Trending about Smartphones

Phones with 8,000mAh to 10,000mAh batteries used to be a trade-show curiosity. Not anymore. The vivo T5 Pro shipped with a 9,020mAh cell, and the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max has already been confirmed at 10,000mAh, Gadgets Now reports. Batteries that size used to demand a phone thick enough to double as a doorstop, but the same chemistry now lets manufacturers fit 7,000mAh or more into bodies under 8.5mm, per Gadgets Now.

Should you restart your phone regularly? The honest answer is: probably less often than you think, and for different reasons than you've been told. Your phone is not a 2003 Windows PC. It doesn't need a Sunday-night reboot to stay functional. Modern smartphones are built to run for weeks at a time without issue, and the idea that routine restarts keep a phone healthy is, at best, weakly supported by the evidence.

Global foldable smartphone shipments are projected to rise 20% year-over-year in 2026, and industry sources point to Apple's expected entry into the category as one factor behind that growth, according to industry sources cited by DigiTimes this week. Counterpoint Research puts the figure slightly higher, forecasting 21% growth and tying the increase to Apple intensifying competition in the premium book-style foldable segment, the category of phones that open outward like a book to reveal a...

Search for the best $100 smartphone in 2026 and the results won't cooperate: every phone reviewers have actually tested this year costs more than that. Samsung's Galaxy A17 5G lists at $174.99, and Motorola's cheapest 2026 model, the Moto G Play, runs $169, with the standard Moto G at $199 (Android Authority, 3 months ago). Even PCMag's "cheap phone" roundup skips $100 entirely; its budget category starts under $300 (PCMag, seven weeks ago).

A satellite passing overhead has no opinion about a stairwell, a parking garage, or a windowless office. A phone's antenna does. That gap, between where a satellite can technically reach and where a phone can actually use it, sits at the center of Starlink direct-to-cell coverage limitations. Regulatory approvals for the service have piled up steadily over the past two years, but the public record says almost nothing about whether the signal holds up where people actually spend most of their...

TSA counted 15 states with a mobile driver's license that worked at its airport checkpoints as of February 2025, a list that ran from California and Puerto Rico all the way to Louisiana and New York (TSA). More states have added the option since then, and checking TSA's Digital ID page is the only reliable way to know if yours is one of them today. This guide walks through how to add your driver's license to your phone: confirming your state and device qualify, completing enrollment, and...

Regional tracker XimiTime, cited by Android Authority today, claims the Xiaomi 18 Pro could launch in Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Turkey, and countries across the European Economic Area. The phone carries a secondary OLED panel built into its back. No official announcement has come from Xiaomi, the US is absent from the reported list, and the timing remains contested, but the leak, read alongside earlier distribution evidence, suggests the rear-screen concept may be heading toward its widest...

WhatsApp has started activating usernames for a small number of accounts on Android and iOS, letting the first wave of users share a handle instead of a phone number when contacting someone new. The WhatsApp username feature rollout is live now, though only for a very limited cohort activated users see a banner at the top of their chat list confirming their handle is ready, WABetaInfo reported yesterday.

Huawei launched the Pura 90s Pro and Pura 90s Pro Max in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, opening global sales in Malaysia first, with expansion to additional markets expected in the coming months, according to FoneArena. The Pura 90s Pro starts at approximately $907; the Pro Max comes in at $1,202. Both are now available to order in Malaysia.

A Xiaomi 18 Pro Max camera leak reported by Notebookcheck last week has been widely interpreted online as describing a phone with three 200MP cameras. The source doesn't say that. Tipster Digital Chat Station describes a 200MP main sensor and a 200MP telephoto. The third lens, the ultra-wide, may use a 50MP sensor based on a separate, earlier leak. Two high-resolution cameras, not three.

Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station posted what are described as Xiaomi 18 Pro leaked specs this week, covering what is expected to be Xiaomi's next flagship Pro model. The leak, picked up by Android Authority today, describes a compact flat-display phone with a roughly 7,000mAh battery, 100W wired charging, and wireless charging. It could also carry two 200MP rear cameras and a 2nm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6-series chip. Xiaomi has not confirmed the phone exists, and Android Authority flags that...

Bigme announced the Hibreak Dual 2 in late June 2026, roughly two months after its predecessor failed to reach customers. The original HiBreak Dual was listed for preorder starting at $359, per The Verge, but available reporting shows no retail release followed. Bigme subsequently issued a public "reflection and apology" acknowledging the design's shortcomings, according to Heyup. The Bigme Hibreak Dual 2 is the company's answer to those criticisms and the core hardware change is significant...

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

A Bigme HiBreak Dual 2 competitor arrived within days of Bigme's Kickstarter launch: a new Hisense e-paper phone with a detachable color LCD. Hisense had recently debuted its own E Ink phone with a fundamentally different design choice: its secondary color LCD detaches magnetically. That single difference defines the central question worth asking right now: should an E Ink display be a permanent part of a phone, or something users can choose when they want it?

Qualcomm has reportedly told its customers that chip prices will rise by a double-digit percentage for all products shipped after September 1, 2026. The notice came via a customer letter reviewed by Bloomberg, reported this week by The Verge, 9to5Google, and Igor's Lab. Qualcomm has issued no public statement, and no product-by-product breakdown has been published.

HONOR detailed the full camera system for its Robot Phone at a camera technology event in China today, confirming HONOR Robot Phone dual 200MP cameras, three-axis mechanical stabilization, and a partnership with professional cinema brand ARRI for LOGC3 encoding. The main sensor mounts on a four-degree-of-freedom titanium-alloy robotic arm that, according to Honor, enables 360-degree subject tracking a physical mechanism rather than a software compensation layer. The China launch is set for...

Urban Armor Gear's new wet phone rescue pouch is entering a market where the baseline advice is already clear, well-sourced, and costs nothing. The UAG rescue pouch is built on DRYOUT, a patented moisture-removal material that the company says absorbs up to 3,400 times more than a silica gel packet. Every one of those performance figures comes from DRYOUT's own press materials. No independent testing exists. That gap between what the company claims and what external evidence shows is the...

Two phones. A steep price gap. A decision that comes down to one honest question: do you actually need a tablet in your pocket, or do you just want one?

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold presents a specific kind of buying dilemma. Closed, it's a 6.3-inch smartphone. Open, it's an 8-inch tablet. The Galaxy S25 is a 6.2-inch phone that fits in a back pocket and does exactly what it promises. The question this comparison actually answers isn't which device is better in the abstract it's whether a bigger screen justifies everything you give up to get it, especially when a discounted foldable starts closing the price gap with a compact conventional...

WhatsApp has started letting users reserve usernames before a wider launch later in 2026, giving people a way to connect without sharing their phone number. The Associated Press reported that WhatsApp began the reservation phase on June 29, 2026, with the full username feature expected later this year.

vivo launched the X Fold6 in China on June 26, pairing a 7,000mAh battery with ZEISS G2 telephoto converter support and a thinner book-style foldable design. The launch gives vivo a clearer answer to two long-running foldable complaints: battery life and camera reach.

Oppo launched the Bubble globally yesterday alongside the Reno 16 series: a detachable wireless puck with a 1.73-inch circular OLED touchscreen, a 550mAh battery, and a silicon bumper case and star-shaped lanyard included in the box. The Verge called it the best execution of this concept they'd tested. The problem is structural: Oppo built a magnetic accessory for phones that contain no magnets.

Nothing's Charli XCX campaign has put one of the company's phones in the spotlight, but not as a normal product launch. The phone drawing attention has not been announced as a standard retail device, with no preorder page, carrier listing, or release date attached.

Poplar Group, the media relations firm that had handled Trump Mobile's T1 Phone press operation since at least June 2025, is no longer working with the company. Poplar founding partner Chris Walker told The Verge on June 19, 2026, that his team is "not assisting Trump Mobile any further" and said he did not know whether a replacement firm had been retained.

Nothing will not release a new CMF phone in 2026. Co-founder Akis Evangelidis confirmed today on X that the CMF Phone 3 Pro has been scrapped, citing memory prices that make a meaningful upgrade impossible at the price point CMF exists to deliver. The decision is unusual for its candor: rather than quietly shipping a compromised product, Evangelidis posted a direct explanation and put a specific number on the cost problem.

Apple plans to raise prices, but CEO Tim Cook did not say which products will get more expensive, when the increases will happen, or by how much. But in a Wall Street Journal interview published June 17, he made one thing clear: Apple can no longer shield buyers from surging memory and storage costs.

Leaked specs for the Redmi K100 Pro surfaced earlier this month, pointing to a battery capacity somewhere north of 9,000mAh, a 200MP main camera, and an Apple-inspired design with full water resistance, according to GSMArena. The K100 family is expected around September. That timeline matters because it follows directly from what Xiaomi already built: the Redmi K90 Max, launched two months ago as the company's first gaming phone with a built-in cooling fan.

Sony Semiconductor Solutions just announced the LYTIA L910, a 50-megapixel smartphone camera sensor that Sony claims can deliver 100 dB of dynamic range from a single exposure, with no multi-frame synthesis required. It is the first sensor in Sony's LYTIA lineup to feature LOFIC, a structural change to the pixel itself. Mass production is scheduled for this summer.

A surfaced Huawei vertical tri-fold phone patent points to something more consequential than a single filing: Huawei appears to be treating the Mate XT not as a finished product line but as an engineering platform, with a vertical folding axis as the next stress test. Where the Mate XT folds horizontally to open into a wide tablet slab, a vertical tri-fold would collapse a tall display into a compact, phone-shaped rectangle. That is a different ergonomic proposition entirely, and the...

Memory has overtaken the processor and display to become the single most expensive component in a smartphone, Nothing CEO Carl Pei warned this week, and he says phone prices are going up and will keep rising into next year. That claim matters beyond Nothing's own lineup: independent market data from IDC puts the memory shortage at the center of what it calls the steepest smartphone market contraction in recorded history.

T-Mobile subscribers who make voice calls abroad could soon pay twice as much per minute. Multiple customers have received notices warning that standard T-Mobile international roaming call rates will jump from $0.25 to $0.50 per minute on June 25, according to Android Authority today and PhoneArena four days ago. The timing puts the reported change squarely in the opening weeks of peak summer travel season.

Nothing phones at Best Buy are now a real U.S. retail play. The London-based company has brought its phones and audio lineup to more than 500 Best Buy stores across the country, giving shoppers a much easier way to see and handle its hardware before buying.

Chinese leaker Digital Chat Station, cited by Android Authority today, describes the OPPO Find N7 as a wide foldable with a 7.6-inch inner display, a 5.5-inch cover screen, and a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip built on a 2nm process, with a Q1 2027 launch window. OPPO has not commented. The leak traces to a single source with no independent corroboration. What gives it weight is what OPPO has already shipped: the Find N6, whose TÜV Rheinland certification, documented manufacturing process, and...

iFixit tore down a Trump Mobile T1 on Thursday and removed any remaining ambiguity about the phone's origins: the Trump Mobile T1 HTC U24 Pro connection goes deeper than cosmetics. Technicians pulled the mainboard from an HTC U24 Pro, placed it into the T1's chassis, and powered it on. It booted, according to Android Authority's coverage of the iFixit findings. The hardware is interchangeable.

Mobile gaming has always been defined by what the hardware cannot sustain. Not enough GPU headroom to render demanding scenes natively. Heat that builds until the chip throttles. A battery that drains faster than the session ends. These are structural features of a device that lives in your pocket, not temporary problems waiting for a faster chip.

Xiaomi 17T Live Images Surface With Dimensity 8500 Benchmark