shots of objects far away (architecture, birds, etc.), or ultra-low DoF portrait shots. Well, maybe you’d take the latter, but that’s a legitimate gray area because artificial bokeh can never compare to the real deal. SANDMARC’s Telephoto 6x Lens wants to change that. Designed to be good enough to take on a wildlife photoshoot or to capture objects from far away because they aren’t really accessible, the zoom lens does a phenomenal job of enhancing your smartphone’s vision without causing any sort of loss in quality because of the limitations of smartphone lens structures.

Aside from extending your zoom range, the Telephoto 6x Lens prioritizes superior image quality over the limitations of your phone’s digital zoom. Crafted with high-quality, multi-coated glass, this lens promises to deliver noticeably sharper images with enhanced detail, even in challenging low-light conditions. Unlike typical add-on lenses that can be cumbersome and offer limited functionality, the SANDMARC lens boasts a unique feature: an adjustable focus wheel. This empowers you to take complete creative control over your photos. By fine-tuning the focus, you can ensure intricate details in close-up shots are captured with razor-sharp precision, adding a whole new dimension to your mobile photography repertoire.

The lens design incorporates a shallow depth of field, a technique beloved by professional photographers. This means realistic bokehs that highlight your subject beautifully, without any of those errors or artificial blurring created as a result of computational photography done by smartphone algorithms. This setup, in its truest sense, is the closest thing to bringing conventional camera tools to smartphone photography. Sure, professional camera evangelists would still say this isn’t ‘real photography’, but they also won’t deny that the results from this phone and lens setup are just immaculate.

While the $159.99 price tag might seem steep, it’s worth considering the significant enhancements it offers. The extended zoom range, improved image quality, and creative flexibility the lens provides can elevate your mobile photography to a whole new level.

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Sony Xperia 1 VI phone design might lose what makes it special

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It might come as a surprise to some that Sony actually makes smartphones. Actually, it might even come as a bigger surprise that it still makes smartphones at this point in time. Its mobile business has definitely fallen on hard times, forcing the brand to exit some global markets and sell only through online channels in others. Despite all that, Sony still believes that a smartphone has a place in its portfolio, especially as a means to access its treasury of entertainment-related content. That has been the guiding principle behind the design of its premium Xperia 1 smartphone series, but it seems that the product line’s sixth iteration will make some small but significant changes that almost undermine all of that in one fell swoop.

Designer: Sony (via zackbuks on Weibo)

Truth be told, the Sony Xperia 1 design has always been an oddity among its peers even today. It easily stands out from the crowd almost literally because of its extra tall and narrow body, designed to support a 21:9 screen aspect ratio that Sony has been advertising as the perfect format for ultra-wide content. It also distinguished itself with its 4K display resolution when all its competitors continue to play in 2K or even 2.5K figures only.

The latest rumor, however, changes the narrative a bit. According to the source, Sony will be downgrading that 4K resolution to something like 2K+ or QHD+, more in line with other high-end smartphones in recent years. More importantly, it is also making the screen a bit wider and shorter to achieve a more “normal” 19.5:9 aspect ratio, again similar to flagship devices from the likes of Samsung and Apple. It’s by no means going to be significantly smaller, as these leaked images show, but it definitely changes the shape of the phone to be less distinctive.

It sounds perplexing that Sony, which has never really minded smartphone trends and fads, would make such drastic changes, but it might all boil down to price. Sony Xperia phones have been notorious for their higher price tags compared to their peers, so downgrading one of the most expensive and uncommon components could actually do a lot to drive the cost down. Unless, of course, Sony decides to offset those savings by including features and hardware that incur just as much expenses.

That’s not to say that the Xperia 1 VI will be bereft of any notable features. Another selling point of the phone is its use of camera hardware close to Sony’s own Alpha line of mirrorless cameras. That said, its photography prowess has rarely been praised mostly because the phone barely reaches people’s hands, so making the next Xperia flagship more affordable could actually help remedy that situation.

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Infinix NOTE 40 phones blend sleek urban aesthetic with super-fast charging

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Of the many things that smartphone buyers look for, cameras and battery life probably rank the highest, even over display quality. Capturing memories is a very important part of what people use smartphones for, but an extremely short battery life can ruin even the most powerful smartphone. In fact, the more powerful a device is, the faster it will drain its battery. While batteries themselves haven’t evolved as fast as smartphones, charging technologies have been growing in leaps and bounds. In the past, super-fast charging speeds have been exclusive to high-end, premium phones, but the new Infinix NOTE 40 smartphones are bringing that technology and convenience to a wider and younger audience that also cares just as much about style as they do the rest of the phone’s specs.

Designer: Infinix

Although there are research and innovations that attempt to improve the quality of smartphone batteries, they’re pretty much still the same packs that we’ve been using for years. Manufacturers have poured their efforts into improving charging speeds instead, making sure that people spend as little time as possible when they do need to plug the phone in. That’s what Infinix’s new All-Round FastCharge 2.0 technology is trying to accomplish, bringing speed and versatility to users’ charging experience.

Infinix NOTE 40

Infinix NOTE 40

This technology supports rapid charging at 70W for the new Infinix NOTE 40 and NOTE 40 Pro (4G), as well as blazing fast 100W speeds for the Infinix NOTE 40 Pro (5G) and NOTE 40 Pro+ 5G. Thanks to Infinix’s self-developed Cheetah X1 chip, these phones can boast reaching 50% in just minutes (8 minutes for the Infinix NOTE 40 Pro+ 5G, to be precise) while still providing safety and longevity. Additional charging highlights include Bypass Charging 2.0 to minimize heat generation when playing games while the phone is plugged in, 20W wireless charging, and, perhaps most interesting, Infinix’s own brand of magnetic wireless charging technology, MagCharge.

Infinix NOTE 40 Pro (4G)

Infinix NOTE 40 Pro (4G)

Infinix NOTE 40 Pro (5G)

The Infinix NOTE 40 series is designed to cater to a younger audience that appreciates a more distinctive and livelier aesthetic than most gray, black, or even white phones in the market. That’s why Infinix adopted an urban theme for the phone’s designs, creating a sleek and modern appearance through smooth curves, colors, and materials. The Vintage Green, for example, tries to evoke a sense of charm for retro styles and uses vegan leather to add a bit of luxury to the finish. Titan Gold’s mix of blue and yellow tries to capture the image of the sun setting over the city’s horizon.

Infinix NOTE 40 Pro+ (5G)

Infinix NOTE 40 Pro+ (5G)

In terms of hardware, the Infinix NOTE 40 runs on MediaTek’s mid-range chips, paired with 8 or 12GB of RAM. All four models in this series get a 108MP main camera, though only the Pro variants put optical image stabilization (OIS) on it. The brand also introduces an AI-powered Active Halo lighting feature for dynamic notifications and accents to give a little life to your smartphone usage. The Infinix NOTE 40 series launches globally this month, available in Vintage Green, Obsidian Black, and Titan Gold colorways. A special BMW DesignWorks Racing Edition will be coming later this year to truly drive home the phone’s super-fast charging speed.

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World’s First E-Ink Smartphone with a QWERTY Keyboard will get your eyes and hands to fall in love

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It’s like if the smartphone, Kindle, and Blackberry had a baby… and frankly, it’s gorgeous.

The Minimalist Phone stands at a rather unique junction of two trajectories – one, with smartphones getting more and more advanced, and being able to do much more than they previously did, and another, with phones that are designed to be ‘dumb-phones’ that just handle the basics, and don’t have you becoming a screen addict. Strangely enough, even though the two of them should really never have an intersection point, it seems like the Minimalist Phone IS that intersection point. It’s a unique combination of traditional smartphone features, coupled with a no-nonsense design that cuts all the clutter, but reintroduces the QWERTY keyboard, bringing a world of user-focused functionality back. And just if you’re wondering, yes, the Minimal Phone works exactly like any other smartphone – it runs Android 13, supports all your favorite apps, has a fingerprint reader, 4G LTE, and surprisingly enough, both rear and front-facing cameras so you can click color photos just like you would on a regular phone. (You’ll still need to view them in color on a regular screen though)

Oh, and it also has a 3.5mm jack.

Designers: Andre Youkhna and Armen Youssefian

Click Here to Buy Now: $325 $450 ($125 off, exclusive perk for YD Readers only). Hurry, only a few left!

“Live more. Scroll less,” say Andre Youkhna and Armen Youssefian, the folks who designed the Minimal Phone, a smartphone designed to switch the existing relationship where we’re slaves to our technological devices. Here, the smartphone empowers you, giving you the features of a phone without the layer of addictive interfaces and notifications. In essence, the Minimal Phone behaves just like your existing smartphone but has a different approach to interface, features, hardware, etc.

The e-ink display of the Minimal phone offers users a comfortable, glare-free reading experience, significantly reducing eye strain even during prolonged use.

Just like the Fairphone focuses on supply-chain transparency, the Minimal Phone focuses on a user-centric design. The device boasts a 3.5-inch-wide e-ink touchscreen that runs all your apps, lets you send/receive messages, watch videos, and even browse the internet. It has a 300PPI resolution and a 90Hz refresh rate, which even by regular OLED screen standards, is pretty impressive. However, the e-ink screen notably, trades color for high-contrast, daytime visibility, and a much longer battery life. The lack of color isn’t really a bug, but rather a feature that helps deliver information without any distractions, ensuring you use your phone for exactly what you need and don’t spend more time on it than necessary.

Under the screen lies a 43-key QWERTY keyboard that brings back the glory days of being able to type out messages without accidental presses and those godawful typos that are still a problem with touchscreen keyboards. The Minimal Phone’s QWERTY keyboard is 70mm wide, and each key has a respectable travel of 0.15mm, giving you a confident and reliable typing experience.

When you’re not typing out messages and emails (or sh*tposting on X), the phone’s touch-sensitive screen lets you easily browse the internet, use apps, and perform regular smartphone-related functions. Building on the ongoing trend of the minimal OS courtesy brands like Nothing, the one on the Minimal Phone is fairly utilitarian too, with clear text, easy-to-navigate menus, and even widgets. The only difference, however, is the landscape nature of the display, which means apps look/feel different on the Minimal Phone. Nevertheless, you can still use all your favorite Android apps like Uber, Spotify, Instagram, WhatsApp, even Maps.

Its software capabilities aside, the Minimal Phone has some impressive hardware too. Under its hood you’ve got a MediaTek 6769 processor with 6GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4000mAh battery that should last up to a week on a full charge. The Minimal Phone has Bluetooth 5.0, dual-band WiFi, NFC, and 4G LTE. The phone stands at 4.7 inches tall, 2.8 inches wide, 0.39 inches (or 10mm) thick. It’s got a fingerprint reader built into the power button, a USB-C port, a single SIM tray, a 12MP main camera and an 8MP front-facing selfie-cam, and most impressively, still retains a 3.5mm aux input, quite literally giving you the best of all worlds! The Minimal Phone starts at a discounted price of $325, and is designed to be completely repairable, complying with the latest EU regulations.

Click Here to Buy Now: $325 $450 ($125 off, exclusive perk for YD Readers only). Hurry, only a few left!

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The iPhone 16 might just be a snoozefest… History tells us why.

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Historically, every three years, the iPhone’s design gets a ‘boring’ upgrade. Do you remember the iPhone 8 or the iPhone 13’s most exciting features? Neither do I.

The iPhone X and 11 had radical new designs with the notch, the iPhone 12 introduced 5G and MagSafe… but after two consecutive years of exciting features, the iPhone 13 barely had anything worth talking about (unless you consider ‘Cinematic Mode’ to be a game-changing feature). Skip to the next year and the iPhone 14 Pro had the Dynamic Island and Satellite Connectivity. The iPhone 15 had the Action Button, the USB-C port, and a titanium construction. All indications show that the upcoming iPhone 16 won’t really dazzle much. Aside from a few hardware upgrades and perhaps one or two extra camera features (probably tied to the Vision Pro), there isn’t any thrilling rumor regarding the upcoming iPhone 16’s design. Not that there needs to be – Apple’s entitled to taking a short break every few years and just focusing on fine-tuning the product rather than wowing people. If you’re thinking of upgrading to the 16 this year, I’d probably give it a miss and go for the 15 instead. The iPad, on the other hand, is due for a BIG refresh with rumors of a glass-back, MagSafe, and perhaps some more camera upgrades to support the Vision Pro.

The rumor mill for the latest iPhone often begins around a year prior to its release. Once a model of the iPhone launches, analysts and experts begin speculating what the next year’s model could look like. Speculations turn into rumors by January. Rumors turn into leaks by April or May. And renders emerge online by July or August, approximately a month before Apple announces its newest iPhone. So far, the rumors have been rather underwhelming at best, with some minor upgrades being touted for the iPhone 16.

So far, outlets like MacRumors haven’t specified any ‘game-changing’ new features for the iPhone 16. Sure, you have a chipset upgrade every year and the 16 Pro will run Apple’s latest A18 Bionic chip. Cameras get upgraded too, and there’s speculation that the Ultrawide camera could get a 48MP bump this year. The new iPhone 16 series will apparently have larger displays (so maybe smaller bezels), better 5G, WiFi 7 capabilities, and a new stacked battery architecture for better battery life. Visibly, the iPhone 16 might have a different camera layout, defaulting to the original vertical orientation seen with the iPhone 11 and 12 (although the bump around them may be capsule-shaped instead of square like older models). There’s also speculation about a new physical ‘capture’ button for clicking photos or recording videos… although all indications show that this might just be one of those rumors that end up staying a rumor. Apple’s famously trying to move away from buttons and ports, so adding an extra button to the new phone just doesn’t sound like something the company would do. Moreover, the volume buttons already work as capture buttons when the camera app’s active… so a dedicated capture button feels rather redundant.

The iPhone 16 Pro might see some extremely small incremental changes, with barely any visible differences. The rendering below shows a possible iPhone 16 Pro with a design that’s indistinguishable from last year’s 15 Pro model. Apple will almost certainly stick to titanium for the Pro series, potentially with newer colors to help differentiate them from last year’s models.

All eyes, however, are on Apple’s software development team this year. The company famously canceled its rumored Apple Car project, moving the entire Project Titan team to work for the in-house AI development department. Analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo speculate that Apple might announce AI-based features like a next-gen Siri powered by Apple’s own LLM, or other generative AI capabilities. These announcements, however, may just come with the iOS 18 debut during WWDC in June. To push the latest iPhone series, Apple may also limit these AI features only to the iPhone 16 range, forcing consumers to make the upgrade. However, until these speculations are confirmed, the iPhone 16 may just be worth a miss this year.

Images via MacRumors

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Smartphone upcycling concept helps give your old companion a new lease on life

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Mobile devices, both smartphones and tablets, have become an inescapable fact of modern life to the point that almost everyone has one. While they do empower people with their smart features, they unfortunately also inflict damage on the environment, whether it’s through their manufacturing or, more often than not, their improper disposal. Not all smartphone manufacturers have a well-established or easy process for owners to send back unused or broken devices for handling and responsible disposal, which means many of these end up in landfills where they eventually poison the soil and water. Some of these aren’t even totally broken just outdated or unused for one reason or another. Finding a different use for them delays their untimely demise, which is exactly what this upcycling concept tries to do, offering smartphones a better life after death.

Designer: Think Tank Team

There could be a variety of reasons for ditching an old but still functional smartphone. Some parts, like the screen, battery, or charging port might no longer be in tip-top shape, or the owner simply upgraded to a newer model that will last them another two years or so. Whatever the reason may be, it might not actually be enough to warrant simply throwing the phone in the waste bin, or even just keeping it in a drawer until it’s forgotten forever or, worse, becomes a safety hazard.

Project Afterlife tries to remedy that situation by upcycling rather than recycling the phone. This means it puts the device to a different use without actually modifying it or taking it apart, thereby using less energy, less resources, and less effort. This increases the likelihood that people will adopt this product because it is accessible and easy to use.

The product concept pretty much comes in a taco-like crescent shape made of recycled plastic and given a frosted finish. You simply slide in the phone from the opening and set it on a flat surface with its curved edge at the bottom. The shape is balanced in such a way that it will stay still unless you intentionally rock it, and that rocking motion actually affects its functions. Just like a game controller with motion sensors, tilting the phone lets you cycle through its different modes without having to touch the screen. Rocking also makes the “Endless Clock” change the clock face at every movement, while both the “Timeline” photo stream and the “Moment” abstract art display also react to such movement.

Admittedly, you can simply take that same old smartphone, put it on a stand, and use it in the same way as a clock or small photo frame. Project Afterlife, however, also transforms the phone into a kinetic art object that will enhance the ambiance of your desk or shelf. It’s a simple yet impressive example of how upcycling not only helps save the environment but even adds value to your experience.

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Caviar’s Custom iPhone 15 Pro Has A Vision Pro-inspired Design And A Ridiculous $8060 Price Tag

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You could buy two Vision Pros at that price and still have change to spare…

I’m not sure whether to call this prohibitive pricing or to just keep scrolling without reacting viscerally, but the folks at Caviar, in their infinite wisdom, have created a version of the iPhone 15 Pro that’s so ludicrously expensive it actually makes the $3500 Vision Pro look affordable. The ‘Vision’ is Caviar’s latest customized iPhone model, designed to pay homage to the Vision Pro. Its rear comes embellished with Vision Pro-inspired details, featuring a close-up of the nose-ridge, along with speaker and camera details along the edge, and a diamond-knurled surface on the top. The entire iPhone’s backplate is machined from Titanium (unlike the regular iPhone which has a glass back), and detailed with jewelry-grade enamel. The collection is limited to just 99 units, and Caviar says it’s perfect for people who want an iPhone that complements their Vision Pro. That’s if you’ve got any money left over from purchasing the spatial computing headset in the first place…

Designer: Caviar

The Vision’s overall appeal lies entirely in the design of its backplate. Under the hood, it’s still your standard 128Gb iPhone 15 Pro with all the features intact. Caviar just takes liberties with redesigning the exterior surface, sometimes embellishing it with rare materials like gold, diamonds, and other jewel-worthy accouterments. With the Vision, while you don’t get any gemstones per-se, you do get an edgy, futuristic-looking backplate that complements your spatial headset. The drawback, however, is the fact that it costs 80 Benjamins (and some more) and you can’t wirelessly charge the Vision because of the metal back.

At this point, discussing the Vision any further becomes a moot point just because of that price tag. Strangely enough, the Vision is still cheaper than some of Caviar’s other custom iPhone models… but ultimately you’re paying for a luxury statement-piece more than anything. People who splurge on Caviar phones are pretty much the creme-de-la-creme of society, with yachts and private jets to their name.

The Caviar iPhone Vision starts at $8060 for the 128Gb model. If you want to upgrade to models with higher storage, the price goes up significantly (why, I don’t know since it isn’t like Caviar’s got anything to do with the storage). The 1TB iPhone Vision has an eye-watering price tag of $9060. Just for context, with that much money, you could buy high-end versions of every Apple product and probably still have enough money to spare for a top-tier iCloud+ and Apple Care subscription.

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Google Pixel Fold 2 display might be even bigger, according to a leak

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After MWC 2024 last month, it was clear that foldable phones aren’t going anywhere despite previous prophecies of doom. Samsung is obviously very much in the running, and Honor is pulling out the stops as well. Google is the one brand that is believed to be a bit over the fence, especially in the direction it will be taking its Pixel Fold in. There are already some expected big changes in design, but the changes might be even bigger than expected, literally. According to the latest rumor, the Google Pixel Fold 2’s screens will indeed be bigger, but they will actually be a lot bigger than previously cited, and this change could have significant repercussions for the rest of the foldable phone’s design.

Designer: Google (via Ross Young)

Although foldable phones are marketed as phones that can turn into tablets, the reality is that they can only turn into mini tablets that are even smaller than the iPad mini. This is mostly due to the requirement that these devices should still be usable as normal phones, something that’s actually near impossible if you fold a 10-inch tablet in half. Not unless you can actually fold it in three, which is what Samsung might be doing soon.

In the meantime, however, phone manufacturers have to work within that limitation, and Google will apparently be pushing the boundaries with its second-gen design. According to the newest unofficial information, the Google Pixel Fold 2 will have an external “Cover Screen” size of 6.29 inches and an internal main display of 8.02 inches. Considering the first Pixel Fold had sizes of 5.8 inches and 7.6 inches for those same screens, that’s a rather big jump in terms of screen size. For comparison, the iPad mini has an 8.3-inch screen.

That size increase won’t just be for the sake of bragging, though, as it will definitely affect the usability of the device. Yes, you will be able to enjoy more content or a less cramped space, but that could come at the cost of being bigger to hold in one hand, especially when folded as a phone. There’s also the matter of bezel size, which the Pixel Fold was notorious for. Either way, it won’t be the compact foldable that many people actually loved, so Google might lose some fans but gain others.

Unfortunately, the source didn’t confirm the other two big changes rumored for the Pixel Fold 2, particularly the aspect ratio and especially the camera design. The latter might prove to be the more controversial change for Google’s once-beautiful design, especially if the hardware upgrade doesn’t exactly warrant that change. The screens for the Pixel Fold 2 will reportedly go into production next month, so an announcement won’t be far away.

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