We could be in for some wild stuff come 2030. But is this the 5G hype industrial complex all over again?
Samsung Display has a helpful visual on its MWC booth showing how the Flex Magic Pixel technology in the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display works. The technology itself isn’t new — it debuted at MWC 2024 — but its application in a real, shipping product is.
Front and center at Samsung Display’s booth, the demo shows how the OLED structure limits light emitted to the sides of subpixels when privacy mode is engaged. Kinda cool.
The X105 5G modem-RF is the X85’s successor, which is 20 more X by my count. The modem comes with a familiar emphasis on enabling AI applications; it also “predicts RF conditions” with the help of sensing software to try and maintain a stronger connection.
It’s 15 percent smaller and 30 percent more power efficient compared to the last one. Shrinkflation strikes again, but in a good way, maybe?
Honor’s gimbal-equipped smartphone is here at MWC, and unlike at CES, it’s actually turned on. I got to see the phone unfold, look around, and dance to Imagine Dragons, and Honor has promised me I should see a few new demos on its booth tomorrow.
Honor’s new foldable is the thinnest one yet (though only just), but packs a bigger battery than any before. Here are a few of my first impressions from playing around with the upcoming phone.
The MagicPad 4 is thinner than any other iPad or Android tablet, but with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and 165Hz OLED display it probably shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s not exactly bargain-basement tech. It costs £599.99 / €699.99 (around $820) with 12GB of RAM and 256GB storage, though launch offers will save you £100 / €100.
Honor’s press pass for its MWC press conference is a cute tease for the planned reveal of more details on the Robot Phone. Less cute? The pre-recorded applause being piped through the auditorium at regular intervals.
I just reviewed the Leitzphone, a special edition of the Xiaomi 17 Ultra with a load of Leica twists: a refreshed industrial design including the iconic red dot, Leica-tweaked software, and a novel rotating camera ring that can control zoom and more. Thanks to great haptics, it’s also a top-tier fidget spinner.
8
Verge Score
The Xiaomi 17 Ultra and its Leica co-branded special edition are closer to cameras than ever before.
Like Apple’s rumored foldable iPhone, the upcoming Find N6 will reportedly sport a creaseless inner display like the one we saw at CES last month. Oppo is shown testing a demo unit with no trace of a crease after 170,000 folds. The Find N6 is rumored for a China unveil on March 17th.
The new Galaxy S26 series supports satellite-based messaging and data services — including emergency assistance — offered by Samsung’s telco partners in North America, parts of Europe, and Japan. “Select Galaxy smartphones” are also eligible for the wider coverage.
The phone-away-from-phone that Clicks announced at CES will come in a handful of different keyboard layouts, the company says. In addition to the QWERTY version, it’ll be offered in AZERTY (French), QWERTZ (German), Korean, and Arabic.
Clicks has also extended the window for early reservations until March 15th, which brings the price down to $399 if you’re willing to put down some (or all) of that cost now. But as for a firm launch date this year? We’re still waiting on that.
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The upcoming Phone 4A will be available in a gorgeous blush colorway, a pretty late (but welcome) addition to the pink phone trend. Nothing designer Lucy Birley says the transparent chassis is actually tinted red:
“Because of how the light interacts with the resin underneath you get this incredible sense of depth which makes our products look really lively.”
Every year someone invents the modular phone; this time it’s Tecno’s turn. The company will bring a modular magnetic concept device to next week’s MWC 2026, with options like a power bank, telephoto lens, or action camera to add on. We’ll only really believe it if Tecno actually lets me test the thing at the show.
The likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Open Rights Group signed an open letter from the Keep Android Open project in opposition to developer registration, which opens next month and will be mandatory from September. The group’s Marc Prud’hommeaux explains why:
“We’ve been reaching out to Google for months to implore them to reverse course on this lockdown. The implications of their threatened action for competition and digital sovereignty are dire.”
The Chinese smartphone company says it will reveal a humanoid robot at MWC this week, which I’m told will focus on domestic tasks. It’s a big change for the company, even with the Robot Phone also on the way, but makes more sense when you know it has an IPO in its future.
YouTuber Sahil Karoul claims to have bought a Galaxy S26 Ultra early at a market in Dubai, and is slowly revealing all: camera samples, benchmarks, and confirmation that the S Pen doesn’t include Bluetooth. Most interesting is this look at the new Privacy display in action ahead of the official reveal this Wednesday.
It’s a minimal update. Google didn’t bring many Pixel 10 features down to the Pixel 10A this year. Buy the berry color.
Samsung is teasing “a new Galaxy camera experience” coming next week, saying that “the latest Galaxy AI experiences will bring advanced creative tools to one place.” A handful of teaser videos — along with those AI-generated ads — give me the impression that we’re going to see more AI tools crammed into the camera system. But maybe calling it “the brightest Galaxy camera system to date” confirms the rumors of brighter apertures, which could do a lot more for image quality than some AI editing tools.
