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Welcome to ZDNET's "Breakthrough" Awards for 2025, our latest tradition that celebrates the most innovative and forward-thinking technologies to cross our editors' desks this year.
Over the past 12 months, we've spent countless hours challenging the utility of foldable phones that dominated the mobile conversation, lived entire work weeks through the lens of new smart glasses and VR headsets, and benchmarked more robots than ever, from ones that can ideate and pull context through the lenses of our phones, to ones that can sweep, vacuum, mop, and accomplish every chore in between.
Also: The 40 best products we tested in 2025: Editors' picks for phones, TVs, AI, and more
Amidst this relentless wave of maturing -- yet, constantly innovating -- product categories, identifying a true 'Breakthrough' has never been harder. These awards don't just go to the fastest chipset or the most premium design; they go to the products that fundamentally changed the conversation, set a new bar for innovation, and showed us a glimpse of the technology that will define the rest of the decade.
In no particular order, here are the recipients of the ZDNET Breakthrough Award for 2025.
1. Huawei Mate XT Ultimate: The first tri-foldable of many
Prakhar Khanna/ZDNET
While Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Z TriFold continues to dominate the headlines at the end of the year, it was a competing tri-foldable phone that left the biggest footprint in 2025. The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate launched globally back in February and saw immediate fanfare. We witnessed the hype in person at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, as hundreds of journalists, analysts, and tech enthusiasts flooded the Huawei booth to get a feel of the Chinese tech giant's shape-shifting handset.
Also: I tested Huawei's $3,600 tri-foldable phone - now I'm wondering why Samsung hasn't made this yet
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