Awesome Smartphones

OnePlus‘ follow up to the underrated OnePlus 12. The OnePlus 13 has a flat 6.8″ 3.2K AMOLED display, a Snapdragon Elite chip, 50 MP wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto cameras, and a 6000mAh battery that supports 100W fast charging. If you don’t want to import it, you can wait for its global release in January 2025. Check out Gizmochina’s review for more info.

The Motorola ThinkPhone 25 has an impact- and temperature-resistant Aramid case and is rated IP68 for water- and dust-resistance. It also has robust software security features such as a built-in malware detector. It’s positioned mainly for enterprise deployment, but we hope more phones become tough enough to be used without a case or skin.

The new iPhone Pro Max will have a bigger screen. But it must still fit in your pocket, so Apple has probably reached its limit. This ridiculously huge iPhone from DIY Perks and Mrwhosetheboss has an 88-inch OLED screen, a touchscreen overlay, an aluminum case and buttons, multiple cameras, a flash, and much more. Ironically, it runs on Android.

The Galaxy Z Fold6 has a wider aspect ratio than its predecessors, inching ever closer to a true 2-in-1 form factor. It weighs just 239 g and is only 5.6 mm thick, making it the most portable Z Fold yet. Powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 processor, it has a barrage of trendy AI features, but the live translation and note summaries are practical and impressive.

As one of its farcical efforts to prove their government’s awesomeness, North Korea has its “own” smartphones and cellular network. Half as Interesting takes a look at the Monty Python levels of inadequacy and surveillance in these devices and infrastructure. The upbeat music over all this brazen display of oppression makes the whole thing even more hilarious.

The Xperia 1 Mk. VI has an upgraded zoom camera with an impressive 85mm to 170mm (3.5x to 7x) optical zoom range. It also comes with the AI autofocus tracking from Sony’s Alpha cameras. Its 1080×2340 OLED display with variable refresh rate, 5000mAh battery, and Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chip should make for a phone that can last 2 days between charges.

After dropping iPhones into toilets and oceans, I’ve come to appreciate phones that don’t bankrupt me. The pre-paid TCL 40 XE 5G looks like a pricey smartphone and does a good job behaving like one too, but holey moley, the Android 13 phone is priced at $120, making it TCL’s most affordable 5G smartphone yet.

Jay Baruchel and Glenn Howerton star in this lighthearted dramatization of the rise and fall of Research in Motion, the company that created the Blackberry. What started as a pager on steroids became a worldwide phenomenon – then the business collapsed in a similarly spectacular fashion. In theaters 5.12.23.

Sony crammed the 1″ sensor from its RX100 VII camera into a smartphone for outstanding low light performance and bokeh. The main camera has a 24mm lens with f/2.0 and f/4.0 modes, flanked by 16mm ultrawide and 50mm telephoto cameras. It has a BIONZ X processor and can shoot up to 20 fps with auto-focus.

The first iPhone was released in 2007. But it was far from the first attempt to create a touchscreen smartphone. Slidebean explains how an Apple spin-off called General Magic helped lay the groundwork for modern smartphones back in 1994. While their ideas had promise, they made a few critical errors which did them in.

This set of modular blocks snaps onto your smartphone or tablet camera and turns it into a microscope. The kit includes a backlight, 60X, 150X, and 300X magnifiers, and a slide holder that can also hold liquid specimens. In addition, pre-packaged slides display information about the specimens using augmented reality tech.

Snapping selfies in a mirror lets you take advantage of the higher quality cameras on the back of your phone. The downside is that you get the phone in the shot. Unnecessary Inventions pokes fun at this silly pastime with a combination smartphone case and mirror so you can shoot mirror selfies anywhere you go.

Smartphone racing games often require tilting the screen to steer. While it’s not a bad control method, we prefer this clever design, which places the phone in a cradle that’s been rigged up to a metal frame and steering wheel. Though if your game requires acceleration or braking, that’s another problem.

We recently watched in amazement as RAY Studio converted a shaver into War Machine. In this video, the talented maker took a smartphone engineering prototype, broke it down into hundreds of individual components, then reassembled them to form an intricate dragon sculpture.

This aluminum gadget helps increase your productivity by letting you view your phone’s screen at the same time as your tablet or computer. It attaches to the back of your phone using a powerful magnet and sticks firmly to the back of your bigger screen. Its hinged design lets you view your phone in landscape or portrait modes.

GRID Studio turns electronic junk into art. To make their unique wall art, they carefully disassemble old smartphones, then meticulously place and glue their components into a shadowbox frame. They currently make versions based on the iPhone 3GS, 4S, and 5, as well as the Nokia E71, and BlackBerry Bold 9000.