News and Updates about Smartphones

Xiaomi is taking a different approach to the book-style foldable with the Xiaomi 18 Fold, a shorter, wider flagship that starts at ¥10,999, or roughly $1,640, in mainland China. Xiaomi unveiled the phone and opened preorders on Sept. 7, with general sales scheduled to begin Sept. 10 at 10 a.m. local time.

Two phones, same price, different stickers: one says "pre-owned," the other says "refurbished," and a third might claim "certified pre-owned." None of those words alone tells you which phone is the smarter buy (Engadget, this week). The short version: pre-owned describes a phone's ownership history, while refurbished describes a process the phone went through before resale. All refurbished phones are used, but not every used phone has been refurbished (Engadget, this week).

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.

Talk to enough app developers about platform strategy and someone will eventually repeat a version of the same claim: foldable phone users spend more on apps, so building foldable-specific features is worth the engineering cost. It's a tidy story, and it fits with what everyone already assumes about early adopters of expensive hardware. It also isn't backed by any published dataset. No research reviewed for this article measures in-app spending, subscription conversion, or revenue per user by...

At roughly $1,300 apiece, the iPhone 18 Pro Max and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra make price almost irrelevant at the starting line. The real choice comes down to how differently the two phones approach cameras, battery life, software, design, and the features you'll use long after the novelty wears off.

Starting tomorrow, Thursday, August 6, T-Mobile customers will be able to spread the cost of a new phone, including taxes and activation fees, across 36 months instead of the previously available 24-month term, with well-qualified buyers paying nothing at checkout, according to WebProNews. The T-Mobile 36-month phone financing plan actually comes in two distinct versions, and the gap between them decides whether a customer walks out paying $0 or simply pays less than before.

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.

Oukitel is heading into IFA 2026 with three rugged phones that don't just carry bigger batteries. They build in a night-vision camera, a fire starter, and a gaming cooling rig, treating the phone itself as a chassis for gear you'd normally pack separately. The headline device, the Oukitel WP70 Ultra rugged phone, packs a 16,000mAh silicon-carbon battery that Oukitel calls the slimmest in its class, Gadgets 360 reports.

A single Galaxy Z Fold 7 wearing a Temdan MagSafe Kickstand Case went through repeated pocket-height drops onto concrete, and it came away with no damage. The reviewer at Tech with Jerad reported the phone survived the drops intact and the case itself showed only minimal wear (Tech with Jerad). That's a strong result for one case built around impact and scuff resistance. It says nothing about a major durability concern with foldables: dust working its way into the hinge and scratching the inner...

Search interest around "Xiaomi and Motorola phones launched at Snapdragon Summit" is pulling together three phones tied to Qualcomm's newer chips this week: Motorola's Signature, Motorola's Razr 60 Ultra, and Xiaomi's 17 Pro Max. Nothing in the material reviewed for this article backs up a shared Snapdragon Summit launch. Motorola's spec pages, the one available Xiaomi hands-on report, and Qualcomm's own chip announcement never place these three phones at the same event, in the same region, or...

Vivo officially unveiled the X500 Pro Max on September 21, and the Vivo X500 Pro Max camera phone is shaping up as the company's most aggressive imaging flagship yet.

Xiaomi launched the 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max in China on September 23, 2026, and the headline feature across the Xiaomi 18 Pro series is a hardware-level privacy display that switches on for a single app, a single notification, or one pane of a split screen. Both phones also bring back the rear display from last year's 17 Pro, now rebuilt around Xiaomi's Xiao AI assistant (GSMArena, yesterday).

Oppo officially launched the Find X10 Pro Max in China today, and the headline spec is hard to miss: three separate 200MP sensors on the back, one each for ultrawide, main, and telephoto. The configuration is confirmed by GSMArena and FoneArena, both reporting on today's launch.

Sony may be preparing a camera upgrade for the Xperia 1 IX that swaps out the flagship's main sensor for a larger one, which would be the first change to that specific component since the Xperia 1 V launched in 2023. The claim traces to Japanese blog Sumahu Digest and was reported today by PhoneArena.

The sources reviewed here trace the phone's reported specifications to one Gagadget article, and the phone hasn't launched yet. Gagadget reported this week that the Magic 9 Pro Max pairs dual 200MP cameras developed with ARRI, a mechanical gimbal, and support for ARRI's LogC3 color format, with a China launch planned for September 28 starting at 6,999 yuan, roughly £855/$875.

What people want in a new phone depends almost entirely on why they're shopping for one. Someone whose screen just cracked wants whatever's in stock that works today. Someone whose two-year-old flagship still runs fine wants to know whether a new camera or a smarter assistant is worth paying for.

Motorola is scheduled to unveil the Signature 27 on September 22, timed to Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, according to Tech Advisor. The phone follows Motorola's slimline Signature flagship.

Motorola posted a short teaser video from its official X account this week, timed to land alongside Apple's iPhone Duo launch. The clip ends with a brief silhouette of an unnamed foldable phone that looks shorter and wider than Motorola's current Razr Fold, according to GSMArena and ChannelNews. The phone appears on screen for about five seconds, near the end of the clip, per Android Police. The Motorola wide Razr Fold teaser confirms one thing: the company is building a new form factor. The...

Apple has finally unveiled its first foldable phone, and the shape looks strangely familiar. The book-style design, 7.6-inch inner display, and 3,000-nit peak brightness Apple announced this week land close to where Samsung already sits with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, a phone The Verge put through a week of testing. That overlap is the starting point for any iPhone Duo vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 comparison: Apple has arrived at a form factor Samsung has already priced and had independently reviewed.

The iPhone vs Samsung Galaxy bloatware debate usually turns into a scoreboard argument: which phone maker crams in more junk you'll never open. Apple's own support documentation and Samsung's own support page tell a more useful story than any scoreboard could.

HONOR shared its first official camera samples from the upcoming Magic 9 Pro Max this week, and anyone searching for a HONOR Magic 9 Pro Max leaked video should know upfront: the supplied reports describe official still samples, not a leaked video. The images show shots captured at 85mm, 500mm, and 1,000mm (Gizchina, 2 days ago).

Apple and Google have landed surprisingly close together with their latest Pro phones. The iPhone 18 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro both have 6.3-inch 120Hz OLED displays, triple-camera systems, 256GB of base storage, and an increasingly heavy emphasis on AI.

Scroll through enough short-form video, and it starts to look like a documented cultural pivot: teenagers ditching smartphones for flip phones, treating a five-minute conversation without checking a screen like a personal achievement, filming themselves making prolonged eye contact as if it were a rediscovered skill.

The most common mistake people make when a phone breaks is comparing the repair quote to the price of a brand-new phone instead of a realistic used or refurbished replacement. That comparison almost always makes replacing look better than it actually is, according to The Repair Plus. Once that comparison is fixed, the answer to "should I repair or replace my phone" usually comes down to three things: whether the fault is isolated, whether the phone still has real software-support life left, and...

Titanium sounds like the obvious upgrade when a phone maker puts it on a spec sheet, but the metal running around your phone's edge does less than the marketing implies. In the titanium vs aluminum phone frame debate, titanium generally gives the frame more resistance to bending and permanent denting, though the finish still decides how scratches show up day to day. Aluminum tends to win on heat, manufacturing cost, and repair pricing. Neither metal by itself decides whether your phone survives...

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

A new report lays out a full spec sheet for Motorola's first wide, book-style foldable, and the numbers cut against expectations: smaller inner and outer displays than Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8, paired with a thicker, heavier body. The Motorola Razr Wide Fold specs leak surfaced yesterday from Android Headlines, which describes the device as "razr flex" internally under the codename "Parker."

The OnePlus 13R and Google Pixel 11 are no longer a comparison between a phone you can buy and one that exists only in leaks. Google unveiled the Pixel 11 on August 12 and released it on August 20, giving buyers confirmed prices, battery specifications, cameras, and software support to weigh against the older OnePlus.

Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 has been in customers' hands for weeks. Apple's foldable iPhone is still a rumor until next week's keynote. That gap is the whole story behind any iPhone Ultra vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 comparison you'll read right now: one phone has a price, a shipping unit, and an independent teardown behind it, and the other exists only in leaks, analyst notes, and a supply chain rumor mill.

Motorola's Swarovski Razr goes on sale September 10 for $899.99, a $100 premium over the standard Razr 2026, The Verge reported. The phone isn't shipping yet.

Google unveiled the Pixel 11 Pro today, and the detail that stands out first has nothing to do with cameras or chips. It costs exactly $1,099 in the U.S., the same starting price as Apple's iPhone 17 Pro. Comparing iPhone 17 Pro vs Google Pixel 11 Pro means comparing two phones that match dollar for dollar, which pushes the real argument toward what each company actually means by "pro" (Trusted Reviews, today).

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...

Ask a phone maker what costs the most to build a handset in 2026, and the answer isn't the chip anymore. DRAM, the memory that runs a phone's software in real time, has overtaken the system-on-chip as the single most expensive component in a smartphone, according to Counterpoint Research, 2 weeks ago. That single fact reshapes how brands think about every other line item in the bill of materials, and it's the starting point for understanding how the RAM shortage affects smartphone audio...

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...

Every foldable phone complaint worth reading traces back to the same two design facts: the screen has to bend, and something mechanical has to make that happen. Those two requirements create engineering tensions that no manufacturer has resolved. The common foldable phone problems owners report most consistently screen failure, hinge contamination, steep repair bills, and contested warranty claims aren't random. They're downstream consequences of the same underlying tradeoff.

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.