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Motorola has announced a multi-year deal with Danish audio maker Bang & Olufsen to co-engineer sound hardware for its flagship smartphones. B&O's acoustic engineers will work alongside Motorola's design teams to define, test and tune audio components across upcoming devices, with the first model expected to launch soon in the US and other markets.
A growing number of people are buying gadgets, including a $60 plastic cube, designed to lock down smartphone features and reduce compulsive scrolling. These tools intentionally strip phones of advanced functions, pushing them back toward the simplicity of older devices.
Lithium-ion cells age from heat and from time spent at the extremes of charge. Most of the folklore about charging habits is either obsolete or beside the point.
Smart TVs still rely on remote controls, and many now support using a smartphone as a substitute via built-in IR blasters or app-based connectivity. Certain Android phones have infrared hardware and pre-installed universal remote apps that let users pair with their TV brand and control power, volume, and navigation. Devices from Apple, Samsung, and Google lack this IR hardware, but alternative software-based remote options exist for those users.
Reported battery capacity figures for Apple's upcoming iPhone 18 Pro suggest only incremental improvements over the current lineup, according to leaks circulating ahead of launch. The numbers imply Apple still trails some rivals, including Samsung, on long-term battery durability and capacity growth.
Bloomberg's Mark Gurman predicts that foldable phones, currently just 2% of the global smartphone market, will become the majority of new phone sales within ten years. He suggests Apple could eventually extend the format across its lineup, from a larger iPhone Duo Max down to a foldable iPhone SE as manufacturing costs decrease.
TrendForce projects Apple will ship 5 million units of its newly announced iPhone Duo foldable in 2026, giving it nearly a quarter of the global foldable smartphone market. That would help offset a broader slump in the category, with non-Apple Android foldable shipments expected to fall more than 20% year-over-year even as total foldable shipments edge up slightly to about 20.2 million units.
A tech writer with years of foldable phone experience shares candid impressions of what daily use is like, framed around anticipation of Apple's rumored foldable iPhone. The piece notes that a larger screen and unique software tricks come bundled with real-world trade-offs that new foldable owners should expect.
Trump Mobile has increased the price of its T1 handset from $499 to $749, a $250 jump that moves the device out of the mid-range category. The phone, marketed with an 'American-made' identity, now costs roughly the same as established flagship smartphones from major manufacturers.
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy told MPs the government will draft legislation requiring smartphone makers and app providers to prevent under-18s from taking or sharing nude photos. This follows a three-month deadline given in June to Apple and Google, whose voluntary commitments Nandy said still fall short of addressing the crisis. The law would extend blocking measures beyond device operating systems to individual apps used by children.
Samsung executives Hee-Cheul Moon and Seungki Choi told WIRED they welcome Apple's entry into the foldable market ahead of its rumored iPhone Ultra launch. They noted that Samsung has cut 75 grams off its foldable design since 2017, with the new Galaxy Z Fold8 weighing 201 grams, lighter than Samsung's own single-screen Galaxy S26 Ultra. Apple's folding device is expected to weigh between 230 and 241 grams, heavier than Samsung's latest model.
Right to Repair Europe examined 2,334 smartphone model records in the EU's Product Registry for Energy Labelling and found that only about 18 percent link to a working page with spare-parts prices or repair instructions, a year after the rules took effect. Roughly half the entries leave the required URL blank, and 19 percent point to unrelated pages, while some manufacturers still award themselves top repairability grades despite the missing information.