News and Updates about Smartphones

If your phone turns into a hand warmer twenty minutes into a drive, it doesn't necessarily mean something is broken. Phone overheating while using CarPlay or Android Auto can result from several heat sources piling up at once, rather than a single app or hardware issue. Navigation, music, wireless radios, and charging all draw power at the same time, and if the cabin is already warm, that heat has nowhere to go.

Hold a phone to your ear during a call, and the display should go dark almost right away. If it doesn't, a cheek pressed against the glass can mute the microphone, hang up the call, or open a menu without anyone meaning to touch anything. That small failure is usually the first time most people stop to wonder what a phone proximity sensor does: it's a tiny component near the earpiece that tells the phone something, usually a face, has gotten close to the screen, so the system can shut the...

Is the Xiaomi 18 Ultra cancelled? That's the claim circulating this week after leaker Digital Chat Station posted on Weibo, relayed via Abhishek Yadav, saying Xiaomi scrapped the phone because the planned price made sales unsustainable, according to Tech Advisor. Xiaomi has issued no public comment on the device, its specs, or any cancellation.

A new leak claims the standard Xiaomi 18, not the Pro or Pro Max, could ship with a 200MP main and 200MP telephoto Leica camera system, a 7,200mAh battery, and a 6.4-inch display, according to Trusted Reviews. That would give the base model a notably high-end spec sheet, well ahead of anything Xiaomi has confirmed about the standard phone directly.

A lower phone bill is welcome; a discount that lasts beyond the first year is worth a closer look. Visible's five-year offer gives eligible new customers $5 off monthly service, bringing its advertised Visible+ price to $30 and Visible+ Pro to $40.

WhatsApp says it is introducing guest calling, a feature that lets people without a WhatsApp account join a voice or video call through a shared link, the company announced yesterday. Guests open the link in a computer browser, type in a name, and wait for the host to let them in. No app install, no sign-up.

Global smartphone shipments fell 20% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2026, the weakest Q3 total since 2012, according to preliminary estimates from Counterpoint Research's Market Monitor service. That's the headline behind the global smartphone market decline, but the number that matters more if you're holding a phone right now is what's happening underneath it.

Nothing began rolling out the stable Nothing OS 5.0 update on October 12, but so far only the Nothing Phone (3) is in the current wave. Nine more phones across Nothing and CMF have tentative rollout windows extending into mid-January 2027, according to Nothing's published roadmap and subsequent reporting.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 FE and Google's Pixel 11 offer two different routes to a flagship Android experience, with roughly $100 separating their 256GB models in the United States. The Galaxy S26 FE costs $799.99 at its regular retail price, while the Pixel 11 starts at $899. Choosing between them comes down to more than the price difference.

Amazon introduced two new Bee AI devices on October 15, 2026: the $74.99 Bee Frontier wearable, available now, and the $99.99 Bee Eclipse magnetic phone attachment, which Amazon says will arrive soon with no confirmed ship date (CNBC; About Amazon). It's the first hardware update since Amazon bought the startup in July 2025, and the Bee Frontier vs Bee Eclipse choice comes down to one practical question: something worn on the body, or something stuck to the back of a phone (CNBC).

Fenix 8 and Forerunner 970 owners are reporting serious battery drain tied to Garmin's "OK Garmin" wake word, with battery estimates falling from 15 days to nine in some cases and from 12 days to six in others, according to TechRadar, reporting October 19.

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.

Huawei launched the Mate XT2 tri-fold phone in China yesterday, calling it the first foldable with a built-in privacy display. In its home market, Huawei is marketing the device under the fuller name Mate XT2 Ultimate Design.

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.

RAM used to be a straightforward performance purchase. More meant smoother multitasking, faster app switching, fewer cold reloads when you returned to a backgrounded app. That calculus has shifted in a specific and practical way: RAM is now a feature-gating purchase. According to Android Authority last month, current flagship AI implementations on both Android and iOS require 12GB as a hard minimum the point below which those tools simply won't run. Meanwhile, the memory inside most mid-range...

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.

Flagship launches often foregrounded the processor: bigger cores, faster benchmarks, a new chip name printed across the marketing slide. In 2026, the component actually straining a flagship's budget isn't the chip doing the thinking. It's the chip doing the remembering.

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.

Apple's iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 for 256GB, and pricing is expected to climb to roughly $3,000 at the top storage tier, according to Gurman's reporting (Apple, this week; MacRumors, this week). Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 sits close behind at a reported $1,900 (9to5Google, 6 weeks ago). At that price, "it's a foldable" stops being an excuse for missing features on either side, which raises the obvious question: which iPhone Duo features Android foldables should copy, and which Apple claims...

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...

The phrase "military-grade" shows up on phone cases that have almost nothing in common. One brand slaps it on a case without listing a single drop or impact figure. Another, Poetic, claims 20-foot drop protection, five times the 4-foot benchmark described in Android Central's testing (Android Central, last month). If you're trying to figure out what to look for in a protective phone case, the label on the box turns out to be the least useful place to start.

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.

A data plan can disappear in a single evening of streaming.

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.

A viral claim swept through social media this year: starting in February 2027, EU law will force Apple, Samsung, and every other smartphone maker to bring back pop-off battery covers. It's not true, but the real story is more interesting than the myth (Annie Lab, 2 months ago).

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.

Flip phones spent years asking buyers to accept a smaller, weaker phone in exchange for a fun shape to unfold. That compromise mostly doesn't exist anymore. Are modern flip phones worth it in 2026? Based on two current US flagships, Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip8 and Motorola's Razr Ultra 2026, the answer is yes for a specific kind of buyer, and no for another.

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.

The iPhone 18 Pro Max and Galaxy S26 Ultra have now been through the same controlled drop test, giving buyers a much cleaner comparison than the separate durability tests available immediately after Apple's phone launched.

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 Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 both start at roughly $1,900, putting them in unusually direct competition. At that price, the more useful question isn't which is cheaper, but what each gives you for flagship-foldable money.

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).

Ask why smartphones are cheaper in the US than their sticker prices suggest, and the answer usually comes down to one mechanism: carrier installment credits attached to postpaid plans.

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.

Type "use phone as a tape measure" into a search bar and dozens of apps promise to do exactly that. Android Authority decided to test the appetite behind that search: it asked readers which of four sensor-based toolbox jobs they'd actually hand to their phone.

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...