The F9 Ultra feels like Poco growing into its strengths, with Bose-tuned sound still leading the experience.
The Poco F8 Ultra felt like a turning point for Poco. Up to that point, the brand had always been easy to understand. You bought a Poco for speed, sharp pricing, and a bit of swagger. The F8 series added something new to that formula with Bose-tuned speakers, and that changed the feel of the phone in a way a faster chip or brighter screen usually does not.
It was not just about volume or clarity. The whole device felt more built around entertainment. Games had more punch, films had more room to breathe, and even everyday audio felt less like an afterthought. The denim-inspired rear panel helped give the F8 Ultra a bit of tactile identity too, even if the finish was more denim-adjacent than truly fabric-like, but the thing that stayed with you was the sound.
Designer: POCO
The Poco F9 Ultra takes that idea and pushes it further. Rather than treating the Bose-tuned system as a one-off flourish, Poco seems to be building on it with more confidence this time, wrapping that sound-first approach in a package that feels bigger, more polished, and more ambitious. If the F8 Ultra introduced a new side of Poco, the F9 Ultra feels like the phone that tries to make it stick.
If the Poco F8 Ultra leaned young and fashionable, the Poco F9 Ultra leans sophisticated. It keeps the brand’s taste for visual confidence, but expresses it in a more restrained way, swapping tactile playfulness for cleaner lines, flatter surfaces, and a more polished sense of control.
That shift is obvious the moment you look at the back. The denim-inspired treatment from the F8 Ultra is gone, replaced by a finish that feels more metallic and more architectural. The overall silhouette is simpler, but it does not come across as plain. Instead, it feels like Poco has traded novelty for composure, letting shape and proportion do more of the work.
The camera island design remains largely the same as its predecessor, but it feels more resolved here. A large rectangular module sits across the top portion of the phone, housing three cameras and an LED flash in a neat 2 by 2 arrangement, with the speaker grille set off to the right. It is still a bold layout, but one that now feels less experimental and more like a defining part of the phone’s identity.
New to the F9 Ultra is a dynamic light ring built around the speaker grille. It supports personalized visual effects for incoming calls, games, and music. The effect itself appears to be fairly simple, closer to a clean white LED accent than anything overly flashy, but that may be exactly the point. It feels like Poco’s way of keeping a hint of gaming-phone energy alive without letting it overwhelm the more sophisticated direction of the design.
The two colors also tell slightly different stories. The Dark Cherry finish is the more expressive option, bringing warmth and a bit of drama without tipping into flashiness. The Black version feels more understated and technical, especially with the red side-button accent adding a small but effective point of contrast. Both work, but they speak to different moods. One is richer and more characterful, while the other is cooler and more controlled.
That more sophisticated look does come with a more substantial physical presence. At 235g, the Poco F9 Ultra is about 15g heavier than the F8 Ultra, and you feel that extra weight immediately. It sits firmly on the heavier side, especially in one-handed use, where its size and mass are hard to ignore.
Its dimensions, 163.49 x 77.94 x 8.74mm, are broadly in line with its predecessor, so the overall footprint will feel familiar if you are coming from the older model. It is still a wide phone, though, and not the easiest to manage with one hand. The curved edges do help soften the grip and make it feel less severe than the numbers suggest, but this is still a device that feels more at home in two-handed use.
The matte finish does its part as well. It feels premium, pleasant to touch, and better at disguising smudges than a glossier surface would be. Add in the familiar button placement and unchanged in-display fingerprint scanner, and the F9 Ultra ends up feeling less like a phone you need to relearn and more like one you simply need to get used to carrying.
The F9 Ultra runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the same flagship platform used in the F8 Ultra. Poco has also retained the VisionBoost D8, a dedicated chip aimed at improving gaming and video performance. In practice, that makes the F9 Ultra feel less like a leap in raw power and more like a refinement of an already capable performance formula.
The F9 Ultra pairs that gaming focus with a 6.9-inch 1.5K AMOLED display, and it is exactly the kind of panel you would want on a phone built around entertainment. It is large, sharp, and vibrant, with a refresh rate that gives the phone a clear performance edge in games that can actually take advantage of it. Outside of gaming, that same smoothness carries over into scrolling, animations, and general navigation, even if the practical difference becomes less dramatic in everyday use.
Brightness is another clear strength. Poco says this is the first global lineup to use the new M11 luminescent material, which helps the panel reach up to 4,500 nits in peak brightness and as high as 10,000 nits for HDR highlights. The numbers are extreme, but the more practical takeaway is that the screen stays very readable outdoors and gives bright scenes a stronger sense of punch and contrast without losing too much detail.
The F9 series is also Poco’s first to push to 185Hz, with support for 24 games running at a native 185fps. That sounds more dramatic than it always feels in practice, because the benefit depends heavily on the kind of game you are playing. In faster titles like Blood Strike, Crossfire: Legends, and Brawl Stars, the higher refresh rate does make a difference. Motion looks cleaner, visual updates come faster, and the game feels a little more immediate under your fingers. In slower games like Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, or Hearthstone, the gain is much smaller. You still get smoother animations and interface movement, but not the same kind of gameplay advantage.
In an hour-long session of Blood Strike at the highest graphic settings, the F9 Ultra was able to hold 185fps without any obvious frame drops. Just as importantly, it did not get uncomfortably hot, staying at around 40 degrees Celsius on the surface. There is clearly enough cooling here to keep performance from falling off over time, but the more important takeaway is that the phone stays consistent under load.
Main Camera, 1x
Portrait mode, Main Camera, 3.1x
The F9 Ultra is the second phone to come out of Poco’s partnership with Bose, which makes the collaboration feel less like a one-off experiment and more like part of the series identity. The Bose-tuned speaker system remains one of its most distinctive features, and also one of the easiest to appreciate in daily use. Poco says it has redesigned the acoustic port and upgraded the dual speakers for clearer sound and richer bass. It also keeps the sound profile presets and 10-band EQ introduced on the F8 Ultra, which means there is still plenty of room to tailor the sound to your liking.
Telephoto Camera, 5x
Telephoto Camera, 10x
In use, the speakers are easy to like. Just like the F8 Ultra, the F9 Ultra delivers some of the best smartphone audio you can get. The sound is fuller and more open than what most phones manage, with enough bass presence to give games, films, and music a bit more body. Dialogue comes through clearly, and the overall presentation feels less cramped than the average smartphone speaker setup.
Main Camera, 1x
Telephoto Camera, 5x
Telephoto Camera, 10x
The F9 Ultra upgrades the main camera from 50MP on the F8 Ultra to 200MP here, though the sensor itself is smaller, dropping from 1/1.31-inch to 1/1.56-inch. That makes it less a straightforward upgrade and more a different kind of tradeoff. The rest of the setup remains familiar, with a 50MP 5x telephoto, a 50MP ultrawide, and a 32MP front camera.
Poco has also made a subtle but useful change to the focal lengths. The F9 Ultra uses a 24mm-equivalent main camera and a 17mm-equivalent ultrawide, compared with 23mm and 18mm on the F8 Ultra. The shift is small, and the ultrawide still does not feel especially expansive, but the added separation between the two lenses makes the jump from main to ultrawide feel a little more purposeful.
Ultrawide Camera, 0.7x
Main Camera, 1x
Telephoto Camera, 10x
In use, the main camera captures photos with good detail, solid dynamic range, and vibrant color. The 5x telephoto is also capable, though it tends to produce images that look a bit more saturated and contrast-heavy. Video is solid too, with crisp footage and enough consistency to make the camera system feel dependable for everyday shooting.
Night Shot, Ultrawide Camera, 0.7x
Night Shot, Main Camera, 1x
Night Shot, Telephoto Camera, 5x
Night Shot, Telephoto Camera, 10x
Battery life remains one of the F9 Ultra’s biggest strengths. The 8,050mAh battery is enormous even by flagship standards, and it gives the phone a clear advantage in the kind of heavy use it is designed for. In my use, it was easy to stretch the phone across two days on a charge, which suits the F9 Ultra’s media-heavy, gaming-friendly character especially well.
Charging is just as capable, with 100W wired and 50W wireless support, plus 27W wired reverse charging and 22.5W wireless reverse charging. It is a battery setup that feels as well-rounded as the rest of the phone.
The F9 Ultra is not a phone that talks much about sustainability in the material-driven sense, but it does make a decent case for longevity. Its IP68 rating and Corning Gorilla Glass 7i should help it stand up to everyday wear, which is still one of the most practical ways a phone can stay useful for longer.
Poco also promises four major Android OS updates and six years of security patches, which gives the F9 Ultra a fairly credible long-term support story. That matters because software support plays a big role in whether a phone remains worth keeping. Poco may not be leading the conversation around recycled materials or repairability here, but the basics of durability and usable lifespan are in place.
The F9 Ultra starts at $799 for the 12GB/256GB version, which puts it $70 above the F8 Ultra. That is still an increase, but not an especially aggressive one in the current climate, where similar phones have seen price jumps closer to $100. Some of that restraint may come from Poco reusing the same Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 platform, which likely helped balance out the rising cost of RAM and other components.
As an upgrade, though, the case is less convincing. If you already have the F8 Ultra, moving to the F9 Ultra does not make a lot of sense unless you specifically want the new design, the 185Hz display, or the 200MP main camera. As a fresh buy, however, it remains one of the best affordable flagship-level phones around. Poco may be edging upward in price, but it still knows how to deliver a lot of phone for the money.
The Poco F9 Ultra feels like Poco settling into a formula that actually works. The design is more mature, the gaming side is still strong, and the Bose-tuned speakers remain one of the best reasons to care about the series in the first place. Add the huge battery and the 185Hz display, and you end up with a phone that feels very sure of what it wants to be.
If you already have the F8 Ultra, I do not think this is the upgrade to chase. The older phone is still good enough that the differences here feel more iterative than urgent. But if you are buying fresh, the F9 Ultra is still one of the better affordable flagship-level phones around, especially if you care as much about sound and gaming as you do about the usual specs.
The post Poco F9 Ultra Review: Great Sound, Grown-Up Design first appeared on Yanko Design.
Most of us have two or more gadgets that need constant charging, plus several chargers and cables to keep them all juiced up. That’s probably fine if you have an entire outlet strip at home or in the office, but when you’re working with a small space, or you’re traveling and on the go, it can be a real challenge to charge multiple devices at once. You end up with a tangle of cords and charging heads, or sometimes you even have to take turns charging your gadgets.
If you mostly own Apple devices or other USB-C-powered gear, the TESSAN 3-in-1 USB-C Charger may actually solve that problem for you. It’s a compact wall charger with a USB-C port, a USB-A port, and a built-in magnetic Apple Watch dock, so you only need one outlet to power up three devices at the same time.
Designer: TESSAN
This 3-in-1 charger is especially handy when you only have one outlet available but need to power up three different devices. A few years ago, this wouldn’t have been much of an issue, since most of us only had one phone to worry about. But now that owning multiple devices is the norm, charging has become an everyday hassle. What do you do when you’ve got a phone, a pair of AirPods, and a smartwatch that all need power at the same time?
TESSAN’s charger features fast charging through its 20W USB-C port, so you can get a device like the iPhone 15 up to 55 percent battery in just 30 minutes. At the same time, its 18W USB-A port can juice up an accessory simultaneously while your main device charges. It also offers broad compatibility, working with everything from the latest iPhone models to AirPods and other USB-powered devices. The real star of the show, though, is the built-in magnetic charger for your Apple Watch. There’s no separate puck or cable needed here. Instead, you get a self-aligning dock, so you won’t have to fuss with positioning your watch every time you need to charge it.
The charger comes in four finishes (white, black, pink, and blue) and is clearly designed to double as a small desk-aesthetic item, though it will likely still read as “just a charger” to most people, especially in the white colorway. Where it really shines is portability: it’s a travel-friendly device you can toss in a bag without a second thought, instead of hauling around three separate chargers that eat up space and weight in your carry-on.
How does it stack up against the competition? The most obvious comparison is Belkin, whose 3-in-1 MagSafe charging stands are the gold standard in this category. Belkin’s BoostCharge Pro and UltraCharge Pro docks charge an iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods wirelessly and look considerably more premium sitting on a nightstand, but they also run anywhere from $95 to $150 and require more desk real estate. TESSAN’s charger, at $20.99, skips the wireless charging bells and whistles in favor of a compact, plug-in design that’s built more for function and travel than for a styled bedside setup. If you want a showpiece charging stand for your living room, Belkin is still hard to beat. But if you want something inexpensive, pocketable, and fast enough to get you out the door in the morning, TESSAN makes a compelling case for itself as the budget-friendly, travel-first alternative.
At the end of the day, this isn’t a charger trying to be a lifestyle centerpiece. It’s a charger trying to solve a genuinely annoying, everyday problem: too many devices, not enough outlets, and not enough patience to wait in line for your turn at the power strip. For $20.99, the TESSAN 3-in-1 USB-C Charger delivers fast charging, broad compatibility, and a clever built-in Apple Watch dock in a package small enough to disappear into a laptop bag or a nightstand drawer. It won’t turn heads the way a sleek charging stand might, but it will quietly keep your phone, watch, and earbuds powered up without the usual cord chaos. For anyone juggling multiple Apple devices on a daily basis, or packing for a trip and dreading the tangle of cables, this little charger earns its spot on the “actually useful” list.
The post This $21 Charger Powers Your iPhone, Apple Watch, and AirPods at Once first appeared on Yanko Design.
Setting a reminder on a phone means unlocking a screen, opening an app, and typing on a keyboard, three steps that break whatever train of thought led to needing the reminder in the first place. MATE skips all of that by reading your own handwriting instead. Write “meeting at 1:00 p.m.” on its E-ink panel with the built-in pen, and the device sets the alarm itself, no app, no unlocking, no menu to dig through.
That handwriting recognition is the entire premise, and it works because the device treats a note and a task as the same object rather than two separate steps. The moment it detects a time written into the text, it quietly converts that scribble into a scheduled alert running in the background. Nothing about the note’s appearance changes. It still just looks like something you jotted down on paper.
Designer: Geonwoo Kang
A thin LED bar along the top edge handles the countdown, giving a glance-able sense of how much time remains without requiring a full screen wake or a swipe through settings. When the set time actually arrives, the alarm sounds and stops the instant you tap the panel, keeping the entire alert cycle contained to the same physical surface where the note was written in the first place.
Because handwritten notes pile up fast, MATE handles multiple pages through a three-stage physical slider running down one side, letting you flip between up to three saved notes with a flick of a finger. That’s a deliberately low-tech solution to a problem most gadgets solve with a touchscreen menu, and it works specifically because a slider takes zero attention to operate correctly on the first try.
The memo pad itself doesn’t have to stay locked into the main body either. It detaches from its dock and relies on built-in magnets to stick onto a partition wall or a metal filing cabinet, turning a handheld notepad into a fixed reminder posted wherever it’s actually needed. A grocery list stuck to a fridge door works the same way a sticky note always has, just with an alarm quietly running underneath it.
Even the pen gets a small, deliberate design decision most styluses skip. It nests into a groove at the top of the device rather than rattling around loose in a bag or a drawer, solving the single most common complaint about any stylus-based gadget: losing the one piece that makes the whole thing work. Reaching for a note and finding the pen missing defeats the entire point of a device built around spontaneous handwriting.
None of MATE’s individual pieces, the E-ink panel, the physical slider, the magnetic pad, would stand out much alone. Put together, they describe a specific kind of object: something meant to sit on a desk quietly doing one job well, catching a thought before it disappears and holding onto it until the moment it’s actually needed.
The post MATE Works Like a Sticky Note That Sets Its Own Alarm When You Write first appeared on Yanko Design.
I’ve tried every trick to get my phone to leave me alone. Do Not Disturb. Grayscale mode. Leaving it in another room, which mostly just means I walk to the other room every twenty minutes to check on it. None of it works for long, because the problem was never the settings. The problem is that the phone is still there, still glowing, still capable of buzzing the second I let my guard down. Willpower is a terrible security system, and every app-based fix is still just asking me to trust myself, which is exactly the thing I can’t do at nine at night with a bag of chips in one hand.
That’s the gap French industrial designer Pascal Grangier is quietly working in with FARADAY, a home object that doesn’t ask you to resist your phone. It makes resistance unnecessary. Named after the 19th-century scientist whose cage design blocks electromagnetic fields, the piece works on the same basic physics: once your phone is inside, it has no signal at all. No calls sneak through, no texts land, no app can light up your lock screen and drag your eyes back to it. You’re not disconnecting through discipline. You’re disconnecting through geometry.
Designer: Pascal Grangier
What makes this more than a novelty is the shape it comes in. Most signal-blocking products look like they were built for a hardware store, not a living room. Faraday pouches for concerts and courtrooms are floppy nylon sleeves you’d never leave out on a counter. Grangier’s version is carved from wood, with the kind of soft, rounded form you’d expect from a well-made bowl or a piece of studio furniture. It’s designed to sit on a nightstand or a kitchen counter without looking like a confession that you have a phone problem. That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should. An object you’re proud to display gets used. An object you’re embarrassed by gets shoved in a drawer and forgotten by the second week.
I think a lot about why boxes like this are showing up now, and it’s not really about phones getting worse. It’s about people finally admitting that the “just put it on silent” advice never addressed the actual craving, which is the urge to check, not the urge to hear. Silent mode still lets the dopamine loop run in the background of your brain, because you know the notifications are piling up somewhere, waiting. A Faraday enclosure removes the pile entirely. There’s nothing accumulating on the other side of that lid, so there’s nothing to be curious about later.
I don’t think objects like FARADAY are anti-technology, and I’d push back a little on anyone who frames it that way. It’s closer to how we treat food we know we’ll overeat if it’s sitting on the counter. Nobody calls it deprivation to put the cookies in a cabinet instead of banning sugar from the house. A wooden box that mutes a phone for the length of a dinner, or a weekend, or a first date, isn’t rejecting the smartphone era. It’s setting a boundary the same way a lock on a liquor cabinet does, respectfully and without lecturing anyone.
The dinner table is probably where this thing earns its keep fastest. Phone stacking, where everyone tosses their device into a pile and the first person to grab theirs pays the check, has become a real ritual at restaurants precisely because people know they need external enforcement. FARADAY takes that same instinct and gives it a permanent home, no penalty games required, no honor system to break.
Whether a hand-carved signal blocker becomes a fixture in American homes the way candles or diffusers did, I couldn’t tell you yet. But the appetite is obviously there. We keep buying productivity apps, screen time trackers, even flip phones marketed as luxury items, all chasing the same outcome Grangier reached with a block of wood and a basic law of physics. Sometimes the smartest tech solution is the one that refuses to be technology at all.
The post The Wooden Box That Refuses to Let Your Phone Win first appeared on Yanko Design.
Most phones arrive finished, sealed behind glass before you open the box. MAKERphone 2.0 flips that script. It ships as loose parts that only become a phone once you build it yourself: no soldering iron, no electronics background, just a screwdriver and about two hours. Once assembled, it’s a working 4G device that makes real calls and sends texts over a live network.
The build is what really sells the design. Every piece, from the board to the display to the numpad and to the joystick, clicks or screws into place. The entire endeavor is guided by an illustrated manual that reads like a LEGO instruction booklet, with video walkthroughs for anyone who gets stuck. By the time you finish, you’ve seen the processor, the modem, and the battery close, not used them.
Designer: CircuitMess
Click Here to Buy Now: $129 $160 (24% off). Hurry, only a few left! Raised over $300,000.
Pop in a nano-SIM and the phone comes alive on 4G networks, handling calls and texts like any device off a shelf. There’s a music player, a photo and video gallery, a calendar, notes, and a handful of retro games loaded onto that small color screen. What’s missing says as much: no app store, no social feed, nothing designed to keep anyone scrolling past bedtime.
That absence is the whole appeal for anyone shopping for a kid’s first phone. It calls and texts the people a child needs to reach, without opening the door to an internet’s worth of distraction. When a kid wants a new app or game, the answer isn’t downloading one; it’s building it. Screen time stops being something to limit and starts being something to spend making.
That building happens inside VibeBoy, the phone’s companion coding studio that runs on a computer. Describe an idea in plain English, like a taco dodging falling pickles, and the AI writes code sent to the phone with one click. The goal isn’t to let AI do all the thinking but to let VibeBoy teach users to read that code, question it, and eventually rewrite it.
That teaching happens across four stages built into the same app. Beginners describe what they want and watch it appear on-screen, before moving on to reading and tweaking the Python code the AI generates. Eventually, they write their own Python and C++ from a blank file. Nobody stays at one skill level long; the ladder is designed so most people climb it faster than expected.
Six snap-on modules turn the phone into something closer to a small hardware platform than a single-purpose device. A camera module captures pixelated stills and video, a bigger speaker adds volume, and a flashlight adds utility. An environment sensor reads temperature and humidity, an infrared module controls other devices, and a bare perforated board lets anyone solder a custom circuit and plug it in.
A companion smartwatch called MAKERband follows the same idea, arriving as a kit to assemble rather than a sealed gadget. Once built, it pairs with the phone over Bluetooth and also works with iOS and Android, running 15 watchfaces and five mini-games out of the box. It connects to VibeBoy, so a custom watchface, say, a pixel cat that naps after 9 PM, is a prompt away.
The company behind it, CircuitMess, has spent years building kits like this from a small studio in Croatia. It has shipped hundreds of thousands of units to customers across more than 100 countries, developed dozens of products, and earned coverage from outlets like Wired and The Verge. Just as important, the MAKERphone 2.0 isn’t a rendering or an early prototype: the hardware is finished and ready for production.
What sticks with you isn’t any single spec but the sequence. A pile of components turns into a working phone, and that phone turns into whatever its owner decides to code next. Somewhere between the last screw and the first successful call, the device stops feeling like something you bought and starts feeling like something you actually built, one working call at a time.
Click Here to Buy Now: $129 $160 (24% off). Hurry, only a few left! Raised over $300,000.
The post MAKERphone 2.0 Assembles Like LEGO, Calls Like a Real 4G Phone first appeared on Yanko Design.
OpenAI unveils Sponsored Agents for ChatGPT ads, letting users chat directly with brand AI agents. Learn about new Shopify and HubSpot integrations.
The post OpenAI Launches Interactive Sponsored Agents for ChatGPT Ads appeared first on TechRepublic.
Waymo plans to launch robotaxis in Singapore in 2028, testing its self-driving system against local roads, monsoon weather, and regional rivals.
The post Waymo Picks Singapore for First Southeast Asia Robotaxi Market appeared first on TechRepublic.
MIT researchers built a robotic optics lab that assembled a working laser in 30 minutes, pointing toward more autonomous scientific research.
The post MIT Robot Builds a Working Laser in 30 Minutes With Minimal Human Help appeared first on TechRepublic.
The DOE is offering up to $215 million through Quantum Genesis Q to accelerate fault-tolerant quantum computers with at least 100 logical qubits.
The post Trump Bets $215 Million on Quantum Computing: DOE Targets Practical Systems appeared first on TechRepublic.
OpenAI launches Astra for Law with specialized US legal search, integrations, and improved research results, but its benchmark reveals limits.
The post OpenAI Launches Astra for Law: Legal AI Gets a Specialized Research Engine appeared first on TechRepublic.
Slim, art-inspired, and tougher than it looks, the TECNO CAMON Slim 5G packs a 6,000mAh battery into a body thin enough to turn heads.
Slim phones have always come with a catch. Shave down the body and something else usually gets sacrificed: usually the battery, sometimes the durability, occasionally both. The TECNO CAMON Slim 5G doesn’t play by that old rulebook. At just 6.39mm thick, it still packs a 6,000mAh battery, 5G connectivity, and a durability rating most phones twice its thickness wouldn’t dare claim.
This review spent real time with the phone away from spec sheets, mostly to see if the design holds up once the initial wow wears off. That meant handling the Neo Mondrian finish TECNO sent for testing, carrying it through a normal week, testing the camera in situations that actually matter, and checking whether the durability claims survive contact with water and everyday clumsiness. The design conversation comes first.
Designer: TECNO
Pull the CAMON Slim 5G out in public and watch what happens. People notice a phone this thin the way they’d notice a watch too elegant for its price tag, usually with a double take and a request to hold it. TECNO carried over the swan-neck curve from the CAMON 50 series, and on a body this slender, that curve reads like a signature rather than a spec sheet footnote.
TECNO sent the Neo Mondrian colorway for this review, and it’s the strongest argument for treating a phone back as an actual canvas. Expose the panel to sunlight and yellow, green, and cyan blocks slowly bloom out of white, forming the grid Piet Mondrian made famous a century ago. It’s a photochromic trick, but watching it happen feels less like a gimmick and more like a magic show.
Neo Mondrian isn’t the only finish doing something interesting. Van Gogh Blue uses similar light-reactive techniques to make its swirling nebula pattern look like it’s actually rotating as shadows shift across it, closer to a painting than a phone back. Matisse Black leans into fluorescent green or pink color blocks that echo the artist’s cut-out work, while Burgundy Red blends fiberglass and matte texture into a warm, understated finish. Rebel Pink keeps things simpler, pairing a black body with sharp pink accents for something a little more playful.
Phone backs used to be an afterthought, something to protect rather than admire, which is why so many people slapped an opaque case on day one without a second thought. That’s changing. As manufacturers invest more in finishes, textures, and light-reactive coatings, more owners are leaving their phones bare, treating the back panel the same way they’d treat a piece of art they paid good money to display.
Carrying the CAMON Slim 5G is where the thin body actually pays off day to day. It slides into a front pocket without that telltale bulge, sits flat against a jacket without pulling on the fabric, and feels lighter in hand than the display size suggests. After a few days, reaching for a thicker phone almost feels like picking up a brick by comparison.
Those flat edges aren’t just a style choice borrowed from boxier design trends. They give fingers something to actually grip onto, instead of sliding off a rounded rim the way slippery slab phones tend to do. The matte texture on the Neo Mondrian panel adds even more confidence, and TECNO’s wet and oily finger recognition keeps the touchscreen responsive when hands aren’t exactly dry or clean.
The 6.78-inch AMOLED display runs at 1.5K resolution and 144Hz, and both numbers translate into a screen that looks sharp and feels fast under a thumb. Photos pop with the kind of contrast only AMOLED delivers, video looks great for a lunch break binge, and scrolling through a feed never feels like it’s fighting the hardware. TÜV Rheinland’s low blue light certification is a nice bonus for long reading sessions.
Under the hood sits a MediaTek Dimensity 7300e, a processor built for balance rather than benchmark bragging rights. It handles social apps, photo editing, and everyday multitasking without hiccups, though demanding 3D games will ask more of it than it’s built to give. The 8GB of RAM stretches to 24GB with virtual memory extension, which covers most multitasking habits without needing to close every open app.
The 50MP Sony LYTIA 700C handles most of the photography workload, and it earns that responsibility. A 1/1.56-inch sensor paired with an f/1.8 lens pulls in plenty of light for evening shots, while the closed-loop ball motor keeps focus locked even when subjects won’t sit still. The 8MP ultra-wide feels more like a footnote, and there’s no telephoto here, but the main camera rarely leaves you wanting one.
The real showstopper is the 6,000mAh battery, a number that seems almost impossible once you remember this phone measures 6.39mm thick. It comfortably carries a full day of camera use, video, and scrolling without the battery anxiety that usually comes with slim designs. That same waterproofing also unlocks a dedicated underwater photography mode, one that kicks in automatically the moment the phone senses it’s gone for a swim.
TECNO rates the CAMON Slim 5G at IP69K, IP69, IP68, and IP66, a combination that’s rare even among phones that don’t have to worry about staying thin. That covers everything from high-pressure water jets to dust particles to full submersion, which is a lot of technical armor for a phone this delicate-looking. Finding this rating on a 6.39mm body is the kind of detail that quietly impresses.
There’s also a MIL-STD-810 rating covering shock and drop resistance, which pairs nicely with features like Rain Touch and Waterproof Case Touch that keep the screen usable in a downpour or behind a case. This doesn’t read like a feature bolted on at the last minute. It feels like TECNO wanted this phone to survive actual daily chaos, not just look good sitting still on a shelf.
Longevity extends past the hardware, too. TECNO promises three major OS upgrades and five years of security patches, plus a 60-month smoothness certification from TÜV SÜD. That’s a meaningful commitment in a market where phones often get abandoned after two update cycles. A well-built object is worth keeping around, and TECNO seems to be betting that owners will want to hold onto this one for a while.
TECNO hasn’t confirmed global pricing yet, but early indications point to somewhere around $400. At that number, buyers get a phone with genuine art-inspired finishes, a 6.78-inch 144Hz AMOLED screen, a Sony-backed 50MP camera with real stabilization, a 6,000mAh battery, and a durability rating that most phones twice the price don’t bother chasing. That’s a fairly generous list for a phone that costs less than most flagships.
Most phones in this price range make you pick a lane. Go thin, and the battery usually suffers, or the body skips water resistance entirely, or the software support runs out after a couple of years. TECNO’s five-year update promise and its layered durability ratings quietly add up to lower long-term cost, since a phone built and supported to last half a decade doesn’t need replacing as often.
This phone makes the most sense for people who are tired of carrying an identical black slab and want something that says a little more about them. It’s not the right pick for hardcore mobile gamers chasing max frame rates, or photographers who need optical zoom on tap. For nearly everyone else, it covers daily needs while looking like it belongs on a gallery shelf.
After a few days of actual use, the 6,000mAh battery and the quad-IP rating stop feeling like marketing footnotes and start feeling like the whole point. TECNO built a phone that looks like it belongs in a design museum and still survives a rainy commute or a splash at the sink. The Neo Mondrian panel alone gives it a personality that’s genuinely hard to find anywhere near this price.
Plenty of phones ask you to choose between something beautiful and something dependable, and most buyers have quietly accepted that trade-off as the cost of owning a nice-looking device. The CAMON Slim 5G makes a strong case that the choice was never as necessary as the industry made it seem. It’s a phone that looks good on a café table and still works fine after falling off of one.
The post TECNO CAMON Slim 5G Review: Thinner than a Pencil, Tough as a Tank first appeared on Yanko Design.
A new Samsung patent reveals how wearable glucose measurement could work as the company continues researching noninvasive blood sugar monitoring.
The post Samsung’s New Patent Reveals How a Galaxy Watch Could Measure Blood Sugar appeared first on TechRepublic.
Camera design spent the last two decades chasing thinner phones and bigger screens, so a company deciding to revive a boxy, finger-length shape from the 1970s sounds like a step backward. The Camp Snap 110D proves otherwise. It borrows its elongated, pocketable body from the old 110 film format, then strips out the one feature every digital camera has trained us to expect: a screen for checking the shot you just took.
That missing screen isn’t a cost-cutting shortcut. It’s the entire point. Smartphone photography turns every outing into a loop of shooting, reviewing, deleting, and reshooting until a moment gets buried under a dozen nearly identical takes. The 110D breaks that loop by design, letting a photo exist the instant it’s taken and staying invisible until you plug the camera in later and actually look at what you captured.
Designer: Camp Snap
Living without a review screen also solves a problem the original 110 format never had to think about: battery life. Screens are usually the single biggest power drain in a compact camera, so removing one frees up room for improvements elsewhere. The 110D pairs that saved power with QuickDraw sleep and wake functionality, letting the camera snap awake fast enough to catch a moment instead of fumbling through a slow startup.
Inside that slim shell sits an 8-megapixel sensor, modest by phone camera standards on purpose, since chasing sharper resolution would work against the whole idea of embracing a lower-fidelity, more film-like result. Five built-in filters let a shooter pick a mood before pressing the shutter rather than fixing it afterward in an app, pushing the entire editing decision to before the photo exists instead of after.
Storage runs on a microSD card, and images transfer out through a USB-C port, a small detail that keeps the retro shape from turning into an actual hassle to use. Charging works the same way, so nobody’s hunting for a proprietary cable or a dead battery with no replacement in sight. The vintage silhouette stays purely visual, while the internals stay entirely current.
Two colorways round out the release: a black variant and a cream-and-orange combination that leans harder into the ’70s reference than the shape alone already does. Both ship with a wrist lanyard and a small carrying pouch, treating the camera less like a serious tool tucked into a bag and more like something meant to hang off a wrist at a party or a weekend trip without a second thought.
At $74.99, the 110D undercuts most instant cameras and plenty of higher-end toy cameras while offering something neither fully provides: a shape borrowed from actual photographic history rather than a generic plastic body built to look vaguely retro. That’s a specific kind of nostalgia, aimed at people who remember what a 110 camera looked like even if they never touched the film it used.
The post Camp Snap’s 110D Looks Like 1973 and Still Skips the Screen on Purpose first appeared on Yanko Design.
Vietnam's NATIF is offering businesses up to about $114,000 for AI projects, with applications open through Oct. 10, 2026.
The post Vietnam Offers Businesses About $114K for AI Projects — Who Qualifies? appeared first on TechRepublic.
Bose's new open-ear earbuds cost $199 and $299. The extra $100 buys longer single-charge battery life and more audio features, but not better durability.
The post Bose Sport Open vs Ultra Open 2: Is the $100 Upgrade Worth It? appeared first on TechRepublic.
The Apple ecosystem runs deep, but the devices themselves only go so far. The iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad are remarkable pieces of hardware on their own, and yet a small category of accessories has figured out exactly what each one is missing. Not cases that just protect or cables that just charge, but objects that change the way a device feels, sounds, looks, or works from the moment you pick it up.
These five accessories do exactly that. They come from different corners of the Apple world, covering the watch, the phone, the iPad, and the kind of audio experience Apple never built its own hardware around. Each one earns its place not because it carries a name worth recognizing, but because it solves a specific frustration that was always there waiting to be noticed. Here are the ones worth knowing about right now.
Most Apple Watch docks are functional and forgettable, a plastic puck with a magnetic charger and no ambition beyond getting your watch off your wrist for the night. The NightWatch is not that. It is a clear glass orb, roughly the size of a generous paperweight, that you set your Apple Watch inside at night. The result transforms the watch’s nightstand charging face into a magnified, glowing clock that is genuinely easier to read from across a dark room than the device alone would ever allow.
The dock works by treating the Apple Watch display as a light source and the glass sphere as a lens, drawing the time out of a small wrist-bound rectangle and spreading it into a real visual presence on the nightstand. It also includes a built-in audio amplifier that boosts the sound of your alarm, so quiet mornings stay that way until you actually need them not to be. At $69.99, it is priced more like a considered object than a cable management solution, which is exactly the spirit it deserves to be received in.
The Apple Pencil is a precision instrument that has never quite figured out how to feel like one. The glass surface beneath it is smooth and frictionless, and while that works fine for certain tasks, illustrators and note-takers spending hours drawing have always wanted something closer to real paper. Astropad’s Rock Paper Pencil addresses that gap directly: a removable, reusable nano-texture screen protector paired with custom Apple Pencil tips, and version 4.0 makes the system meaningfully better than it has ever been.
The upgrade introduces a new graphite POM tip alongside the existing steel ballpoint option, and the difference is immediately legible. The graphite tip mimics the toothy drag of a 2B pencil, a sensation that makes expressive sketching and shading feel deliberate and controlled rather than slippery and approximate. Each kit now ships with four tips in total, two graphite and two ballpoint, alongside a screen cleaning kit that should have been included from the beginning. The protector attaches via NanoCling static cling rather than adhesive, meaning it lifts off without residue and goes back on without a bubble.
Every speaker you own asks something of you before it makes a sound. The Bluetooth speaker needs charging, and the charging case needs its own cable. The smart speaker needs a wall outlet, a WiFi password, and a company’s servers to stay online on a random Tuesday. The Battery-Free Amplifying iSpeakers, designed by Ooi Masato of Pit-A-Pat for Shimawa and made in Japan, need none of it. They need your iPhone and the physics of a sound wave moving through precision-machined metal, and that is the complete brief.
The design is straightforward: a Duralumin metal body with a slot for the phone and golden-ratio speaker apertures that channel and amplify sound through acoustic resonance, the same principle that powered phonographs before electricity reached most homes. There is no pairing, no app, no battery level to check. You set your phone in the slot, and your music gets louder and fuller, immediately.
Click Here to Buy Now: $179.00
Phone cases tend to fall into two camps: those that protect the device and those that try to say something. Nomad’s Leather Folio attempts something harder: a single object that does both without looking like it is trying to do either. Crafted from Horween leather inside and out, with MagSafe compatibility and RFID blocking built in, it folds over the front of the iPhone Duo and turns what is already an expensive device into a combination that reads less like a phone and more like something a person who still carries a leather notebook would reach for without thinking twice.
Priced at $129, it is not a cheap case, but it is not pretending to be. The leather cover closes over the screen, which is either a feature or a nuisance depending entirely on how you use your phone, though for anyone who already drops it face-down out of habit, the protection is real and the payoff is legitimate. MagSafe integration means the phone charges normally through the case, and the RFID blocking handles the handful of situations where that actually matters. The overall effect is a device that feels deliberately considered in a way most cases never manage to pull off.
The click wheel was never just an interface. It was a tactile experience that gave early iPods a sense of ceremony that touchscreens have never quite replaced, a physical scroll mechanism that made navigating a playlist feel like it was worth doing slowly. Techpod’s RePod C1 is a $60 Apple Watch case that wraps the watch in an iPod-style shell and brings that wheel back, and what keeps it from being a novelty is one mechanical detail: the click wheel connects directly to the Apple Watch’s Digital Crown, so turning it actually does something real.
The case uses an open-back design that leaves all of the watch’s sensors fully accessible, meaning heart rate monitoring, ECG, and Apple Pay all continue to work normally. Antenna cutouts preserve Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular connectivity without compromise. The more interesting side effect is what it does to the device’s identity: sliding the watch into a pocket during a run or a commute and navigating with the Crown from inside the shell turns the Apple Watch into something that feels far more like a small, deliberate music player than a wrist-worn notification machine.
Apple’s hardware is precise enough that the accessories worth paying attention to are the ones that noticed a gap the company chose not to fill. The NightWatch saw a dim nightstand clock. Astropad saw a frictionless drawing surface. Ooi Masato saw a speaker that required too much setup before it made a sound. Nomad saw a phone that could carry itself differently. Techpod saw a scroll mechanism nobody had brought back with anything real underneath it.
None of these are essential in the way a charging cable is essential. They are optional in the best sense, the kind of thing that makes a device feel more considered in the hands of whoever chose it. Whether your Apple device is a watch, a phone, or an iPad, something on this list has already figured out what was missing before you had the words for it.
The post The 5 Best Apple Accessories Of September 2026 That Actually Improve How You Use Your Devices first appeared on Yanko Design.
Connexion