Apple kicked things off in March with the MacBook Neo, a $599 laptop that felt like an aggressive attempt to do to the low end of the market what the MacBook Air did to the middle. Even with a subsequent $100 price hike due to the rising cost of components, it remains a cheap and cheerful MacBook that puts its Windows competition to shame on the merits.

But at Computex Taipei last month, it felt like the rest of the industry awakened. Dell revived its XPS line as a MacBook Neo rival. Qualcomm announced its Snapdragon C chip, aimed at Windows laptops priced as low as $300. And Nvidia finally made its long-rumoured move into PCs with RTX Spark, an ARM-based and inevitably AI-focused chip.

Unsurprisingly for the hardware-heavy Computex show, US players like Microsoft and Dell, along with Taiwanese OEMs such as Asus and Acer, are banking on a future where they can compete on local performance, battery life and tighter integration between software and silicon.

But just before Computex, Google announced its new “Googlebook” initiative, which is set to launch later in the year.

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As it does every year, Apple announced new versions of each of its operating systems, now all unified under the “27” banner; this fall will see the release of macOS 27, iOS 27, visionOS 27 and so on. But the most intriguing hardware-related news was exactly which of Apple’s gadgets will actually get the updates.

The most interesting case is watchOS 27. Apple’s next smartwatch operating system will only run on the Apple Watch Series 9, Series 10, Series 11, Ultra 2, Ultra 3 and SE 3. Anyone running an older model is out of luck, meaning it won’t even be available on the original Apple Watch Ultra.

That’s a little surprising. The first Apple Watch Ultra came out in 2022, so this decision means it will only have received three operating system upgrades over the course of its entire life cycle. And this wasn’t a throwaway product — it was Apple’s first significant expansion of the Watch lineup, coming with an all-new design and a $799 price tag. Mine is still going strong; I wasn’t particularly tempted to upgrade to the Ultra 2 or 3.

But now Apple is rendering it obsolete. watchOS 27 is a fairly significant update, bringing a redesigned app grid and the new version of Siri, and it won’t be coming to the Ultra.

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In a world of overprocessed, HDR-heavy smartphone photos, Leica contributes realistic, tasteful color science to Xiaomi devices. While all smartphones need to operate in accordance with the laws of physics, the phones that Leica and Xiaomi have been working on together take photos that really don’t look like they came from a phone.

Most recently in Vienna, Xiaomi announced the latest in its line of collaborative Leica-branded phones, the 17T and 17T Pro. I was able to speak to representatives from Leica about the philosophy and technology behind its collaboration with Xiaomi.

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What is the T series? It hasn’t always been easy to pin down, often reusing various parts from Xiaomi’s vast supply chain. Last year, though, the 15T series got an industrial design of its own and stood out more as a relatively high-end option that allowed Xiaomi to pursue different priorities than the rest of its flagship lineup.

This year’s 17T series isn’t as big an overhaul, but the result is that Xiaomi now has a Leica phone for almost everyone.

The 17T mostly keeps the same design language as last year’s models: these are boxy phones with a squircle camera bump housing a quartet of round modules. That bump itself has been squared off at the edges this year, moving on from the 15T’s bevelled approach.

The most visible change is actually in the available colourways: the 15T series was solely offered in neutral metallic finishes, but the 17T and 17T Pro both have blue and purple options, which are darker and described as “deep” on the Pro model. They’re each available in black, too, with a further pearlescent “opal white” option for the 17T.

I actually kind of miss the raw silver option, which I thought looked great on the 14T and 15T, but I’ll never complain about more colours. In particular, the lighter “violet” I’ve been using on the 17T is a really good look.

The other main design change is that the 17T is now a little smaller than the Pro model, moving down to a 6.59” display while the Pro stays at 6.83”. It’s not a huge change, but they do feel different side by side — it’s roughly in line with the size disparity between the iPhone Air and the 17 Pro Max.

While the panels themselves remain similar, Xiaomi is making a big deal out of the steps it’s taken to ensure a comfortable viewing experience. This includes features like full-brightness DC dimming on the 17T Pro and 3,840Hz PWM on the 17T, which can alleviate eye strain that some people experience with other OLED phone panels, as well as a comprehensive approach to blue light reduction and ambient color shifting.

I’m not someone who’s ever suffered from flickering or low PWM rates on other devices, but I have noticed that the 17T Pro does a much better job than most Android phones of adapting its colours and brightness to various lighting environments. I often find myself brute-forcing white balance by manually using the reading modes on other devices; Xiaomi has taken a more user-friendly approach here.

On the spec sheet, the 17T Pro jumps to a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 SoC while the 17T has a Dimensity 8500 Ultra — that’s up from the 9400+ and 8400 Ultra respectively. The 9500 is MediaTek’s flagship chip and was announced the same week as the 15T Pro, so this earlier launch puts Xiaomi on a more favourable timeline.

As with the Xiaomi 17, the 17T and 17T Pro have received substantial upgrades in battery capacity. The 17T jumps to 6,500mAh from 5,500mAh, while the Pro gets an even bigger bump to 7,000mAh from the same prior 5,500mAh figure.

The Pro supports 100W fast-charging and 50W wirelessly, but the 17T is restricted to 67W with a cable and no wireless capability at all. That’s an unfortunate omission for a phone in this class.

The 17T Pro’s camera hardware is similar to the 15T Pro’s: a 1/1.31” 50-megapixel Light Fusion 950 sensor; a 1/2.76" 50-megapixel 5x telephoto camera and a 1/3” 12-megapixel ultrawide. The 17T has a smaller 1/1.55” Light Fusion 800 sensor seen on phones like the Poco M8 Pro, but gets the same 5x telephoto for the first time for a non-Pro model in the T series.

The bump from the Light Fusion 900 to the 950 is subtle but welcome, and it’s nice to see that the 5x telephoto lens now formally supports telemacro photography. As ever with the T series, though, the selling point here is that you get the excellent Leica image processing on less cutting-edge hardware that is generally up to the task.

This year’s phones also introduce a couple of new features. There’s a stage mode that optimizes the exposure for complex lighting situations like concerts; Oppo has been doing this on its recent phones, too, and it makes a big difference.

There’s also a new feature called Leica Live Moment, which is basically Xiaomi’s take on Apple’s Live Photos. There are a couple of advantages here, though — Leica’s image processing is applied to every frame of the moving image, for example, and it also works in Portrait mode. You can further customise the output with Leica watermarks and multi-frame collages.

I use Live Photos all the time on iOS but Android implementations have never really caught on with me, since they tend not to work as well across the entire operating system — let alone with others. While Xiaomi isn’t the first to try this, the Leica pipeline support and integration with apps like WhatsApp and Instagram make it a better attempt than most.

I’m not sure what (if anything) is happening in the second half of the year, but with this earlier T-series launch, Xiaomi has now set itself up for 2026 with a really strong lineup across screen sizes and Leica camera setups.

Here’s the rundown:

• The Xiaomi 17 is a compact powerhouse with a 6.3” screen, a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor and a 6,300mAh battery. The 2.6x telephoto lens could be considered a pro or a con.

• The 17T is a great mainstream phone at 6.59”, a Dimensity 8500 Ultra chip and a 6,500mAh battery. The lack of wireless charging will be a miss for many, but the 5x telephoto can be seen as a selling point over the regular 17.

• The 17T Pro bumps the screen, processor and battery to 6.83”, Dimensity 9500 and 7,000mAh. This hardware is easily on par with Pro-level iPhones or Pixels, if not quite Chinese flagship-level.

• The 17 Ultra pulls out all the stops with a 6.9” screen and a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset as well as by far the most advanced camera system, though it actually has the smallest battery of the lineup at 6,000mAh. (This can be augmented by the extra 2,000mAh in the Photography Kit Pro.)

So what does “T” really mean?

This lineup actually reminds me a lot of what Apple has done with the iPad in recent years. You have the iPad mini as a premium product for people who prefer smaller screens, the iPad Pro at the top with an overkill spec sheet, and two sizes of iPad Air in the middle.

In Apple parlance, “Air” has evolved from meaning “ultra-thin” to “the right pick for most people”. I think the same could be said for the new Xiaomi 17T phones. There’s something for everyone in this lineup, but the 17T Pro in particular is essentially playing the hits.

Although the Keirin is yet to become a commercial device, there’s a lot of its DNA in what VWFNDR has decided to release as its first product: an innovative new camera app for Android phones. VWFNDR + MBL is available now for free.

There’s a few things going on in VWFNDR + MBL, which I was lightly involved in testing before its release, and they make it quite unlike other apps available.

The first is the UI. This is where the app is most reminiscent of the Keirin; it uses the same idea of dragging the viewfinder into different aspect ratios, with the settings and buttons shifting around to fit.

Here’s the 35mm-standard 3:2, for example, which is a little wider than the 4:3 default on pretty much every phone:

Or you can stretch the viewfinder even wider to 2:1 and see how the UI adapts:

You’re also able to drag all the controls around the grid and place them where you want. It’s an intuitive system for photographers, with a button that switches between standard modes like full manual, shutter priority, program and auto, each option highlighting rows where you can swipe to adjust the relevant parameters.

Swiping all the way to the right of the controls brings up this simple settings screen, while swiping to the left of the viewfinder shows you your recently captured images.

That brings me to the next key feature of VWFNDR + MBL, which is that it is designed to capture and export unprocessed 16-bit RAW images in .DNG format. This is commonplace in popular enthusiast iOS apps like Halide, and some Android phone makers offer the option in their stock camera apps, but it’s less common for a third-party Android solution.

The results are, well, they’re RAW files. You don’t benefit from the computational grunt that most phones deploy for things like multi-frame stitching or noise reduction, and lens distortion isn’t automatically corrected — you’re at the mercy of your hardware, and you’ll likely want to edit your shots later to dial in the desired results.

But this gives you a lot of creative latitude down the line, and it frees you from the over-sharpened, over-processed, overly HDR results that mainstream phones churn out by default. VWFNDR presents this as a return to authenticity, transforming your phone into a more traditional camera.

And that plays into the final standout feature, which is that VWFNDR is (to my knowledge) the first third-party app that works with CP2A Content Credentials, a fairly new initiative that embeds metadata into images to prove they were captured with a real camera. Google added support for the built-in camera app on Pixel 10 phones last year, while Leica has started to do the same on newer models like the M11-P as well as the Leitzphone designed alongside Xiaomi.

The Content Credentials signature doesn’t last forever, as it’ll vanish if you edit the photo or upload a JPEG to social media. But as long as you have the original .DNG from the VWFNDR app, you can upload it to a compatible platform and prove that it was captured by a real camera, rather than edited in Photoshop or generated by AI.

I know from talking to the VWFNDR team during the development process that putting this app together was a hugely complicated task, and there are some limitations that weren’t able to be ironed out.

There’s no way to switch lenses within the app, for example, owing to manufacturers’ different implementations of the Android camera stack. And while the app has been tested on countless phones, including several from my drawers, it’s impossible to guarantee compatibility with everything.

VWFNDR + MBL isn’t going to replace something like the Leica Authentic mode on a Xiaomi 17 Ultra for my personal, general use. There’s something to be said for .JPEG files that look great out of camera, after all.

But I really encourage anyone with an Android phone to check this app out. It’s breathed new life into my Pixel 10 Pro, for example, which is not otherwise something I’d normally use for creative, traditional photography; it really makes it feel like a bespoke compact camera, one that encourages me to take my time shooting and editing the unfiltered results.

The naming convention here is admittedly a little confusing. Last year’s Titan 2 was a rugged, wide-format device clearly inspired by the BlackBerry Passport — it was, in every sense, “titanic.” But this new Elite successor isn’t a turbo-charged version of that phone; it’s a completely different animal. It ditches the ultra-wide, ruggedized footprint for a much smaller design that feels like a spiritual successor to the BlackBerry Q10.

The Elite 2’s industrial design is a departure from Unihertz’s recent “brick” aesthetic. This isn’t a rugged phone, and it feels better for it. That said, I would personally avoid the iPhone 17 Pro-inspired orange model, which seems unlikely to age too well; this black model I’ve been using is much more in keeping with the BlackBerry heritage.

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Ternus has been a senior vice president of hardware engineering at Apple for five years, and a VP since 2013, but beyond that he hasn’t been credited with steering the company in a particular direction. All anyone can really say for now is that Apple will be led by someone who is strongly experienced in hardware, which sounds like a meaningful change from Cook.

Of course, Ternus’ stewardship will be defined by a lot more than how he chooses to manage the hardware portfolio. The state of Apple’s software and how it handles developer relations will continue to be hot topics, not to mention how it adapts to the destabilizing impact of AI. As CEO, those issues will land at Ternus’ door.

Still, as a hardware enthusiast myself, I have to admit it’s encouraging to think that Apple will soon be led by someone who may share some of the same passions. And following many years of Ternus’ influence, it’s hard to say that Apple’s hardware is in a bad spot. The iPhone 17 lineup is excellent, while the new $599 MacBook Neo might be the most impressive example yet of the Apple Silicon advantage.

But as someone who uses a wide range of devices, I do know that Apple doesn’t always ship the best hardware available. Let’s dream for a minute and imagine that Ternus makes it a priority to change that reality. Here’s where I’d want him to focus.

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Last year, for instance, the company enjoyed record U.S. sales in September after the launch of the Pixel 10 line, according to Counterpoint Research. But despite achieving 28% year-on-year growth, the Pixel still only accounted for 6.1% of the $600-and-up smartphone market in the US, which is dominated by Apple.

There is one market, however, where Google has managed to turn the Pixel into a big hit, and surprisingly it’s in a country that was one of the last to adopt its search engine. The entry-level Pixel 8A and 9A have been some of the best-selling phones in Japan over recent years, and this seems to have prompted Google to pull out all the stops for the latest iteration.

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Which is fine for now, because there’s actually quite a lot to talk about on that front.

Readers, I am sm…

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So, this past weekend I went to New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Sakura Genesis show at the Ryogoku Kokugikan, which is better known as the national venue for sumo in Tokyo. I don’t follow pro wrestling very closely but I am somewhat into NJPW; this was the first show I’d been to in a little over a year.

Anyway, great show. I thought the best match was the tag title contest between the Knockout Brothers (Oskar and Yuto-Ice) and TMDK (Zack Sabre Jr. and Ryohei Oiwa).

As for the camera setup, I brought the Find X9 Pro as well as its dedicated 10x Hasselblad teleconverter kit.

Here’s the hardware you get with the Find X9 Pro:

• 23mm-equivalent lens with a 50-megapixel 1/1.28” sensor and f/1.5 aperture

• 70mm-equivalent telephoto lens with a 200-megapixel 1/1.56” sensor and f/2.1 aperture

• 3.28x teleconverter that attaches onto the 70mm lens for a 230mm-equivalent field of view

• 15mm-equivalent ultrawide with a 50-megapixel 1/2.76” sensor and f/2 aperture

But I relied almost entirely on the teleconverter, for a few reasons. First off, these were our seats:

Secondly, in order to use it you have to attach a case and then a mounting plate that covers all the other camera lenses. You also have to use the teleconverter in a dedicated mode within the camera app, because it inverts the image from the 70mm lens.

And thirdly, well, what else is an unwieldy telephoto lens attachment for if not taking close-up photos of professional wrestlers.

No edits, as ever.

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Infinix is a sub-brand of Chinese company Transsion, which also owns the smartphone maker Tecno. The manufacturer is particularly successful in developing smartphone markets like Africa and the Middle East; across all of its brands, Transsion accounts for about half of Africa’s smartphone market share, according to figures from Canalys last year.

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Vivo X300 Ultra announced

Vivo has announced the X300 Ultra, the latest in its series of high-end flagship camera phones. This is looking like one of the most capable options that’ll see release in 2026.

The X300 Ultra’s main camera uses a 200-megapixel 1/1.12” sensor, which is a little bigger than last year’s but not quite up there with the X100 Ultra’s 1” chip from a couple of years ago. Still, Vivo continues to stand out by pairing the sensor with a 35mm-equivalent f/1.85 lens. I’ve written before about how the ever-widening focal lengths on phone cameras might not be a good thing, and Vivo continues to release the highest-end phones to lean into that concept.

What if you want to go wider? Well, what if the ultrawide camera was actually good? The 14mm-equivalent f/2 lens has a 50-megapixel 1/1.28” sensor, the same size as the main camera from last year and the largest ultrawide sensor on any phone I’m aware of. There’ll certainly be a tradeoff compared to the main camera, but you should still be able to get decent 28mm results simply by using a 2x crop.

As for the zoom story, Vivo is using a 200-megapixel 1/1.4” sensor with a 85mm-equivalent 3x lens, which is a similar setup to the excellent 100mm telephoto on the Xiaomi 15 Ultra. Vivo is also offering Zeiss-branded 200mm- and 400mm-equivalent teleconverters that attach onto the 3x sensor, along with a heavy-duty grip accessory with extra buttons and a dial.

This is Vivo’s first high-end phone in a while to see release outside of China, although precise details on the launch (or pricing) haven’t yet been announced; preorders are set to start on April 16. I’ll definitely try to check it out, because it looks like a very strong competitor.

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Izu Oshima is larger and closer to Tokyo than Hachijojima, where I took the Xiaomi 17 Ultra by Leica last month. That trip involved an overnight ferry, whereas this took a couple of hours on a much faster jet-propelled hydrofoil.

Izu Oshima is famous for a large active volcano called Mount Mihara, which most recently erupted in 1986. It’s also known for a diverse array of wildlife and tsubaki flowers, known as camellias in English; this past weekend marked the end of the annual Tsubaki Matsuri festival.

In this photo essay you’ll see the cooled lava formations on Mihara-yama, a lot of animals both at a well-kept zoo and around the island itself, a volcanic ash desert, a bunch of camellias and some pizza.

As a reminder, here’s what we’re dealing with on the Find N6 in terms of camera hardware:

• 21mm-equivalent lens with a 200-megapixel 1/1.56” sensor and f/1.8 aperture

• 70mm 3x telephoto lens with a 50-megapixel 1/2.75” sensor, f/2.7 aperture and telemacro close-focus capability

• 15mm-equivalent ultrawide with a 50-megapixel 1/2.75” sensor and f/2.0 aperture

The setup isn’t hugely different to last year’s Find N5, which I wrote about a year ago; the big changes are the higher resolution (to say the least) main sensor and the much-improved ultrawide, which is now in line with higher-end phones like the X9 Pro.

Also like the X9 Pro, the N6 also has an extra spectral sensor to help with colour rendition across the whole frame, and it makes use of Oppo’s Lumo image engine for processing.

I shot all these photos in the camera app’s Hasselblad Master mode, which I always feel gives much more natural results than the standard photo mode, and as ever they’re all unedited.

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But Poco’s newest phones somehow manage to cover both angles. One of them has unprecedented endurance, and the other literally has Tony Stark’s badge on it.

Let’s start with the latter.

The Poco X8 Pro is a global version of the C…

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That sounds like a typically Apple feature to prioritise, and it could well explain why the company is late to the category. Folding phones are cool, but the creases in their inner screens are undeniable imperfections. Whether it’s capacity with music players, user interface with smartphones or the overall form factor with tablets, Apple tends to avoid making products with clear compromises in their defining elements.

But is it even possible to make a crease-free folding phone? There are huge engineering challenges to making a phone with a glass display that bends back and forth and flattens seamlessly, much less one that stays that way over time.

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A little over a year later, here’s the Find N6. In most regards, it’s an iterative upgrade. But in one area, it’s truly groundbreaking — and it might be the phone that finally sells some holdouts on fol…

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I’ve been using the Find N6 for a while, but the full reveal and review isn’t until next week. What I can tell you about today is that…

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It’s a neat piece of history, but I’m not sure it had the intended effect. Rather than demonstrating Samsung’s progress over the years, it highlights how the South Korean tech giant — still the #2 phone maker in the world right behind Apple, according to data from Counterpoint — has been treading water at the top of its lineup.

This year’s Galaxy S26 Ultra, announced a few days before Mobile World Congress kicked off, is an extraordinarily iterative update in what has become a line of near-identical flagships. The design is almost indistinguishable from the previous four years’, and there isn’t much to shout about on the inside either.

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I have made my way home from Barcelona; here’s a roundup of what I thought was neat or noteworthy at Mobile World Congress.

Google AI glasses

Look, Google Glass obviously didn’t go so great, for a million reasons we’re all familiar with. That said, I always thought there was something to the idea. That first teaser video demonstrating a future where Google Maps is beamed into your retina? Sign me up for that. Just not if it looks like, well, that.

Well, that’s what Google is working on now, and I was able to try the latest demonstration of its upcoming AI-powered smart glasses. The final product will be developed in partnership with Warby Parker and Gentle Monster, while the demo glasses were more of a generic prototype. Still, they looked normal enough and no more obtrusive than my Meta Ray-Bans.

Google is shooting for somewhere in between the complexity of those Ray-Bans and the more advanced, display-equipped version that Meta recently launched. There’s no neural wristband for control here, but you do get a simple colour display that appears more or less in the centre of your visual field.

The glasses’ functionality is overwhelmingly handled by Gemini. Tap a capacitive sensor on the frame for a second and the Gemini Live interface pops up, allowing you to naturally interact with the AI. I’ve found Gemini to be really useful on smartwatches lately, and this has the potential to be even more convenient.

But what takes the glasses’ implementation to a new level is the multimodal functionality. The best demonstration of this was when I looked at a framed picture of the Camp Nou and asked what it was. Gemini gave me a concise explanation that it was FC Barcelona’s home stadium, I followed up by asking how I could get there, and then I was able to invoke walking directions through Google Maps. The implementation is smart — it’s not constantly in your field of view while walking, but if you tilt your head down about 45 degrees you can see a compass-orientated map of your surroundings.

Google plans to ship its first AI glasses this year. Based on this demo, I’ll definitely be picking a pair up — as long as its partners stick the landing on the design.

Honor

Honor certainly had the flashiest phone of the show, which was simply dubbed the “Robot Phone”.

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