Weekly poll results: a surprising number of people are using feature phones

Feature phones are not as dead as you may have thought – one third of voters in last week’s poll use one at least occasionally. Some even use a feature phone full time as their only phone. And others are at least thinking about the idea of ditching their smartphone. As some commenters point out, smartphones are basically a necessity in some countries – you might need one for messaging family and clients, for bank authentication and so on. Even so, some manage to get by with a feature phone as their only handset. That said, a large portion of voters are never going back to feature phones...

iQOO 16 tipped to come with a higher refresh rate screen, new design

iQOO is said to launch the iQOO 16 in September, with the latest rumor from China claiming it will have a higher refresh-rate screen than its predecessor. The word comes from reliable tipster Digital Chat Station, who claimed the iQOO 16 will feature a 165Hz refresh rate screen. It will be a 6.85" flat 2K display sourced from Samsung. For comparison, last year's iQOO 15 came with a 6.85" flat display having a 144Hz refresh rate. Furthermore, DCS claimed that the iQOO 16's rounded corners and bezels have minimal changes, but said the camera module on the rear is small, square-shaped, and...

Google now lets you remove Gemini's visible watermark

Google's Nano Banana image generator is pretty good but some people have been put off by the fact that its images have a visible watermark in the bottom right corner, unlike the images generated with ChatGPT's latest model. So now Google is finally letting you choose to remove the watermark. There's a new setting for this that you will see in Gemini and Flow, and it will also be available in Google Search's AI Mode soon. And the good news is that it's not just for images. You'll also be able to remove watermarks from videos created with Gemini Omni and songs created with Lyria. The...

Poco starts teasing the M8x 5G, shows us a glimpse of its back

Poco launched the M8 and M8 Pro in January, the M8s in April, and the M8 Power earlier this month, but now it turns out that there's a fifth member of the family on the way too. This will be called the M8x, and Poco has started teasing it today via a dedicated microsite on Flipkart. That tells us where you'll be able to buy it once it launches. We also get the teaser image you can see below, showing us a glimpse of the phone's back. The microsite reveals that this device will support 5G, and that's it for now. More specs should be revealed in the coming days and weeks, and we'll...

Honor Robot Phone hands-on review

In the somewhat stale smartphone market, Honor decided to shake things up a bit and finally launched the much-anticipated Honor Robot Phone. As the name implies, it's no ordinary phone, and it doesn't belong to the already existing Honor smartphone lineups. Instead, the Robot Phone bags several "industry first" technologies and it's built on over 100 patents. And if the photos are not obvious enough, the centerpiece feature is the robot arm-like gimbal that extends and can do all sorts of stuff. Honor says it's the world's most compact gimbal, weighing only 2.6g and being 6mm thin....

Here's when Huawei's non-folding wide-screen phone is launching

Following up on the success of the Pura X, Huawei has, for quite some time now, been working on a new non-folding smartphone with a similar 16:10 screen aspect ratio. This device is now rumored to be launching in September. According to a previous leak, it will be powered by a Kirin 9-series chipset, and will have a battery capacity of at least 7,000 mAh. The device is also said to have a 50MP main camera using a 1/1.3" type sensor, as well as a 50MP periscope telephoto camera and a multispectral camera. The phone was initially expected to be launching between October and December,...

Google already launches Gemini 3.7 Flash

Just three weeks after launching Gemini 3.6 Flash, today Google is releasing Gemini 3.7 Flash. The company says this is its "most intelligent workhorse model yet for coding and agents". Gemini 3.7 Flash is "the direct result of developer feedback and algorithmic innovations" that will also be used in future models, according to Google. Compared to Gemini 3.6 Flash, Gemini 3.7 Flash has improvements in software engineering, knowledge work, and web development workflows. Google says Gemini 3.7 Flash will be better than its predecessor at coding tasks like debugging and issue...

Poco F9 Pro and Poco F9 Ultra mega leak brings images, specs, and prices

A few hours ago a leak talked about the battery capacities of the upcoming Poco F9 Pro and Poco F9 Ultra, and now we have a mega leak with renders and specs for both devices. As expected, the Poco F9 Pro is a rebranded Redmi K100 Pro with a smaller battery, and the Poco F9 Ultra is a rebranded Redmi K100 Pro Max with a smaller battery. Otherwise, the specs are identical to their Chinese counterparts. The F9 Pro has a 6,330 mAh battery and the F9 Ultra has an 8,050 mAh battery (compared to 8,580 mAh and 9,070 mAh on the Redmi K100 Pro and Pro Max, respectively). Poco F9 Pro...

Here's when the Fairphone 6+ is rumored to launch and how much it will cost

According to a new rumor, the Fairphone 6+ will become official on August 18. It will be priced at around €685, based on a listing in Denmark. Of course, the price may slightly vary in other European markets because of different VAT rates. In fact, it may not be that bad in the Eurozone - a leak from France said the RRP would be €649. That's €50 more than the Fairphone 6's launch price, and €100 more than it costs today. According to recent leaks, the Fairphone 6+ will have a 6.31-inch OLED screen with a 120Hz refresh rate, the Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 SoC at the helm, 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 256GB...

Galaxy Z Fold8 does not impress in teardown

Earlier this week we saw the Galaxy Z Fold8 go through JerryRigEverything’s torture durability test where it survived some hard bends and close encounters with blades and sand. And the team over at iFixit has now brought its teardown expertise to Samsung’s trendy bendy phone. Here’s the full video: The Z Fold8 earned a 4/10 repairability score. That’s not impressive by regular smartphone standards, but it is a point higher than last year’s Z Fold7 repairability score. If you don’t feel like watching the whole thing, here are the key takeaways. The folding screen is still a...

Google launches Tap to Share for Pixels and Samsung's latest devices

For a while now, Google has been rumored to be working on an Android equivalent of Apple's NameDrop. Today, this has become official as Tap to Share. It is available on Pixels from the Pixel 6 onwards, and Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold8, Fold8 Ultra, and Flip8. Google promises to expand support for the feature to more devices "by the end of the year". As you'd expect from the name, this works by tapping two supported devices together. When that happens, stuff is shared - contact info, photos, videos, "and more". It's really that simple. To swap contact info with someone,...

Realme P4s Lite gets certified on its way to launch

Realme is working on yet another smartphone to add to its already pretty expansive P4 family, the P4s Lite. The device is on its way to India, as it has just been certified for sale in the country by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), with the model number RMX5398. This is a necessary pre-launch step for any smartphone that will be sold in India. The certification process hasn't revealed any of the phone's specs, unfortunately. However, a past leak did claim the device would have 4GB of RAM and 64/128GB of storage. It will allegedly be available in Moonlight Silver and Nebula...

Motorola Signature is now receiving its Android 17 update

Motorola has now started rolling out the update to Android 17 for the Signature, a smartphone that it launched in January. The update is a 5.75GB download, so make sure you grab it over a good enough connection. Once you've installed it, your Signature will be on software version A171WVH.21-16-1-3-4, which has to be the most convoluted naming scheme for smartphone software builds we’ve ever seen, and that's really saying something. Anyway, the changelog says you can expect "a fresh, expressive design", reduced clutter with smarter notifications, faster multitasking with more apps...

Poco F9 Pro and F9 Ultra battery details leak

Poco is expected to launch the successors to the F8 Pro and F8 Ultra in the coming weeks. While the Poco F9 Pro and Poco F9 Ultra have surfaced on multiple certification websites recently, a new leak has now revealed the battery specs of the two phones. The Poco F9 Pro is expected to be a rebrand of the recently launched Redmi K100 Pro, whereas the F9 Ultra is likely to be a rebadged K100 Pro Max. According to a tipster on X, the Poco F9 Pro could pack a 6,330mAh battery. If accurate, that would mark a significant downgrade from the 8,580mAh battery in the Redmi K100...

Redmi K100 Pro and K100 Pro Max announced

As expected, Xiaomi unveiled its newest Redmi K-series phones in China today, and they are equipped with some impressive specs. Though they look alike, they also bring several key differences. Redmi K100 Pro (left) and K100 Pro Max (right) Redmi K100 Pro gets Qualcomm’s recently announced Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V Series (SM8850-1-AB) chip, which is a binned version of the regular SD Elite Gen 5. The major change is on the GPU side, where the Adreno 840 GPU comes with two cores running at 1.2GHz instead of three units clocked at 1.3GHz. The K100 Pro Max comes with the...

The Fairphone 6+ will have an upgraded chipset for slightly higher performance too, leak shows

So, there is more to it than more RAM and a new color – the Fairphone 6+ will feature a new chipset too. EvLeaks has posted the complete specs sheet for the upcoming phone, an “exploded view” image of the phone’s internals and even a promo video. Leaked: Fairphone 6+ complete specs sheet The specs sheet helpfully marks the changes from the original Fairphone 6 in bold. As previously reported, the RAM capacity on the Plus model will increase to 12GB, up from 8GB (LPDDR5 in both cases). Storage remains the same, 256GB of UFS 3.1, plus the microSD card slot. An exploded view of...

Alleged iPhone Ultra screen protector surfaces online

Apple's first foldable iPhone is expected to debut this September with a design similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 and Huawei Pura X Max. While several renders of the rumored iPhone Ultra have already surfaced, a new leak now offers a glimpse at the phone's alleged front screen protector. Well-known tipster Ice Universe has shared images and a hands-on video of what is claimed to be the front screen protector of the rumored iPhone Ultra. The leaked screen protector has an unusual shape, with square corners on the side that sits next to the hinge and rounded corners on the...

Samsung reportedly begins One UI 9.5 development for the Galaxy S26 series while users await stable One UI 9's release

Samsung released the first One UI 9 beta for the Galaxy S26 series in May, and the company recently confirmed that the fifth One UI 9 beta for the lineup will be rolled out this week. While Galaxy S26 series users await the rollout of One UI 9 Beta 5, and of course the stable update, Samsung has reportedly begun working on One UI 9.5 for the S26 lineup. The source also claims that the One UI 9.5 build Samsung is developing for the Galaxy S26 series has a version ending in CZH1, but doesn't provide a timeframe for the release. Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra Samsung had begun One UI 8.5...

The iPhone 18 Pro Max's actual battery leaks, here's how big it is

The iPhone 18 Pro Max is launching next month alongside the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Ultra. Back in early July, we first heard that the iPhone 18 Pro Max's battery capacity would be 5,425 mAh for the eSIM model, and 5,235 mAh for the one with a physical SIM card. Then, mere days later, we heard that the former would be 5,567 mAh, and the latter 5,391 mAh. Today three images purportedly showing the iPhone 18 Pro Max's actual battery have been leaked in China, and one of them clearly shows a capacity of 5,391 mAh. That matches the earlier rumor, and it fits because China should be getting...

Verizon's latest outage saw mobile and internet services disrupted in Southern California

Verizon hasn't had a great day, to say the least. The carrier has announced that vandals cut multiple fiber cables, causing service disruptions for both mobile and internet customers in parts of Southern California. Repairs were swiftly initiated, and the service was restored within a few hours. Law enforcement was notified and is investigating the incident. Theft and vandalism like this, Verizon says, "represent a direct threat to the safety and security of our communities". The company is "committed to raising awareness and driving proactive solutions to prevent these direct...