• Google leads efforts to dismantle 1.3 million device residential proxy botnet built through malware preinstalled on Android hardware
• Researchers say manufacturer Videostrong intentionally shipped malware and sold botnet access to cybercriminals
• Google seized infrastructure, blocked the company from Android certification, and strengthened device security checks

Google has revealed its role in taking down a massive residential proxy network and the malware that built it - with the unusual twist that the developer was a seemingly legitimate business with multiple products and countless trusting customers.

In a blog post, the company said that together with its partners, it dismantled a backdoor called XCPE. This malware was apparently used for ad fraud, served as a dropper for additional malware, and used for assimilating devices into an illegal residential proxy network.

In total, more than 1.3 million set-top boxes alone were part of the network, the company said.

No supply chain attack

Malicious residential proxy networks are nothing new - they emerge and get dismantled on a regular basis. But this one was unique, as it came preloaded on Android devices built and sold by a certified Android Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and Original Design Manufacturer (ODM). In other words, people were thinking they were buying a legitimate product from a legitimate, Google-vetted company, but were instead getting malware-laden hardware that abused their trust and sold their bandwidth to cybercriminals.

In this case, not only did the company know what it was doing, but it was actively developing the malware and even worked on hiding it from Google and everyone else.

“A device manufacturer intentionally infecting their users with malware is an unacceptable breach of trust, and represents a serious risk to those users,” Google said, not hiding its disappointment with the manufacturer.

Videostrong ended up selling two things: On the surface, it was selling Android-powered smartphones and similar devices that contained malware that built a botnet. Under the table, it was selling access to that botnet to cybercriminals.

Google was joined by a number of other companies and agencies in this operation, including Japan’s National Police Agency, Lumen, HUMAN Security, Plume, Synthient, and TrendAI.

Threat actors are always in need of residential proxy botnets. They can use them to launch powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, hide their addresses as they operate, conduct large-scale credential stuffing campaigns, bypass geographical restrictions, scrape websites at scale, and more. We don’t know how much Videostrong made from selling access to the botnet, or who used it.

Taking down the C2 domains

To disrupt both the malware and the network, Google took down the domains and servers the company used to control the botnet and install malware modules, took down C2 domains that were used by over a dozen malware families loaded as modules via the XCPE backdoor, and banned Videostrong and all future subsidiaries and affiliates from building and selling Android devices in the future, or supplying software to other certified vendors.

Google also said it had improved its firmware integrity checks for certified Android TV devices to prevent similar incidents involving other manufacturers.

“Google requires OEMs go through a comprehensive suite of compatibility and security tests to ensure a consistent and safe user experience across the Android ecosystem,” it stressed. “However, Videostrong employed obfuscation techniques to exploit a gap in our tests and load malicious code after the device's first boot. As a result, Google has implemented changes to its existing review process to better safeguard against similar activity in the future.”

This is not the first time an electronic device came with malware off the shelf. Last month, security researchers Bitdefender found Android phones from multiple manufacturers, including Doogee and Cubot (both Chinese firms) being sold with preloaded malware. However, in those cases, the supply chain was compromised and the malware was included without the OEM’s knowledge, or consent.

• A zero-click Android flaw let attackers crash phones with a specially crafted SMS message
• Repeated messages could trigger reboot loops, disrupt calls, and even affect emergency connectivity
• Google patched supported Android versions, but many end-of-life devices remain permanently vulnerable

Picture this: You’re talking on your Android phone when all of a sudden you just lose mobile connectivity and your phone call drops. No explanation, no notification. Soon after, it happens again. And again. At one point, the device goes into recovery mode, rebooting every minute and a half until you finally perform a factory reset.

This is not a theoretical scenario - it is a real possibility, thanks to a critical-severity vulnerability in Android tracked as CVE-2026-58882.

Google has patched the issue for newer versions of Android, but those who are past their end-of-life date will remain at risk.

Sending an evil message

The bug was discovered by security researcher Mark Blah and described as a zero-click denial of service (DoS) vulnerability. In more technical terms, it is an “improper validation of a header-length value” bug in Android’s WapPushOverSms.decodeWapPdu function. It was nicknamed “SMS of Death” because it can be exploited with nothing more than an SMS message, which the victims doesn’t even have to open (hence the ‘zero-click’ part).

As Blah discovered, a threat actor could send a malformed eight-byte WAP Push message to an Android device’s port 2948: 01 06 88 80 80 80 00 BE.

Since this is a hex message, when it gets translated into a signed 32-bit integer, it becomes -2147483648. Android can then try to allocate memory using this negative value, triggering a NegativeArraySizeException error that crashes the com.android.phone process. Since this process manages cellular functions, the call is dropped and mobile connectivity is disrupted. Even emergency services are susceptible, it was said.

It gets worse. Android processes messages before they reach the inbox, meaning the victim will not be notified of the SMS and won’t even know it’s the text message that’s crashing the system. Also, some carriers will attempt to redeliver messages that never reached the inbox, extending the agony. Android also does its part by constantly trying to process messages already stored on the phone.

Finally, Blah found that if a malicious actor sends 20 or more messages, they can force the device into a reboot loop. On an Android 12 device, they can force looped recovery mode, leaving factory reset as the only viable option.

Patching the SMS of Death

Initially, all Android versions were affected, it was said. Google patched it for versions 14 through 17, but older devices will not be getting a patch and thus will remain at risk indefinitely. The fix is called “Fix remote DoS in decodeWapPdu”, and apparently it prevents the crashes by catching exceptions triggered when Android processes malformed text messages. It also deletes these messages from the SMS database so that they don’t trigger repeat crashes.

Blah has released a proof-of-concept (PoC), showing the wider community exactly how to exploit the flaw, and BleepingComputer reported that a GitHub contributor found a way to remove the malicious message, but it requires more technical knowledge, which is something the majority of mobile phone users probably won’t have. Still, those interested in tinkering should know that it can be removed via a computer, using Android Debug Bridge (ADB).

Google apparently patched the bug in its October 2026 Android security updates, but that doesn’t automatically mean all Android users are safe. Unlike Apple’s ecosystem, Android is diversified, and different manufacturers have different update cadences.

Therefore, while we can assume Pixel users have likely already received this update, Samsung users, as well as those using Xiaomi, Motorola, or OnePlus devices, will probably have to wait a little longer until their manufacturers apply the fix to their devices and push the update.

Still, since the PoC has been released, it’s safe to assume most Android manufacturers have already pushed their updates. Users are advised to install them as soon as possible.

• The Android Kindle app now supports handwriting
• This means you can use a stylus to annotate books
• A support page suggests similar functionality might soon come to Apple devices

One of the big perks of the Kindle Scribe is being able to add handwritten annotations to your books, but it’s a perk that’s no longer exclusive to Amazon’s hardware, as the Kindle app for Android now supports handwritten notes too.

With this update, you can now use a stylus to write directly onto your Kindle books, selecting from different pen styles, colors, and sizes. You can also use this feature to highlight, circle, and underline text.

This could be especially useful for studying, but if you enjoy annotating fiction books, it’s a helpful update there too. It’s not limited to large-screen devices either, with users on Reddit claiming that various standard phones, such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, gained access to this feature as well — though it appears to only work on devices that have native stylus support.

An ereader upgrade — with iOS support possibly incoming

Still, as confirmed by some users, that also means you can access this update on some Android-powered ereaders like certain Boox models.

It’s a feature that’s largely been received positively, with comments on Reddit including “nice surprise,” “I was so happy to see this,” “this is awesome,” and “this is such a game changer.”

Right now, this feature is only available on the Android app, but an Amazon support page mentions that Active Canvas (the feature that allows you to write directly on a Kindle book) is also available on supported iOS devices — so perhaps the iPad and iPhone Duo app will get this update soon.

Oppo Pad 5 Pro: One-minute review

If you’re after a big-screen tablet with a premium design, a huge battery, and a price tag that won’t bankrupt you, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro makes a compelling case as one of the best tablets on the market.

It also arrives with an initially puzzling spec configuration. The Pad 5 Pro is the successor to the Oppo Pad 3 Pro, which landed in 2025 with a smaller screen (12 inches) and 12GB of RAM. This time around, however, Oppo has increased the tablet's screen size but slashed its RAM capacity to 8GB.

That means the Pad 5 Pro has a lower power ceiling than its predecessor for multitasking and resource-intensive productivity tasks, but Oppo has almost certainly made this decision as a result of the ongoing global RAM shortage, which is pushing up memory prices. Had the Pad 5 Pro been equipped with 12GB of RAM, it would almost certainly be significantly more expensive.

And it’s not all bad news for the Pad 5 Pro's power credentials, as its Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset can handle pretty much everything you throw at it. The Pad 3 Pro, by contrast, uses a still-powerful but older Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 Leading Version chipset, so what you lose in RAM, you gain in CPU power.

The tablet's 7:5 aspect ratio display also makes the Pad 5 Pro a great productivity companion. The ColorOS 16 interface has excellent multitasking tools, and I love the ability to use the tablet as a screen for your laptop.

I also enjoyed holding the tablet vertically and reading articles, with its 144Hz refresh rate allowing for smooth scrolling, and the screen's bezel providing a place to rest my thumb.

With the Pad 5 Pro back in landscape, the expansive screen was great for my PUBG: Mobile sessions and streaming videos. Plus, with eight speakers built into the slender frame, the Pad 5 Pro has surprisingly good audio.

Then there’s the whopping 13,380mAh battery that’ll give you multiple days of use from a single charge with moderate use, and a solid two days with more intensive activity.

As big-screen tablets go, then, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro has a lot to offer that makes it easy to recommend.

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Price and availability

• The Oppo Pad 5 Pro costs £699, less than the 13-inch iPad Air (M4)
• Available in the UK and Europe with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro costs £699, making it slightly more expensive than Apple’s entry-level iPad 11-inch (2025) (£429), but comfortably cheaper than the firm’s iPad Air 13-inch (2025) (£949) and Samsung’s 12.6-inch Galaxy Tab S12 Plus (£1,399). Its closest competitor, price-wise, is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus (£689).

At £699, the Pad 5 Pro also costs £200 more than its predecessor. Sure, it has a bigger screen, a larger battery, and an updated chipset — but as mentioned, it also has less RAM. You're still getting decent bang for your buck, but last year's Pad 3 Pro was a better value proposition overall.

At the time of writing (October 2026), Oppo is running a £100-off promotion on the Pad 5 Pro, taking the asking price down to £599. At that figure, it's a steal.

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is currently available in the UK and Europe. If you’re reading this review in North America or Australia, then bad news: this tablet is not currently sold in your region.

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is available in a single configuration: 8GB RAM with 256GB of storage, and Wi-Fi only. Unlike Apple’s iPads and Samsung’s Galaxy Tabs, there is no cellular option here.

If you want to enhance your experience, Oppo offers case and stylus accessories for the tablet. The Oppo Pad 5 Pro Smart Keyboard case (£299), as the name suggests, provides you with a full QWERTY keyboard and stand in a similar design to Apple’s Magic Keyboard.

The Smart Case (£29.90) provides front and back protection and an origami-style folding flag for various stand orientations.

Meanwhile, the Oppo Pencil 3 Pro (£79.90) comes with 16,000 levels of pressure sensitivity — more than the Apple Pencil series — and an industry-first felt tip for a realistic writing-on-paper-like experience.

• Value score: 4 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro: Specs

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro boasts a number of key spec upgrades over its predecessor — but it's also saddled with a notable downgrade.

Oppo’s increased the screen size to 13.2 inches, and the display resolution gets a bump too, with the LCD screen now offering a 3392 x 2400 (3.4K) pixel resolution, 315 ppi, and a peak brightness of 1,000 nits.

Battery capacity is now a meaty 13,380mAh with 80W fast charging, while Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset runs the show. There’s 256GB of storage too, plus eight speakers and two microphones, all packed into a supremely slim 5.94mm body.

The downgrade comes in the RAM department. The Pad 3 Pro packed 12GB of RAM, but for the Oppo Pad 5 Pro, you’re getting just 8GB. For a tablet that’s supposedly offering a PC-level experience and plenty of AI productivity tools, this is a disappointment, but not a deal-breaker.

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Design

• Slim, premium design that looks great
• Just one color option, but Mocha Brown works
• It’s almost 100g heavier than the 13-inch iPad Pro

In the battle of the big-screen tablets, there’s not much to choose between the Apple, Oppo, and Samsung slates in terms of design.

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is a great-looking and feeling premium tablet. Its flat edges mimic the latest iPad design, while its ultra-slim profile means it slips seamlessly into a bag.

At 5.94mm thick, the Pad 5 Pro is certainly slender, but it’s not as svelte as the pricier iPad Pro 13-inch (M5) or Samsung Galaxy S12 Ultra, which are both just 5.1mm slim.

This isn't a particularly big issue, although at 672g, there’s some weight behind this supersized slate: the Pad 5 Pro is almost 100g heavier than the iPad Pro 13 (M5) and its predecessor, the Pad 3 Pro. A lightweight, compact tablet this is not.

Oppo claims the all-metal unibody is designed to feel "as natural and effortless to hold as a magazine." While it’s certainly heavier than the T3 magazine I had to hand, I did enjoy holding the tablet during use. There are no sharp edges, and so long as you’re okay with the weight, it’s comfortable in the hand.

I especially liked using it in portrait when reading articles, and while the bezels around the screen might appear to be on the large side, they provided an accommodating space for my thumb to rest.

Oppo has continued the single-color trend it employed for this tablet’s predecessor, with the Pad 5 Pro available in just one hue: Mocha Brown. Now, brown isn’t the first color that jumps to mind for a tablet, but I must say it looks smart here. Plus, a single color choice at least means a simpler buying journey.

There’s a front-facing camera positioned along the landscape edge of the screen, which is the premier position for video calls when in a protective case or keyboard stand, while a pill-shaped island on the rear houses the 13MP rear snapper and flash.

The only buttons on this tablet are a power key and two volume buttons, while a USB-C port provides wired charging and data transfer access.

On the rear, you’ll also find three pogo pin connectors, allowing you to connect the tablet to the optional Smart Keyboard accessory. And on the top edge, there’s a subtle oval indentation to guide you when magnetically attaching the optional Oppo Pencil 3 Pro stylus to the slate when not in use.

Oppo’s also managed to pack eight speakers into the Pad 5 Pro, four on each short side, and there are two microphones to pick up your voice during video calls.

There’s no fingerprint scanner either under the display or built into the power switch, with Oppo instead opting for face unlock smarts.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Display

• Huge 13.2-inch, 3.4K display
• Great for multitasking, gaming, and video streaming
• Supports HDR for Netflix and Prime Video, plus Dolby Vision

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro's display measures a whopping 13.2 inches, making it bigger than Apple’s largest iPad Pro. This supersized screen ensures you have plenty of real estate for your apps, games, videos, and work tasks.

Oppo has stuck with an LCD panel for the screen here, which will likely help keep overall costs down, but it does mean you don’t get the same deep black levels as you do with Samsung’s AMOLED screens.

Resolution isn’t an issue, though, with the 3.4K panel offering a pixel density of 315ppi — that's much higher than you'll get on the pricier iPad Pro (265ppi) and Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra (239ppi).

Oppo uses what it calls the “A4 golden ratio” for the screen — specifically, it's a 7:5 screen aspect ratio that makes reading articles, checking documents, and reviewing presentations very comfortable.

The adaptive refresh rate up to 144Hz means scrolling, swiping, and sliding around the interface and apps feels fluid; great when you’re moving through long documents or fast-moving comment sections.

Fire up a streaming service, though, and 16:9 and 21:9 videos result in large black bars above and below the action. Still, this isn't deal-breaking for the experience, and with HDR for Netflix and Prime Video, along with Dolby Vision support, content looks great.

The Pad 5 Pro's large screen size means it’s an excellent tablet to use away from home, especially when on the move for work. It’s easy to run apps side-by-side without them feeling cramped, and I enjoyed using Oppo’s O+Connect software with my laptop to enable the Pad 5 Pro as a second display.

Plus, the plentiful display real estate was beneficial when I fired up PUBG: Mobile, giving me an expansive view of the battlefield and plenty of space for the on-screen buttons and HUD.

With a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, I was able to use the Pad 5 Pro outside without much in the way of reflections or glare. In direct sunlight, you might struggle to see the screen a little, but positioned on a sun lounger in the shade, this tablet works nicely.

• Display score: 4.5 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Software

• ColorOS 16 provides excellent customization and multitasking
• AI tools are included, but usefulness varies

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro is an Android tablet at heart, with Oppo’s own ColorOS 16 interface laid on top. And Oppo says the tablet will get an upgrade to ColorOS 17 in November 2026.

The good news is Oppo’s UI is a highly accomplished offering these days. It’s pretty close to stock Android, while offering extra layers of customization and features on top. The result is a tablet that’s enhanced by the software Oppo makes.

If you like to fine-tune your experience, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro has plenty of options in the Settings menu, but you don't need to dive into them. This tablet also works great out of the box with the default settings.

And, mercifully, Oppo has kept pre-loaded applications to a minimum, with just a handful forced on you from the off — apps such as Netflix, WPS Office, LinkedIn, and TikTok. The good news is these can be uninstalled easily if you’d rather not have them.

I like how easy it is to get two (or three) apps side by side on screen — tap the three dots at the top of the screen when in an app, select Split View, and you're away. Coupled with the big screen, this multitasking functionality makes the Pad 5 Pro an excellent productivity machine that students and mobile workers will find intuitive and helpful.

And as I mentioned briefly in the display section, productivity can be further enhanced with O+ Connect, which allows you to sync your Mac or Windows laptop to the Pad 5 Pro to use it to transfer documents, mirror displays, or act as a second screen. It works wired and wirelessly, so you don’t need to remember cables every time.

Considering how slim the Pad 5 Pro is, it’s not a huge ask to slide this tablet into your bag with your work or study laptop, giving you excellent flexibility.

There are AI tools on board too, including the now-familiar Circle to Search feature, but Oppo also has AI Smart Circle. When using the optional Pencil 3 Pro, pressing and holding the stylus on the screen will highlight content, allowing you to annotate, save, or share it.

From there, you can access additional AI tools, including AI Painter (which helps you enhance images you find). The tools work and can be fun to use, but their mileage will vary depending on your use cases.

• Software score: 4.5 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Performance

• A mixed bag of specs, but enough power for most
• Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and 8GB of RAM
• Comfortably handles three apps on screen at the same time

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro performance specs are a bit of a mixed bag. First, the good: you get Qualcomm's latest, top-of-the-line chipset, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

That means plenty of raw power under the hood and enough smarts for various AI workflows, whether you’re a Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, or other LLM user.

What’s less impressive is the amount of RAM you get. With its predecessor, the Pad 3 Pro (there was no 4 model), you got 12GB of RAM. On the Pad 5 Pro, however, Oppo has downgraded this capacity to 8GB.

We can’t be too cross with Oppo, though. There’s a global shortage of RAM, which in turn is pushing up prices, and its scarcity is leaving manufacturers in a tricky position when it comes to balancing power and price.

I suspect if Oppo did include 12GB of RAM in the Pad 5 Pro, its asking price would be much higher, and to be fair to the tablet, it handled everything I threw at it with ease.

I cranked up the graphical settings on PUBG: Mobile and was able to successfully log some Winner Winner Chicken Dinner victories, while 4K video streaming from Disney Plus, Prime Video, and Netflix all worked well and looked great.

Hours of gaming, long video calls, prolonged typing of this review using the Smart Keyboard Case, and TV series binges (series two of The Gentleman, anyone?) were all taken in stride, too.

If you’re looking to complete overly complex graphical or AI tasks, though, the Oppo Pad 5 Pro may start to struggle, so consider a more powerful (and likely pricier) tablet if you fall into this category.

For those of you who do a lot of gaming, the Pad 5 Pro has Oppo’s Game Assistant, allowing you to direct maximum performance to the game you’re playing, with toggles to enhance graphics and framerate too.

And a quick word on this tablet’s eight-speaker setup. They sound great for their size, considering they’re packed into the Pad 5 Pro’s slender frame, offering rich audio and great stereo performance. They’re not going to beat a quality pair of Bluetooth headphones, but they’re more than capable for most use cases.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Oppo Pad 5 Pro review: Battery

• Huge 13,380mAh battery
• Multi-day use from a single charge is easily achievable
• 80W fast charging, but you’ll need to provide the block

The Oppo Pad 5 Pro performs very well when it comes to battery life.

Oppo has packed a massive 13,380mAh power pack into the tablet's slender frame, and the sheer capacity on offer translates directly into impressive longevity.

An hour-long PUBG: Mobile gaming session resulted in a 7% drop in battery life, which means the Pad 5 Pro is capable of many hours of gameplay.

Loading up a Dolby Vision-supported movie on Netflix, the Pad 5 Pro dropped 9% in an hour and a half. That was with Wi-Fi connected, brightness at half, and various applications syncing in the background.

Extrapolated out, that's over 10 hours of video streaming, although Oppo claims the Pad 5 Pro can deliver up to 20 hours of video playback. That might be possible on lower brightness settings and with a film file on the tablet itself, but not through everyday streaming.

And when left idle overnight, the Pad 5 Pro lost just 1% in 12 hours.

Battery drain is similar when working and multitasking, with the Pad 5 Pro offering two days of battery life pretty consistently with multiple hours of use each day.

If you use the tablet less, though, you'll find you'll still have battery life days later.

Oppo has also equipped the Pad 5 Pro with its 80W SuperVOOC flash charging, allowing you to top up the mega battery at speed. You'll need a high-powered plug block to achieve the 80W speeds, though — and one isn't provided in the box.

I used a 100W charging block, and the Oppo Pad 5 Pro went from 46% to 54% in 10 minutes, reaching 62% after 20 minutes, and a quarter of the total capacity (3,345mAh) after 30 minutes.

These might not seem like stellar increases on paper, but when you consider the size of the battery inside the Pad 5 Pro, you’re getting hours of use from short charging sessions.

• Battery score: 4.5 / 5

Should you buy the Oppo Pad 5 Pro?

Buy it if…

Don’t buy it if…

Also consider

How I tested the Oppo Pad 5 Pro

I used the Oppo Pad 5 Pro as my daily tablet for a week. I used it for a wide variety of activities, including reading articles, sketching with the Pencil 3 Pro, gaming, checking emails, scrolling social, and streaming TV, movies, and music.

I used the Smart Keyboard Case to type the majority of this review, and recharged the slate with slow and fast charging blocks — you’ll want to invest in an 80W+ block if you buy the Pad 5 Pro.

As part of my testing, I engaged in a mix of high- and low- usage days to get a proper sense of the Oppo Pad 5 Pro's excellent battery life. I tried the tablet's AI features and used its cameras for photography indoors and outdoors, as well as for video calls.

Read more about how we test

First tested October 2026

What’s in a name? When it comes to smartphones, quite a lot, actually. And some brands' product naming conventions are more straightforward than others.

The Oppo Find X10 series arrived last week, comprising two models: the Oppo Find X10 and Oppo Find X10 Pro Max. There’s no regular ‘Pro’ this year, and while there may yet be a Find X10 Ultra in 2027, Oppo’s decision to mix up its flagship naming strategy raised eyebrows at the Find X10 series launch.

Typically, flagship smartphone lineups include a standard model, a Pro model, and a larger Pro Max and/or Ultra model. Apple does it, Google does it, Samsung does it (sort of), and until this week, Oppo did it — the Oppo Find X9 series was made up of the Find X9, Find X9 Pro, and Find X9 Ultra. There was no ‘Pro Max’, but the sequence made sense nonetheless.

Why, then, has Oppo decided to scrap the regular ‘Pro’ and add a ‘Pro Max’ into the fold with this year’s Find X lineup? The reason, Oppo says, is to distinguish the Find X10 Pro Max from the Find X9 Pro as more than just a generational upgrade, and to avoid aligning the Find X10 too closely with its bigger, more premium sibling. Confused? Let me (and Oppo) explain.

“For the Find X10, though it’s a standard version, it’s better compared with the last generation [Find X9 Pro] because it’s empowered with Pro capabilities,” Jensen Jie, Smartphone Product Director at Oppo, explained (via translation) at a roundtable attended by TechRadar.

“And for the Find X10 Pro Max, you must have felt the change compared with the Find X9 Pro. Its competitiveness has been lifted remarkably — that’s why we wanted to name it ‘Pro Max,’ to send a message to users and the market.

“When we’re naming our products, one of the key considerations is that the users can understand the meaning [implied by] a name change,” Jie continued. “And for the Find X10 series, [we believed] there should be a standard version, because many users are more familiar with [the experience offered by] a standard version.

“We just talked about positioning; we have empowered the Find X10 with Pro capabilities this time. And for the Find X10 Pro Max, we have empowered it with the three 200MP camera system and a larger battery [than the Find X9 Pro]. It’s a big upgrade on the last generation — it’s a step forward. That’s why we used ‘Pro Max’, so we can articulate this upgrade clearly to the market and our users.”

Now, that’s a bit of a word salad — I’ll reiterate that Oppo’s answers were provided via translation, so some nuance may have been lost as a result — but I think I understand what the company is trying to say here.

In Oppo’s eyes, the Find X10 Pro Max is a better phone than the Find X10 Pro name would’ve implied. And the Find X10 couldn’t be called the Find X10 Pro, because doing so would make it seem like the same phone as the Find X10 Pro Max, but smaller, which it isn’t (versus the regular model, the Pro Max has a more powerful 2nm MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro chipset and a larger 200MP ultra-wide camera).

Of course, you’d think this conundrum could’ve been solved by simply calling the Find X10 Pro Max the Find X10 Ultra, but we’re expecting that very device to arrive sometime next year and be better still than the Find X10 Pro Max.

So I can (sort of) understand Oppo’s strategy here: the ‘Pro Max’ is being used to describe a product that’s better than ‘Pro’, but still not quite ‘Ultra’. That’s different to how, say, Apple uses the ‘Pro Max’ designation.

Still confused? Perhaps this might help: imagine for a moment that Samsung wanted to release an even better phone than the Galaxy S26 Ultra in the same generation. In that case, the Galaxy S26 Ultra we know might have instead been called the Galaxy S26 Pro Max (owing to its size and premium features), while Samsung would continue to call the Galaxy S26 the Galaxy S26. There’d be no Galaxy S26 Pro. That is, I think, what Oppo is doing here — but please correct me in the comments if you think I've got the wrong end of the stick.

I’m not entirely sure what Oppo means by “many users are more familiar with [the experience offered by] a standard version,” but it’s clear that Oppo thinks of the Find X10 as the true successor to the Find X9 Pro. And that sentiment rang true in our testing of the new device:

“The Oppo Find X10 costs £1,099 — exactly the same as last year’s Find X9 Pro at launch and £200 more than the standard Find X9,” we wrote in our Oppo Find X10 review. “That might sound like a mighty price hike at first, but the truth is that the Find X10 is more obviously a follow-up to the Find X9 Pro than the standard Find X9, and makes a case for its price point with some properly pro-grade features.”

Both the Oppo Find X10 and Find X10 Pro are available to pre-order now from Oppo directly; they'll begin shipping later this month.

For someone who loves movies, I’ve never fancied myself as much of a filmmaker — but Oppo’s Hasselblad-inspired XPAN mode has got me rethinking my directorial ambitions.

Built into the new Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and other Find X Series phones, XPAN lets you shoot ultra-wide frames with a 65:24 aspect ratio. It’s inspired by the Hasselblad XPan camera, which first launched in 1998 and could capture both standard 35mm and panoramic images on the same roll of film.

During a recent visit to Mallorca, Spain, I put Oppo’s XPAN mode to the test, and I’ve decided that a) I wish my iPhone 18 Pro had the same photography feature and b) if Christopher Nolan ever did decide to own a smartphone, he should consider the Find X10 Pro Max. If you’re reading this, Chris, you’ll soon understand why.

I bring up Nolan because XPAN mode turned what would have been good-but-not-great vacation snaps into photos that look like scenes from The Odyssey.

By extending the width of the frame significantly — 65:24 is roughly the size of two standard 35mm frames side by side — XPAN lets you capture the full context of a scene, and I found this extra width beneficial for shooting both landscapes and urban cityscapes.

XPAN works across the wide, ultra-wide, and telephoto lenses of the Find X10 Pro Max — all three, impressively, are 200MP (that’s a first for a smartphone) — and in the gallery above, you’ll see I used the ultra-wide for the widest possible shots of the sunset, and the standard wide for a tighter framing of the headland.

In the Cathedral of Santa Maria in Palma, XPAN came in handy for capturing the breathtaking scale of the building. I particularly love how, in the last image, the almost ethereal light in the middle of the scene is bookended by completely normal churchgoers. The contrast is great.

In these shots, I’ve used XPAN to capture the hustle of busy streets. In the first gallery, see how the couple is trailing behind their runaway daughter, and in the second, how four distinct groups are visible outside the café — you just can’t get the same dynamism and richness from standard smartphone aspect ratios.

As mentioned, XPAN works with all three lenses on the Find X10 Pro Max, and in the gallery below, I’ve included shots taken with the phone’s telephoto lens at 3x optical zoom — proof that wide angles can work up close, too.

Of course, I’m not the first person to discover Oppo’s XPAN mode, but I’m writing this article to make sure I’m not the last.

The feature is actually pretty hidden (it’s tucked away in the ‘More’ tab in Oppo’s camera app), and I only learned about its existence after my colleague, Prakhar, highlighted it in his coverage of the Oppo Find X8 Ultra last year.

“I love anything that helps me see the world differently, and XPAN does just that. It brings an amazing new perspective that I wouldn’t have paid attention to otherwise,” Prakhar wrote at the time, and having now used the feature for myself, I feel the same way.

It’s worth noting that you can achieve similar results with non-Oppo phones by manually cropping ultra-wide shots into the 65:24 aspect ratio, but you’ll have to think harder about your framing before taking the shot.

XPAN, meanwhile, lets you shoot directly into this wider ratio and even transforms the Find X10 Pro Max’s camera into a classic Hasselblad XPan viewfinder. What’s more, once you click the shutter, you’ll get a nice ‘developing’ animation as the phone simulates the transition from negative to photograph, which is a nice nostalgic touch.

Oppo announced the extension of its partnership with Hasselblad in 2025, meaning future Oppo phones will continue to feature XPAN mode and other Hasselblad-inspired photography tools, including Hasselblad Portrait Mode and Master Mode.

It’s sometimes easy to think of these brand partnerships as gimmicks, or as something that Chinese smartphone companies do to keep pace with rivals — Oppo has Hasselblad, Xiaomi Leica, Vivo Zeiss, and Honor recently partnered with ARRI. But if not for Oppo’s Hasselblad collaboration, XPAN mode wouldn’t exist, and I wouldn’t have looked twice at my Mallorca vacation pictures.

So what do you say, Chris — fancy taking the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max for a spin?

For recent generations of students, Chromebooks are ubiquitous: Google's handy, budget-friendly laptops have become classroom fixtures across the US and beyond, handling everything from homework to essays and assignments.

But many of those students are now heading to university or entering the workforce, where choosing a laptop for themselves is a different prospect altogether – something Apple is making a play for with the MacBook Neo.

Google isn't sitting idly by, though, and the recent launch of its Googlebooks is a big statement of intent.

Far from being the inexpensive Chromebooks familiar in schools, Googlebooks like the Acer Googlebook 14 are premium laptops running a new Android-based OS, with deep smartphone integration and the company's Gemini AI.

After years of gaining a deep familiarity with Chromebooks and ChromeOS, these students might be tempted to stick with Google's ecosystem as they grow older and their computing needs change.

But is familiarity enough? Apple's MacBook Neo and a wide range of cheaper Windows laptops also offer compelling alternatives, and both platforms are already deeply entrenched in work and everyday life.

School of Chrome

Google launched its Chromebook project back in 2011, initially as a general-purpose laptop, but its success really came in the education sector – long dominated by Windows – where inexpensive hardware, straightforward device management, and Google's classroom tools won out.

Michael Boreham, principal analyst at Futuresource, told TechRadar that Chromebooks accounted for just 16% of US K–12 mobile PC sales in 2013, rising to 50% by the end of 2015.

Since 2020, Chromebooks have accounted for between 61% and 67% of annual US K–12 mobile PC shipments, a remarkable level of dominance.

The success of Chromebooks has led to millions of students spending their formative years using Google's OS and apps, with services like Google Docs and Drive also available across Windows and macOS.

But those laptops were generally chosen by schools, rather than their students.

"As students transition from school-issued devices to choosing their own laptops, preferences typically shift away from the devices provided by their institution and towards products that align with personal needs and lifestyles," says Boreham.

Old habits, new laptops

Carolina Milanesi, president and principal analyst at The Heart of Tech, draws an important distinction between students becoming familiar with Google's software and actively wanting to buy its hardware.

"What a decade of Chromebooks built is familiarity with Google's tools: Docs, Drive, Classroom, Gmail," she says. "Those tools run in a browser on any laptop, so that familiarity travels with the student wherever they go, including to a Mac."

"For most students the Chromebook was a device the school assigned, often low-cost and locked down, and the association is with schoolwork more than with a laptop they chose," Milanesi adds.

Futuresource's Student Journey research, which surveyed students in the US and UK, found that durability, value for money, storage, and battery life were among the main factors influencing their purchases.

"The lure of Apple is strong for university students given Apple’s unique position as a lifestyle brand and the power of its joined up ecosystem with the seamless integration between iPhone, iPads and MacBooks," says Boreham.

When choosing a brand, students also considered compatibility with their existing devices, brand reputation, and previous experience. Most university students surveyed also reported paying for their devices themselves or using university loans and grants, making value for money especially important.

That presents an obvious challenge for Googlebooks: price. The laptops start at £999 in the UK, compared to £599 for the MacBook Neo – or just £499 with Apple's education discount – and many of the best student laptops are also considerably more affordable.

These are different machines, for sure, but a price gap of up to £500 is hard to ignore when value for money is such an important factor.

Milanesi isn't convinced it'll be an easy sell: "It will be difficult. Younger buyers have a $499 to $599 MacBook on one side and Windows laptops at every price point on the other, and a new platform asking for a premium carries more risk for the buyer."

Then there's the software. Familiarity with Chrome is all well and good, but university students may need specialist applications that their school Chromebooks never had to handle.

"If Googlebooks can replicate or better the performance of a MacBook or Windows notebook and have access to key applications, like, for example, Adobe’s Photo Editing suite, then it may capture share of the student user base as they move beyond high school," says Boreham.

For Milanesi, Google's enormous user base will only get it so far. "Googlebook has to turn that comfort into a purchase, which means making the Google laptop the aspirational choice rather than the default one," she says.

The Android in the room

Google's biggest advantage might be sitting in its potential customers' pockets: their Android phones.

"The Android phone base is the bigger opportunity," says Milanesi. "People choose personal laptops based on the phone in their pocket far more than on the computer they used in class, and Apple has spent years proving how much phone-to-laptop continuity drives Mac sales."

Features like Cast My Apps let users access their phone's apps on a Googlebook, while the Files app can bring photos and documents from an Android phone onto the laptop. It's the kind of connected experience Apple users have enjoyed for years, and an important part of Google's pitch against Windows.

"Against Apple, Google is offering parity more than an edge," says Milanesi.

While these ambitions might sound good on paper, the experience isn't quite seamless yet. When we put the Acer Googlebook 14 through its paces, the hardware and AI integration impressed, but connecting an Android phone proved more complicated than expected.

Milanesi points to another limitation: "Full phone integration requires Android 17, which shrinks the addressable base at launch given how slowly Android updates roll out."

Every Googlebook already includes a year's subscription to Google AI Pro, but Milanesi believes student discounts and more competitive bundles could help bring the overall price closer to Apple's MacBook Neo. Cheaper models further down the line might also help Google reach a wider audience.

Gemini could be another way for Google to stand out, although Milanesi thinks its importance hasn't been obvious enough at launch. "I wish Gemini stood out more as a driver of the overall experience," she says.

Googlebooks, then, could well benefit from the Chromebook generation, but their immediate success is likely to depend more on the smartphones those students carry than their school laptops.

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max: Two-minute review

The Oppo Find X9 Pro was my favorite phone of 2025, so of course, I had extremely high hopes for the X10 series. Interestingly, Oppo hasn't released an X10 Pro in 2026 — instead, there's just an Oppo Find X10 and an X10 Pro Max.

The Pro Max isn't larger than last year's Pro, but it is larger than the X10. If I had to hazard a guess as to why the name has changed, I reckon the RAM shortage-induced price hike might have something to do with it.

That aside, the Find X10 Pro Max does not disappoint. The star of the show is the new camera system, which now features three large 200MP sensors on the rear. The new model also gets a chip upgrade, a larger battery (in some regions), and a faster, professionally calibrated display.

After using this phone for about three weeks, I find myself with almost no complaints. It's super fast, the software is superb, battery life is excellent (I have the larger-capacity version), and the cameras are some of the best on the market.

Honestly, the Find X10 Pro Max's cameras are so impressive that there's a case to be made for picking up this device over a compact point-and-shoot or a vlogging camera. The fact that it's also a phone only sweetens the deal. As a content creator who likes to travel light, it's a dream come true.

What sets the X10 Pro Max's cameras apart is that you can use any lens in any situation without compromising quality. They all share the same 200MP resolution, and they're all at least 1/1.56-inch sensors, so they handle low-light conditions well. The same goes for video, where each lens can capture at up to 8K/30fps or 4K/120fps, and each supports open-gate capture, Log recording, and Dolby Vision. Even the selfie camera is impressive, offering a super-wide field-of-view and reliable autofocus.

Cameras aside, everything else about the Find X10 Pro Max is great, too. Its display is bright and speedy, its software is among the best around, and it games like a champ.

The only real sticking point is the price (spoiler: it's very, very expensive), but if you can stomach the cost, the Find X10 Pro Max is an extremely easy recommendation.

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Price and availability

• £1,499 for 12GB + 512GB
• Introductory offers and bundles available
• Not sold in the US; Australia availability TBC

The globally available version of the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max only comes in one configuration: 12GB of RAM with 512GB of storage.

As ever, it won't launch in the US, but everywhere else, it'll cost you a pretty penny; the Find X10 Pro Max starts at an eye-watering £1,499 in the UK.

Of course, we have the component shortage going on, so a feature-packed flagship like this was never going to be cheap, and this is a higher price point than most were expecting. Still, the Find X9 Pro launched at £1,099 in the UK, so if you see the Find X10 Pro Max as its successor (which I do), that's a £400 price hike.

That said, the 512GB iPhone 18 Pro Max also costs £1,499, and the 512GB Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra costs even more. Meanwhile, the Find X10 Pro Max's spec sheet is in a completely different league, so perhaps this isn't such an outlandish sum after all.

If you're in the UK, there are some tempting introductory deals to help soften the blow. For a limited time, Oppo is offering £100 off the Find X10 Pro Max, plus you can grab a free accessory worth £500. Options include the Hasselblad Teleconverter kit, Oppo Watch X3, or Oppo Pad 5. Other regions will likely have similar offers.

• Value score: 3 / 5

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max: Specs

Here’s a look at the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max’s key specs:

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Design

• Aluminum frame and glass back
• Titanium Grey and Lunar White options
• IP69 dust- and water-resistant

When I first saw the design of the Find X10 Pro Max, I wasn't quite convinced, but it has grown on me over time. It shares some DNA with the Find X9 series, but the camera bump has grown larger, and the lenses are now covered by a single dark pane of glass.

The Find X9 Pro was already a little iPhone-inspired, but that's perhaps even more noticeable with the Titanium Grey X10 Pro Max, which has a raised platform spanning most of the upper rear panel — just like the iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro.

The Luna White model (which is the one I have) looks a little more unique. It has a two-tone rear panel, while the camera island and the module containing the flash and color sensor are completely separated, with no platform underneath.

It's a little quirky, but it's nothing too outlandish, and I've grown to like it a lot. Crucially, having the cameras shoved up in the corner (rather than being in a central circle like on the Vivo X500 Pro Max) means that this phone works really well with MagSafe accessories. And while we still don't get magnets built into the Find X10 Pro Max itself, almost all of Oppo's official cases come with magnets.

Oppo has ditched the somewhat controversial Camera Control clone, but it kept the Action Button (which Oppo calls the Snap Key). It's not a popular stance, but I actually quite liked the Camera Control, and I'll miss it, but I'm very aware that I'm in the minority there.

The Snap Key is great, too, but Oppo's implementation is on the basic side. It can be assigned to access a number of features, like the flashlight, translation, camera, and Mind Space, but you still can't choose your own app. There are also no options for double- or triple-press actions, as we've seen from some competitors.

Otherwise, the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max has the typical flagship look and feel. You get flat aluminum side rails, and a flat front and rear made from Oppo's own Crystal Guard Glass (co-developed with Corning). It's a sizable phone with a bit of heft to it, but I'm used to that, and I felt immediately at home when picking it up for the first time.

It's hard to speak much about the durability, as I haven't tortured my device much, but on paper, the Find X10 Pro Max should handle the elements well. It's IP69 rated for dust and water resistance, and it has an SGS Five Star Drop Resistance Certification, too.

The phone comes with a basic opaque white TPU case in the box, a factory-installed screen protector, a charger, and a USB-C Cable — although I expect the charger inclusion might differ from region to region.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Display

• 6.78-inch 120Hz LTPO OLED
• Can boost to 144Hz in some games
• 3,600 nits, 3,840Hz PWM

The display on the Find X10 Pro Max is nothing short of excellent. It has super-slim symmetrical bezels that measure just 1.15mm on each side. That's the same size as the bezels on the Find X9 Pro, but it's just as impressive to see such thinness the second time around.

What is new on the Find X10 Pro Max is the refresh rate. It can dynamically adjust between 1 and 144Hz as required. Oppo admits that only a few games will take advantage of the full 144Hz, like COD: Mobile, PUBG, and Free Fire, and you won't see such high refresh rates outside of those titles. Still, if you play those, it's a great perk.

As for brightness, it peaks at 3,600 nits, just like last year's model. In my experience, that's more than enough for just about any situation. What I find even more useful is the fact that it can dim down to 1nit for late-night scrolling without melting your eyeballs.

On the topic of eye health, the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max supports 3,840Hz high-frequency PWM dimming to prevent screen flicker at lower brightness levels. Above 70Hz, it'll switch to full DC dimming. If you're sensitive to flicker, you'll really appreciate this feature.

One thing that's pretty unique to the X10 Pro Max is that the screen is professionally calibrated and covers 95% of the BT.2020 wide color space — that's 40% more color coverage than most phone screens, which usually target DCI-P3 instead.

As a result, while the image might not look as vibrant or poppy as some competitors, you can be assured that the colors displayed are accurate. That makes a lot of sense on a content-creation powerhouse such as the Find X10 Pro Max, and I appreciate it.

• Display score: 5 / 5

Xiaomi 17T Pro review: Cameras

• 200MP f/1.5 main (1/1.3-inch)
• 200MP f/2.2 ultra-wide (1/1.56-inch)
• 200MP f/2.1 3x telephoto (1/1.56-inch)
• 50MP f/2 selfie camera (1/2.75-inch)

The Oppo Find X10 Pro Max takes a fresh, zero-compromise approach to the camera system. All three rear cameras have a 200MP resolution, and they all have large sensors, too.

Usually, you have a primary camera that's the best of the bunch, while the telephoto and ultra-wide come with compromises — I wouldn't recommend shooting low-light photos with most ultra-wide cameras, or with that tiny 3x telephoto on the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, for instance.

With the Find X10 Pro Max, you don't need to worry about compromises; just pick the right focal length for the scene and snap away. It reminds me of the Vivo X300 Ultra (which has even larger sensors on all three rear cameras), but even that beast makes a compromise with the ultra-wide's resolution.

The Find X10 Pro Max's selfie camera shares most of its specifications with that of last year's X9 Pro, but it has a wider field of view (similar to the ultra-wide on the back), so it's much better for group photos. Reliable autofocus helps in that regard, too. Of course, if you want a normal selfie, the camera UI lets you crop in to a standard FOV.

The Oppo Find X9 Ultra has been my favorite phone for photography since launch, and the Find X10 Pro Max shares a lot of the same DNA. The pro-focused Master Mode is what truly stole my heart, and thankfully, Oppo is extending that joy elsewhere.

The standard photo mode now uses the same tone mapping as Master Mode, and the sharpening and noise reduction have been dialled back a little, too. It's still a very different look to Master Mode — it's still sharpened much more heavily, and the HDR effect is more pronounced — but it's much more natural than before, and I think it's a change for the better.

The picture styles have been reworked on the Find X10 Pro Max, too. They're available in most modes, and they're all extremely customizable, with their own tone pad (like on the latest iPhones) as well as individual adjustment sliders. Primrose is my favorite, which simulates the look of Portra film stock, but there are plenty of other excellent options, too.

To summarize my experience with photography, the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max is unquestionably among the best camera phones, regardless of lighting conditions. The X9 Ultra is really the only phone that beats it. The Ultra still has the edge with long-range zoom and low-light capture, unless we're talking about the ultra-wide camera, in which case the Pro Max easily comes out on top.

Now, photography is only one part of the puzzle, because Oppo put a lot of effort into this phone's video capabilities, too. Again, consistency is the name of the game here.

All three rear lenses can shoot up to 8K/30fps or 4K/120fps, and they all support open-gate capture at up to 60fps. The same goes for Log recording and Dolby Vision. Just use whatever focal length feels right for the occasion, because they can all do everything.

The Find X10 Pro Max is a seriously capable video-making tool. Solid stabilization and microphone performance add to the appeal, too. If you make YouTube content using your phone, this device should definitely be on your shortlist.

If all that wasn't enough, Oppo also has an external (10x equivalent) teleconverter kit for the Find X10 Pro Max, so you can push the zoom even further, or use it on closer subjects for DSLR-like compression and bokeh. There's also a full-on video rig developed with Tilta, if you want to fully transform this phone into a video workhorse.

• Cameras score: 5 / 5

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Camera samples

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Performance

• MediaTek Dimensity 9600 Pro chipset
• 12GB RAM
• 512GB storage

The Oppo Find X10 Pro Max is powered by MediaTek's latest flagship chip, the Dimensity 9600 Pro. In most situations, it beats the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 on performance and efficiency, and it trades blows with the new 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, too.

For the globally released version, the Find X10 Pro Max only comes in one configuration: 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. That's less RAM than last year, and of course, we have the data centre-driven shortage to thank for that. Still, these capacities are more than sufficient for my needs — the Find X10 Pro Max never skipped a beat, even under heavy multitasking pressure.

It won't be surprising to hear that the Find X10 Pro Max feels incredibly quick, no matter what you ask of it. You have to boot up a seriously demanding game to get the phone to break a sweat.

For this purpose, I put a few hours into Neverness to Everness, which has a detailed urban open-world map that makes some phones chug. The Find X10 Pro Max, though, can run it at 60fps on the highest graphics preset without issue.

The phone's frame does get fairly hot after a while, but the performance seems steady enough. In reality, that just means the cooling system is doing its job, drawing heat away from the chip. If you use a case or a gaming grip, it won't bother you in the slightest.

Gamers will have a great time with the Find X10 Pro Max, and other phones are unlikely to come close to the performance limits of this hardware. It's great.

• Performance score: 4 / 5

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Software

• ColorOS 17, based on Android 17
• Fresh design and new animations
• New Mind Space and AI features

The Oppo Find X10 Pro Max runs ColorOS 17, Oppo's take on Android 17. I have become a big fan of this operating system over the past couple of years, and it's a big part of the reason that I daily-drive an Oppo phone.

The latest version doesn't stray too far from the winning formula, but it has been spruced up a bit. The animations have been refined with some extra elasticity that makes interactions feel even more natural. Plus, there are subtle new glowing touches that appear over the Liquid Glass-esque quick settings and notification shades. It's not a dramatic change, but it's an extra bit of polish that you'll notice.

There's a lot of Apple influence in the styling, but I'm fine with that. Apple has always been strong in the design department, and while Oppo's approach isn't too novel, it does look great. Plus, if there's anything you don't like in ColorOS, it's all very easy to customize.

Oppo has been putting a lot of effort into making its software feel smooth, and the OS now apparently uses up to 25% less RAM than previous versions. Apps should open slightly faster, and Oppo says its software should maintain this smooth operation even when your storage fills up — but I haven't come close to doing that just yet.

Of course, there are loads of AI tools built into the Find X10 Pro Max. There's plenty that we've already seen, like Mind Space, which organizes your screenshots into searchable collections with AI summaries, and there are some new additions, too.

For instance, there's a new tool called AI Photo Agent, which lets you edit your pictures using natural language prompts. Plus, it can give suggestions for edits that might look good, or attempt to recreate the style of another image.

As with anything involving AI, the results can be a bit of a mixed bag, but on occasion, AI Photo Agent works really well. You can do anything you can dream up, from subtle color adjustments to background replacement, subject removal, subject addition — you name it, AI Photo Agent can do it.

There's also something called AI Mind Pilot, which is designed for AI super freaks. It pulls models from Gemini, Perplexity, and OpenAI all into one app, so you can ask the same question to a chorus of chatbots, or switch between them as you see fit.

Mind Pilot was already available on the X9 Ultra, but this version now has more agentic capabilities. The AI can find files and photos from around your phone, move them, rename them, or even create something with them, like a presentation or a collage.

• Software score: 4 / 5

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Battery

• 7,150mAh battery (EU) / 8,000mAh (APAC)
• 80W wired charging
• 50W wireless charging

The battery situation with the Find X10 Pro Max is a little complicated. If you live in Asia, Australia, or the Middle East, you'll get a mammoth 8,000mAh battery pack. Meanwhile, in Europe, shipping regulations mean that you'll only get a 7,150mAh-capacity cell.

There's nothing unusual about that, except for the fact that I have the 8,000mAh version of the Find X10 Pro Max, despite living in the UK. This means that any of my observations about battery life only apply to the APAC version of the phone. Relevant to some of you, less relevant to others.

Unsurprisingly, with an 8,000mAh pack inside, the Find X10 Pro Max's battery life has been excellent. I'm consistently getting at least a day and a half of use per charge, despite lots of camera use and gaming. Two days on a charge is easily achievable, too.

Charging is also pretty quick. You'll get up to 80W speeds with the official adapter or 55W with third-party USB-PD chargers. It'll still take well over an hour to charge from completely flat to full, but that's understandable with such a large capacity.

• Battery score: 4 / 5

Should you buy the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Oppo Find X10 Pro Max review: Also consider

The Oppo Find X10 Pro Max is one of the best camera-focused flagship phones, but it's important to consider the competition, too. Here are a couple of competitors that are worth looking at:

How I tested the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max

• Review test period: Three weeks
• Testing included: Everyday use, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
• Tools used: Geekbench 7, 3DMark, native Android stats

I put my SIM card into the Oppo Find X10 Pro Max and used it as my main phone for over three weeks. I used it exactly as I would use any other phone, taking lots of photos, gaming, messaging, working, streaming video, and navigating with Google Maps and Waze.

I also compared the experience of playing graphically challenging games like Neverness to Everness to my experience on other Android flagships like the Galaxy S26 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. I ran lots of benchmarks on the handset, including 3DMark and Geekbench, to confirm my performance findings.

I assessed the phone's battery performance based on my real-world usage, and charging times were measured using the official Oppo wall adapter along with the included charging cable.

Read more about how we test

First tested October 2026

• A new location-sharing upgrade for Google Messages has been spotted
• You'll be able to add different map layers, including live traffic
• It's not clear how long it will be before the feature is enabled for everyone

While Google has added plenty of new features and refinements to its Google Messages app in recent months and years, it still lags behind competitors such as WhatsApp when it comes to certain facets of the app — like sharing your location with other people.

This is something that's essential for social meet-ups, keeping tabs on the kids, planning journey times, and more besides, and hidden code spotted by Android Authority suggests that location sharing in Google Messages is about to get a significant upgrade.

This is code that's present but not yet enabled in the latest beta version of Google Messages for Android, but the Android Authority team was able to get it working. It adds several map types and a map details option, when you choose to share your location.

Currently, you can only show a map in the default Google Maps style when location sharing in Google Messages, but the new options would let you switch to satellite or terrain views instead, as well as overlaying live traffic information on top.

Benefits to users

The satellite view would make it easier to find someone in relation to a landmark or a feature or the landscape, for example, while the terrain view would give you a better idea of how simple (or otherwise) it might be to reach someone in a remote area.

Then there's the traffic view — say if the roads were blocked up around a person you're trying to pick up in a car, you could get them to walk and come and meet you, rather than getting stuck in a traffic jam unnecessarily.

Most of the time I do tend to default to WhatsApp when it comes to letting people know where I am, because everyone's got the app and it's straightforward to use. You can also set time limits on location sharing, something which Google Messages doesn't have.

If improvements like this continue, I might switch to Google Messages for locations instead — at least for those people on Android. There's still work to do, but the feature only arrived earlier this year, so it's encouraging to see upgrades on the way already.

Recent data published by Counterpoint Research paints a bleak picture of the smartphone industry as it stands today.

Q3 2026 (that’s the period between July and September) marked the lowest Q3 for smartphone sales in 14 years, with challenger brands like Oppo, Xiaomi, and Vivo all experiencing declines in market share versus the same period in 2025.

Skyrocketing component costs have wreaked havoc on the budget and mid-range tiers, while consumers are holding onto their devices for longer and have become more discerning in how and where they spend their money.

What, then, are growth-hungry smartphone manufacturers to do? Oppo, for its part, plans to pursue an aggressive premiumization strategy in Europe.

“The European premium market is dominated by two brands,” Elvis Zhou, CEO of Oppo Europe, explained to TechRadar in a recent roundtable interview. “I believe local European consumers would be interested in a third, good option.”

Zhou didn’t mention Apple and Samsung by name in our discussion, but those two companies were the only two smartphone manufacturers to grow their respective market shares during that aforementioned Q3 period (though they, too, suffered year-on-year sales declines).

“We are not here to say we will replace one of these established brands. No. We are here to offer a differentiated third option [...] I believe, in the future, the competition between flagship products [will not be] about price; we are not here to sell a more affordable smartphone. We are here to offer a differentiated experience for the premium market.

“And we heard the same [sentiment] through our market research — most premium users would be happy to try a third premium brand.”

The European market is not as wedded to Apple and Samsung as, say, the US market, but these companies still account for 68% of the entire European smartphone market (34% each). By contrast, different sources put Oppo’s share of the European pie at between 1 and 4%.

That’s a sizable mountain to climb for any brand — but Zhou and Oppo have identified three emerging trends that could turn the tide in the Chinese company’s favor.

“I'm quite aware that these two established brands in the European market do still lead the market in terms of brand awareness, sales channels, and even retail channels; they still do have a lot of advantages,” Zhou explained. “But through our market research, we have identified three trends that might be beneficial to us.

The kids are alright

“First of all, young consumers here in Europe are ready to buy smartphones online. That offers us an opportunity to engage them directly.

“The second trend is that the young generation is dubious about advertisements. They prefer to believe real user experiences that they see [relayed] on social media platforms. And if they believe [those testimonies], then it must be good experiences that people are sharing organically on social media — that's more convincing, and only good products can do that.

“The third trend is that younger consumers ask questions to AI tools during their decision-making process. These AI tools can help our brand because they focus more on the features of these products — on the user experience of these products — without other interference. And according to our market survey, more than 40% of young people ask questions to AI tools when they want to purchase a new phone. Based on these three new trends, I believe that the value of our products is better respected nowadays.”

That last point is a particularly interesting one. Chatbots like ChatGPT have quickly become a primary search engine for millions of young people globally; if these consumers ask an AI platform for information on the best phone to buy, Oppo’s handsets are likely to be surfaced on a numerical specs basis alone (the Oppo Find X9 Ultra, for instance, has better camera specs than the iPhone 18 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra).

Oppo doesn’t enjoy the same visibility via traditional Google searches, as I proved by searching for the “best phone for photography” on ChatGPT and Google. The former displays Oppo Find X9 Ultra as the number one choice; the latter doesn’t reference Oppo at all until you manually click through to a dedicated best camera phones guide.

Of course, young consumers aren’t so naive as to instantly buy the first product recommended by ChatGPT, but Oppo’s increased visibility on the platform can only be a good thing for its brand awareness and, ultimately, sales.

The perception challenge

In our roundtable interview, Zhou was also asked whether Oppo and other Chinese companies face a perception problem in the West, particularly surrounding privacy, and the CEO was keen to credit consumers’ ability to decide for themselves which brands they trust.

“We face all kinds of challenges in our work, but for Oppo, since we are here in an overseas market, our focus is more on market surveys. I've met a lot of young consumers here in Europe, and I find that they are quite open-minded. They're well educated, reasonable, and rational. They are independent in their decision-making process.

“These young consumers, when they purchase their personal items, focus more on the product itself. Is this experience good enough? Is it good value for money? And through our market surveys, we found that young consumers are more interested in good imaging [capabilities], AI [features], and also battery autonomy.

“In addition,” Zhou continued, “the European market pays great attention to data privacy, so we pay great attention to our compliance policy. We want to make sure that when we design our products, we can meet all these compliance regulation demands. We are very confident that our products can stand the test of time, and one day, our local European consumers will understand that our products can not only meet their requirements, but exceed their demands.”

Oppo, then, is putting all its eggs in the premium basket for the foreseeable future — and its next pair of flagship phones, the camera-focused Oppo Find X10 and X10 Pro Max, will be the first test of the company's new premiumization strategy.

We’re expecting both devices to be more expensive than their predecessors, but if, as Oppo suggests, young European consumers really do value imaging, AI, and battery life above all else, the Find X10 series has every chance of making a splash on the continent.

• Sony won't deliver the final Android update it had promised for the Xperia 10 VI
• This is due to issues with the phone's storage configuration
• While the explanation seems reasonable, it also shows that these support commitments might not be guarantees

Nowadays, most Android phones are sold with the promise of a fixed number of major Android version updates, with top-end phones like the Samsung Galaxy S26 series and the Google Pixel 11 line promising an impressive seven. But it seems these promises might, in some cases, be more hopeful than guaranteed.

While neither Google nor Samsung have so far shown any sign of reneging on their update commitments, Sony just did with the Xperia 10 VI.

In a support post spotted by Phandroid, the company explained that while it had originally promised that the Sony Xperia 10 VI would receive three Android version updates, it will actually only receive two, as “due to limitations related to the device’s storage configuration, the Xperia 10 VI does not support an Android 17 upgrade experience that we consider adequate.”

The phone will at least still receive the promised four years of security updates, and Sony claims that this issue won’t affect other models, but it goes to show that these support promises aren’t as ironclad as you might have expected.

This could be the first of many rollbacks

Of course, if updating the Sony Xperia 10 VI would genuinely have degraded the experience of using it, Sony probably made the right choice in not doing so. But that’s cold comfort for anyone who bought the phone off the back of Sony’s update commitment.

And who’s to say something similar couldn’t happen with other phones, whether those from Sony or other brands. In fact, expensive high-end phones might be even more at risk of unfulfilled commitments, with most offering up to seven years of promised updates; seven years is a long time in the tech world, so who’s to say whether Android 24 will actually work well on a phone that launched this year.

So, if you weren’t already doing so, you should probably take any support commitments as a goal rather than a guarantee.

• Android devices have started automatically linking your phone number to all signed-in Google accounts
• This is a privacy issue for anyone with multiple accounts who doesn't want their phone number linked to secondary ones
• You can toggle this feature off, but some users claim it reverts back anyway

Google has never exactly been a bastion of privacy, but its reputation has just taken another hit with a controversial new Android default — it's just started automatically linking your phone number(s) to all signed-in Google accounts on your Android device.

As spotted by Reddit user Nanosinx, Google Play Services has started automatically verifying your phone number and linking it across your signed in Google accounts — so if you have secondary accounts on your Android phone, perhaps for work or throwaway ones, these may now have your number linked to them.

As a phone number is quite private and potentially sensitive information, this isn’t ideal — and should obviously be an opt-in feature, as it always used to be.

It does seem that users are at least getting emails from Google alerting them to this change, so if you haven’t received any emails, your number(s) might not have been linked — at least not yet. But it’s still probably worth checking if that's important to you.

Shut it down

To check if the feature is enabled — and disable it if you don’t want it to be — head to Settings > Google (or Google services and preferences) > All services > Phone number verification. If this screen has a ‘Verify phone numbers automatically’ toggle enabled, then this is happening to your accounts — so disable that to turn off this ‘feature.’

But that won’t remove your phone number from accounts that it has already been linked to. For that, head to your Google account personal info page, then go to Contact info (or Personal info) > Phone, and remove the number from any account you don’t want it linked to.

Remarkably, some users are reporting that the same issue occurs even on the privacy-focused GrapheneOS, though possibly only if you’ve installed Google Play Services. And some users also report the auto verification toggle turning itself back on, so the above may only prove a temporary fix.

Understandably, Android users aren’t happy about any of this, with comments on Reddit including the likes of “I’m so sick of this,” “this feature is absolutely dumb,” and “scummy practices yet again by a mega corp.”

So this isn’t a popular change, but whether Google will care enough to switch it back to an opt-in rather than opt-out process remains to be seen.

• The latest Google Play Services update brings four upgrades to Google Wallet
• The biggest of these is the ability to scan and store receipts
• It also adds an in-app message center, improved merchant names, and a smoother payment process

If you have an Android phone then you’re probably already using Google Wallet, and with the latest Google Play Services update it’s getting slightly better in four ways.

As spotted by Android Police, the October Google Play Services update (v26.40) is rolling out now, and it — among other things — brings the ability to scan receipts into Google Wallet, so you’ll be able to save and view them in the wallet interface.

Additionally, this update improves merchant names in transaction notifications. Google hasn’t specified how they’re improved, but presumably this is aimed at providing more clarity about who or what you’ve sent money to.

More messages and fewer payment screens

The update also adds an in-app message center to Google Wallet, and while it’s not clear what kind of messages you might receive, we can imagine they might for example tell you about updates to the service — such as the ones we’re writing about here.

Finally, if you use Google Pay through Chrome for Android, the update lets you now “skip the Payment Request UI when you provide merchants with your name, email, and phone number.” That presumably makes for a faster, smoother payment process.

So while none of these upgrades are individually massive, combined they should make for a notable difference to your Google Pay experience.

The update will roll out automatically, so if you’re not seeing these changes yet, you likely will do soon. But to check what version of Google Play Services you have, you can head to Settings > Apps > Google Play Services, and you should see the version number at the bottom of this screen.

• Budget Android phones shipped with firmware-level malware preinstalled before reaching customers
• Malware generated fraudulent ad revenue and turned infected devices into residential proxies
• Victims spanned 150 countries, with cleanup often requiring firmware-level remediation

Imagine buying a brand new, sealed Android phone, and later realizing it came with preinstalled malware rooted deeply into the firmware and thus almost impossible to remove - generating fraudulent ad clicks for a malicious third party, and even turning the phones into residential proxies to be used for whatever sinister purposes.

Security researchers Bitdefender found an unidentified threat actor managed to compromise the supply chain of multiple smartphone manufacturers and added malware on a firmware level before the devices were even shipped to stores.

A number of brands were mentioned, including Doogee S200 X, Doogee Fire 3 Max, and Cubot KINGKONG X - both Chinese smartphone manufacturers building budget, rugged Android phones.

The reports also mention ripoff devices impersonating Samsung and Apple products. In general, these are devices using MediaTek chipsets, which were infected in a way that allowed the attackers to tamper with applications, grant themselves higher privileges, and even do remote code execution (RCE) attacks without the victim’s knowledge.

Victims across the world

Unfortunately, these devices were shipped all over the world, and Bitdefender claims “thousands” of people were victims, scattered across some 150 countries around the world, with the highest concentration found in Mexico, France, Italy, United States, Germany, Brazil, and Spain.

The malware comes in different shapes and sizes. So far, Bitdefender uncovered 32 malicious apps, including those pretending to be weather apps, file managers app lockers, OCR tools, and audio editors. All of these do the same thing - create an invisible overlay over different apps and register an ad being viewed, despite the fact that the user never actually saw it.

That way, whoever installed the malware scams the ad network into thinking the ad was served to thousands of users which, in turn, generates profit. We don’t know exactly how many devices are compromised this way, or how much money the crooks stole this way.

"The system app itself doesn’t register the fraudulent impressions and clicks," Bitdefender said. "The revenue engine is driven by the dropped cover apps, including real-looking weather, app-lock, note, and OCR apps, which load genuine ads through a legitimate ad SDK. The goal is simple: to load an invisible window on top of apps that registers ads being shown."

Spilling into the Play Store

Bitdefender also said that one of the uncovered applications (the app locker one), contained a TCP proxy element that registered the compromised phones with a remote command server. After successful registration, the attackers were able to forward traffic through the phone, essentially creating a residential proxy service that criminals can use for different things, from launching DDoS attacks to participating in spam and wire fraud.

They also found more than a dozen applications on the Google Play Store with the same fraudulent advertising code, as well as the same communications infrastructure. These, however, required manual installation and required users to grant them the requested permissions, which might have raised flags with the users.

Removing the malware isn’t as easy as simply uninstalling the app. The researchers said that many of the devices require cleanup on the firmware level, or disabling the malicious component using Android Debug Bridge (ADB), which could be too technical for many victims.

The easier and more elegant solution is also a more expensive one - don’t buy devices from brands with a shady reputation.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 arrived earlier this year boasting a familiar trick: it folds into a pocket-friendly square and places a surprisingly useful screen on the outside.

With this new model, Samsung has kept the basic Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7 formula intact, but shaved down the body, improved the hinge, added more processing power, and made the cover screen easier to live with.

The displays, camera hardware, battery, and charging have barely moved, though, leaving last year’s Galaxy Z Flip 7 looking far from obsolete — it's also now much cheaper than its newer sibling.

To help you make sense of what's changed and which model is best, we've weighed up the price, design, displays, cameras, performance, software, and battery life of these two foldable phones to see which deserves your money.

As a disclaimer, we've fully reviewed the Galaxy Z Flip 7, but not the Galaxy Z Flip 8. We have spent time with the former model, though, so we've based our judgements on both hands-on experience and on-paper specs.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: specs comparison

Before we dig into the details, here’s an overview of both phones’ key specs:

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: price and availability

Samsung announced the Galaxy Z Flip 8 in July 2026, and the phone went on sale on August 7. Prices start at $1,199.99 / £1,149 / AU$1,949 for the 256GB model, rising to $1,399.99 / £1,319 / AU$2,249 for 512GB.

The Galaxy Z Flip 7 arrived in 2025 at $1,099 / £1,049 / AU$1,799 for 256GB, while the 512GB version launched at $1,219 / £1,149 / AU$1,999.

Samsung is therefore asking an extra $100 for the entry-level Z Flip 8, despite retaining the same storage capacity. The gap grows further with the 512GB models, and the older Flip 7 is likely to become even more tempting as retailers clear stock and discounts begin to appear, especially around sales events like Black Friday.

Given the global memory shortage and rising inflation, Samsung's decision to raise the price of the Galaxy Z Flip 8 makes some sense, but it does mean the Z Flip 7 — which is still a great phone — represents even better value in 2026.

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: design

Samsung has focused on making the Galaxy Z Flip 8 a little easier to carry and use, rather than giving it a big redesign. At 180g, it's 8g lighter than the Flip 7, while its 6.1mm unfolded body is 0.4mm thinner.

Fold the two phones shut, and the difference grows slightly, with the Flip 8 measuring 13.1mm compared with 13.7mm for its predecessor.

The revised Armor FlexHinge is the more useful change. Samsung has reduced friction inside the mechanism and widened the inner edges so that your fingers have more room to open the phone.

In our early hands-on testing of the Galaxy Z Flip 8, the phone felt noticeably easier to open and close than the previous model — a small refinement that should become more valuable when you repeat the motion dozens of times each day.

Otherwise, the family resemblance is strong. Both phones use the same flat-sided clamshell shape, with the large cover screen wrapping around the two rear cameras.

The Flip 7 already felt sturdy and polished, although its familiar Galaxy styling could look rather restrained beside some rival foldables.

Winner: Galaxy Z Flip 8

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: display

Samsung has carried both of the Flip 7’s displays straight over to the Galaxy Z Flip 8. Each phone opens to reveal a 6.9-inch, 1080 x 2520 AMOLED panel with a 1–120Hz adaptive refresh rate, while the outside is covered by a 4.1-inch, 948 x 1048 FlexWindow. Peak brightness remains 2,600 nits.

That leaves little room between them on paper, although this is hardly a weakness for the older phone. In our review of the device, we awarded the Flip 7 a perfect 5/5 for its displays, finding the inner screen bright and clear even outdoors.

The Flip 8 receives some cover-screen improvements, but the main changes concern how Samsung’s software uses the FlexWindow rather than the panel itself. We’ll cover those additions later.

Both phones offer two excellent screens, and there is no convincing hardware reason to choose one over the other.

Winner: Tie

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: cameras

Samsung has left the underlying camera hardware unchanged — you might be sensing a theme emerging here.

Both phones combine a 50MP main camera with a 12MP ultra-wide and a 10MP selfie camera, with no dedicated telephoto lens for longer-range shots.

In our testing, the Flip 7 produced strong results with more natural-looking colors than some older Samsung phones and an excellent Portrait mode.

Its folding design also lets you use the cover screen as a viewfinder for sharper selfies from the 50MP rear camera, although the lack of optical zoom limits its versatility.

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 directs its attention towards video.

Camcorder Grip places the recording and zoom controls within easy reach when the phone is held sideways, while Super Steady’s Horizontal Lock can keep footage level as the handset moves or rotates.

Our early hands-on found the latter feature particularly effective, although more aggressive stabilization can crop the frame and reduce image quality.

Winner: Galaxy Z Flip 8

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: performance and software

This is where the Galaxy Z Flip 8 begins to put some meaningful distance between itself and its predecessor.

US and Australian models of the Z Flip 8 use Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset, while the UK version of the phone receives Samsung’s Exynos 2600, replacing the Exynos 2500 inside the Flip 7. The latter chipset features in every version of the Flip 7, in every region.

The older phone still handles everyday apps, split-screen multitasking, and Samsung DeX without much trouble, but its performance was one of the weaker parts of our review. The Flip 8 has considerably more headroom for gaming, demanding apps, and Samsung’s growing collection of AI features — even if your version of the phone uses the Exynos 2600, and not the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5.

Its software is also better suited to the folding design. Android 17 and One UI 9 add a proper FlexWindow app tray and let you rearrange widgets directly from the cover screen.

Both phones receive seven generations of Android upgrades, but the Flip 8 naturally starts one version later and offers a smoother cover-screen experience from day one.

Winner: Galaxy Z Flip 8

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: battery

Samsung has kept the same 4,300mAh battery in both phones, alongside 25W wired and 15W wireless charging.

Neither model comes close to the fastest-charging foldables, and the Flip 8 gains no extra capacity to offset its more powerful hardware.

The Flip 7 generally made it through a full day in our review, although heavier photography or gaming could leave it needing an evening top-up.

The Flip 8’s newer chipset should use that capacity more efficiently, but the improvement is unlikely to transform the experience. These remain one-day phones with relatively slow charging, leaving little to separate them.

Winner: Tie

Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 vs Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 7: verdict

The most revealing thing about this comparison is how mature Samsung’s Flip formula has become.

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 improves the parts you touch every day — weight, thickness, hinge action, performance, and cover-screen software — while leaving the displays, camera hardware, battery, and charging largely untouched.

Given these upgrades, the Flip 8 is a better phone for someone buying their first Flip, especially if they plan to keep it for several years.

Existing Flip 7 owners have far less reason to move. Last year’s model still delivers most of the same foldable experience, and its lower price makes the Flip 8’s refinements look expensive rather than essential.

Overall winner: Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8

Did Amazon just release one of the best Android tablets you can buy? Perhaps, based on my colleague Axel Metz' hands-on with the new Alexa Tablet, which he reckons could even give some of the best iPads a run for their money.

It's been two years since Amazon last released a Fire tablet, and 15 years since the first model was released — and I thought 2011 would be the first and last time I'd ever purchase one of Amazon's touchscreen tablets.

That might be about to change with the release of this new product range, which ditches FireOS for Android, packs Alexa+ intelligence, and boasts some pretty impressive specs at an approachable price point across its three sizes.

A Kindle, yes, but not Fire

Now, to its credit, the original Kindle Fire was designed to toe the line between Amazon's successful Kindle product range and general-use tablets, but it didn't succeed tremendously at the latter. While many Amazon devices do lean heavily into the world's biggest retailer's... well, retailing, it erred at times on the side of being a dedicated Amazon shopfront, which, for 15-year-old me, wasn't incredibly useful.

Media playback was fine across platforms, e-reading was decent, but the meager app support, clunky FireOS, and painful Silk web browser experience quickly relegated the slate into the pits of my personal e-waste landfill. With little meaningful change to address these woes in the 13 years of Kindle Fires (later rebranded as Fire Tablets) that followed, I never quite forgave Amazon for its misstep into mobile computing.

Times have changed, however, and now I've got my sights set on the new range of Amazon Alexa Tablets.

We discussed the Amazon Alexa Tablet in our latest episode of the TechRadar Podcast, which you can watch below.

For one thing, I use Alexa+ services every day, and while I find the system far from perfect, it is the most user-friendly in terms of smart home device compatibility and accessibility. Plus, on these tablets you can enable Alexa+ to see your screen and offer in-context services, offering seamless interaction with the rest of Amazon's devices; if you find a recipe on your tablet, you can ask Alexa+ to save it, send it to your Echo Show device, and prepare the steps for you to follow while you're cooking.

There's a looming question over how much functionality you lose if you don't have an Alexa+ subscription ($19.99 / £19.99 / AU$29.99 per month, but free for Prime members); however, as I noted in the latest episode of the TechRadar Podcast (which you can watch above), I imagine a lot of the target audience for the product are, like me, pretty bedded in with Amazon's services already.

Regardless, the devices are all the more compelling when you see their prices. The largest and most performant Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro starts at just $499.99 / £449.99 with a 120Hz display, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage. There's also an optional Nanomatte display model (much like the internal screen on Apple's new iPhone Duo), starting at $549.99 / £599.99, which is where I'm setting my sights for a more comfortable reading experience.

That's before we get to the optional keyboard attachment and Pro Pen, which open doors for productivity use cases, especially now that software like G Suite will run far better natively. Plus, the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is powered by the MediaTek Dimensity 8400 chipset; Amazon says "with up to 16GB of RAM, Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro delivers nearly three times faster processing and nine times faster graphics than any tablet we’ve ever shipped."

You can read the full range of prices and more insights in Axel's aforementioned hands-on with the slates, but suffice it to say, they're coming in hot, and as an Apple device user with an Alexa smart home, I find myself at a real crossroads when it comes to choosing my next device.

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Alexa Tablet 11, and Alexa Tablet 8 — plus the new Amazon Kids Tablets — are available to pre-order now and will begin shipping October 19.

Amazon’s Fire tablets have historically been seen as low-cost, low-spec alternatives to the best Android tablets and best iPads, but now the mega-retailer has finally entered the premium tablet market with the Amazon Alexa Tablet 12 Pro.

Yes, the ‘Fire’ nomenclature is gone — and, mercifully, Fire OS along with it. The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is the first Amazon tablet to support full Android, meaning users will be able to access the Google Play Store and its millions of streaming, gaming, and productivity apps, including Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail.

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro — which is joined by the smaller Alexa Tablet 11 and Alexa Tablet 8 in a three-product lineup — is also the first Amazon tablet to feature baked-in Alexa+ integration, so it’s got AI chops to rival Apple’s Apple Intelligence-compatible iPads and Samsung’s premium Galaxy tablets.

In other words, the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro is about as far away from the Amazon Fire Max 11 as the Kindle-maker could have gotten — and Amazon acknowledges that this distinctly premium product marks a dramatic change in strategy for the company.

“Without a doubt, this is the biggest leap we've ever made in developing tablets in our history,” Eric Saarnio, Vice President of Amazon Devices International, told me in a briefing for the new Alexa Tablet range. “And I'm incredibly excited about what the team has built.”

Despite their shortcomings, Amazon’s existing Fire tablets have been a hit for the company — “we've sold a ton of tablets over the years, and that’s something we're very proud of,” Saarnio says — but they’re loss-leader products designed to usher customers into Amazon’s digital ecosystem, rather than market-leading tablets in their own right.

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, by contrast, is a full-blown premium slate with specs to rival the Apple iPad Air (2026). It features a 12-inch, 120Hz display, up to 16GB of RAM, and 3x more CPU power than any previous Amazon tablet.

Buyers can also choose to equip their Alexa Tablet 12 Pro with Amazon’s anti-glare Nanomatte technology, which improves visibility outdoors and makes on-screen text look as if it’s sitting on top of the display (I’ve seen it in person, and it’s not a million miles away from the nano‑texture finish on the iPhone Duo’s inner display).

Why has Amazon pumped such impressive specs (and, presumably, millions of dollars in development costs) into the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro? Because it recognizes that consumer habits are changing, and it wants to offer a one-stop-shop device for streamers, gamers, and productivity-focused users alike.

More than just an entertainment device

“The truth is, what people are using tablets for is really starting to evolve — and it’s the power of the cloud that’s changing things,” Saarnio told me.

“The ability to build and code is really powerful, and you can do that [now] from your tablets. And for sure, tablets are there for entertainment, and that's where it all starts. But I do think there’s this evolution starting to happen, where [people are] using tablets just to get things done.

“When we think about tablets going forward, I don't necessarily think they’re going to be a replacement for a laptop. But I do think they're going to be very powerful tools to both entertain and to help you be productive. And so, as we think about our next era in tablets, we wanted to bake all of that [into one device]. And we really landed on three big things [in the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro].

“First: performant, premium hardware, with exceptional screens that deliver for customers. Second: we're moving to full Android, and [granting] access to the Google Play Store, which will give customers the ability to access millions of apps that they enjoy today. And last but not least: we wanted to give them access to an assistant. So we’ve embedded Alexa+ into the tablet, along with access to everything they love about Amazon. To be clear, this isn't an app that we've added to the tablet: it’s actually baking the Alexa+ experience into it.”

Now available in the US, UK, and Australia, Alexa+ is Amazon’s cloud-based virtual assistant. It can respond to queries in natural language, control your smart home devices, and, of course, seamlessly interact with all other Amazon services. Notably, on the Alexa Tablet range, Alexa+ can look at what's on your screen (when given explicit permission to do so) and provide real-time, in-context assistance, similar to Gemini Live’s screen sharing functionality.

On the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Tablet 11, and Tablet 8, Alexa+ lives in a dedicated Dynamic Tab in the top left corner of the screen, and can be expanded into a full-screen For You tab for more comprehensive interaction.

Alexa+ costs $19.99 / £19.99 / AU$29.99 per month, but is free for Prime members. It’s not yet clear how the service’s deep integration into the Alexa Tablet will function if you’re not subscribed to it.

Interestingly, the Alexa Tablet can also transform into a Kindle for a completely distraction-free experience. When activated, Kindle mode silences notifications, reduces blue light, and extends battery life. It’s particularly effective on the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro when paired with Amazon’s Nanomatte finish.

“What we think we've invented here is a tablet that doesn't, in any way, force you to compromise,” Saarnio concluded. “It's great for entertainment; it’s intelligent; it's great for productivity and helping you get things done. All in one package. And you get all of this starting at £500.”

That price reveal triggered an audible gasp in my briefing session. $549.99 / £499.99 is an extremely competitive price for a 12-inch tablet with a 120Hz display, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of starting storage. Even the top-end version of the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro (which comes with 16GB of RAM) costs just $679.99 / £599.99 (we’re awaiting confirmation of Australia pricing).

The iPad Air, for reference, starts at $749 / £749 / AU$1,249 following Apple’s June price increases. That device features a more powerful M4 chipset than the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, which runs on the MediaTek Dimensity 8400, but it’s smaller, at 11 inches, and has a static 60Hz display.

As you'll see in the price section, the Alexa Tablet’s specs do get worse as you move down the price ladder (the Alexa Tablet 8, for instance, has a 60Hz refresh rate, 4GB of RAM, and no Nanomatte display option). But the value of the 12 Pro bundles looks, on paper at least, exceptional — $699.99 / £639.99 for the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro with Nanomatte display (128GB), Alexa Tablet Pro Keyboard, and Alexa Tablet Pro Pen is still cheaper than Apple’s entry-level 11-inch iPad Air with 128GB of storage.

The big question, of course, is whether Amazon’s new tablets are any good. I’ve only been hands-on with the top-end Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, and my first impressions are positive — the Nanomatte screen looks great, the tablet’s aluminum construction is thin and light, and its access to the Google Play Store is going to please a lot of people. But we’ll need to put all three new devices through their paces before passing a full verdict on their value for money.

The Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, Alexa Tablet 11, and Alexa Tablet 8 — as well as new Amazon Kids Tablets — are available to pre-order now and will begin shipping October 19.

Pricing

Here's the full pricing information for the Amazon Alexa Tablet range (we'll update the below tables with Australia pricing when we have it):

It’s finally official: after what feels like years of leaks, Apple has entered the foldable race with the iPhone Duo. It brings a host of new features, but also has the same passport-style form factor as the recently launched Galaxy Z Fold 8, Xiaomi 18 Fold, and Huawei Pura X Max.

Apple’s first foldable features many of the same compromises you might expect from a first-generation foldable, even from a company as meticulous as Apple, but the biggest concern for most users may be around the Duo's battery life.

I’ve spent the past three months using the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and its competitors. What battery life do they offer, and what can we learn from it? I tested six of the best globally available flagship foldables over several weeks to answer that question.

How I tested the folding phones' battery life

Over the past few months, I’ve been developing my own battery testing suite, CellMark, using a combination of AI models. After hundreds of hours and various iterations, I've built a solid test suite that accounts for each phone maker's idiosyncrasies and how the average person actually uses their phone today.

For this comparison, I ran the EnduranceMark suite, which loops until the battery level reaches 5%. A test is only valid if it successfully drains 80% of the battery, and each result below is characterized using a standardized metric. I ran two tests from this suite: the Synthesizer test to test drain under heavy loads, and my favorite, the Doom Scroller. As the name suggests, it simulates everyone’s favorite pastime of endlessly scrolling social media.

I also ran the ChargeMark charging test to log battery charging times. I paired the three CellMark tests with a web-browsing script that loaded 20 different web pages, scrolled at intervals, and looped to the next page, plus a looping video playback test.

As some phone makers aggressively limit background apps, some phones failed to complete certain tests, but I've included the relevant tests regardless.

Of course, these tests aren’t 100% indicative of real-world usage, but anecdotally, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Doom Scrolling results closely matched my findings during daily use. Having tested smartphones for 20 years, I'm confident in the CellMark app's results.

Round 1: The charging test

For years, charging speeds differed markedly between folding phones sold in the US and those sold outside it. Simply put, the former were vastly slower than the latter.

In the above charging test, the Galaxy Z Fold 8's 45W charging speed got it to a respectable 69-minute full charge, but the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra sustained 45W charging for longer to reach a full charge in one hour.

The Moto Razr Fold, Honor Magic V6, and Oppo Find N6 were the top three in ascending order, with Oppo retaining a charging lead it has held for years. The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold ranked last, which isn’t surprising given its charging is the slowest.

For the iPhone Duo, Apple says 60W charging can reach 50% in just 20 minutes. Apple hasn’t published a full-charge estimate, especially since phones optimize charging speeds for longevity, but its claims put the iPhone Duo's charging speed around the level of the Honor Magic V6 and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.

Round 2: The web browsing test

The second test was web browsing, and each phone ran a script to load 20 of the heaviest webpages on the internet and scroll through them to simulate real-world usage. Running in a loop, this gives us an estimate of the battery life if you’re always using your browser.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 proved surprisingly strong here, but that's where a smaller screen comes in handy. Its drain rate was the lowest of all tests, meaning a larger battery at the same drain rate would theoretically give us the best battery life overall.

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold fell short of the competition, even though its drain rate was only the third-highest, while the Motorola Razr Fold proved that the Razr Fold — and its Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor — is very well optimized for web browsing. Apple hasn’t revealed any iPhone Duo web-browsing estimates, so it’s unclear what to expect.

Round 3: The video playback test

The other fairly standard test is video playback, which lets us directly test many phone makers’ listed claims. This involved looping a locally stored 4K video in the default media player with the phone’s brightness set to 50%.

It’s clear that every phone maker makes bold battery-life claims that don’t always reflect your real-world experience. Here, Samsung, Oppo, and Honor deserve credit for fairly accurate video playback claims, whereas the results on the Moto Razr Fold and Pixel 11 Pro Fold fall far short of what's stated.

For the iPhone Duo, Apple claims that you'll get up to 35 hours of video playback on the inside screen and up to 44 hours on the outer display. If it lives up to these claims, or even comes close, it will likely have the best video playback battery life of any folding phone.

Round 4: The Synthesizer performance test

Web browsing and video playback are two common ways we use our phones, but companies also optimize for these scenarios, and phones struggle considerably under heavy loads.

To test this, I built the Synthesizer, which runs a series of calculations around ever-increasing prime numbers and runs numerous I/O operations in the background, both designed to heavily tax the chipset.

None of these results are surprising on their own, but together they show just how differently each phone maker has balanced power and efficiency.

The Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Fold 8 Ultra use the high-specification Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset, and Samsung doesn’t throttle performance of the chipset. The result is ~5.5 hours of battery life at high performance.

The Tensor G6 inside the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is surprisingly well optimized, but as the above test shows, Motorola, Honor, and Oppo all offer considerably better battery performance and battery-life balance. The result is sustained high-load performance for much longer.

Round 5: The doomscrolling test

When I started building CellMark, I set out to build an app that could, among other tests, simulate social media usage. Considering how we use our phones — and my additional needs for visual ways to demonstrate battery and charging tests on social media — this felt like the most natural test to build.

It’s also where I've faced challenges with Oppo and Motorola phones specifically, which prevent the CellMark app from running tests longer than nine hours. Despite this, it reveals a lot of interesting data.

First, the thin body on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra and larger battery mean it runs considerably hotter than all the competition.

The thicker build and vapor chamber of the iPhone Duo should mean this won’t be an issue for Apple's first foldable, although the A20 Pro chipset is a powerhouse. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 proves it's possible to be a small phone without succumbing to overheating problems, despite using the same processor as its sibling.

The performance of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold proves the Tensor G6 is a welcome improvement over the Tensor G5, while the Honor Magic V6 reigns supreme yet again.

It’s worth noting that the Find N6 and Razr Fold results ran for 9 hours before ending, and while all phones drain much faster as thermal temperature rises, both likely had the lowest drain and best thermal performance.

The key takeaway there? The processor makes a big difference: the Find N6 has one fewer performance core than its rivals, while the Razr Fold uses the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 rather than the high-performance Elite version. Both companies made these choices with battery life in mind, and it becomes especially apparent when you look at thermal performance in these tests.

The 24-hour Galaxy Z Fold 8 run

Just days before publishing, I tested the Galaxy Z Fold 8 with a few changes to determine what battery life would look like under more optimal conditions. The surprise is just how much of a difference it makes.

Running the Doom Scroll test on a Galaxy Z Fold 8 with background data sync disabled and brightness set to 40%, I achieved 24 hours and 42 minutes on a single Doom Scroll run. That’s nearly 150% higher than the rest of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 testing results.

Also, every foldable phone maker tells you to open the phone for the fastest charging, partly because of thermal management. During this test, all 8,907 logged telemetry samples showed a nominal thermal status. In simple terms: unfold your phone to keep it cooler.

How might the iPhone Duo's battery compare?

Apple claims the iPhone Duo has better battery life than the iPhone 17 Pro Max, offering up to 35 hours of video playback when unfolded or 44 hours when folded. That puts it 35% higher than the Galaxy Z Fold 8, and paired with a thicker body and better thermal management, the iPhone Duo could set a new battery-life benchmark for folding phones in the US.

The true test will be in real-world use cases like Doom Scroller. I’m excited to see how optimized the iPhone Duo is, but am cautiously optimistic that it can at least match the Galaxy Z Fold 8. We’ll find out once the iPhone Duo goes on sale.

Fairphone 6 Plus: Two-minute review

To many in Europe, Fairphone is seen as a niche yet reliable Android manufacturer that specializes in one thing: fair phones. Its devices are made from eco-friendly materials, in factories that respect their workers, and are designed to last ages so they don't become e-waste.

But the new Fairphone 6 Plus — officially called the Fairphone Gen 6 Plus — is not just for European buyers. It's the first of the Dutch brand's smartphones to be released in the US, giving a whole new audience of green-minded consumers the chance to buy a phone that aligns with their ethical beliefs.

If that's you, the Fairphone 6's slightly newer successor is an easy recommendation; there's no real competition in the environmentally-friendly phone space, at least since Teracube stopped making new devices. But there are other reasons to pick up the Fairphone 6 Plus, too.

For starters, it boasts impressive durability credentials, with a military-grade chassis and plastic body that shrugs off drops and bumps with ease. If you do damage something, the phone is easy to open up at home, allowing you to replace parts instead of throwing the device away or shelling out loads of money for a company to repair it.

In fact, that's Fairphone's whole schtick: it wants your phone to last as long as possible, to avoid it going into landfill (they're eco-friendly, remember). So the 7 years of software updates make sense too.

Okay, so you're now brushed up on Fairphone, but let's fully rip the band-aid off: the brand's phones are rarely good value for money if you compare them with similarly priced rivals. It's the same with Fairphone's audio products, like the Fairbuds XL: you pay for longevity, not features.

Samsung, Google, and Motorola all offer Fairphone 6 Plus-beating phones for the same price, and if you live outside the US, a whole host of Chinese brands offer superior specs for a fraction of the cost. The Fairphone 6 Plus doesn't match its rivals in performance, camera capabilities, or slimness (though longevity, of course, is a different conversation).

Normally with Fairphones, you're paying for their eco-friendly credentials and high level of repairability. But a price hike for the Fairphone 6 Plus over the non-Plus model makes this trade-off a little harder to stomach, especially when the specs are barely different. And sure, price hikes are rife these days — Fairphone isn't alone in charging more for not much more — but they're harder to justify when the handsets weren't that competitive anyway.

But that 4-star score? As a devout green buyer, I'd still recommend the Fairphone 6 Plus. It lets you talk the talk and walk the walk, as long as you don't need a flagship phone. For me, Fairphone is the only company whose tech is actually, genuinely green — there's no greenwashing going on here (at least to my knowledge).

Still, the Fairphone 6 Plus is only worth it if you have the money to spare, plan on keeping your handset for a long time, or find it discounted in the sales. And if it is on sale in your country, keep tabs on the Fairphone 6 too: it's basically the same phone for a slightly lower price.

Fairphone 6 Plus review: price and availability

• Released in August 2026 in Europe and US
• Sells for $649.99 / £569 (roughly AU$1,100)
• Price hike over predecessor

The Fairphone 6 Plus was revealed in mid-August 2026, a little over a year after the unveiling of the ‘standard’ or non-Plus model. This is Fairphone’s modus operandi: it often releases main-series phones every other year, bridging the gap with ‘Plus’ models in the meantime.

This latest Plus model justifies that suffix with its price, though. The Fairphone 6 Plus costs $649.99 / £569 (roughly AU$1,100, though Fairphone doesn’t sell its tech in Australia), which is a sizeable price hike over the Fairphone 6’s £499 (roughly $680 / AU$990) starting price. The latter phone remains on sale as a valid alternative to the newer handset, especially for cost-conscious buyers.

Given the relatively few upgrades the new model offers, for a higher price, its value proposition just isn’t as competitive.

Notice how I could share a US price for the Fairphone 6 Plus? That's because it's the first of the brand’s mobiles to be sold in the States, finally giving green-minded US buyers a phone to buy since Teracube went quiet.

As I'll mention later in the review, the Fairphone 6 Plus is designed to be repaired, and you can easily buy spare parts on the brand's websites. These range in price and vary by region, and so instead of reeling off a massive list, I'll simply refer you to Fairphone's website for the full list.

It's worth noting, too, that the Fairphone 6 Plus — like many previous Fairphone models — is also available in a de-Googled /e/OS configuration from Murena, which puts privacy at the forefront of the experience. This version of the phone costs $699.99 / £599 (around AU$1,009). We'll be publishing a separate feature on the de-Googled Fairphone experience in the coming weeks.

Fairphone 6 Plus review: specs

Fairphone 6 Plus review: design

• Bulky handset that stretches the hand
• Neat touches like a switch, a side-mounted fingerprint scanner, and military protection
• Easily repairable and modifiable

People often turn their noses up at Fairphones for their middling specs, but I’ve used most of them, and to me, I'd say their designs are an equal reason why some users may be put off. These phones are bulky. The 6 Plus measures 156.5 x 73.3 x 9.6mm and weighs 193g, so in this age of super-slim mobiles, it feels like a dinosaur.

There are benefits to this chunky size. Not only does it ensure the phone is easier to repair — more on that later — but it means it's better protected too. Case in point, the Fairphone 6 Plus has the military-grade MIL-STD-810H compliance, and IP55 protection against dust and water jets. I used the handset without a case and never felt like it was at risk.

On the left edge of the phone you get your power rocker, and on the right there’s a power button with a fingerprint scanner embedded. This worked flawlessly in my testing, unlocking the handset instantly and never failing to recognise my thumb, though some prefer phones with under-display scanners.

The right edge also has a physical switch, which can be programmed for different functions like turning on Airplane mode, enabling the torch, or enabling Fairphone’s Moments (which basically turns your handset into a ‘Lite’ mode with only access to certain apps). The switch is useful if you use it right, but it’s a shame that the list of functions is a little limited. I can’t use it to instantly open Google Maps, for example, or turn on NFC.

You can buy the mobile in a fetching blue, as you can see in the images, which is new for the Plus model. There are also green and black options, matching the Fairphone 6’s hues (but no white, as was offered for the previous model).

Now onto one of the big draws of Fairphone handsets: they’re designed to be repairable. This means you can remove various elements using a simple Fairphone screwdriver, and replace them if anything is damaged. If you smash the screen of your handset, scratch the lens, or find the battery health greatly diminished, you can simply swap the offending components out instead of buying an entirely new phone.

A side-effect of this modularity, which Fairphone has greatly leaned on in recent years, is that you can remove the parts for another purpose: buying accessories. You can swap out the phone’s back and replace it with a card holder or finger loop, for instance, the latter of which you can see in all of these review pictures (I absolutely love using it to hold the phone).

There are other accessories available from the My Fairphone app, and they all vary in price.

• Design score: 4 / 5

Fairphone 6 Plus review: display

• 6.31 inches, 1,116 x 2,484 resolution
• 120Hz refresh rate, 1,400 nits max brightness
• Decent display, but nothing special

Despite the Fairphone 6 Plus feeling like a pretty chunky phone in the hand, its display is a little smaller than those of many Android rivals.

The panel measures 6.31 inches diagonally, and it's broken up by a top-center punch-hole cut-out for the front camera. It's got a 1116 x 2484 resolution, 120Hz refresh rate, and 20:9 aspect ratio; the size, OLED build, and 1400-nit max brightness all match the specs of the Fairphone 6’s panel.

A note on the refresh rate: by default, it’s set to 90Hz, so bump it up in the Settings app if you don’t mind the resulting lower battery life.

I can’t pretend that this is the best-looking screen on any Android phone, but the difference between ‘best’ and ‘good enough’ is tiny, and the Fairphone 6 Plus’ display will seem as good as any other to most users. Unless you’re doing something wild like professional photo editing, you’ll find the display to be bright and responsive.

One small annoyance: at the top of the display is a speaker grille, which is much larger than most you see in this day and age. It proved quite the fluff magnet when the phone was in my pocket; I kept having to pick bits of tissue out of it.

• Display score: 4 / 5

Fairphone 6 Plus review: software

• Stock Android 16 (or /e/OS in alternative model)
• And I mean stock: there's no bloatware or extra features
• Seven years of OS updates

The Fairphone 6 Plus comes with Android 16 pre-installed — and I mean stock Android, not ‘almost-stock’ like some other brands use. So you’re not getting loads of random pre-installed social media and holiday apps here. There's a single pre-installed app (which I'll get to later), and beyond that, you’re getting a clean slate with the bare minimum Google apps that all Android phones come equipped with.

A clean interface is great, but you’re also lacking other brands’ customization options here. If you like tweaking the look of your phone until it’s truly unique, you’ll find the Fairphone lacking — though I’ll applaud the accessibility options like high-contrast icons and text outlines that make writing easier to read.

Otherwise, you’re getting the ‘standard’ Android experience: a home screen in which to bury apps, widgets and shortcuts, plus a familiar quick-settings menu if you swipe down from the top of the phone, though I occasionally faced a recurring bug that wouldn’t let me close it easily. I also missed Circle to Search, a close-to-universal Android feature that isn’t available on Fairphones.

This aforementioned extra app is My Fairphone, which you won’t be using all the time, so you can hide it in the App Gallery. It lets you check your phone’s health (including storage use, temperature, and runtime since last reboot), and buy accessories or spare parts for your phone. If you’re planning to keep your Fairphone running for years, this latter option will be the most intriguing — although some may find the My Fairphone app unnecessary.

Fairphone has pledged that its Gen 6 Plus phone will get at least seven Android updates (bringing you to Android 24, if Google’s software naming stays true), which is one of the best commitments we’ve seen for Androids. It helps the company's longevity promise; this phone will keep working for a long time.

Not sure about using Google’s hegemonic operating system? A version of the phone is available with /e/OS, an open-source ‘anti-Android’ operating system designed around data control, privacy and security. Given that it’s not Android, it’s not designed for the average buyer, but some people who want something more secure might consider it. However, I haven’t tested it, so I can’t give a personal take on how it works.

• Software score: 4.5 / 5

Fairphone 6 Plus review: cameras

• 50MP main, 13MP ultra-wide, and 32MP front cameras
• Basic, expected range of camera modes
• Very light-touch optimization (perhaps too light-touch)

Fairphone decided to keep its camera array unchanged from the Fairphone 6 to the new model, which means I'm going to keep my camera score similarly unchanged.

We're looking at a 50MP f/1.9 main and 13MP f/2.2 rear duo, with a 32MP f/2.0 front-facing camera rounding out the party. Okay, there's been one tweak: the main snapper now has a smaller aperture, but the changes aren't huge.

I wouldn't recommend a Fairphone if you're looking for an accomplished camera phone, and as the unchanged specs show, the 6 Plus hasn't changed my stance. It's totally fine for the average buyer — your holiday snaps or selfies will be perfectly acceptable — but you won't be taking anything particularly amazing.

You can see this from the camera samples below, and the handicap is that the image optimization isn't particularly game-changing. Look at the field of flowers, or pizza: another handset would add much more saturation and contrast. The phone can perform better, but only in really well-lit scenarios. But, as I keep saying, its cameras are mostly fine. You can drop your photos into Photoshop if you want, to make up the difference.

The Fairphone 6 Plus offers the expected range of modes, including Portrait, low-light Night mode, and a Pro mode, but there's nothing especially unique, as you'd find in a Samsung or Google Pixel device.

I took the Fairphone on vacation, and the one thing I really missed was a way to zoom in. You can use digital zoom up to 10x, but anything over 2x looks a little too grainy to use. I would've loved to see a dedicated zoom lens added to this phone, but those only show up on devices designed for photography (or phones that cost significantly more).

• Camera score: 3.5 / 5

Fairphone 6 Plus camera samples

Fairphone 6 Plus review: performance and audio

• Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 chip, 12GB RAM, and 256GB storage
• Mid-range performance, though it starts sluggishly
• Bluetooth 6.0 but no headphone jack

Arguably the main Fairphone 6 Plus upgrade versus its regular sibling is its performance. The RAM capacity is up to 12GB (something I asked for in my review of the Fairphone 6), and the chipset is now a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 (the previous model had a Gen 3). That’s the same chipset as you'll find inside the Nothing Phone (4a), so it’s no slouch on the performance front.

I’ve previously found the Snapdragon 7-series chips to be fine for mid-range devices like this, and the Fairphone 6 Plus is no exception — even if it did struggle now and then to run certain games. Most users will find it enough for most tasks, though this isn’t really a device designed for gamers.

When I put the phone through benchmarking tests, it returned an average Geekbench 7 multi-core score of around 3,500. Geekbench 7 is fairly new, so we haven't used it on enough phones to give useful comparisons, but the tool's browser library suggests this is a similar result to other mid-range mobiles.

On 3DMark, I put the phone through various tests. The results showed that the handset lags quite far behind flagships, even ones from several years ago, but it does stand as more powerful than the 'standard' Fairphone 6.

Just bought the Fairphone 6 Plus and finding it surprisingly slow? Most mobiles take a little while to get up to speed, but mine took a few days more than I’m used to. Give it some time before you declare something’s wrong.

Like most phones, the Fairphone has stereo speakers and no 3.5mm jack, so you’ll probably be relying on its Bluetooth 5.4 support for audio. One minor upgrade from past models is that the device supports aptX Lossless, so in theory, it’s better for audiophiles, but it still doesn’t support LDAC, so this is only a small win.

• Performance score: 3.5 / 5

Fairphone 6 Plus review: battery life

• Relatively small 4,415mAh battery
• Lasts roughly a day of use
• 30W charging, no wireless or reverse powering

The Fairphone 6 Plus has a 4,415mAh battery — on paper, that’s a little lower than most contemporaries, which usually offer power packs of 5,000mAh or above. However, in the past, I’ve been wowed by the battery life of Fairphone devices, which have often outperformed their spec sheets.

Not so much in the 6 Plus. Its battery life is ‘fine’, but the RAM and chipset upgrades from the past model clearly take their toll. The Fairphone lasts for about a day of average use, which is nothing to turn your nose up at, but it’s nothing exceptional, either. When I took the device on holiday, I relied on battery saver mode to make sure I had all the juice I needed.

You can power the phone up at 30W, which isn’t especially fast, but since fast charging can adversely affect battery health, it’s a hard thing to be critical of. You’ll have to plug the phone in for over an hour to charge it to full. There’s also no wireless or reverse power functionality.

• Battery score: 4 / 5

Fairphone 6 Plus review: value

I have the same problem every time I review a Fairphone; any other device with the same specs would cost a lot less, but with a Fairphone, you’re buying a device that lasts longer than rivals and takes much less of a toll on the environment.

Does that mean they’re good value or not? Because of their longevity, I usually say 'yes'. Fairphones aren't cheap, but if they last you twice as long as a rival phone would, and you’d end up buying two alternatives instead of one Fairphone, the price is justified.

But the Fairphone 6 Plus' price hike over the Fairphone 6 gives me pause to second-guess this. This phone is still a green marvel that will keep ticking for years, but its high price will probably deter most people from picking it up — and that's a shame.

• Value score: 3.5 / 5

Should you buy the Fairphone 6 Plus?

Buy it if...

Don't buy it if...

Fairphone 6 Plus review: Also consider

Not convinced by Fairphone's latest eco-phone? Here are some alternatives, all of which ostensibly have a green angle.

How I tested the Fairphone 6 Plus

• Tested for one month
• Everyday usage, including web browsing, social media, photography, video calling, gaming, streaming video, music playback
• Benchmarked using Geekbench 6, 3DMark, native Android stats

To write this Fairphone 6 Plus review, I used the device for one month. I conducted lab-style testing during one week of this month-long period, but for the other three weeks, I popped my SIM into the 6 Plus and used it as my normal smartphone.

This means I used it for texting, playing games, streaming music, working, and taking pictures as anyone else would. During this time, I also used the 6 Plus abroad during a vacation, so it really got put through its paces.

I've been reviewing Android phones for TechRadar since the start of 2019, and was on the team for much of that time. This means I've tested plenty of other competitors and past Fairphone models (including the Fairphone 6), as well as some other gadgets from the company, including its headphones.

I also recently published a long-read piece on gadget repairability for TechRadar, which included an interview with Fairphone's Head of Product.

Read more about how we test

First reviewed September 2026

The race to crown the best camera phone of 2026 is heating up.

Back in January, Samsung released the globally available Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, before Oppo and Xiaomi dropped the Oppo Find X9 Ultra and Xiaomi 17 Ultra, respectively, both of which were made available in the UK but not the US (Australian buyers, meanwhile, got the Xiaomi, but not the Oppo).

Google entered the race with the Google Pixel 11 Pro in August, and now Apple has released the iPhone 18 Pro, which is earning plaudits for its variable aperture feature and pro-level video capture capabilities.

So, wherever you are in the world, you’ve likely got at least three compelling camera phones to consider at the time of writing, and I took two of them — the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra — on a recent trip to Hawaii to see how they stack up against one another.

Below, I’ve added examples of both phones’ wide, zoom, macro, ultra-wide, and selfie-taking capabilities to help you decide which model is right for you. Then, at the end, I've summarized my thoughts on how they compare.

Specs

Before we dig into the comparison, here’s a quick roundup of each phone’s key camera specs:

In addition to the optical zoom distances listed above, both phones offer an additional ‘optical-quality’ zoom (8x for the iPhone, 2x and 10x for the Samsung), but they do so via a sensor crop rather than fixed focal lengths, so I’ve prioritized their true optical zoom distances in the ‘zoom’ section below.

It’s also worth noting that, to save storage, both the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra capture images in smaller file sizes than their large sensors suggest by default. Specifically, the iPhone defaults to 24MP (using Apple’s ‘super-high-resolution’ imaging pipeline), while the Galaxy S26 Ultra defaults to 12MP (via pixel-binning).

I stuck with these out-of-the-box shooting settings for each of the comparisons below.

Wide

iPhone

Samsung

In this picture of a statue by the beach — “The Acrobats” by John Robinson — we can immediately see the difference between the two phones’ approaches to color science.

The iPhone’s image is the more natural of the two, with more pronounced shadows and muted colors, versus the Samsung’s brighter, more contrast-heavy image. This difference is particularly apparent on the statue’s torso and patch of grass to the right of the scene.

iPhone

Samsung

Here, again, the Samsung’s image has punchier, arguably more artificial-looking colors, but the difference isn’t quite so stark as in the first image. Both photos are equally detailed.

iPhone

Samsung

Again, only a subtle difference between the two images, but the leaves are certainly greener in the Galaxy’s shot (see the top right-hand side of the image)

iPhone

Samsung

The iPhone and Samsung take radically different approaches to capturing this shadowy pathway. The former’s image is more realistic, with strong detail maintained where the leaves meet the sky. The Galaxy’s image is impressively detailed, too, but its colors are much more stylistic than natural, which is emerging as a theme in this comparison.

iPhone

Samsung

This, for me, is the clearest example yet of the color science difference I’ve referenced below every image so far. Both of these shots are equally detailed, but the Samsung has definitely dialed up the saturation versus the iPhone’s more neutral shot.

iPhone

Samsung

Moving on to a sunset image, and the iPhone does a good job at maintaining the clarity of both the foreground and background, while the Galaxy goes full “Oh, so you want a sunset shot?” mode. I definitely don’t hate the Monet-style sky the Samsung has captured here — it's certainly the more aesthetic of the two — but in doing so, the phone obscures almost everyone in the foreground. The iPhone’s shot is, again, more balanced, but much less stylistic.

iPhone

Samsung

This image, though, proves that the Galaxy S26 Ultra can effectively balance foreground and background in low light. I actually think it does a slightly better job than the iPhone here, but there’s not much in it.

iPhone

Samsung

Again, pretty similar results here, but the iPhone definitely chooses a warmer hue that fades from orange to red, while the Samsung goes from red to an almost pink color. This is, in fairness, a particularly tricky shot to capture.

Zoom

iPhone

Samsung

Back to that statue again, this time at 4x optical zoom for the iPhone and 5x optical zoom for the Samsung.

The level of detail captured is impressive in both cases, but the Galaxy’s image is, in my opinion, the sharper of the two, which makes sense given the phone's optical advantage over the iPhone — the Galaxy essentially has more information for its processing algorithms to work with, resulting in a slightly more detailed image.

I also like the way the Galaxy dials down the color of the blurred clouds in the background to really bring the statue into focus, which isn't something you'd expect given the phone's gung-ho approach to colors we've observed so far.

iPhone

Samsung

Interestingly, in these photos — taken at the same optical distances as above — the Samsung has again dialed down the colors to produce a much grayer image than the iPhone, though I'm not sure that approach works for this particular scene.

The iPhone's image is warmer and, in parts (see the cracks in the pavement), a touch more detailed.

iPhone

Samsung

This is an example of each phone’s maximum digital zoom capabilities — 40x for the iPhone, 100x for the Samsung. Yes, 100 is a bigger number than 40, but you can see why Apple doesn’t bother to offer anything beyond that figure. In both cases, the phone is guessing at details via processing trickery, rather than actually being able to capture them, which results in two pretty unusable images.

Still, the Samsung will produce iPhone-like results up until around the 50x mark, so it's a more versatile zoom camera overall.

Macro and ultra-wide

iPhone

Samsung

Macro mode — where your phone automatically switches to its ultra-wide camera lens when you move close to a small subject — was my favorite test to carry out on both the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra, because macro photography is something Apple and Samsung phones have been good at for years.

In this example, as we’ve seen previously, the iPhone 18 Pro opts for more realistic, neutral colors, while the Galaxy’s shot has way more contrast. The greens in these two images are quite literally different shades.

iPhone

Samsung

Again, the level of detail here is comparable across both shots, but this is the first instance where I actually prefer the Galaxy’s deeper, more artistic-looking colors. The iPhone's brighter image is closer to reality, though.

iPhone

Samsung

In this example, it’s the other way around; I prefer the iPhone’s colors to the Samsung’s. However, you’ll notice — if you zoom in on the vascular tissue of the leaves — that the Galaxy phone actually captures more detail.

iPhone

Samsung

As in my comparison between the iPhone 17 Pro and OnePlus 15’s cameras, I’ve only included one regular ultra-wide example here because I was so preoccupied with the phones’ wide and telephoto lenses while shooting in Hawaii that I forgot to take more with their respective ultra-wide lenses (perhaps my colleague was right in saying that phones don’t need ultra-wide lenses at all — but that’s a debate for another day).

In any case, everything I said about the first few photos in this comparison applies again here. Both phones capture excellent detail — I'd probably give the edge to the iPhone, since it captures the graininess of the sand slightly better than the Samsung — but their approaches to color science differ dramatically, which is evident in the sand, sky, and grass pictured above. The iPhone captures the scene as it is; the Samsung captures the scene as it thinks you want it to be.

Selfies

iPhone

Samsung

Both of these selfies are detailed and well-balanced in terms of color, but the iPhone's image is the slightly sharper of the two, no doubt because the 18 Pro has a larger 18MP front-facing sensor than the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s 12MP sensor. It does a better job of maintaining the clarity of my flyaway hairs, for instance.

It’s worth mentioning, too, that the iPhone 18 Pro’s ‘Center Stage’ selfie camera uses subject tracking to automatically keep you in the frame, and also lets you switch between portrait and landscape modes, depending on how many subjects are in frame. I've used that particular feature a lot, so it's definitely not a gimmick.

Verdict

There’s no doubt that both of these phones are among the best camera phones money can buy in 2026, but they do differ on several fronts.

For everyday shots in good lighting, both the iPhone 18 Pro and Galaxy S26 Ultra — in their respective default shooting modes — capture plenty of detail, but you’ll get more natural-looking shots from the former, and more vibrant, stylized shots from the latter.

In low light, the iPhone takes slightly brighter pictures and, as a result, sometimes captures more of the scene than the Galaxy, but Samsung’s style-focused color science can similarly lead to better results than the iPhone. It all depends on what you’re shooting and which aesthetic you prefer.

When it comes to zoom, both phones perform well, though the Galaxy will get you closer to your subject than the iPhone without sacrificing detail (5x optical zoom vs 4x optical zoom). You also get an additional 3x optical zoom option on the Samsung, which you don’t get on the iPhone. If I wanted the most versatile zoom shooter, I’d choose the Samsung.

For selfies, though, the iPhone is the clear winner, with its larger 18MP sensor and genuinely useful framing tricks.

As mentioned, the iPhone 18 Pro also boasts a variable aperture feature. Since I wanted to compare both of these phones using their out-of-the-box shooting settings, I didn’t manually control the aperture on the iPhone in any of the above shots, but Apple does give you the option to do so, whereas Samsung does not.

Changing the aperture is useful for tweaking how much of a given background you want to keep in focus (as my colleague Lance demonstrates in a separate piece), and you can also achieve some nice lens flare effects in low light while doing so. But this is very much a pro-level feature that most users won’t play around with too much.

Overall, then, I’d say the Galaxy S26 Ultra is my preferred camera phone for zoom photography and stylized shots, but the iPhone 18 Pro is the more consistent wide shooter in both well-lit and low-light scenarios. It’s got a better selfie camera, too, and since Apple’s new pro-level controls unlock more possibilities for the iPhone, it’s the phone I’ll be sticking with until the next wave of camera-focused Chinese flagships rolls around.

Incidentally, I'll be publishing separate Portrait mode and video comparisons shortly, so stick with TechRadar for more on these two top-end camera phones.