Modern displays are truly amazing. The paper-thin, flexible OLEDs in the latest TVs and smartphones are not only amazingly thin but also sport unparalleled color accuracy, astounding contrast, buttery-smooth refresh rates, and brightness like no one could have imagined until now. But among all these specs, something keeps getting forgotten: our eye health.

Staring at blindingly bright screens for hours a day is, unsurprisingly, causing massive discomfort for an ever-growing percentage of the populace. Experts once thought that a blanket "screen time" metric could help reduce the pain, but it turns out that there's a lot more to what makes displays painful to look at. Thankfully, a few companies are actively working to fix those problems.

Chief among them is BOE Technology Group, whose displays power many of the world's most popular phones, and has been the world's leading display manufacturer since 2023. I write tons of display reviews every year for Android Central, and BOE's displays are always the most eye-friendly displays from any major brand.

The company took its most recent innovations to SID Display Week in Los Angeles, and I couldn't help but be impressed by its ever-growing focus on making displays that not only look good but also feel good to look at. BOE broke it down into four categories that I'll analyze today: spectrum optimization, depolarization, anti-glare, and flicker.

What's in a spectrum?

The light spectrum isn't something we think much about in our daily lives, unless we're shopping for light bulbs or toying around with night mode display features on our phones. Our eyes were built to absorb the full spectrum of light from natural sources, but, unsurprisingly, the artificial light from most displays is anything but natural-looking.

Most OLEDs and LCDs follow a similar pattern. Since they use red, blue, and green subpixels, a graph of the light spectrum emitted by these displays shows steep peaks in each of these three colors, while the rest of the spectrum is left out.

It's usually possible to go into display settings and tweak the color output a bit (usually described as a warmer or cooler temperature), but this doesn't spread the colors across the spectrum; it just alters the height of the red, green, and blue peaks.

Looking at the graph above, you can see that the natural light graph (which represents sunlight filtered through cloud cover) shows a fairly even distribution across all colors in the spectrum. Some colors are slightly more intense than others, but none are "missing" from the graph.

Meanwhile, most LCD and OLED displays have pronounced valleys and steep peaks, which inherently cause some degree of eye strain due to the missing colors. Some LED bulbs and LED backlights on e-readers can produce quite a bit more color than LCD or OLED, but you'll often find parts of the spectrum missing entirely in the outermost sections.

BOE's next-generation display technology uses what it calls Beneficial Natural Light (BNL) to fill that color spectrum far more than existing technologies, and it does so across several different display types, too. On the show floor, BOE presented this across LCD, OLED, and micro-OLED displays, adopting the best features of each technology while leveraging the advantages of a more natural color spectrum.

Flicker, the headache machine

For several years now, I've written about how display flickering is causing debilitating pain in an increasing percentage of the population. While some companies refuse to provide solutions for customers facing these problems, BOE has done a superb job of introducing new displays with lower flicker rates since then.

At the show, BOE focused on three solutions that help solve the flicker problem: DC dimming, 4320Hz PWM dimming, and ultra-high refresh rates. Phones like the Honor Magic 8 Pro use BOE Displays with DC dimming at medium to high brightness, then switch to 3840Hz or 4320Hz PWM dimming at low brightness to strike an excellent balance between image quality and eye care.

BOE is taking that one step further by creating new displays that operate at 1000Hz refresh rates at full 1080p resolution (pictured above). This particular display uses Oxide TFTs with a 1ms response time to create the smoothest experience you've ever seen. This was only shown off on a 24.5-inch monitor, but I'm hoping to see this kind of tech make its way to mobile d

Kill the glare

Boe is a bit behind on this one, as companies like TCL and Samsung have been utilizing anti-glare layers on their phones for a few years. TCL's next-generation NXTPAPER display is launching later in 2026 and will be the world's first OLED display with an anti-reflective layer. Samsung has been using an anti-glare layer on its flagship Ultra series since 2024 (pictured above), but it cuts glare rather than preventing reflections entirely.

The first BOE OLED I used with an anti-glare layer is on the Honor Magic V6, a phone that launched in June and sports an anti-glare layer similar to that of the Galaxy S Ultra series. The tech BOE showed off at the SID show looked identical to this, so while I'm not expecting anything new from the company compared to what's on the Magic V6, it likely means we'll start seeing more phones with this important feature.

Anti-glare is about more than just cutting annoying reflections. It also enhances colors and black levels, helps prevent eye strain, and keeps your phone from emitting peak brightness as often (since it doesn't have to fight against reflective light).

Depolarized light

Circular polarizers have become more commonplace in modern mobile displays because they help prevent the annoying blackout that occurs when viewing linearly polarized content through polarized sunglasses. In other words, you can use your phone in portrait and landscape while wearing polarized glasses, so long as it uses a circular polarizer. Plus, circularly polarized displays are brighter than linearly polarized ones in the same situation.

Surprisingly, circular polarizers are good for more than just outdoor or in-car phone visibility. They also help scatter light in a way that's more natural and less direct than an LCD or OLED might otherwise be, helping lutein levels to remain higher than with linearly polarized displays.

Studies show that higher lutein levels improve eye performance, so your display (and everything else) continues to look good with prolonged use, while contrast and clarity can diminish over time as lutein levels decline.

Just the tip of the iceberg

If you want to see more of what BOE is working on, the display tour video above is the most comprehensive I could find from SID Display Week 2026. It goes over a ton of additional products and concepts the company is working on — like a true creaseless foldable display, transparent OLEDs, ultra-wide-gamut TVs, etc — but it's telling that BOE has such a large section devoted to eye health.

To my knowledge, only TCL shows such strong commitment to eye health with its NXTPAPER products (and beyond), while companies like Samsung never even mention eye health when announcing new products. I often get completely ignored by Samsung when I ask questions about color spectrum output, display flicker improvements, and similar topics, and my eyes (and the feedback from many people online) tell me that eye health simply isn't a concern for the company.

As we add more and more displays to our lives — whether that's the phone in our hand or the multitude of signs and advertisements in public spaces — eye health is becoming an increasingly important topic for display companies to focus on, and I'm glad to see that significant work is being put into ensuring the long-term health of the people who look at them.

When I was a kid, I always looked forward to seeing what new gadgets Q would cook up in the latest 007 James Bond movie. From Geiger counter wristwatches to folding sniper rifles, exploding pens, and even X-ray glasses, there's no shortage of fantastic devices that the Bond universe has cooked up.

Every gadget has its roots in the era it came from, so it makes sense that the 5-star-rated 007 First Light video game that just came out in May 2026 would use smart glasses as one of its gadgets. The partnership between Even Realities and IO Interactive came at the perfect time, as I was already using the company's new G2 glasses for a few weeks when I found out.

Even Realities G2 sports dual monochrome displays (one in each lens), the most minimalist frames you'll find on any pair of smart glasses today, and up to 2-day battery life. To make things even cooler, the G2 is designed to pair with Even Realities R1, the company's first smart ring, enabling health monitoring and glasses gesture control by just touching the ring. It already feels like a 007 gadget, and that's made even more legitimate by seeing James Bond wear them.

The all-day wearable smart glasses

Most smart glasses suffer from two main problems: weight and battery life. Take my beloved Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2's, for example. While Ray-Ban Metas are arguably the most popular smart glasses on the market, no one is buying them for their battery life. No matter which Meta glasses I use, I can't get more than a few hours' use out of them, and that number drops substantially if you use the camera.

Then, there's weight to consider. My reading glasses weigh 32g, while Ray-Ban Meta and Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses weigh between 48g and 52g, depending on the size and style you choose. The higher-end Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses with a display in the right lens bring that up to a whopping 69g.

Even Realities G2 is only 37g, despite having a display in each lens, a pair of batteries, and a microphone for commands. The battery lasts well over a day in my use, and the charging case makes it easy to quickly top up if I need to. They're also substantially thinner and more svelte-looking than any of Meta's glasses, and that's all down to a very specific design constraint Even Realities worked under.

I spoke with Will Wang, Founder and CEO of Even Realities, ahead of the G2's launch, specifically about the company's design ethos. "How do you define a good pair of glasses?" Wang asked me during the interview. The obvious answer is that they've got to look good and be comfortable; otherwise, I'm not going to want to wear them.

"To make a good pair of smart glasses, we knew we had to look at the traditional glasses category and see how we evolve from that."

On top of those two categories, smart glasses need good enough battery life to keep you from worrying about charging them. Smartwatches went through this pain point for years until a true 24-hour+ watch debuted, but the first ones to achieve that goal did so by including only "necessary" features and leaving out the battery-draining ones.

Likewise, Even Realities glasses — both the G1 and G2 — ship without any kind of onboard speakers or cameras. It's the polar opposite of what companies like Meta and Google are trying to achieve with the "AI glasses" product category, and it just might be the winning combination for a different crowd of people.

Regarding glasses with cameras, Wang was adamant that they posed a privacy problem. "To me, at this stage of how society is or how regulation is in place, I think it's a big 'no,'" Wang says, noting that there's far too little concern being paid to glasses with cameras onboard because they're not obvious enough.

"It's really different from a VR device because, you know, as a VR device, everybody knows that you are wearing it, and you're not wearing it outdoors all the time, right?" Wang noted, "You can have all the cameras you want to capture the room for spatial tracking [on a VR headset]" without it being a visible privacy problem.

But smart glasses are different.

"You really need to respect your own privacy as well as people around you, right?" Wang is far from alone on this front, too. Cruiselines and even the U.S. Air Force have banned those types of glasses, and Wang clearly doesn't want Even Realities to get mixed up in those kinds of headlines.

And don't worry, no one can see the displays on the glasses when they're looking at you. The waveguide optics are designed to shine light towards the wearer. If someone sticks their face up to your glasses from the outside, they can see a mirrored version of the display, but if someone is this close to you already, you might have other things to worry about.

Apps that make it feel like a gadget

While there are no cameras or speakers on Even Realities glasses, they do have a single microphone that can be used to interact with Even Realities' own (limited) AI assistant or selectively with Perplexity via a setting on the Even Realities app on your phone.

You can also use the microphone to translate a conversation live, something other smart glasses do, and the translation will appear right on your glasses' lens displays. It's crazy cool, and the various scaling and comfort-level options on the green monochrome display make reading easier and more comfortable than I've found with Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses.

The displays can be set to three different distance levels and also adjusted vertically to best fit your vision. The display will light up any time a notification comes in, if you tilt your head up enough, or if you double-tap either the touchpads at the end of each temple or the Even Realities R1 smart ring on your index finger.

A smart ring a spy would love

This smart ring is another unique point that sets Even Realities G2 apart from the pack and, again, makes this pair feel more like a James Bond gadget. One side of the R1 ring features a touchpad you can swipe or tap to navigate the glasses' on-screen menus. A single tap acts as a click or touch, while a double-tap navigates backward. Having the pad on one side ensures that lefties and righties can wear it comfortably on their index finger and only interact with their thumb.

On top of genius navigation via a very unobtrusive smart ring, Even Realities G2 supports web apps that both Even Realities and the community have made. At the time of writing, there are hundreds of apps available for the glasses, ranging from weight-lifting counters to speedometer dashboards, calculators, virtual pets, birdsong identifier apps, and even ePub readers. Yes, you can read a whole book on it, and it's surprisingly comfortable since it's right in your line of sight.

In essence, these glasses are a smartwatch for your face. Pairing it with the R1 ring will also track heart rate, body temperature, sleep cycles, and all the usual stuff you'd expect from something like an Oura Ring. Since I don't like wearing watches most of the day (I only wear them while working out), this concept appeals to me greatly.

Your next smartphone companion?

As with anything, it's not a perfect experience, but I can see most of my concerns being addressed quickly through feedback. I'd love a more customizable dashboard, as I don't care to read news regularly on my glasses; it's just too much regular information for my taste.

I'd also love to be able to launch apps from the glasses a little more easily than with the current implementation. Right now, launching them from the Even Realities phone app is the quickest way (and sometimes the only way, depending on the app), partially defeating the purpose of having apps on your glasses in the first place. Lastly, better messaging reply capabilities are a must, especially if I'm replacing a smart watch with these glasses.

Get those in place, and I can see myself offsetting a significant amount of my daily phone checking and tinkering to my Even Realities glasses in no time. Until then, I'll be toying around with all the new apps on the glasses in my downtime and enjoying every minute of it. Even Realities G2 is available from the Even Realities website for $599 and ships in two different styles.

Motorola phones aren't usually known for having exemplary cameras. Most of Motorola's phones in North America these days are budget-friendly models and, by extension, don't leave much room for impressive camera performance. However, the Motorola Razr Fold is a different beast entirely, and after capturing hundreds of photos with the foldable, we’re confident when we say that the Razr Fold continues to blow us away.

The Motorola Razr Fold is the most premium phone Motorola has ever made, and the fact that it's available in North America seems almost like a miracle. To make things even more complicated, most of the best foldable phones aren't available in North America at all, meaning your only real choices are between Samsung and Google.

That said, we're breaking up this camera review a little differently than usual. Managing editor Derrek Lee will focus solely on the Razr Fold and how it stands on its own, while Nick Sutrich is comparing the Razr Fold to some of its biggest competitors, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Motorola Razr Fold cameras

Motorola is using a Sony Lytia sensor for the primary 50MP camera, further enhancing it with Pantone Validation. That means the camera should produce truer-to-life colors and more accurate skin tones, though you may need to be patient as the phone takes a few seconds to fully process images.

Photos taken with all three cameras all look extremely pleasing to me. The Razr Fold captures very bright, vibrant images that look very pleasing on the phone’s Extreme AMOLED displays. In good lighting, particularly on sunny days, the Fold camera is at its best and tends to brighten darker areas, softening harsh shadows. The result is that blacks are not as rich as they could be, but this is often not a huge problem, and low-light images appear a bit brighter with minimal noise.

The Razr Fold camera has decent dynamic range, but I often wish Motorola would punch it up a bit. I notice that the details in the clouds tend to get lost and a tad overexposed, but I don’t think this is the Fold’s biggest problem.

In fact, as far as colors go, Motorola could stand to tone them down a little. The Fold produces very punchy colors, but sometimes it can go a little overboard. This is precisely why I stick with the Normal Mode in Motorola’s camera, though if you like punchy colors, you can always opt for Vivid Mode.

The Razr Fold also handles movement well, even in low-light situations, although it has its limits. You can capture moving subjects in focus pretty well with the main sensor, and the Action Shot feature takes things to the next level, allowing you to zoom into fast-moving subjects for a clear image, something even the Razr Ultra 2025 couldn’t do.

Zoom camera

Where the Razr Fold really shines is in its zoom capability. This was never a particularly strong area for Motorola, but the company was clearly cooking with its imaging engine. The Razr Fold sports a Sony Lytia 600 3x optical telephoto camera, but it's capable of up to 100x "Super Zoom."

This probably sounds like a gimmick, because who would be taking photos at 100x zoom? I've seen time and again that those images don't amount to much. Well, the Razr Fold has proven me wrong.

The Razr Fold manages to take some rather impressive photos at just about any zoom level. Clearly, 3x images are its bread and butter, and photos appear crisp and detailed. However, at a concert in a relatively dark theater, I found that photos taken at 6x and even 10x zoom were almost as impressive, and I stuck to these zoom levels throughout the show.

It's when you get to 10x and beyond that the Fold really shows off what it can do. It's here that the AI is clearly doing a lot of the heavy lifting, as the resulting photos don't look like much until the Fold finishes processing, at which point I'm blown away by how well it cleans up photos at 50x and even 100x. The fact that I can capture individual people on a boat that I can barely see with my own eyes is quite impressive.

Every camera on the Razr Fold is great, but the telephoto sensor is so good that I find myself defaulting to it, using it more than I have any other phone with a telephoto camera. That's not to say there aren't other phones capable of this level of zoom, but it's more than I ever expected from Motorola.

Motorola Razr Fold vs. Galaxy Z Fold 7

Motorola is finally offering North American Android users a reason to get excited about foldables again. Not only does the Razr Fold 2026 offer a bigger battery, better displays, and even stylus capability than Pixel Fold or Galaxy Z Fold phones, but it's also delivering a better camera experience.

To say the Razr Fold 2026's camera annihilates Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 is a huge understatement. The Z Fold 7 doesn't exactly set a high bar for camera quality, but it's still the best foldable available in North America today, and that's what really matters.

Motorola has two main advantages you'll see in the following comparisons. First, the company's use of Pantone color science absolutely shines in every picture, making this the most color-accurate foldable camera I've ever used. Second, the phone's cameras provide exquisite detail in every lighting situation, eclipsing Samsung's efforts every single time.

You'll find the largest quality gap between the Razr Fold and the Galaxy Z Fold 7 at virtually any zoom level. The Razr Fold not only captures substantially more detail but also produces photos with a convincing depth of field that you'll only get from larger, better sensors. If you look at any of my comparison examples at 3x and beyond, you'll see the Razr Fold captures the subject in impressive detail, while the background naturally blurs behind it.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy Z Fold 7's photos often look flat and very obviously come from a smartphone. This is a problem with all Samsung phones, including the Galaxy S26 Ultra, because Samsung consistently uses smaller, cheaper sensors. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 also maxes out at 30x zoom, and most photos beyond 10x simply aren't usable on that phone, while the Razr can produce great photos even up to 50x and 100x (as Derrek noted above).

The Razr Fold's main and ultrawide cameras produce incredible detail, dynamic range, and a general "punchiness" that the Galaxy Z Fold 7's cameras lack. Many photos from the Z Fold 7 are on the cool side and often look flat.

I only found one example when the Z Fold 7 produced a better photo — the very dark image of the two keyboards and monitors on a desk — but this was also a time when the Z Fold 7 took a 2-3 second-long exposure to capture the image, while the Razr Fold's photo was taken instantly.

Motorola Razr Fold vs. Honor Magic V6

Folks in Europe and Asia have a much wider range of phones to choose from, giving the Razr Fold some actual competition. Even so, I've found that the phone tends to keep up quite well, and often still produces the most color-accurate image.

Compared to the Honor Magic V6, I've found the Razr Fold's main and ultrawide lenses generally come out slightly on top. Dynamic range and colors are particularly impressive, even if the gap isn't as wide as it was when compared to the Z Fold 7.

Between roughly 8x and 19x, the Razr Fold sometimes performs slightly worse than phones like the Honor Magic V6, but it's highly situation-dependent. The photo of my cat below shows an obvious difference between the two phones, while the photo of the moss is nearly indistinguishable.

But something interesting happens at 20x and beyond, and it's powered by generative AI. You can choose to turn this off in camera settings if you prefer a more "raw" image. But the reality is that this turns the tables on extreme zoom smartphone photography. Images go from a neat parlor trick to actual usable photos at 50x and beyond, and that's not something I expected to see from a foldable, much less a standard non-foldable smartphone.

The winner is a toss-up between the Razr Fold and Honor Magic V6, and it's entirely situationally dependent. Generative AI features seem to apply their magic to whatever they feel like, rather than being consistent all around.

The photos of the statue I took above are a perfect example of this, as Honor's does an exemplary job at 30x but seems to forget to work beyond that, whereas Motorola's AI additions only seem to kick in at 100x. Your mileage will absolutely vary with this feature, but it ensures that you're more likely to get a usable photo of something far away, and that's a great thing.

A real winner

Before I started my review, my biggest concern with the Razr Fold was the camera performance. Motorola doesn't have a great track record with good camera quality, but the Razr Fold has proven that the company can not only get it right but can beat the competition.

I'm sticking with this phone for the foreseeable future, and a large part of that is because of the camera quality. Oftentimes, when you choose a foldable, you have to sacrifice camera quality to get a good foldable experience, but Motorola has proven that this is no longer the case with the Razr Fold, and I couldn't be happier about it.

When you compare OLED to nearly any other display tech available, the differences become immediately clear. OLED is renowned for its contrast ratio, deep blacks, and punchy, vibrant colors. The love for OLED's vibrant nature is so strong that we've even seen "scandals" when a phone doesn't launch with a vibrant color option.

But it turns out not everyone finds these extreme colors very nice. In fact, some people find them to be uncomfortable, a definition that's quite different from a simple opinion on looks. While some companies are working on fixing OLED discomfort through hardware, Google just introduced a new software update that uniquely addresses the color situation.

It's called Comfort Filters, and it combines the existing Night Light feature with a new option called Comfort View. The concept is simple: adjust the display color to accommodate a user's comfort level. Whether this is shifting to warmer colors to promote better sleep patterns, making the display greyscale to keep you from using your phone as much, or just swapping the color palette for more soothing pastel colors, Comfort Filters are Google's latest answer.

The science of color

Color has a deep-seated meaning in the human brain. While some colors and their meanings are cultural, many are seen as universal. Red, for instance, is often seen as a color of strength or anger, while yellow often symbolizes hope or happiness. Over the years, smartphone manufacturers have learned that the absence of color can make you less interested in using your phone, which is why monochrome mode is included in your phone's bedtime mode.

Likewise, researchers have found that lighter, desaturated, and pastel colors often evoke a sense of calm or relaxation. TCL has baked this color palette into its NXTPAPER devices, like the NXTPAPER 70 Pro, calling it "Color Paper mode." This mode desaturates all colors and simplifies on-screen visual elements to provide a less distracting, yet still colorized, version of your phone's apps.

"Comfort View creates a new, more comfortable aesthetic for the content rendered when users want it," Google says. This feature, somewhat surprisingly, was not built as an accessibility option. Rather, it's one designed to offer users more choice in how their phone's display looks.

"This feature is built for anyone who finds the 'mellow aesthetic' attractive. We have heard from users who found this experience especially helpful in a darker room, where they appreciate the more comfortable color palette while still being able to see the different colors."

I put together a simple chart above showing standard RGB colors in Photoshop next to the pastel versions of each color. To illustrate the point, cover the regular colors with your hand and stare at the pastel colors for a few seconds, then cover the pastel colors and look at the regular colors.

The difference is incredibly jarring, and it can be even more so depending on how sensitive your brain is to light and color. Comfort View uses a color palette much closer to the right side of the chart, and I felt the difference in intensity the second I enabled the feature.

Pastel colors are also often associated with the spring season, which brings great comfort to people who live in climates with cold, snowy winters, furthering the idea that pastel colors deliver an incredibly positive feeling. It's fitting, then, that Google introduced this feature in the spring! If you're using a Pixel right now and are on the April build of Android 16 (or later), here's how to enable that:

1. Open the system settings on your Pixel. Either open Settings in the app drawer or swipe down twice on the status bar, then tap the gear icon.

2. Select Display & touch from the menu.

3. Scroll down to and tap Comfort Filters.

4. Tap the toggle next to Comfort View to enable it.

5. To manually adjust the strength of Comfort View, uncheck the Dynamic box and move the slider to your preferred filter strength.

While you're in the Comfort Filters section, you can also toggle the Night Light feature, which will tint the screen an amber color and reduce blue light output. This feature can be used at the same time as the pastel Comfort View option and is most often used at night to help keep your circadian rhythm from being interrupted by daylight spectrum blue light that normally emits from your phone's display.

Still work to do

While Comfort View is a wonderful way to make the Pixel's display more comfortable to look at, Google still needs to address a few other factors to ensure its displays remain comfortable for everyone.

Last year, Google introduced a new Sensitive Eyes feature for the Pixel 10 Pro family, which raised the PWM dimming rate to match that of Samsung and Apple. The problem is that all three of these companies are dreadfully behind on certain technologies, and the slow PWM rate is one of the most egregious problems.

Unfortunately, rumors suggest the Pixel 11 won't change its PWM rate, just like Samsung's Galaxy S26 family this year. Meanwhile, Apple gave users a way to completely disable PWM at low brightness on the iPhone 17 series last year. Apple's Display Pulse Smoothing feature was a great start, but the company still uses 480Hz dimming (even if it's not PWM), so it didn't fix the problem for a lot of flicker-sensitive people.

Still, I've been happy to see that most companies have been working toward introducing more eye-friendly features on their phones. Smartphones are a ubiquitous part of modern life, and given how often we have to use them, companies need to prioritize eye health over nonsense specs that few people actively care about.

Despite not getting the Sensitive Eyes feature quite right, Google is putting in effort to ensure its phones have accessibility options for people who need them, and that speaks volumes. I hope that we continue to see companies like Google and Apple emphasize accessibility features, especially display-related ones, as people who are sensitive to things like flicker cannot use these devices at all. Here's hoping the Pixel 11 continues to surprise!

Over the past few years, TCL's NXTPAPER displays have become synonymous with eye care, but the company's next evolution of the technology is swapping out the existing LCD backpane for an OLED one, and that's making a few people nervous. I talked to TCL about these concerns, and the company shared exclusive answers it hasn't publicly disclosed regarding its upgraded tech — and I think they'll give some people a very real sigh of relief.

That's particularly great in the wake of the recent Galaxy S26 Ultra release, which features a new Privacy Display that seems to be giving even more people headaches than Samsung's OLED displays have in the past. Sure, Samsung's latest innovation is downright cool and a legitimate selling point, but some have found it causes splitting headaches instead, and Samsung isn't the only company with this problem.

I've been covering the negative effects of PWM dimming and temporal dithering for years; Samsung's latest OLED trick is the freshest wave causing user discomfort and pain. It's a systemic problem with a technology that's designed entirely to push the boundaries of display "quality" while entirely ignoring user comfort. And one company is attempting to completely rework OLED into something far better than we have today: TCL.

NXTPAPER is evolving from LCD to OLED this year, and while it's bringing along some of the familiar tenets of OLED — wider color gamut, ultra brightness, and fast response times — TCL is attempting to do things differently, and better as far as I can tell, all in the name of eye safety for you and me.

What's wrong with OLED?

OLED has been one of the most impressive visual upgrades this side of HDTV and DVDs, but like any good thing, there are always tradeoffs. OLED is a self-emissive technology, which means each pixel emits its own light rather than relying on a backlight to pass through colored filters, as in LCDs. And while this means OLED has infinite contrast ratios and ultra-vibrant colors, it also means OLED will always flicker.

You can't normally see the flicker happening because it occurs at a faster rate than your eyes might pick up, but our brains still notice it, and some people's brains hate it. This flicker occurs because the pixel emits its own light, so whenever it has to change color, it turns off and then illuminates again with the new color. Every OLED manufacturer handles this flicker differently, but research shows that flickering at specific rates can help prevent discomfort.

Unfortunately, some of the world's most popular smartphone companies — Samsung, most prominently — seem unwilling to change their methodology to align with the science. I wish I understood why, but it's likely that their methods work for enough people, and the companies simply don't want to spend money on new testing.

Thankfully, companies like TCL are paying attention and seem to actually care about our health in this regard. After all, it benefits a company to keep its users healthy so they can keep buying new products in the future. NXTPAPER OLED will use 3840Hz PWM dimming, a 10-15x increase over what Samsung, Google, and Apple use on their OLED phones.

Research shows that most people cannot perceive any flicker at all beyond 3000Hz, so 3840Hz should be comfortable for the vast majority of users. Current NXTPAPER technology uses an LCD backlight with a constant-driven current, meaning it's truly a flicker-free light source, but a very fast PWM rate can be perceived similarly in most cases.

Reflections, blue light, and the boogeyman

One of the core tenets of NXTPAPER is its paper-like quality. It's in the name, after all, and the key behind it is a unique chemical etching process that TCL says gives it nano-level roughness. This texture isn't just for your fingers, though. It actually scatters light differently, softening the appearance of the pixels and giving them a more print-like appearance.

The matte texture is also engineered to resist fingerprints and smudges like no other display, too. I found this to be the case in every NXTPAPER device I've reviewed, and it's only gotten better over the years. This, combined with the circular polarizer and an additional blue light filter layer, makes NXTPAPER easier to look at.

The big change with this new evolution of NXTPAPER is the use of OLED as the backend instead of LCD. That means we'll keep many of the fan-favorite features of NXTPAPER and get the advantages of OLED contrast, brightness, and color gamut.

As you can see from the comparison images, OLED can make a massive difference in outdoor visibility when an anti-reflective layer is used. That, combined with the matte-textured surface and circularly polarized light, should make NXTPAPER OLED feel like the ultimate version of many people's favorite display tech.

Aside from outdoor visibility, NXTPAPER OLED should also address two color-related challenges in modern displays. First, the displays are 10-bit, which should help avoid temporal dithering to artificially enhance color gamut. Existing NXTPAPER displays use dithering in some situations, which can be as uncomfortable as PWM dimming for some users.

Second, it further reduces blue light output. Blue light has been the display boogeyman for a long time, and while all smartphones have some form of blue-light blocking, some companies implement it better than others. NXTPAPER has always had a hardware-level blue-light-blocking filter, but NXTPAPER OLED further reduces blue-light emission to 2.9% (down from 3.41% on NXTPAPER 4.0).

Unlike other companies' blue light reduction techniques, TCL's won't make your screen all yellow and funky looking. Instead of just turning blue light off, TCL's blue light filter shifts the blue output to the 457-462.5mm bands, which fit snuggly within the healthy blue light range. Standard OLEDs may emit blue light between the 400-455mm range, which is considered harmful.

So far, every major NXTPAPER upgrade has featured a new version number. TCL's latest phones, like the NXTPAPER 70 Pro, feature a NXTPAPER 4.0 display, but TCL tells me it's planning on stepping away from version numbers from here on out. The next NXTPAPER phones will just launch with a NXTPAPER OLED display, and TCL thinks this will make things clearer for everyone.

We don't yet know which phone or tablet the NXTPAPER OLED will debut on, but we'll likely see something by the year's end. My best guess is that IFA Berlin in September will be where that phone debuts, and that's a great time to unveil something as cutting-edge and groundbreaking as I surmise NXTPAPER OLED will be.

I've long had a love/hate relationship with using voice typing on my phone. On the bright side, I use Android, and I know from experience that Google's voice typing is substantially better than what Apple has historically had. But while I don't generally have a problem with my phone understanding my words, the way I talk to it is anything but natural or normal.

If you use voice typing, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I usually pause a moment to think about what I want to say, then tap and button and blurt out the whole thing in one fell swoop. Any pauses or hesitations in the form of "um," "uh," or something similar is often translated into text, requiring me to edit what I send before I can send it.

What if your phone was finally smart enough to understand that these parts of speech are just filler? Pauses are natural, and our brains generally filter out that stuff when we're speaking to someone. Nothing's new Essential Voice is the closest I've seen to authentic human speech understanding, and it's totally transforming the way I talk to my Nothing Phone 4a Pro.

The return of the physical key

Last year was the clear return of physical keys on the side of phones, and Nothing was a clear leader in this space. Essential Space and the Essential Key were a glimpse into a smarter future where AI understands what you want, all while still requiring a physical press of a key to invoke the action.

This type of physical interaction is the most useful in situations where you can't use both hands to get something done. Voice typing is a great example of this, as people often use voice typing while they're physically multitasking. Whether that's doing the dishes or driving a car, having hands-free control of what's happening on your phone can be very important.

Essential Voice can be invoked by pulling up the keyboard, then either tapping the Essential Voice key in the bottom left or pressing and holding the physical Essential Key on the side of the phone. I prefer the latter, as voice transcription stops the moment you let go of the key, but it's nice to have a toggle alternative for when you can't dedicate a hand to holding down the physical button.

Instead of using the on-screen keyboard to type, Essential Voice used a combination of local and cloud AI to quickly understand what you're saying, which then appears in text wherever you're trying to type on the screen. It's no different from what Google's voice typing does, but Nothing's does the job better.

I've spent plenty of time over the past few days using Essential Voice to dictate things I'd usually type. This article, for instance, was mostly written using Essential Voice, then lightly edited afterward for a few punctuation changes, mostly in places where I wanted paragraphs to shift differently. I've even tested it by reading an article out loud and seeing if it can write things the same way I read them. In every case, Essential Voice worked flawlessly.

Now, as you might expect, there is a downside to Essential Voice. The biggest issue, by far, is that it requires network connectivity to function. There's no offline support just yet, but my hope is that Nothing will be able to take it offline in the future, even if offline transcribing takes a little longer.

Your transcription time will also vary depending on how long you talk. Short messages, surprisingly, take a bit longer to transcribe into text than long ones, but that's because the system works as you speak. This one isn't a deal-breaker, but the fact that it requires a network connection could be a big problem if you find yourself offline.

Even with these caveats, I've been so impressed with Essential Voice's performance that I'm willing to look past them for the moment as Nothing improves the feature. It works so well and works everywhere, unlike some AI-powered transcription features on most phones that only work in certain apps. The freedom and quality you get with Essential Voice are unparalleled, and, for that, Nothing deserves praise.

When Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S26 series at the end of February, one of the biggest wow moments of the show was Horizontal Lock, a new video recording feature that keeps your videos steady and straight, no matter how much you bounce or turn the phone.

While this caught the attention of many people, tech enthusiasts were quick to point out that Motorola had launched an identical feature all the way back in 2019 (even though I didn't get the chance to test it until 2023). Since then, Motorola has included the feature on every flagship phone it ships, as long as it has an ultrawide-angle camera.

In other words, Samsung users who buy an expensive Galaxy S26 phone might be getting an amazing new video recording feature, but people can save a lot of money by choosing Motorola and not miss out. That means $500 phones like the Motorola Edge 2025 and the more expensive Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 all support the same feature, but can the quality match up with Samsung's best? Let's find out.

Finding the horizon line

Horizon Lock on Motorola phones and Horizontal Lock on the Samsung Galaxy S26 series appear to work identically from a descriptive standpoint. Both features utilize the main and ultrawide sensors on the back of your phone to create a fused video. As such, these features reduce video quality a bit, typically capping out at 1080p resolution at 30 FPS, although the Galaxy S26 Ultra upgrades that to QHD resolution.

As these cameras record video, a sophisticated AI-based algorithm uses scene understanding to determine the horizon line. Despite what that sounds like, you don't need to be outside or have a clear horizon line or landscape in your video. I even recorded it in a room with a blank wall, and the Motorola Edge 2025 kept the video oriented straight, even as I spun it around.

In addition to using both main and ultrawide cameras on the back, Motorola and Samsung phones use the phone's gyroscope and accelerometers to determine how the phone is being moved. This data is then translated in real time, helping to keep the video in portrait or landscape orientation no matter how much the phone is rotated.

Most demonstrations, like my own above from 2023, focus on spinning the phone 360 degrees. In most real-world situations, there's no chance you'll be doing this with a phone while recording a video. That's fine, as Horizon or Horizontal Lock are designed to adapt to any movement and keep your video locked in place.

You might be riding as a passenger in a car, recording video out the window, or maybe you're taking a summer vacation on a boat, filming the lake while a family member drives the boat. The normal bumps and turns of vehicle movement are smoothed out by these features, and they work even better than the electronic stability features on older phones.

Samsung vs. Motorola

In the video below, you can see the difference between Samsung's Horizontal Lock and Super Steady mode on the Galaxy S26 Ultra compared with a normal (non-stabilized) recording using the same movements. The Motorola Edge 2025 demonstration in the second half uses the two available modes, Horizon Lock and standard video, as Motorola doesn't offer the middle option on this phone.

My colleague, Derrek Lee, also used his Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 to test the feature and found that Motorola has an orientation button on that phone that's not found on Motorola's cheaper phones (or the Galaxy S26 series) to change the orientation to portrait or landscape mode. This lets you record in either orientation without physically turning the phone (although you'll probably want to), which can come in handy, particularly when recording one-handed.

As you might expect when comparing a $549 phone to a $1,299 phone, the cheaper model's video recording quality is significantly lower. There's a substantial drop in quality on the Motorola Edge 2025 when Horizon Lock is enabled, so it's not a feature you'll want to use on that model if you're looking for top-notch quality.

Meanwhile, the Galaxy S26 Ultra does a surprisingly good job of maintaining consistent video quality while using Horizontal Lock mode, despite a drop in resolution from my normal 4k60 setting. More capable Motorola phones like the Motorola Razr Ultra 2025 will get higher-quality video from the Horizon Lock feature.

You'll also notice that videos recorded using Horizon Lock or Horizontal Lock are quite a bit wider than videos recorded from the main camera lens. That's because these stabilization features rely heavily on the ultrawide camera and, as such, use it as the main video feed.

I also noticed that the Galaxy S26 Ultra did a better job of keeping the video looking clear, even when I spun the phone around. There's a limit to this, as lower lighting conditions or faster (or more uneven) spinning will produce lower-quality video, but the fringing on the left and right sides of the Motorola video is nearly nonexistent in the video from the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

It's impressive to see Motorola offer such an advanced feature even on its cheaper phones, while Samsung only offers it on some of its most expensive phones. That's especially prominent given the recent price hikes from Samsung. I also like that Motorola scales features based on the phone's capabilities, so you'll get more options on a more powerful phone like the Razr Ultra 2025 than on the Edge 2025, which is half the price.

If you're looking to try Horizon Lock on a Motorola phone this year, the key is to ensure it has an ultrawide-angle camera onboard. The Galaxy S26 Ultra might get you the best quality video in this situation, but there's something to be said about democratizing such a cool feature that Motorola deserves to get real credit for.

Samsung built the Galaxy S26 series to do more than ever, but it left out a few physical buttons that most other modern smartphones have. Whether you prefer OnePlus's Alert Slider, a camera shutter button like an iPhone, or the customizable keys found on the side of many brands, you're not getting any of these features on a Samsung Galaxy S26 without some help.

Thankfully, Pitaka makes a range of cases that add not one, not two, but three customizable physical buttons to the left side of your Galaxy S26, Galaxy S26 Plus, and Galaxy S26 Ultra, letting you assign up to three functions to be activated with a single press.

These cases are built for function and protection, and Pitaka offers both an ultra-slim Aramid Fiber style called Edge, plus a "military grade" protection style case (called Cairn) that's better for drop resistance. Both cases feature different style buttons and levels of protection, so let's take a look at the options and see which one is right for you.

Why add more buttons?

As I alluded to earlier, Samsung is one of the few companies not adding more buttons to their smartphones. Some people might prefer this, but physical buttons are also one of the best ways to add functions that might otherwise take multiple steps to solve, and it also lets you separate functions to a specific button, so you don't have to perform finger gymnastics to achieve.

Samsung is missing out on a massive wealth of choices by not including at least one side button. Still, Pitaka's cases add two additional buttons beyond the missing button. These buttons are called Aaron Buttons and act as NFC tags, which can be translated into nearly any system function you can think of with the help of Pitaka's Aaron Button app and the Samsung Routines feature built into your Galaxy phone. This is a huge boon to convenience and one of the best ways to get more out of your Galaxy smartphone.

Pitaka Edge

Pitaka Edge is designed for people who want the thinnest case without real drop protection. This one retails for $59.99 at Amazon and comes in 5 amazing colors and styles.

This case adds important grip and scratch protection, plus display corner lips to protect the display just a bit. It's got all the expected cutouts and protects the camera lenses around back, but doesn't do anything to help the obnoxious camera island size.

The Edge case doesn't cover the power or volume buttons, but it does add a series of three semi-capacitive buttons on the left side of the phone. These buttons require a physical click, so they're not true capacitive buttons, but they're flat and require more force to click versus the protruding buttons on the Cairn case.

Still, they operate in the same basic way: they transmit an NFC tag signal to the phone when pressed. You'll need to press and hold to activate the tag, so a simple click doesn't activate the action.

Pitaka Cairn

As the name suggests, the Pitaka Cairn case is rugged and adds a bit of bulk to the phone. It's slightly more complicated than the Edge and thus retails for a slightly higher $69.99, available in three cool colors and styles.

It not only protects your Galaxy S26 better than the Edge case, but also provides tactile buttons that are easier to use. You'll also find a MagSafe magnet in the back that supports Qi2 wireless charging.

Surprisingly, despite the extra thickness, the camera island is the same size as the Edge case and the naked phone, so this case doesn't eliminate the extreme wobble this phone has while on a table. It does have a nice lip around the edge of the display, though, so you can expect full protection for every corner of the phone.

The real stars of the show are the tactile buttons, which not only provide extra clickiness for the power and volume rockers but also add a set of three clever buttons on the left side of the phone. Each of these triggers an NFC tag on the inside of the case, allowing you to customize an action via the Aaron Button app, which I go over below.

As is the case with the Pitaka Edge, these buttons need to be pressed and held in order to function. Unlike the Edge, however, you don't need to hold both sides of the phone to get enough leverage to push the buttons. That makes the Cairn case much more one-handed friendly.

The app that powers it all

The Aaron Button app resides on the Galaxy Apps store and can be easily downloaded on any Samsung Galaxy phone. If you haven't customized the buttons yet, a simple click will open a prompt to download the app.

Once you've downloaded and installed the app, it'll show you a selection of preset commands commonly used for each button. You don't need to use any of these commands if you don't want to; they're simply suggested actions. Clicking any of them, then holding one of the side buttons, will assign it to that button.

Any action that can be mapped through the Aaron Button app bypasses the system Routines feature, which, unfortunately, makes management a little more complicated than it needs to be. Otherwise, the Samsung Routines app handles all the NFC tag customizations.

Open up settings, then head to Modes & Routines to see a list of actions customized through the Routines app. You can set up an action by following these steps:

1. Open Settings, then select Modes & Routines.

2. Tap Routines at the bottom.

3. Click the Plus button on the top right to create a routine, or select a routine from the list.

4. Tap the Plus button next to the If trigger, then select NFC tagged from the list.

5. When the prompt appears, press and hold the button you want to assign an action to.

6. Give the button a name. I prefer to name it what I want the action to be.

7. Back at the Create Routine menu, tap the Plus button under the Then section. Select any action you want this button to perform.

8. When you're all done, tap the Save button.

A powerful choice

Pitaka's cases aren't your normal smartphone case. They add customizable buttons and features that really matter, plus the usual protection expected from each style. Normally, I prefer thinner cases that add little to no bulk to a phone, but the Cairn case's buttons are so much easier to use that I find that I prefer that style over the Edge.

Beyond that, this is a no-brainer decision for any Galaxy S26 owner. You get three customizable buttons and more features than competing phones, all powered by Pitaka and One UI.

My three favorite activities are Flashlight, launch Gemini, and Sound/silent mode. I've also found that using one button to open Voice Recorder can be incredibly useful and is a good replacement for opening Gemini, especially if you bring back the Gemini gesture trigger.

Going into this review, I was prepared to be disappointed. From the onset, Samsung appears to have made no major changes to the camera system on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. It's got the same major numbers as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which seemed concerning at first, especially when other companies are making a big deal about major camera hardware upgrades.

But it turns out that I didn't need to worry at all. Samsung's intelligent use of Galaxy AI in its cameras, along with a bit of clever tweaking to many of the lenses on the back, meant I was able to take the Galaxy S26 Ultra around for weeks without worrying about getting a good photo.

It's proof that spec sheets are becoming less and less relevant, a position Samsung has publicly taken this year. As I noted in my Galaxy S26 Ultra review, this phone is more than meets the eye, and that all starts with the camera system.

Note: To view high-quality photos, expand the photo using the icon at the bottom right of the image, then tap "View Original."

Surprise upgrades await

Over the past few weeks, I've been carrying around the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra alongside the Galaxy S25 Ultra, OnePlus 15, Honor Magic 8 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and Google Pixel 10 Pro XL. I typically take two phones with me wherever I go to compare cameras in various situations, which has meant I've been able to capture hundreds of photos with the Galaxy S26 Ultra in a short time.

One of the Galaxy S26 Ultra's biggest strengths is its consistency. Images are almost always perfectly balanced, with natural colors, accurate lighting, and peppered with fine detail. That 200MP main camera is the star of the show both day and night.

Compared to the competition's results, the Honor Magic 8 Pro often produces punchier photos with deeper, more vibrant colors and additional detail. Some may prefer this look, as Samsung phones used to be similar. Still, Honor's default camera settings often produce unrealistic representations of whatever you're trying to photograph.

The Google Pixel 10 Pro XL and iPhone 17 Pro Max, on the other hand, often match the color accuracy and optimal exposure of the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but tend to lack the fine detail that Samsung's camera produces.

The ultrawide camera doesn't hold up as well, though. It often produces more saturated images and has less dynamic range than the competition. The example above gives you a good idea of what to expect.

Samsung's portrait mode has been industry-leading for years, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra's is better than ever in some scenarios. When taking pictures of pets or people, the Galaxy S26 Ultra's portrait mode is the cream of the crop. This year, Samsung seems to have further improved motion capture, capturing cleaner pictures even when pets or kids won't hold still.

But one of my favorite ways to use portrait mode on modern phones doesn't work well on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. I often use portrait mode to create a shallow depth of field, mimicking the look of a professional camera. The S26 Ultra often struggles to understand what I want in these situations, while phones like the Honor Magic 8 Pro and Google Pixel 10 Pro XL get it right almost every time.

I've been incredibly pleased with the consistency of the Galaxy S26 Ultra's camera. It might not always be the best in any one specific area, but overall, its images are often considered the best median result.

The ultrawide camera is used in conjunction with the main camera to deliver ultra-smooth, ultra-stable video capture. Samsung's previous Steady Shot system is available alongside a new Horizon Lock option, which does exactly what it says on the tin. In the video example above, I rotate the phone side to side using all three stability settings to showcase the effectiveness of each option.

Horizon Lock isn't necessarily "better" than the existing Steady Shot system. Still, it's an impressive option that uses digital cropping and multiple sensors to deliver the most stable video you'll find anywhere, even if Motorola was the first to offer it.

Space Zoom comes back to Earth

While the telephoto quality on this phone is excellent overall, it doesn't always match the greatness produced by Samsung's biggest competitors. No, I'm not talking about Apple or Google, two companies that produce similar telephoto quality to Samsung's; rather, I'm referring to competition from Chinese OEMs that have been pushing telephoto camera specs recently.

Let's begin with the good, though. Samsung has improved zoom clarity beyond 5x by using a new All Lenses on Prism (ALoP) concept for the 5x telephoto zoom camera. This reduces distortion compared to traditional lenses, such as the one on the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

When it comes to telephoto quality, there is simply no replacing physics. AI can do a lot to enhance a photo and create details that should be there, but it still can't replace the look and feel of a photo taken with better hardware.

Phones with larger sensors or lenses that physically zoom in more will deliver better results than the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but it might not matter much in the end. The Honor Magic 8 Pro often performs better in zoom quality, but Samsung's results aren't bad by any means and are the best the company has produced to date.

Not "Ultra," but very close

The Galaxy S26 Ultra isn't "the best" in any specific area, but it's so consistent in its results that this doesn't really matter. Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra often delivers realistic results, even if they aren't the highest quality possible from a smartphone to date.

I expected slightly better performance from this phone's telephoto sensors, given that it's "ultra" branded, but the performance from 3 of the 5 sensors is top-notch, and the two telephoto sensors are often excellent, and that's what really matters at the end of the day.

For the past five years, display engineers at Samsung have been working on what looks like a display miracle from most angles. Privacy Display has been the talk of the town since the February 25th unveiling of the Galaxy S26 Ultra, and for very good reason. It's easily the most unique and, quite possibly, the most innovative new display concept in a decade. It's also the most fun I've ever had testing a display.

But anything new often comes with tradeoffs, especially when it's a first-generation product. The Galaxy Z Fold 2, for example, was such a massive leap forward for foldable hardware that it felt like it was made by a completely different company than the one that released the ugly original. Scores of products have seen this same kind of evolution from the first generation to the second, and I think that might also be the case for Samsung's new Privacy Display.

Now, this isn't to say Privacy Display is bad, but once the shiny new feeling has worn off and you look a little closer, it's clear that you'll have to deal with a few trade-offs to enjoy what might be Samsung's crowning OLED achievement. I've asked Samsung to detail how they made Privacy Display and whether they feel anything specific can be improved in the future. I've yet to hear back at the time of writing, but for now, let's take a closer look at what's available today.

Privacy Display or bust

If there's any single reason to get a Galaxy S26 Ultra this year, it's the Privacy Display. This new type of OLED panel redesigns the pixels, separating them into two types: wide-angle and narrow-angle. This display deviates from the typical diamond PenTile matrix design of most AMOLED displays and opts for a square of two green, one blue, and one red subpixel to make up each pixel.

This is important because it plays the key role in how Privacy Display works and why its design affects the display's overall quality metrics. When Privacy Display is disabled, all the pixels are turned on. When Privacy Display is enabled, the wide-angle pixels are completely shut off.

The brilliance of this design is that it doesn't just work like a privacy screen protector; it works at all angles and can even be used to hide specific content you choose in granular detail. You can also select specific apps or conditions for Privacy Display, so even when the function is enabled, it'll only kick in for specific events or apps that you choose (or you can just turn it on all the time).

Since the narrow-angle pixels primarily emit light in a narrow cone, it's difficult to see the screen content from certain angles. The only time Privacy Display actually makes content impossible to see is from extreme angles. Even a moderate tilt just dims the brightness from an angle. No, it doesn't work nearly as well as marketing might imply, but it is incredible, and enabling Maximum Privacy mode will produce the most obvious effect.

The least obtrusive Privacy Display mode is using it only for specific apps, PIN/pattern/password entry, and notification pop-ups. This leaves the screen looking normal most of the time, with only certain sections showing any change. Turning on Privacy Display for everything will immediately deliver a cut in brightness and resolution, a direct side effect of turning half the pixels off.

If this appeals to you, it's going to be the best reason to buy a Galaxy S26 Ultra and the only thing you should probably care about going in. Otherwise, I explain the porential trade-offs below.

Negative effects

Privacy Display achieves a goal brilliantly, but like any big change or new idea, some conventional measurements or ideals had to fall. Privacy Display appears to negatively affect brightness output at any angle, viewing angles in general, resolution and pixel density of the display, color richness and volume, and the anti-reflective layer people loved on the S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra. Yes, even when the feature is disabled.

Will you notice these differences without comparing them side-by-side to another phone? Maybe, and maybe not. It depends on how much you care about any one of these individual factors. As a result, I don't think this display can be considered "the best" in any traditional sense of display quality measurement. Obviously, this is fine if privacy is what you prioritize over all else.

Now, does this display look bad? No. Does it look worse than the Galaxy S25 Ultra's? Yes. My measurements show it's at least 300 nits dimmer at the brightest setting, despite Samsung claiming it has the same peak brightness output. With Privacy Display enabled, that number is cut down much further, meaning you probably won't be using Privacy Display on the beach.

Privacy Display also slightly negatively affects contrast when disabled, an effect that's further pronounced as brightness gets lower and, especially, if you use the Extra Dim accessibility feature.

The new pixel structure also means that things look less crisp than any other flagship phone you can buy. To mitigate this, Samsung appears to be using a sharpening filter, which will definitely annoy some people, but I haven't noticed it all the time. Most commonly, I saw this effect while looking at photos in the built-in Gallery app. Samsung also appears to have downgraded the anti-reflective layer when compared to the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which you can see in the gallery above.

Questionable comfort

Part of my display testing always includes comfort measurements, and Samsung rarely does well in this section. The company's use of low-frequency PWM dimming has been a source of discomfort for many people, including me, for years, and the Galaxy S26 Ultra's display doesn't change this factor at all. It still uses the same paltry 480Hz rate the company has used for a few years now, while other companies are pushing PWM rates to 5,000Hz and beyond.

The lack of change was particularly surprising to me, given that both Apple and Google launched new PWM-sensitive accessibility features last year, but Samsung hasn't given any word on whether it's working on similar avenues or not. Samsung is also still using an 8-bit display here, while most competitors have moved to true 10-bit displays, meaning the company has to use temporal dithering to fake 10-bit colors.

While it's not generally a good fit for people who are sensitive to LED flicker, the irony of the reduced brightness output means that some sensitive users may find this release more comfortable. See the difference in brightness output in the image below.

What might be more surprising is that a new group of users is now reporting eye strain with the S26 Ultra, and it seems to be caused by how Privacy Display works. Several social media posts are popping up from people noting that the new display gives them eye strain, and it's not related to the PWM rate.

Instead, it appears to be related to the idea that directional pixels create alternating patterns of contrast, causing eyes to strain in a way that's similar to an improperly calibrated 3D screen. As there's no way to calibrate the S26 Ultra's screen, it's likely we're going to see another group of people emerge who simply cannot use the Galaxy S26 Ultra without pain.

Innovative, but not without potential tradeoffs

From a traditional standpoint, this may be one of the worst flagship displays in recent years, and certainly the worst Samsung may have ever put on a phone relative to the competition. However, as I said before, it's not a bad display in most senses, but it is worse than other phones, including many older Samsung flagships.

But Privacy Display may well eclipse that for the normal person who probably doesn't care all that much about display "excellence," anyway. The brightness output is good, the colors look fine, and other metrics are still more than "good enough." The thing that's going to blow people's minds is the headliner feature, anyway, and that's likely enough to sell people on the idea of switching to an S26 Ultra.

I can't say exactly when I was last excited about a new tablet release, but it's been at least a few years. Most tablets are slight iterations of the previous version, and while that can be said to some degree about the Honor MagicPad 4, it's the display that's got me really excited this time around.

It's not just because Honor replaced last year's lackluster LCD display with a higher quality OLED one, but this is the first OLED I've ever seen with 5320Hz PWM dimming. No, that's not a typo, and it means that Honor continues to push dimming frequency in the right direction while most of the competition either ignores the problem or feels current solutions are "good enough" for most people.

It's one of the things I love about Honor devices these days, and it ensures that the vast, vast majority of people interested in buying the tablet will be able to enjoy a comfortable experience in addition to an extremely high quality one. Here's why Honors latest is the best tablet display I've used to date.

A display for everyone

As part of the spec sheet, I noticed that Honor has specifically started listing its displays as "low modulation" OLEDs in addition to ones that support high-frequency PWM dimming. This is important because it means that Honor's display not only operates at a frequency that's deemed safe by the IEEE standard for lighting, but it also goes above and beyond what the competition is doing.

The plain facts are that OLED tablets from Apple and Samsung simply do not qualify as "safe" under these lighting standards. They're not even close, either, as they mainly rely on a 240Hz PWM dimming rate at all brightness levels. The result is a subset of the population that physically cannot use these devices without incurring substantial head pain from them. I've got a quick 5-minute explainer video here, if you want to learn more.

That's where companies like Honor come in. Pushing PWM rates higher and lowering the modulation are two key factors in ensuring that even the most sensitive users can enjoy a modern device instead of having to use something from 2013 with outdated security patches and features.

The trick to getting the best results on the Honor MagicPad 4 is to set it to 165Hz in display settings. The problem is that there's no way to force the peak refresh rate. If you're running the display at 20% brightness or below — which is when the tablet switches from DC to PWM dimming — the display will oscillate between 4320Hz and 5280Hz, depending on the content on screen.

I'm not sure if this will bother any flicker-sensitive users, but rapidly switching between dimming rates has been known to bother some people, though those reactions are usually recorded at much lower dimming frequencies than 4320 or 5280Hz. The only way to guarantee that the display doesn't switch dimming rates is to set it to 60Hz in display settings. Since this is an LTPS panel, it'll run at 60Hz all the time, which means a 4320Hz PWM rate at 20% brightness.

Honor could really do with a setting to properly force the peak display refresh rate for folks who want to see the best at all times or want to ensure dimming frequencies don't shift. I'm not a huge fan of Honor advertising this as 5280Hz. That's not because it's not true — the display certainly can reach 5280Hz PWM dimming — but because it's only true under very specific and difficult to guarantee circumstances.

Despite using 10-bit OLED panels in most of their recent phones, the 165Hz OLED panel here is only an 8-bit panel. That's not problematic in and of itself, but the spec sheet for the tablet clearly lists that it's boosting color volume using a nasty trick called temporal dithering to alternate pixels between two colors to make your eyes see a color that "doesn't exist."

It sounds cool on paper, and some display enthusiasts love this trick because it can make displays more vibrant, but it does so in a way that can trigger epilepsy-level conditions in some people. The MagicPad 3's display used this trick, but it doesn't seem like the MagicPad 4 actually does, based on my extensive testing. I was also pleasantly surprised to see that all of the tablet's blue light blocking options don't use dithering to alter things. It's true blue light blocking from the hardware level.

There's no guarantee that Honor won't enable the 2-bit "enhancement" in an update, but, for now, this panel seems dither-free. I'm fine with companies offering a vibrant color mode for enthusiasts that want obnoxiously vibrant, cartoony colors, but it's important to offer a dither-free option for folks who suffer from flicker sensitivity.

My only real "disappointment" is that the display doesn't get as bright as the company's phones. I use this HDR white YouTube video for every display review because it gives me the peak HDR values using a common app that everyone has, and the highest I saw the display hit was just shy of 1,200 nits. By comparison, the Honor Magic 8 Pro's display hits 3,600 nits using the same test.

Given the huge size difference between this display and a phone's, however, it might be for the best that it doesn't hit that same peak value. Don't want to get blinded while just trying to watch a movie, after all. And it's still plenty bright while watching content on YouTube or Netflix, especially when that content supports proper HDR levels.

What I've been waiting for

Overall, this is a huge step up from the MagicPad 3's display, not just in motion clarity and refresh rate, but also because it doesn't have to use dithering to display 10-bit colors properly. Not only that, but this tablet is a much more manageable size than the MagicPad 3, which I found to be simply too large for any real utility.

Everything combined makes this an incredibly impressive table to use for any kind of entertainment or work, especially with its thin design, excellent battery life, and those absolutely bonkers good IMAX speakers. I just wish Honor were able to make better use of the improved PWM rate, as it's really only available in apps that support the 165Hz refresh rate.

About two weeks ago, I unboxed the Honor Magic 8 Pro Photography kit. It's a delightful package that includes a special case for the phone, a MagSafe camera grip, a few different straps, lens adapters, and a telephoto extender.

The package is most similar to the Vivo X200 Photography Kit, although the Oppo Find X9 Pro's kit also features a telephoto extender in the box (but not the fancy camera grip). All of these kits are designed to transform your phone into something that looks and feels a lot like a professional camera.

Honor partnered with Telesin, a company that specializes in photography accessories for smartphones, GoPro cameras, and other portable camera products, making it easy to buy camera filters for your Honor Magic 8 Pro's Photography kit. Curiously enough, it doesn't seem like the company sells additional lenses, so we'll just check out what's in the box and whether it's worth your money.

A real upgrade for my phone's camera

The Honor Magic 8 Pro Photography Kit is an 8-piece set. Snap the phone into the very "camera-looking" case, pop the magnetic camera grip on, click in the lens extender, then open the camera app and enable the Teleconverter option on the left/top bar of the camera viewfinder. If this is your first time using it, you'll need to enable the Teleconverter accessory in the camera's settings.

When the Teleconverter mode is enabled, it'll restrict the camera to three supported shooting modes (photo, video, stage) and swap the zoom buttons out with 200, 400, 600, and 800mm options. You can also use the zoom wheel on the screen or on the camera grip to zoom in to a maximum of 5400mm. I'm not even sure what the "x" equivalent is on the normal viewfinder, but it's a very, very far distance zoom.

With everything attached (including the phone), the whole kit weighs 583g. That's just over double the weight of the 219g Magic 8 Pro on its own, but it's a far cry from the 1,081g my Panasonic Lumix GH-5 professional camera weighs. The camera grip operates via Bluetooth and has a built-in rechargeable battery, a USB-C port, and a 1/4-inch thread hole for standard tripod mounts.

The whole kit feels really good to use. The magnetic grip looks and feels just like a "proper" camera, including a two-step shutter button to lock focus before taking a photo (or recording video), a quick button to open the gallery, a mode-switching wheel, and a zoom switch for smooth zooming in and out.

If you're concerned about dropping the kit, you can install a wrist strap or a neck strap, both of which are included in the box. I don't particularly care for the location of the strap connectors, especially when using the longer neck strap, as they constantly get in the way of the screen or something else, since the holes are on the top side of the phone when held like a camera.

Since the camera grip is magnetic, it can be rotated in any direction you'd like. That makes it easy to take portrait and landscape photos or videos while still getting a great, ergonomic grip on the phone. It's amazing what something like this will do for stability!

To keep things straight, the telephoto extender measures distance in milimeters, while the phone's standard viewfinder (with the extender detached) measures in "x" levels. Here's the rough conversion, based on my findings (which you'll also find labeled in the sample images):

• 8.5x = 200mm
• 17.5x = 400mm
• 26x = 600mm
• 35x = 800mm

The telephoto extender produces better pictures and video in all lighting conditions compared to the built-in telephoto lens on the phone. There are no exceptions to this, which is always nice to say.

During the day, you'll notice noticeably enhanced detail, a significantly shallower/crisper depth of field, downright incredible subject separation without needing to use software portrait mode, and, of course, better zoom detail at any distance.

This extender takes the best portrait shots I've ever seen from a phone, and as I said before, it doesn't need software to do it, either. The separation of foreground and background in these types of shots is absolutely spectacular, and there's no way anyone could tell they were taken on a phone.

Macro photography has become a commonplace feature on phones, but I often prefer taking "macro" shots with a phone's telephoto sensor rather than the ultrawide camera. This is the only area where the photography kit's telephoto extender is a mixed bag. A photo of my cat lying on the other side of the couch looks better using the extender, but flower photography isn't as good as I'd hoped.

Part of this seems to be down to subject size/complexity. Smaller flowers, like those in the comparison below, were more difficult for the telephoto extender to focus on. I had to physically back up quite a bit and play around with zoom settings to find one that would actually focus on the flowers. For the built-in telephoto lens, all I had to do was tap the 3.7x zoom option on the viewfinder and take the picture.

Something you might notice so far is that the telephoto extender's color science is a bit different from the built-in telephoto lens. Honor says a combination of high-quality lens materials and an upgraded AI-powered color science algorithm is the reason, and I've found that it produces better colors in every situation.

The flower above is a perfect example. The golden hues of the standard telephoto's image might look nice, but the extender's color is actually the correct one.

Honor also says the telephoto extender improves the Magic 8 Pro's stability to CIPA 6.5, meaning you can hold the phone freehand while it takes longer-exposure shots. The higher the CIPA number, the longer the exposure can be without introducing blur, which inherently creates better, more detailed images (especially in low light).

The difference in low light is equally as striking as daylight performance, and in some cases, even greater. The 400mm option (17.5x zoom) seems to be the sweet spot for nighttime detail, as it's here where I found the most obvious differences between the standard and telephoto extender's photo quality.

Despite the substantial length of the telephoto extender — which almost always reduces the amount of possible light to the sensor — the capture time was no different between it and the standard telephoto lens, even in the darkest conditions. With the exception of one photo of a mural of a man (seen above), I also found the telephoto extender's photos had better light balance.

Ultimately, I'd love to see more lens options in the future, though, as it's cumbersome to switch to shorter focal lengths since this extender takes over the entire viewfinder. Overall, though, this is a phenomenal accessory if you're into telephoto capture. Folks with kids who perform on stage or people who frequent concerts will also find this to be an extremely valuable addition to their Magic 8 Pro.

When I was in middle school, I was enamored with the idea of making my own video game. Through the rudimentary nature of the AOL-era internet, I learned Visual Basic and proceeded to make very basic games. That was enough of a spark to get me to try my hand at harder coding languages, but I quickly realized I was in over my head. Years later, I'd try my hand at it again in college, only to realize that programming just wasn't my thing.

Fast forward 20 years, and companies like Nothing are helping people like me realize my dreams in a way I'm not sure I ever expected: by having the computer write the code for me. This week, Nothing launched Essential Apps, something the company pens as a fresh concept for a new smartphone era, one that's not run entirely by siloed apps in a walled garden.

Instead, apps made in Playground (access it here) — the builder tool for Essential Apps — live on your home screen just like a classic widget. While we could debate the idea that this is or isn't actually a new concept, I'd rather focus on how well Nothing Playground and the Essential Apps it makes work, and the first 20 minutes I spent with it have given me a very clear understanding of that.

From can't code to no code

I haven't written a line of code since the last website I designed in the mid-2000s. At least, not that I can remember, anyway. But Essential Apps has made me feel like that doesn't matter at all. All I needed was a vision for a micro app and a few lines of text. Surely a writer can do that, right?

It only took me five revisions to make the widget I wanted, and I love that. In a nutshell, I wanted a small widget that could count my reps and weight at the gym, including the name of the exercise, and then export that to another program. I'm basically a neanderthal when it comes to recording my PRs at the gym and storing everything in Google Keep.

While there certainly are better programs for this, I just wanted something dead simple, and that's what I made with Essential Apps.

The builder UI couldn't be simpler, but I've never used a "vibe coding" platform before, so I can't directly compare it with building in ChatGPT or Claude, but I'm certainly of the mind that I want to try those platforms out after this.

Several times throughout the process of building the Essential App widget, Playground asked me to clarify a few steps. Things like "Should weight be recorded per set, or just once per exercise session?" were things I didn't initially consider asking the program to do.

It not only felt unbelievably smart — this thing clearly understands nuance and context — but it also saved me from having to ask it to make that change in a further revision of the app.

It was also impressively easy to move forward and backward between versions if I didn't like where things were headed or I just wanted it to branch off an idea from a previous version. While I didn't create any graphics for this widget, it also included an option to upload any imagery you want and add that to the widget, and you can also decide if you want a large or small widget.

Once you're done, deploying the app to your phone's home screen is a single click. Essential Apps are found in a dedicated section of the app drawer so that they don't get lost with traditional widgets. Once you've tested it and want further feedback from the community, you can publish it to the Essential Apps gallery so other Nothing Phone 3 users can try it out.

Will this replace normal apps?

In a LinkedIn post, Nothing's CEO, Carl Pei, declared that Essential Apps would be "free from walled gardens" of current app stores, separating Nothing's new move from apps "built by a handful of companies, for billions of people at once."

"Software should be tailored to your specific needs and context," Pei noted. "From a simple prompt, you create personalized apps. No ads. No dark patterns. No one-size-fits-all." It certainly sounds ideal, but as the top reply on the post notes, this angle isn't the first time we've seen this kind of language.

"I’ve seen this pattern every time 'personalization' gets declared the next frontier," Shivam Chand Srivastava said in a reply to Pei's post. "Open ecosystems start idealistic. What’s uncomfortable is that defaults return because most people prefer convenience over control. Choice feels empowering until maintenance becomes work."

The "danger" of Essential Apps is that users might be attracted to the idea at first, but eventually stop making or using them in favor of more centralized or popular apps. My workout app is a perfect example of this: it might solve a problem I have right now, but I can see myself eventually tiring of manually exporting the data after logging it in the app.

A service like Strava can be connected to one of the many popular apps from companies like Nike on the Play Store, and then we're right back to square one in the walled garden, as Pei defines it.

Even if this doesn't redefine apps as we know them, Nothing's implementation of the concept is solid, and I can see the company growing it substantially from here. That, alone, is a victory in and of itself, especially since Nothing can shift it to a must-have feature on every Nothing Phone in the near future.

Last year, the world got its first real batch of E Ink phones. Sure, there have been many attempts in the past, but phones like the Minimalist Phone, Mudita Kompakt, and Bigme HiBreak Pro offered real ways to keep up with the modern world while still delivering on the E Ink promise. But all of those phones were only available in black & white, which isn't a terrible experience, per se, but it does make some things hard.

That's where the Bigme HiBreak S Color comes in. It's got a lot of the features that made the HiBreak Pro stand out, but with a slightly smaller build, a textured back, a lower price, and a color E Ink display that's much easier to use with normal Android apps.

Like any E Ink device, this isn't something that everyone is going to enjoy, but it's edging closer to perfection for a few groups of folks. Whether you're looking for a phone that encourages digital detox without missing out on important features like NFC, or a truly flicker-free phone to keep you in the modern age, this is a pretty impressive little device.

What's an E Ink phone like?

Since I've been testing E Ink phones, I've had a lot of people ask me about them. What's the experience like? Can it run normal Android apps? Does it have the Google Play Store? Can it take pictures? Can I watch Instagram or TikTok videos on it?

Yes. The answer to all of these questions is yes, and you'll find that the HiBreak S Color is surprisingly similar to a typical Android phone, aside from its unique display. It's not the fastest phone you'll ever use, but it's not trying to be either. The latest color E Ink displays can refresh at around 40 FPS, a massive improvement from just a year or two ago, when black-and-white E Ink was still stuck in the sub-30Hz range.

Obviously, that's a fairly notable difference from most modern 120Hz OLED or LCD phone displays on paper, but the actual experience doesn't feel terribly different at the end of the day. Videos are very watchable, although you probably don't want to watch your next Lord of the Rings marathon on it, and even basic daily tasks like typing and swiping feel responsive and tactile.

It's got a haptic motor inside that's fine enough, and while I occasionally missed letters while typing from time to time, Gboard's excellent autocorrect mostly made up for it. It's a phone that'll teach you to slow down life just a little bit, be a little more intentional with what you're doing on it, and even encourage less mindless activity (like scrolling through social media feeds).

Color E Ink at its best

The Bigme HiBreak Color S sports the best E Ink display I've seen to date, even if it's still not quite as bright when passively lit as the black & white HiBreak Pro. That's all down to how color E Ink works, but the built-in front light helps make up for that in all the right ways. It's fully dimmable, as you might expect, and doesn't resort to nasty PWM dimming or other flickering tactics to achieve the task.

It's also got a fully customizable color range that's achieved through separate warm and cool frontlights. That means it doesn't use temporal dithering to alter or artificially deepen the display's colors, a problem that often plagues LCD-based (and some OLED) phones in this price range.

It's a truly flicker-free display that's perfect for even the most flicker-sensitive users, a godsend for people who feel like they're slowly being pushed out of society due to the hidden flicker in many modern displays and lights.

Bigme OS 5, based on Android 14, also features an upgraded E Ink center and a ton of customization for the phone's multitude of buttons. I normally prefer navigation gestures on Android phones, but found that a customized row of five buttons was best for this phone. In order from left to right, I've got them set up as back, E Ink center, home, full display refresh, and multitasking.

Scrolling through Instagram or YouTube videos was fine, as I mentioned before, but playing games is a bit of a mixed bag. Games with less movement — puzzle games like Wordle or Sudoku — are just fine, but more graphically intensive games aren't recommended.

I could walk around in Minecraft just fine, for example, but actually playing the game is a different story. There's a slight delay between your input and what happens on the screen, and that, combined with the reduced color palette and lower contrast, makes these types of games very difficult to play.

Do I recommend it?

The Bigme HiBreak S Color is the best E Ink phone I've used to date. It looks and feels like a normal Android phone and does everything you'd expect from one. It's got NFC for mobile payments, supports T-Mobile's 4G in the US and 5G elsewhere in the world, and generally works extremely well.

E Ink phones are a paradigm shift, and while last year's first crop of E Ink phones weren't easy to switch to, the Bigme HiBreak S Color makes that change substantially less arduous. It's a great way to get some relief for your eyes and help wean yourself off smartphone addiction without going cold turkey.

Last month, Chinese manufacturer IQOO debuted its latest flagship phone, the IQOO 15. While the phone is incredibly generic looking, something about it is very special: the display.

That's because it's the first phone on the market to use the upgraded Samsung M14 LEAD OLED panel. It's an upgrade on the display panel used in the likes of the Google Pixel 10 Pro and all four iPhone 17 models, and while it promises all the usual upgrades Samsung tends to deliver — higher peak brightness, faster refresh rates, better color accuracy, etc — it's also got a few surprises we expect to see when the panel makes its way to the Galaxy S26 family.

But Samsung isn't going to just slap the same display on its next flagship phone and call it a day. The company is known for using different displays on its own flagships, for better or worse, and this time around is likely going to be no different. Since Samsung hasn't officially announced the Galaxy S26's display yet, outside of a teaser, we'll need to base this on IQOO's presentation of the technology and how that might look on a Samsung phone.

What they'll get right

For the past two years, Samsung has excelled in outdoor visibility. Some might attribute this to peak brightness, but the real secret lies in the company's use of anti-glare technology. The Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Ultra are two of the only flagship phones to use this, and it cuts down on the reflections that normally require high brightness to overcome.

What's interesting is that Samsung is likely not only incorporating this feature again with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, but will also be using a new Privacy Display feature that blocks out sensitive information on your screen to people trying to peek over your shoulder. That means the screen may be able to control the direction of light emission and fully block portions of the screen from passersby who might be looking at it.

Privacy Display looks to be fully customizable, as leaks have shown that you'll be able to granularly select on-screen elements to automatically hide, like images and text, or go full Monty and black out the screen entirely if you're not looking at it straight on.

Leaks say that Samsung's "Flex Magic Pixel" technology uses directional "gates" that can be controlled via software. When the phone's camera detects that someone nearby is looking at your phone, it positions these gates in a way that prevents the OLED from shining light in that direction, and is likely one of the reasons the company removed the display's polarizer layer entirely.

IQOO noted in its display presentation that the Samsung M14 LEAD OLED is also brighter due to the removal of this layer, reaching a peak brightness of 6,000 nits in HDR scenes. IQOO isn't utilizing the Flex Magic Pixel technology in its phone, so brightness of the S26 Ultra's panel may differ from the IQOO 15.

The M14 display on the IQOO 15 supports up to 144Hz, but it's unclear whether Samsung will support this on the Galaxy S26 series. It's also got a 1440×3168 resolution, which, on the IQOO 15's 6.85-inch display, equates to a razor-sharp 508 pixels per inch density. That's slightly higher than the Galaxy S25 Ultra, which is already one of the most pixel-dense smartphone displays. Samsung is also said to be further rounding the corners of the display, making it more comfortable to hold.

What could potentially go wrong

For years, people like myself have complained about Samsung's use of low-frequency PWM dimming at all brightness levels, which can cause headaches, eye pain, and other debilitating health issues. From what I can tell, IQOO has made several modifications to this display tech to ensure this doesn't happen on its phone.

But I'm still not convinced that Samsung will follow suit on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. I've seen one rumor suggesting Samsung will use a higher PWM rate this time around, based on leaked code, but this feature seems to apply only to videos flickering at 15-30Hz, which can trigger photosensitive epilepsy.

The screen will reportedly dim during these moments, but since Samsung screens using PWM dimming don't actually dim when they reduce perceived brightness, that point seems a bit moot.

Samsung's displays currently operate at a 480Hz dimming rate, a number that far exceeds the photosensitive epilepsy danger zone, but doesn't come close to meeting industry standards for flicker safety. IQOO's implementation of 2160Hz would fix that problem for most users, but again, there's no guarantee Samsung will implement that number.

Meanwhile, rivals like Honor have pushed this number to 4,230Hz and beyond, ensuring even the most flicker-sensitive users have a chance to use a modern smartphone without enduring pain. Specs like PWM frequency aren't like other specs, as people who are flicker-sensitive cannot physically use phones with low rates, meaning this isn't just some silly complaint about performance.

Samsung has fallen significantly behind rivals in the eye care category, often prioritizing high scores in artificial benchmarks over user complaints. Apple launched a new PWM-sensitive feature with the iPhone 17 series, and while Apple's method doesn't solve the problem for all flicker-sensitive users, it goes a long way toward acknowledging the problem.

We're also not sure if the Galaxy S26 family's M14 LEAD OLED will be a true 10-bit OLED panel, or if Samsung will continue to stick with 8-bit for cost-saving reasons. ChatGPT and some other sources will tell you that Samsung smartphone displays are 10-bit, but this is a cleverly crafted lie.

Phones with 8-bit panels, like the Galaxy S25 Ultra, use temporal dithering to achieve a full 10-bit color palette. Ironically, dithering often occurs at 15-30Hz rates, the very same rate Samsung is rumored to target for that photosensitive epilepsy feature I mentioned above.

Here's hoping Samsung actually delivers a true 10-bit panel and doesn't rely on nasty software tricks to achieve the effect. The company hasn't historically acknowledged the flicker-sensitive community, despite the ubiquity of Samsung displays, and I haven't seen any real sign that it will suddenly start caring this year. I hope I'm wrong.

More of the same, for better or worse

What I'm seeing so far is a Samsung that is doubling down on what it does well: delivering a sharp, clean-looking display that's easy to see outside even in broad daylight. The company is reportedly adding a new privacy layer to the display, and that could give it a unique advantage over rivals who regularly trounce Samsung in areas like eye care technology and peak brightness.

Famed leaker Ice Universe is looking at things through a cynical lens, saying Samsung will almost certainly hold the M14 LEAD OLED back from greatness by limiting its brightness, dropping the PWM frequency substantially, sticking to an 8-bit display, and making other cuts to save on power and costs.

Considering Samsung's market position, I'd hope this wouldn't be the case, but time will tell whether the cynic is right. Either way, I'm expecting something new and exciting from this display, and that's great for anyone looking to upgrade this year.

E-readers have grown leaps and bounds as a category over the last year, thanks to a ton of new players entering the market and significant advancements in E Ink technology. You may not have heard of DuRoBo before, but this new company's first device, Krono, is doing something unique that attempts to set it apart from the pack.

DuRoBo's first e-reader attaches a digital crown to the side and adds quick recording features for note-takers, plus it runs Android 15 in a light frame that's comfortable to hold for a long time. Plus, it packs nice haptics into a device that usually goes without such niceties, adding tactility to its digital facade.

I've been using the Krono since early December, and while most of that time was spent on a pre-launch firmware, I received the v1.0 update right around when CES kicked off. DuRoBo sells it for $279.99/ €279.99 on its website.

A solid start

If you compare the DuRoBo Krono to Bigme's E Ink phones or dedicated phone-sized e-readers like the popular Onyx Boox Palma, it's clear they all share similar DNA (and probably some similar parts). Most of them use E Ink Carta displays — this one packs a black-and-white Carta 1200 HD with 300 PPI-equivalent resolution — ensuring that regular tasks don't feel sluggish like an old Kindle. You can quickly adjust the quality or speed via presets found in the Control Center.

They've also all got similarly chunky bezels, which, on a device this size, get in the way more often than they help, unlike a tablet. But the Krono is designed more for simplicity than to replace your phone most of the time, and it features a thoughtful scroll wheel on the side for lazy scrolling days.

One of the nicest things about reading digital books is that it's more effortless to hold a digital reader than to fold back stacks of pages of a physical novel. Plus, the construction is not only nicely textured matte plastic, but it also weighs just 168g, making it lighter than some other comparably sized e-readers. I wish it weren't so wide, but this is a common issue among e-readers of this size.

But while this wheel works brilliantly in some apps — web browsing and reading vertically-scrolling books like the Bible app are two examples — the wheel isn't customizable and doesn't work for horizontally-scrolling apps. That means the Kindle app, Google Play Books app, and anything else that scrolls horizontally won't do anything when you turn the wheel.

That's annoying enough on its own, but it's made even worse by the fact that turning the wheel delivers such a nice haptic tactility that it just begs to be scrolled all the time. That's not to say the wheel is perfect, as it feels rougher to turn when using a single finger versus pinching and turning as you might a typical dial, but I still would like to be able to use it all the time.

DuRuBo's default launcher is purposefully minimalistic, featuring letters for app icons instead of whatever visual design you might be used to. This makes you more thoughtfully pick out what you're launching rather than be driven by design or colors, the way an OLED-equipped smartphone might. But the launcher is also very basic and lacks customization options.

Since this runs Android, though, you can swap it out with anything you want to use — I personally prefer Niagara Launcher. But you can't swap out the built-in Spark or Libby AI functions, both of which are quickly activated by clicking in the scroll wheel on the side.

It's not that these functions are inherently bad, but Spark is rather simple (and the AI summary feature for voice notes is infuriatingly slow), and I don't feel like I need to add yet another AI assistant to my daily routine.

Because of this, I feel like the DuRoBo Krono is best recommended as a minimalist phone-sized e-reader. The experience is far simpler than comparable products, which is good, but I'd also like to see some more options for the existing functions.

Paramount to this is the need for some actual customization of the scroll wheel, as that currently has no customization at all. Some way to change scrolling from vertical to horizontal on a per-app basis will be a huge step toward making it more useful.

DuRoBo has just delivered the 1.0 firmware update, so I'm sure lots of new things are cooking for the Krono in the future. Here's hoping, because this will be an excellent alternative to more complicated e-readers once a few options are added.

As Honor has evolved over the years from a value brand to a premium one, its phone designs and specs have followed suit. We've seen the brand push out foldables that rival Samsung's best, the strongest ingress protection next to OnePlus, cameras that would make an iPhone blush, and OLED displays that eclipse the best from every brand.

That pedigree continues with a new level of excellence on the Honor Magic 8 Pro, a new flagship that launches globally on January 8, 2026, and brings along an OLED panel with a bevy of accessibility features, custom user-level calibration, the best eye care solutions we've yet seen, and a brightness level that'll blow you away.

While the OnePlus 15's display impressed us with its ultrafast refresh rate, Honor is focusing more on brightness and accessibility solutions for the Magic 8 Pro's display, and it comes out on top for most people because of it.

Comfort and brightness

When I first learned I was sensitive to PWM dimming in spring 2023, phones from brands like Honor, OnePlus, and Motorola were the first to offer alternatives that worked. Since then, Honor has doubled down on the eye-friendly nature of its displays, adopting better dimming methods as the default, faster PWM dimming than most other manufacturers, tons of bespoke eyecare solutions, and more.

Because of this focus, the Magic 8 Pro is the new gold standard for overall flagship display quality and comfort. It's funny to have a new winner so closely after the OnePlus 15, but this is how the smartphone industry works sometimes.

That all starts with a combination of class-leading peak brightness and a bevy of eyecare solutions that genuinely help people who need them. Out of the box, the Magic 8 Pro uses a comfortable single-pulse DC dimming method from 21-100% brightness. A user-selectable option for Honor's alternative "comfort" triple-pulse method is found under the Honor Eye Care Display section in settings.

Despite the names, I find the "classic" mode to be far more comfortable than the "comfort" dimming option. Modulation is impressively low overall, and high-frequency PWM dimming at 20% brightness and below ensures substantial comfort even for sensitive users.

On top of being comfortable, this panel is the brightest I've measured on any smartphone to date by around 10%. Not only that, but I've found that the HDR contrast on this display looks noticeably better than phones like the Pixel 10 Pro XL when viewed under sunlight.

The Magic 8 Pro doesn't feature the same anti-glare layer that the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra does. That means reflections in sunlight will lower the contrast ratio of the overall image, but Honor's display does an excellent job of making up for that.

At around 3,600 nits of actual, measured HDR brightness, this display pumps out the nits needed to be visible outside and still provides a contrast ratio that looks OLED good. To put that in perspective, the Galaxy S25 Ultra hits 2,600 nits of peak brightness, while the Pixel 10 Pro XL tops out around 3,300 nits.

To make those numbers even more impressive, Honor doesn't use nasty PWM dimming at high brightness, so your display isn't strobing your brain with these high brightness values, unlike Samsung and Google. That shows companies can make bright displays that are still comfortable to use.

Accessibility

The Honor Magic 10 Pro debuts Honor's "Custom Display" calibration options, including automatic contrast, brightness, and color adjustments to best fit you as an individual. Custom Display breaks this into two tests to tailor the display to your needs.

Unsurprisingly, my test yielded the "high sensitivity" result, which keeps the brightness a bit dimmer than the default curve and also adjusts contrast to better fit sensitive eyes. A new, scalable Extra Dim option, found under accessibility settings, can further reduce brightness without greatly affecting modulation.

The Magic 8 Pro's display also supports the company's unique accessibility settings like Defocus Eyecare, plus additional accessibility options for hardware-level blue light blocking, a circadian rhythm mode that adjusts the display temperature throughout the day, ambient light temperature adjustment, a motion sickness mode, and a circularly polarized light filter built in for comfort.

This one's a true 10-bit display that doesn't use color dithering in the default vibrant color mode. Temporal dithering is yet another ridiculous way manufacturers have found to simulate better image quality at the expense of sensitive users.

Honor isn't pushing any boundaries with the 120Hz refresh rate, but it's an LTPO panel, which means it can drop as low as 1Hz when needed. That's great for people who love to use the always-on display, especially since Honor provides a true always-on display that won't turn off if you don't want it to.

Additionally, I've found that the Magic 8 Pro's display resolution does a great job of selecting high resolution (2808 x 1256) when necessary. That makes games look nice and crisp, something that's important if you like distance sniping in games like Fortnite.

The launch of a brand new tool

Honor's new flicker-detection tool built into the phone speaks directly to me and anyone else concerned about flickering lights in their life. Found under the Honor Eye Comfort Display settings section, the new flicker-detection tool can be used to do exactly what it sounds like.

Results are displayed in a standardized IEEE 1789-2015 graph, including an easy-to-understand result that doesn't require you to know anything about the lighting industry's flicker standards. You'll get a quick good/moderate/bad result with enough data to help you make positive changes, if need be.

The inclusion of this tool is a testament to how seriously Honor is taking the serious problem of flickering lights, and it means that all users of this phone can swap out the nasty flickering lights that cause some people debilitating pain. This tool only works on lights right now, though, and doesn't seem to work on displays, so there's room for future improvement, too.

Verdict

The Honor Magic 8 Pro is the flagship phone that feels like it finally doesn't compromise on anything, including a class-leading display. From impressively accurate color reproduction and brightness, to accessibility options that ensure even sensitive users don't get left behind, this is a phone that aims to be the best for everyone who wants one.

It's even more impressive that Honor launched the industry's first built-in flicker detection tool with this phone, completing the circle of catering to individuals who are sensitive to the overly bright, flickering displays and LED lights that are increasingly more common in our lives. It's a huge deal that a company like Honor is recognizing these problems and developing solutions to them, and it makes recommending the Honor Magic 8 Pro incredibly easy.

Grade: B

Talk about a fantastic year for the North American smartphone market! While there have certainly been difficulties to endure — tariffs, rising RAM prices, and geopolitical tensions, to name a few — the innovation we've seen this year has led to better phones all around.

Not only did some major phones get thinner and more powerful, but we've seen more options available than in years past, along with important additions like new accessibility and AI features to help people use and enjoy their phones to the fullest.

Of course, nothing good ever comes without something bad, from tariffs causing significant distribution and pricing problems to a record level of homogenization in smartphone design. What's all this spell for the year? Let's break it down.

The year our eyes were finally seen

Since I began writing about it in spring 2023, I've been fighting to get smartphone manufacturers to recognize the harm that flickering displays are causing customers. We've seen slow improvements as more people have become aware of this problem, but this year was the most successful year yet for genuine progress.

In August, Google launched a new accessibility feature that doubled the display's PWM rate. Apple followed a month later with a new accessibility feature that disabled PWM dimming at low brightness. While neither of these features solves the problem in its entirety, it marks a milestone for the flicker-sensitive community.

Most Chinese manufacturers continue to offer the best eye care solutions, but seeing Google and Apple begin work on this important topic is a massive deal.

People who are flicker-sensitive cannot use phones with flickering displays at all, and in a world where smartphones have become an indispensable tool, it's more important than ever for companies to employ eye-friendly settings.

Foldables got exciting again

Despite no follow-up to our favorite foldable of 2023 and 2024 (the OnePlus Open), the foldable market was better than ever, even if international markets still get the best choices. Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 is the foldable we've been wanting the company to make for years, even if it dropped S Pen support to get as thin as it is.

Then Samsung launched the TriFold in select international markets. While it's not officially available in North America right now, it will be soon.

Motorola and Google also finally gave Samsung some decent competition, launching the premium Motorola Razr Ultra and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. While Google's entry wasn't the best, it marked the first foldable to ship with MagSafe/Qi2 magnets built in and IP68 water- and dust-resistance.

Meanwhile, Motorola's Razr Ultra outclassed Samsung's Z Flip 7 in basically every way while teasing a potential new book-style foldable in the new year, ensuring the North American foldable market is starting to look very healthy.

In their own lane

At the beginning of 2025, the OnePlus 13 launched to glowing reviews, including our very first 5-star smartphone review. Two years ago, if you told me OnePlus would be the company to achieve this distinction, I would have been worried about your sanity. But the stars seemed to align perfectly on that release, as the OnePlus 15, which launched later in 2025, didn't make the same big impression.

Google's Pixel 10 launch wasn't quite as impressive as some had hoped, but its goal of making a phone for everyone gives it a unique leg up on the competition. Pixels have notably eaten into Samsung's market share, now accounting for 7% of phones sold. The Pixel 10 is also the first major Android phone series to feature MagSafe/Qi2 magnets inside.

This also marked the year of thin phones, or so Apple and Samsung thought. Both the iPhone Air and Galaxy S25 Edge launched with massive hype, and while Samsung beat Apple to the punch by several months, no one seems to have cared about the launches after the fact. Both Samsung and Apple have reportedly already canceled the follow-ups, but maybe something else will do better next time.

AI takes over

Every company adopted major AI platform features this year. Nothing launched a dedicated AI key on its phones, and plenty of other companies followed suit. OnePlus and Motorola pursued a similar approach, while companies like Samsung and Google repurposed the power button or used dedicated apps to achieve similar goals.

We also started seeing "AI hub apps," letting users pick their favorite AI assistant to complete system tasks. OnePlus launched Mind Space with Gemini integration, while Moto AI lets users choose between Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Perplexity for its AI tasks.

But Samsung and Google seem to be the only companies offering some kind of true offline AI functions. Some users may not care about this, but it's an important option for companies to offer in an era when cloud computing is ubiquitous and sensitive user information seems to leak from data centers constantly.

An improvement over 2024

The North American smartphone market remains heavily reliant on carriers and their influence over the brands sold in the country, but almost every other metric has shown improvement. We've got wider availability of models from companies, including important new additions to the U.S. market from companies like Nothing and Fairphone, strengthening competition in a year when fears over tariffs thought we'd see the opposite.

The situation in Canada is much better than in the U.S. overall, though. Canadians can buy all the best Chinese phones, which means they have full access to the very best Android phones. U.S. customers can technically buy them through third-party sellers on sites like eBay, but those phones are often more expensive and come with no warranty, making them a no-sale for most people.

If I had to grade the U.S. by itself, I'd give it a C- because of the absurdity of our carrier infrastructure and the government's arbitrary restrictions, but Canada's market brings North America's score up by a solid grade point overall.

OnePlus debuted the R series in the U.S. earlier this year with the OnePlus 13R, and now the OnePlus 15R makes its entrance at the tail-end with massive upgrades in tow. It's not only the first phone to sport the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, but also one of the few to feature a 165Hz refresh rate OLED. That, combined with the 3200Hz touch sampling rate, makes this a truly superb gaming phone.

Not only that, but the OnePlus 15R churns out top-tier brightness levels and excellent outdoor visibility, all without compromising on eye care features. It's the first OnePlus phone with a 3840Hz PWM dimming rate, helping make it the most eye-friendly OLED we've tested to date.

It's the premium OLED experience we didn't expect in a $699 phone, and it not only rivals phones twice its price in every regard but eclipses them in eye safety features. Read on to find out all the nitty-gritty details!

Eye comfort, brightness, and colors

The OnePlus 15R's display represents the best of the best in OLED tech. It's extraordinarily bright when it needs to be, impressively dim in a dark room, and dims without flickering, unlike Samsung and Google Pixel phones. In fact, this phone sets a new bar for OLED flicker-free tech.

OLEDs differ from technologies like LCDs because each pixel emits its own light, producing beautiful contrast. But OLEDs have to adjust brightness on every frame, making them prone to flicker. Some phones use an additional PWM dimming layer on top of this, worsening the effect and making it impossible for some people to use them.

But the OnePlus 15R's display sets a new bar for flicker-free OLEDs. It sports the lowest modulation I've ever seen from an OLED. Modulation is the percentage difference between the brightest and dimmest points during the refresh cycle. Lower is always better. Phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro have 99% modulation, meaning they fully turn off before turning on again. The OnePlus 15R's brightness dip (modulation) is as low as 3.89%. That's not a typo, and it's a substantial advantage for OnePlus.

The OnePlus 15R uses DC dimming above 25% brightness and 3840Hz PWM dimming below that. Samsung and Google use a mere 480Hz rate, which has been shown to cause health issues in studies. Not only is 3840Hz well within the safe range deemed by the IEEE PAR 1789 standard, but it's also the fastest rate we've seen yet on a OnePlus phone.

To make things even better, the modulation rate during the PWM cycle is a record low of under 10%. I've never seen that on any phone, regardless of the price. It's a monumental win for OnePlus and the flicker-sensitive community, and great news for anyone who regularly uses this phone at low brightness.

It's also a true 10-bit panel, ensuring the phone doesn't use temporal dithering to fake colors and add yet another layer of flickering to the experience. Like PWM dimming, dithering can cause headaches, nausea, or other health issues.

Despite having so many great eye care features, the OnePlus 15R still gets plenty bright when it needs to. Sunlight visibility was as good as any other phone I've ever tested, including those twice the price (or more).

OnePlus doesn't use any anti-glare layer on the display, but while the glass won't reduce glare, the display itself is more than bright enough to offset the reflections. One of the comparison images above compares it to several other ultra-bright OLED phones. In contrast, the other two images compare it to two popular phones that use matte or anti-glare displays.

Gaming, refresh rate, and resolution

The OnePlus 15R's display uses the same horizontal resolution as the OnePlus 15 — a maximum of 1272 pixels at the "high" resolution setting. That's almost identical to even more expensive phones like the Honor Magic 8 Pro (1256 pixels), but slightly lower than some phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra (1440 pixels). Regardless, this is a 450 ppi display, and it's unlikely you'll ever notice a difference, especially if you're using the high-resolution option.

The slightly lower resolution enables OnePlus to push 165Hz in a select few games, including popular shooters like Call of Duty Mobile, PUBG, and Battlegrounds Mobile India. Just select 165FPS from the game's settings menu, and you'll be blown away by how smooth things are. Here's the full list:

• Call of Duty Mobile
• Clash of Clans
• Brawl Stars
• Real Racing 3
• Standoff 2
• Blood Strike-FPS
• Battlegrounds Mobile India
• PUBG

To make things better, the phone features the same 3200Hz dedicated touch-response chip as the more expensive OnePlus 15. That means games feel notably more responsive, even if they don't support the 165Hz display refresh mode.

Since this uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 processor, it has plenty of power to run games at that frame rate, too. By default, games that support 165Hz drop details a bit, but it's usually just down to medium, not low. I prefer resolution over frame rate any time, but 165Hz modes don't reduce resolution; they only increase object detail.

The OnePlus 15R uses an LTPS OLED panel that supports only a handful of refresh rates: 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, and 165Hz. An LTPO display, like the one on the OnePlus 15, can dynamically adjust from 1 to 165Hz. LTPO certainly looks better on paper, but LTPS displays are generally better for people with flicker sensitivity. That's because the refresh rate mathematically aligns more closely with the dimming rate than on LTPO displays.

Verdict

I'm beyond impressed with the OLED display on the OnePlus 15R. It's not just the most flicker-free OLED I've ever tested; it also features the fastest refresh rate I've seen on a phone this side of a dedicated gaming phone (or a more expensive model like the OnePlus 15).

It does all that without sacrificing outdoor visibility or low-light comfort and gets closer to perfecting OLEDs as we know them. It's funny, because I was impressed by the OnePlus 15's display just a few weeks ago, and now the 15R — a $200 cheaper phone — matches those brightness metrics with even better eye comfort.

The OnePlus 15R is an LTPS display, which means the main refresh rates are 60Hz, 90Hz, 120Hz, 144Hz, and 165Hz. The OnePlus 15's LTPO display can drop as low as 1Hz, which could offer better power savings in some situations, but I'm not convinced this will make a difference for most people.

The OnePlus 15R also lacks the OnePlus 15's video enhancement modes, which can convert SDR content to HDR or even upscale lower-resolution content on the fly. While I don't care much about these two settings, they're notable and might be worth choosing the more expensive model if they're important to you.

FAQ

I'm a huge fan of my local library system, but a few years back, I learned I didn't even have to step foot outside my door to borrow books.

No, I'm not talking about a book delivery service or placing books on hold before my physical visit. I'm talking about the Libby app. When Kindles were the only decent e-readers around, I used to browse what was then called the Overdrive app and reserve books from my phone, which were automatically downloaded to my Kindle the next time it connected to Wi-Fi.

These days, Libby is available on a million different devices (probably literally), and all the best e-readers that run Android can run the app natively without going through an intermediary first. It's the best way to read a ton of books this holiday season (and the rest of the year, too), and it's dead easy to get set up. Here's how to do it.

The right e-readers for the job

The best e-readers to use with the Libby app are ones that run Android. My two favorite brands of Android-powered e-readers are Onyx Boox, and Bigme. The Boox brand became particularly strong after the release of the phone-sized Boox Palma went viral, but Bigme is an up-and-coming brand with a ton of great options.

Thankfully, most of Bigme's lineup is on sale for Black Friday this year, and I can wholeheartedly recommend all of them. These are your choices for the best e-readers for Libby:

Dust off your library card

If you haven't been to the library in a while, you might need to renew your library card or get a new one entirely. If you're not sure of the status, head to the Libby App website and enter your library card number. If it doesn't work, look for your closest library on Google Maps and grab yourself a new card.

Assuming you already have a working card, all you'll need to do is head to the Libby website or download the app from the Google Play Store on your favorite e-reader.

Once you've opened the app, follow the prompts to enter your library card number and select your local branch. The number of books available to you depends entirely on your local library system, so while my library might have 25,000 books available, yours could have 100,000. Either way, it's all free and ready for you to peruse and borrow.

Transfer from your old e-reader

If you've been using Libby for a while, it's easy to transfer your library and account info to any new e-reader. To get started, install the Libby app on your new device, then open it on your new e-reader. Start by selecting Yes, I have a library card > Recover your data > Display setup code.

On your old e-reader, tap the menu button on the bottom row of apps in the Libby app. From the menu, scroll down and select "Copy to another device," then enter the code your new e-reader gave you. The code refreshes every 60 seconds, so pay attention to the countdown.

From here, tap the library card or name of your library system that appears on screen, and everything will transfer automatically. Now, you'll have access to your library's digital system.

How to find great, free books

Once your library information is in the Libby app, you can freely browse and borrow anything that's available in your library system. I specify "available" because, as you might expect from a normal physical library, there are only so many copies of each book available.

That's because a digital library system works just like a physical one: your local library system only owns so many copies (licenses) of each digital book. Once all those copies have been borrowed, you'll have to register for a waitlist until someone returns a copy.

Everyone's home screen will look a little different depending on how your local library organizes things. My North Carolina digital library lets me quickly sort books by newest, most popular, or "available now" by tapping the icons at the top of the Libby home screen. Scrolling down also gives me a curated list of options that sometimes makes it easier to find what I need.

Clicking the magnifying glass icon lets you search for any title or author, and you can specify if you want books, audiobooks, or magazines. Libby doesn't support video rentals, but your local library may have them through the Kanopy app or another similar app.

A recent Libby update added an AI assistant that helps you pick out your next favorite book and can be used by tapping the middle icon, then selecting a tag from the prompts at the top.

Any books you've currently got checked out or on hold for future borrowing can be found on the bookshelf, which is the book icon on the navigation bar. Lastly, any custom tags you've made can be found under the tag section.

Libby is a great app to use year-round, especially when the budget is a bit tighter than usual. Seeing as how that tends to happen around the holidays for a lot of people, now is a great time to dive in and check out your library's entire digital catalog and find your next great read.

Best yet, because Libby uses your local library's system, the app doesn't sell your data. This is a truly ad-free, private reading experience that won't cost you a dime, making it the best app you may ever put on your e-reader!

E Ink has long been considered the best display type if eye health is at the top of your needs list. But one E Ink alternative you've probably never heard of is making serious headway: RLCD. Short for Reflective Liquid Crystal Display, this technology takes the reflective nature of E Ink and applies it to a more traditional pixel-based display, resulting in substantially smoother performance than E Ink could ever hope to achieve.

Now, this isn't the first time I've used an RLCD device. I wrote about the Daylight Computer back in June, an Android-based tablet that uses a bespoke black & white RLCD with a backlight. That backlight makes it a rarity among RLCD devices, as the vast majority of them omit the back or frontlight to make them feel as "paperlike" as possible. The only other major RLCD tablet with a frontlight is the upcoming Eazeye Paper 2, scheduled to release in April 2026.

Today, I'm taking a look at three different RLCD tablets — Harbor Paper 7, Daylight Computer, and Hisense Q5 — to showcase the evolution of RLCD into a true E Ink competitor, from one of the first RLCD tablets ever made to the latest in color RLCD that looks like a screen printed on metal.

Five years of RLCD evolution

Most e-readers feature an anti-glare coating to reduce reflections and make reading as paperlike as possible, but the first RLCD tablet did not. The Hisense Q5 was a novel, ill-fated product when it debuted in 2020. Discontinued just weeks after the initial production run, Hisense later made a second batch in 2020, as COVID disrupted supply chains and likely ultimately led to this unique tablet's early demise.

Up until this product, all LCDs featured transparent layers that allowed a backlight to shine through a layer of colored pixels, creating the images we see on screens. The Hisense Q5 swapped out that transparent layer for a reflective one and removed everything but a black hue, allowing as much light to reflect back to the user as possible.

This tablet was mind-blowing when it came out, and while the lack of a backlight and a black-and-white display limited its potential, its impact on the display industry was impressively monumental. Years later, companies like Daylight and Eazeye would pick up Hisense's mantle, further developing RLCD with products like the Eazeye Monitor and Daylight Computer.

Those companies took RLCD one step further, creating true 8-bit displays that no longer relied on temporal dithering to fake bit depth, ushering in a new wave of truly flicker-free displays. These are still niche products, but it's clear that RLCD is catching on because it can deliver substantially faster refresh rates and deeper colors than E Ink.

The best E Ink displays often top out at 40Hz, while RLCD is capable of 120Hz. Similarly, color E Ink displays can typically show 4096 colors, while the 8-bit depth of color RLCDs can show up to 16.8 million colors. Unfortunately, the Harbor Paper 7 color RLCD tablet I have here uses dithering, meaning it can't be considered truly flicker-free.

Of course, nothing is without its limitations. As I covered in my article about the Daylight Computer in June, RLCD requires a constant power source to produce an image. That's because it's still built on a traditional LCD pixel structure, which must provide power to pixels and constantly refresh them.

E Ink is a completely passive technology that only requires power when the images on the screen are changed. That means that if you're reading something, E Ink requires no power at all to display what's on the screen because the pigments stay there after being "placed." LCDs constantly refresh the screen 60 to 120 times per second, no matter what's going on.

Color or black & white?

In the world of reflective displays, something strange happens when color is added: the displays dim. It doesn't matter if you're using a built-in frontlight or taking them out in the sunlight, a color RLCD or color E Ink display will always be darker than a black-and-white one. At least, that's the case until someone figures out a novel new way to reflect light off the colored pixels.

That's because black-and-white displays have only one pigment: black. Color displays must filter light through several colors — typically red, green, and blue — before the light is visible to the user again. Because each pixel or pigment is now separated into colored bins, there's less physical space for light to reflect off the display.

It's a similar concept to how camera sensors work, and while a "giant" digital camera will still take better photos than your smartphone could ever hope to. It's hard to beat physics, especially when light is required to create the image you want. Whether it's a display or a camera sensor, a larger area means more light, which inherently results in a better, brighter image.

It's actually pretty wild to see the difference. Black-and-white E Ink seems to be the brightest of all the technologies, while Daylight Computer's black-and-white RLCD is the runner-up. The Harbor Paper 7 color RLCD is the dimmest display in a crop of five devices I have here, with any Kaleido 3 color E Ink display managing to get just a bit brighter than it. These images are using just reflected sunlight, no back or front light to help illuminate things.

Those devices with artificial lights will see improvement in any lighting condition, sometimes even in sunlight. The anti-glare layer on top is also worth considering. Daylight's RLCD and TCL NXTPAPER seem to use a similar anti-reflection layer on their displays, and it results in an inability to see the display at all if held at a specific angle to light glare.

The Boox E Ink devices I have don't have this issue, and neither does the Harbor Paper 7 color RLCD tablet. I wouldn't call this a debilitating problem for those other two technologies, but you'll need to hold them at a slight angle sometimes, and that may be a big annoyance for some users.

So, while there's no perfect reflective technology yet, it's clear that several different companies are working to be the first with that title, and that's truly excellent news for everyone focused on eye health over flashy, artificially ultrabright, and flicker-prone display tech like OLED.

FAQ

It's hard to believe that a smartphone display can get any better than the current crop of phones, but the OnePlus 15 promises to blow your mind once again with a 165Hz refresh rate, new eye-friendly features, and an OLED panel that's designed to deliver maximum wow factor.

OnePlus is also laser-focused on speed and gaming performance, delivering a display that's more in line with "gaming phone quality" than one you might find on a typical smartphone. That includes not just the higher refresh rate, but also a dedicated touch response chip and a new fluid frame generation feature for supported titles, such as Call of Duty Mobile.

OnePlus isn't pushing this display as ultrabright despite some obvious improvements in brightness, and the company isn't following Samsung in using an anti-glare layer on the screen, either. How does it all stack up? Let's take a look, and don't forget to check out our full OnePlus 15 review to see how the rest of the phone stands out.

Eye comfort and brightness

The OnePlus 15 boasts the latest TÜV Rheinland Intelligent Eye Care certification, including a flicker-free and low blue light-emitting display. Brightness and dimming methodology are paramount to eye comfort, especially when trying to use a device in a dimly lit environment. Many phones, such as the Pixel 10 Pro, use low-frequency PWM dimming, which can make them an uncomfortable choice for some people.

The OnePlus 15 is supremely comfortable thanks to OnePlus's use of DC dimming at medium to high brightness and 2160Hz PWM dimming at low brightness. Not only that, but the modulation rate of the display is impressively low, coming in at roughly 1/3 the rate of the OnePlus 13.

On the downside, OnePlus doesn't offer dimming options on this display, so what you see is what you get.

OLEDs emit their own light, so, as a result, each time the image refreshes, a dip in brightness occurs. This is known as modulation. Phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra and Pixel 10 don't attempt to control this brightness dip at all, giving them a very harsh strobing effect at 100% brightness reduction each cycle.

The OnePlus 15 efficiently manages this brightness dip to a maximum of 35%, meaning that the brightness dip is significantly less harsh and should be comfortable for most people.

OnePlus shipped its first-ever "reduce white point" accessibility feature with the Android 16-based Oxygen OS 16 update, which reduces the peak brightness of the display for sensitive people. I've found that leaving it at 80% white point reduction makes this the most comfortable flagship display I've used to date.

OnePlus also shipped its first-ever Motion Cues feature in Oxygen OS 16, adding moving dots to the sides of the display for people who get motion sick. It's something we've seen Honor adopt on its phones in the past year, and it's a great choice for motion sickness-prone individuals.

Folks who prefer the highest peak brightness will be happy with this display. It's slightly brighter than the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display without resorting to nasty flickering PWM dimming like Samsung uses, but it's not quite as bright as the Pixel 10 Pro or Pixel 10 Pro XL's displays.

All of these displays are plenty bright for outdoor viewing, although OnePlus isn't employing an anti-glare filter like Samsung used on the S24 Ultra and S25 Ultra. Still, now that the OnePlus 15 uses a fully flat display, it should be easy enough to find a good tempered glass screen protector with an anti-glare layer applied.

And thanks to the high-frequency PWM dimming rate, viewing this one in a totally dark room won't tire your eyes out. It also gets down to 1 nit by default or as low as 0.5 nits when "reduce white point" is enabled. That's the darkest I've ever seen a smartphone display get.

Lastly, the OnePlus 15's OLED display doesn't show any signs of mura, unlike the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display. Mura is the measurement of how uniformly pixels are lit, something that's particularly important on an OLED screen.

As you can see from the above picture, a uniform 50% grey image produces perfectly uniform pixel illumination when viewed through a macro lens. Displays with poor mura can look grainy, especially at low brightness, and have been a complaint among Galaxy S24 and S25 owners over the years.

Gaming, refresh rate, and resolution

Some concerns were raised over OnePlus's decision to choose a higher refresh rate display, as it sacrificed some screen resolution. But even at a reduced resolution of 2772 x 1272 pixels — compared to 3168 x 1440 on the OnePlus 13 — it still pushes a pixel density of 450 PPI.

That's well more than "retina" resolution, and there's no chance anyone will look at this and see anything less than a gorgeous, crystal-clear high-res screen.

To enable 165Hz, you'll need to launch a supported title, swipe the OnePlus game launcher out from the sidebar, and check all the boxes to achieve maximum smoothness. Aside from refresh rate, OnePlus also debuted a brand new dedicated touch response chip that upgrades the response rate to 3200Hz.

• Call of Duty
• Clash of Clans
• Brawl Stars
• Real Racing 3
• Standoff 2
• Blood Strike-FPS
• Battlegrounds Mobile India
• PUBG

With all these settings enabled, I could clearly tell a difference in the fluidity and responsiveness of supported touchscreen games. I'm not someone who typically plays something like Call of Duty Mobile on a touchscreen — I'd rather use a great Android controller like the GameSir Galileo G8 — but this was an impressive upgrade for people who play on touchscreen only.

Otherwise, this display uses a "typical" LTPO refresh rate schema of 1-120Hz depending on what's on screen. There is no way to force 165Hz all the time as some Motorola phones support.

Color accuracy and depth

The OnePlus 15 utilizes a true 10-bit OLED screen, resulting in natural-looking colors and proper HDR brightness without resorting to nasty tricks like faking color depth with dithering.

Folks wanting a more vibrant or sharper experience can use the image sharpener and video color boost features found in display options. OnePlus also allows users to adjust the color temperature of the phone's display using various adaptive tone and eye care solutions.

You can also choose from three preset color space modes: Standard (default), Natural, and Vivid. All three options allow for very specific tweaking via a color wheel, which is substantially more granular than other phones offer.

Verdict

The OnePlus 15 wins handily in most measurable metrics, earning it the award for best flagship display in a phone I've measured this year. Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra still beats it in outdoor visibility due to that phone's anti-glare layer on the screen, but the OnePlus 15 is still plenty easy to see thanks to a peak 2,000 nit brightness.

Aside from this one use case — which can be solved with an anti-glare tempered glass protector — the OnePlus 15's display is as good as you'll find anywhere. It's also the most comfortable flagship phone display I've used to date, and it achieves this metric without sacrificing image quality, resolution, smoothness, or other desirable traits. All in all, this is the metric for how to make a great display.

FAQ

Once upon a time, e-readers were mainly made by bookstore companies hoping you'd continue to peruse their shelves regularly, even if that's just in digital fashion. These days, brands like Onyx Boox and Bigme have made a name for themselves by making E Ink devices powered by Android, ensuring that you can do more on an e-reader than you ever thought possible.

This year, we've seen an explosion of color e-readers, as the E Ink Kaleido 3 has become more popular, and Bigme has been releasing new devices at a rapid pace since the spring. I find myself cycling between three of the company's best color e-readers depending on what I find myself reading, but it's unlikely that most people want two or three e-readers lying around the house.

So that begs the question: what kind of reader are you? Do you enjoy novels and fan fiction? Maybe you prefer graphic novels with a visual twist? How about binging manga series on a perfectly illuminated slab of e-paper? Or maybe you just want an e-ink tablet that's great for writing on, so you can publish your own stories someday. I've got three different-sized Bigme color e-readers here, and I'll help narrow down the best one for you.

I just want to read books

Some people simply want an e-reader as a convenient way to read multiple books without needing to find space to store physical copies. I'm certainly guilty of falling prey to the desire to live as minimally as possible at times, and fitting hundreds of books into a device that's only slightly larger than my phone is a very attractive idea.

That's where the Bigme B6 comes in. As the name implies, this one packs a 6-inch color E Ink Kaleido 3 display behind a slightly chunky frame. Aside from the size, the unique physical aspect here is the row of 5 capacitive keys at the bottom. I would prefer physical buttons over capacitive ones, but this is an interesting hook nonetheless.

If you don't like the default functions, you can assign each button to any of several dozen functions. This was the saving grace for me, as I didn't really care about most of the default button actions.

The only problem here is that function changes can be a little confusing at first, since these are printed capacitive keys. The AI key on mine, for instance, is set to open the E Ink center for adjusting display settings, and I always pause to think about what the button does before pressing it.

I'm a bit mixed on the design, too. I hate phones with flat sides and edges, and this feels no different from a plastic-clad iPhone 14-era phone, design-wise. Some people will enjoy that, but that's not me. I'd prefer more rounded edges. Thankfully, the included folio case makes this design feel a bit like opening a book since the sides of a book's pages are normally completely flat.

If a Boox Palma is a little too small and a standard Kindle is a bit too big, the Bigme B6 fits perfectly in between those sizes as a great little e-reader. It's also hard to argue with the price. At just $179, this is an Android-powered e-reader that's hard to resist!

E-reading and note-taking

Just a step up in size is the Bigme B7, another color E Ink Kaleido 3-equipped e-reader with support for a stylus. That stylus is included in the box alongside a lovely little folio case that features a tri-fold kickstand built in.

This one features two physical keys on a bezel that's thicker on one side, made specifically for better ergonomics when holding it. I always prefer this style of bezel on an e-reader, and since it has customizable physical buttons, it means this model is what I would consider the most ideal on this list.

Aside from physical shape and size differences, the included stylus is perfect for taking notes or just annotating whatever you're reading. Since this runs Android 14 (like the other two Bigme models here), you can run any Android app on it, so your favorite note-taking app is already ready to go.

Productivity with a side of manga, please

The last model is one I've previously written about, the Bigme B1051C Pro, which was the first new color e-reader I used this year. Despite having a generous 11-inch E Ink Kaleido 3 display, this one is an impressive 5mm thin and made of aluminum. It's by far the most premium-feeling product on this page, and that makes sense since it's geared toward productivity and serves as a laptop replacement.

My unit shipped with a keyboard folio case that includes a built-in trackpad, making the Android 14-powered experience feel similar to a laptop. It snaps into the folio case via magnetic POGO pins, and since it runs Android, it likely has everything you need to swap it out with your laptop.

Being color E Ink means that this display is great for a variety of tasks, from spreadsheet editing to email or report writing. Bigme even includes a whole productivity suite, so if you don't already have a favorite set of apps, you don't have to go searching the Play Store.

This one is also my go-to manga reader because of its generous screen size, excellent dual-tone front light, and highest effective resolution. All three of the Bigme e-readers on this page have a dual-tone backlight setup, but I find that the physical design of this one looks more natural than the other models.

That higher resolution screen also makes a big difference in the little details I enjoy in manga drawings. Additionally, I find that the backlight on the B1051C is the best, with the B6 just slightly behind, while the B7's cool backlight is a little too green for my liking. Check the comparisons in the gallery above to see what I mean!

A note on color E Ink

I previously wrote about how color E Ink isn't a great replacement for black-and-white E Ink in some situations. Color E Ink isn't as clean or clear as black & white E Ink, and it's also dimmer. That means general readability is reduced, although I wouldn't call it "bad" by any means. It's just not the best option if you only read novels.

The example photo above uses Onyx Boox e-readers, but all 2025 color e-readers use the same E Ink Kaleido 3 technology, so the same effect applies across all of them. A larger reader, such as the Bigme B1051C, helps mitigate this issue due to its effective resolution, so keep that in mind if this effect bothers you.

This is the best that color E Ink gets at the moment, although it's possible that a fourth generation of color E Ink devices could provide some improvement in a year or two. Regardless of the differences between color and black & white E Ink, both technologies are far better for your eyes than an OLED or LCD, as they provide passively-lit options and are far more flicker-free than most other modern devices. Which size is right for you? Let us know!

FAQ

For me, tablets have always been kind of a weird form factor for a device. They're not small and portable like a phone, and the UI and lack of built-in physical keyboard make them difficult to recommend as a laptop replacement.

But last year, when my power was out for two weeks after Hurricane Helene, I found that the Honor MagicPad 2 tablet was the perfect replacement for my laptop because of the battery life. This year, Honor is taking that usage to heart, upgrading the MagicPad 3 with a giant 13.3-inch screen that rivals the best laptops.

This large size and included stylus also make it perfect for artists who want a digital canvas without investing $1,200 in a similarly sized iPad Pro. But the tablet's massive size makes it awkward for most other tasks, limiting its general-use potential. Over the past few weeks, I've been putting this tablet to the test in every way I can find, and I've narrowed its usefulness down to three categories.

Laptop replacement

First and foremost, the Honor MagicPad 3 makes an excellent laptop replacement in many cases. While Android as a laptop OS still has awkward limitations compared to Windows, Honor's MagicOS skin feels more like a laptop OS than ever.

That starts with a new default window-management function that launches everything in resizable windows rather than full-screen monstrosities. Pair this with the ability to minimize windows to floating icons that can be moved anywhere on the screen, plus a quick way to launch several apps in four pre-made split-screen templates, and it's easy to see why this feels more like a desktop OS than ever.

Honor's significantly improved keyboard and mouse folio case might just be my favorite change, though. The tablet now magnetically adheres to the case and is far simpler to remove and place into the case than before. The keyboard has an extremely comfortable layout that felt native to me the second I started typing on it.

Unlike some other tablet keyboards I've used, there was no adjustment period for me using it. It felt almost identical to my Honor MagicBook Art 14 laptop, which was refreshing. Even the trackpad mouse is fantastic and feels like a proper laptop mouse. My one critique is that the taskbar still cannot be pinned. This was a huge oversight last year, and I really hope Honor adds it in the MagicOS 10 update.

Multimedia powerhouse

Last year's Honor MagicPad 2's speakers were incredible and made watching downloaded videos and movies in the dark evenings (without power) after the Hurricane a joy.

This year's speakers are somehow even better, offering incredibly full sound, notable bass, and truly impressive virtual surround sound. More than once, I actually felt like I needed to look around to find the invisible speakers I knew weren't floating around my head.

It also has a bigger display than last year, making it more enjoyable to watch a movie, binge a TV show, or catch up on the latest episodes of your favorite manga or webtoon.

The problem is that the display is worse in some ways, despite the size upgrade for this purpose. I'm not someone who thinks OLED is inherently better than LCD for a number of reasons, but many people prefer OLED for a more "premium" experience because of the punchy colors and deep contrast it offers.

The 165Hz LCD panel on this tablet is quite good, especially for an LCD, but it looks duller than the Honor MagicPad 2's OLED panel. The backlight is fully flicker-free according to my testing, but the display makes a huge mistake by trying to fake a 10-bit color palette on an 8-bit panel.

This is done through color dithering, a tactic that causes splitting headaches for some people. Doesn't make much sense to have a flicker-free backlight and get lots of TÜV Rheinland eyecare certifications if your pixels are just going to end up flickering a bunch of colors, now does it?

A stylus, if that's your thing

A third reason to buy this tablet would be the excellent stylus that comes with it, but I'm not sure how many professional artists use a tablet to make their art. It could also be excellent for anyone who just loves to draw or doodle — adults and kids alike — as the canvas is so massive and lies nicely and flat on a table, especially if it's in a case.

That said, I think sticking with something smaller makes sense for most people. There's certainly room for big tablets in the world (see what I did there?), but I've not found many in my own time with the MagicPad 3. I think the MagicPad 2 is still the better buy because of its size and display, both of which you won't be disappointed in.

When OnePlus started teasing its Android 16 update, I got a little bit nervous. Everything we'd seen officially from the company looked like it was just ripping off iOS, and I don't know about you, but that's not why I use a OnePlus phone.

Thankfully, what we'd been seeing are just new options that users can enable if they want. Like the split notification shade OnePlus introduced last year, this year's OxygenOS 16 offers users plenty of UI customization options and focuses intensely on the beautification of the entire experience.

That ranges from new lockscreen options, new animations, smoother performance, an updated theme engine, AI-powered photography options that are designed to make the camera even better than before, and plenty more! I've spent several days with OxygenOS 16 on my OnePlus 13 and came away super impressed with what's in store for users as it starts rolling out globally today.

Themes and lockscreen

The first thing you're sure to notice is how much of a glow-up the theme engine and, by proxy, the lockscreen have received. When I first booted up the OxygenOS 16 update, I was greeted by a majestic mountain wallpaper complete with gorgeous new moving wallpaper effects and incredible depth.

OnePlus answered the call for users to customize the text on the lockscreen, so no more settling for just "Never Settle" or some other random word like "fast," as you had to in OxygenOS 15. Not only that, but you can select any motion photo taken with the camera and apply it to the lockscreen, complete with depth effects and movement. It's gorgeous and creates a whole new style you're going to spend hours tweaking.

Notification shade and homescreen

The lockscreen isn't the only thing getting a glow-up! Both the homescreen and notification shade have received some excellent tweaks. App icons are now prominently displayed on the left side of each notification, including an easy-to-see number for nofication groups.

Homescreen icons can now be stretched to fit larger spaces. If you have just one icon and want to fill a gap, it'll turn into a lovely little colored button. Likewise, widgets now have a more rounded shape, giving them a more uniform appearance, but you can disable it if you don't like the new style.

The app drawer got a nice redesign too, adding a new categorical view you can swipe between that auto-categorizes apps into folders. I still prefer the alphabetized drawer, and the redesigned alphabetical scrolling wheel on the right now singles out each letter's apps instead of just scrolling through the drawer, helping to better isolate apps that start with each letter.

Animations

OnePlus made a big deal of animations in OxygenOS 15, and the company is doubling down with Parallel Processing 2.0, which allows new animations to begin before other ones have even finished. That ensures that fun animations complement each other instead of canceling out.

One of my favorite new animations is seeing apps slide outward when using the back gesture. You can play around with this by heading to system navigation in system settings, then enabling swipe animations. It's very fun and helps complete the feeling of a cohesive, fluid OS!

Better portraits

I've found that the OnePlus 13 often takes excellent portrait photos, but there are a few times when I hope for better results. OxygenOS 16 adds a ton of new portrait enhancement features, including much-needed post-processing options that let you adjust the amount of blur and lighting on foreground objects and people.

You can edit any photo taken previously, so these new features work on both new and existing photos. Speaking of older photos, people who have a vast catalog of photos on their OnePlus phones will find the new Perfect Shot feature to be a godsend. Tapping Perfect Shot will scan your gallery (assuming you gave it permission) for similar faces, then offer alternative expressions based on that person's other pictures.

It's similar to Google's Best Take feature, but it doesn't just work on photos taken in a single group burst. This is the perfect solution for those of us with teenagers or pre-teens who never seem to want to smile, as you can pretty easily swap out that angsty stare with a nice smile if you've got a few sitting in your gallery. It feels like magic!

Mind Space

OnePlus may have launched Mind Space with the middling OnePlus 13S a few months ago, but this is the first time I'm getting to use it on my standard OnePlus 13. While I'm hoping OnePlus adds a few more ways to quickly get to Mind Space on phones without a dedicated side key, it's easy enough to three-finger swipe down to capture anything and send it to Mind Space on this phone.

Accessing it via a quick icon on the homescreen is also fine enough, but it's what's inside that I'm really loving. Ever since Nothing launched Essential Space with the Nothing Phone 3a series back in the Spring, other Android OEMs have been adding a similar feature that works even better than Nothing's design. Like Essential Space, OnePlus's Mind Space app is a central repository for all your note-taking and screenshot-searching needs.

The key difference here is that, while things are easily searchable on the Pixel Screenshots app for Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 phones, Mind Space is the first app of its kind to directly integrate into Gemini. That means you don't even have to open the app to start a search. Just ask Gemini and it'll organize everything for you!

Mind Space is also very handy for summarizing or organizing information, and can even create charts and visuals based on information you store in it. This is awesome for me, as I often take notes for briefings or interviews and then have to comb through them later to organize them. Mind Space was able to take one of these documents and turn it into a visual flow chart, giving me a quick way to organize all my thoughts.

My next request for OnePlus is to allow it to store longer documents and make importing documents to Mind Space easier than just sharing what's on screen.

Voice recorder upgrades

Voice Recorder got a massive upgrade in OxygenOS 16. While the previous version was fine enough, it lacked some of the more impressive AI-based features like automatic transcription and speaker identification. All that is here now, and it works beautifully.

You can even go back and transcribe previous recordings you made, making this update even more useful. That transcription can then be summarized, shared, or edited any way you like, which is great because it means I'll no longer have to carry another phone or use another app just to get transcription for my recordings.

Games games games

evenGames are finally, finally running at full speed in OxygenOS 16, with proper 120FPS support for any game that can push those limits. This is part of a total overhaul OnePlus did to enhance fluidity and speed for this release, and it includes a big upgrade for the Game Assistant tool built into the phone.

This tool features a metric ton of options now, including better profiles that help scale performance based on your needs. Game Assistant even does great things like organize all your screenshots and recordings into albums for each game, making it simple to find what you need, well after playing them.

Still the best multitasking in the biz

OnePlus dropped a teaser for the upcoming OnePlus 15 running OxygenOS 16 the other day, and it had me worried. The only multitasking UI shown was a blatant iOS ripoff, which is a big downgrade from the current best multitasking UI that OxygenOS already features. Thankfully, this lame iOS ripoff version seems to just be an optional toggle rather than a replacement.

OnePlus has long had the best multitasking UIs, whether that's the ultra-fast overview screen that lets you swap between 10 apps at a time with a single swipe, or the company's incredible Open Canvas feature that debuted with the OnePlus Open two years ago.

In fact, OnePlus Pad 3 users running OxygenOS 16 now have access to a whopping 18 apps on the bottom dock, and Open Canvas has now been upgraded to support 5-app splitscreen at the same time. Talk about hardcore multitasking!

And more!

There are a lot of new features in OxygenOS 16 that I didn't touch on here that are worth looking at. From the AI writing functionality to the enhanced "Fluid Cloud" (that's OnePlus's version of Dynamic Island) and several other features, this is a jam-packed release that people are going to love.

When TVs were first sold in color, people were sceptical. Sure, a color TV show or movie was an obvious upgrade from black & white from a fundamental perspective, but the quality of early color content simply didn't match the contrast of black & white programming.

Things were made worse by a lack of standards and difficult-to-use equipment. One Reddit user remembers having to "twiddle knobs to decide whether the people would be orange or green."

In a way, color e-readers can suffer from similar problems but for very different reasons. I've been using the Onyx Boox Go Color 7 Gen II as my main e-reader since the middle of August, and I've been extremely impressed with the unit. However, my older Onyx Boox Page still excels in a few areas that I didn't expect.

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Clarity and light

Let's be clear: The Boox Go Color 7 Gen II (I'll call it the Go Color from now on for simplicity) is a better all-around e-reader than the Onyx Boox Page. The design has been refined to feel more comfortable in the hand, and the OS features new capabilities enabled by the updated display.

But anyone coming from an older black-and-white e-reader will immediately notice the graininess of the new color display. Flat white backgrounds now have an almost "old film" quality, giving the picture a distinct character that isn't present on digital stock. The same feeling can't be said for reading, where this grain can be distracting for some.

Text on the black-and-white Boox Page looks smooth and clean. Even when viewed through a macro lens, the Page's letters appear to be printed ink. However, the color screen has a distinct digital pixel look to each character.

For some people, this won't be a big deal. However, people who want to replicate the look of a physical book in a more convenient digital form factor may find themselves disappointed.

Color E Ink is marvelous to look at, especially if you're a fan of graphic novels or manga, but it's less comfortable to read on due to the drop in clarity.

The Go Color's frontlight also struggles to get as bright as the Page's. My light meter measures the Boox Page at 500 lux (159 nits), while the Go Color tops out at 250 lux (79 nits). Color E Ink is also dimmer in the sunlight, something that seems odd for an e-reader.

It still offers far better visibility than any LCD or OLED device available today, but it lacks the bright, white paper-like look and feel of the Boox Page.

E Ink technology works by magnetically pulling positively and negatively charged black or white particles to the surface of the display. On a black-and-white display, those particles can move anywhere they need to. On a color E Ink display, they're sorted into red, green, or blue-colored bins to create the illusion of a more solid color to the eye.

Because E Ink "pixels" can't be as small as those of an LCD or OLED, there's an obvious noise pattern that appears because you can still visibly see these red, green, and blue chambers with your naked eye.

Having pigments in separate chambers also means it's harder for light to scatter across the entire display. All these color chambers effectively create small divots in the display that trap light rather than help disperse it, unlike black-and-white E Ink. That makes a color E Ink panel appear darker.

Where it gets good

The text clarity and brightness of the Go Color's E Ink display may be lower, but the refresh rate and color availability are substantial upgrades. Plus, its 7-inch size feels more comfortable than some larger E Ink tablets.

And while color is certainly delightful, the refresh rate enhancements are the biggest upgrade over the Boox Page for me, as you can see from this side-by-side:

The newer E Ink display on the Go Color refreshes significantly faster than the older Page display, resulting in smoother scrolling and page turning, while also reducing flickering.

Onyx also upgraded the OS with several niceties and additional refresh features that make a significant difference in usability. The quick toggles panel now includes four preset options for the frontlight, making it easy to adjust brightness and color with a single tap without having to adjust each individual slider.

The E Ink adjustment panel is now simplified into a button layout with an AI-powered "recommended" setting that does a remarkable job of further streamlining the process. I've also found that apps are more stable on this hardware than on older Boox hardware, where apps would routinely crash for no apparent reason.

To sum it all up, while the Go Color is a better overall e-reader than the Boox Page, it looks less like paper than older E Ink displays. That's made up for by the addition of color and a substantially better refresh rate, making it more versatile.

I also love the design changes, from the new button layout to the rough paper-like feeling on the back. At 7 inches, it remains a Goldilocks size for an e-reader since it's about the size of the average novel and is more comfortable to hold long-term than having to fold back a spine. Overall, a fantastic choice for an e-reader upgrade, so long as you don't mind the less paper-like display.

Pixel has long been about clever features and intelligent use of machine learning or AI rather than brute force hardware power, and the Pixel 10 Pro fits nicely into this set of expectations.

Most features I regularly use on aren't new for the Google Pixel 10 but have largely been mainstays of the Pixel experience. While Magic Cue, Pixel Journal, Take a Message, and other features are all amazing in their own right, I simply don't find myself using them. Google even pulled the Pixel Daily Hub because it wasn't meeting expectations, proving that not everything new is worthy.

So what's actually good and worth using? Here are all the nifty Pixel AI features I actually use.

Call screening and scam detection

This feature has been around since the Pixel 3, but it has also undergone significant enhancements over the years. In short, Pixel phones can automatically screen calls from unknown numbers (or known scam numbers), filter out scams, wait on hold for you, and more.

Say what you will about Tensor's gaming performance or some other issue, but everyone I've ever known who has switched to a Pixel is blown away by how well these features work. It's not hyperbole to say this is a game-changer, as so many Reddit users point out.

Since its inception, Google has expanded these capabilities to include caller ID and spam filtering, scam detection, call screening, voice translation, and features such as Call Notes, Take a Message, Hold for Me, Direct My Call, and Audio Emojis. Samsung and a few other OEMs offer similar features, but no one actually filters spam better than a Pixel phone, and it's still one of the best reasons to buy one.

Camera motion capture

Pro Res Zoom and Camera Coach might have been the big new features for this year's Pixel 10 camera, but once again, it's a faithful old feature that I find to be the most useful. I'm talking about Frequent Faces, a feature you need to enable in the camera settings and one that ensures pictures of your favorite people and pets come out crisp every time.

Frequent Faces builds upon what Google built in Google Photos many years ago. Your Pixel will recognize the faces of people and pets you most often take photos of and locally store that data for reference. When you take future photos of these people or pets, the Pixel camera software understands that these faces should be prioritized in the shot.

This lets you capture a crisp photo of your 2-year-old while they're running around in the evening, whereas other phones might just capture a blurry image. It's yet another passive AI-based capability that I find incredibly useful on Pixel phones, and something no other phone can do.

Pixel Recorder

Of all the dedicated Pixel apps on the phone, Pixel Recorder is my most used. It's no surprise, given my profession — journalism requires a lot of recording, logging, and note-taking — and Pixel Recorder has been one of my all-time favorite apps since its launch on the Pixel 4.

Many phones have built-in audio recorders that can transcribe the audio, but the Pixel's is still the best for several reasons. First, transcription quality is better than any other phone or app I've tried. Even services like Otter don't perform quite as well, and all of these transcriptions happen locally on your phone. Plus, the recordings and transcripts are automatically backed up to your Google account.

Speaker labels are automatically created, and you can quickly thumb through the automatically-generated summary or search for anything in the recording that you want to find. Plus, Pixel 10 updates add music generation capabilities, so if you're someone who often catches a tune playing in their head and wants to turn it into a legit song, Pixel Recorder can help you do that.

Pixel Screenshots

I'm someone who takes a lot of screenshots. Like Pixel Recorder, this is most often for my job, as I'll catalog noteworthy app features or updates and later go back to reference those for a post. Pixel Screenshots makes it easy to not only categorize and organize those screenshots, but also to search their contents effortlessly.

You can also send screenshots directly to Notebook LM when you capture them, enabling even more detailed ways to search and summarize information. With everything at our fingertips, it can be hard to find a single place to store everything for later reference. These two apps offer genuinely excellent and unique ways to help.

Make a meme

Veo 3 is the latest AI image and audio generation tool from Google, and it's integrated directly into Gemini. While any phone or device can utilize this service as part of Gemini's "make a video" feature, Pixel 10 Pro phones are the easiest option, as they all come with one year of Google AI Pro for free.

I can't tell you how many times I've hopped into the Gemini app and asked it to make a quick video for me. Whether this was something as superfluous as a bespoke meme for a conversation with friends or a way to fill 8 seconds of a YouTube video I was creating, Gemini's Veo 3-powered video creation has become a staple in my digital toolbox.

If you're not into video but still want quick, bespoke images, Pixel Studio is your best bet. This app is found on newer Pixel phones and can be used to create everything from a fun "happy birthday" image featuring your nephew's favorite characters to stickers of cute capybaras, because why not?

The first time I used the Honor Magic V3 last year, I couldn't believe my eyes. The phone was so stupid thin I was sure it wouldn't last a day on a single charge, much less be able to sustain top-end performance while playing games. To my astonishment, it passed both of those tests with flying colors, and this year's Magic V5 is even thinner.

If you can believe it, despite being even thinner than the previous year's phone, the Magic V5's battery is 13% larger. It seemingly makes no sense, especially given that the battery is 32% larger than the similarly thin Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. While it might sound like voodoo magic, the secret comes from a place you might not have expected: electric cars.

Honor has been using these silicon-carbon batteries for a few years now, and each year they improve. This year, we got an even bigger bump than usual, and it's enabling phones to get thinner without compromising on important things like battery life and charging speed.

From cars to smartphones

Group14 Technologies is the company behind the big push for more silicon in our batteries, and a lot of this push began with the need for more energy in electric cars. Cars, after all, require a lot more power to function than your average smartphone, so it was important to figure out how to get a larger capacity battery that also charges quickly into the same size form factor.

This is done by taking the traditional lithium battery material, graphite, and blending it with silicon in the anode part of the battery. Electric car anodes can have up to 30% silicon blended with graphite, while the Honor Magic V5 tops out at 15%, which is still the most we've seen in any smartphone to date.

Since silicon stores a lot more energy in the same space as graphite, manufacturers can create higher-capacity batteries that fit in the same space. In an ultra-thin phone like the Honor Magic V5, Galaxy Z Fold 7, Galaxy S25 Edge, or even the iPhone Air, a larger silicon-carbon battery can make your thin phone feel like magic. It's just too bad Samsung, Google, and Apple aren't using them at all.

The charging test

Earlier this summer, we learned about how regulations could be keeping battery sizes down. The gist is that shipping regulations cap a battery at 20Wh in capacity, which equates to roughly 5400mAh in the smartphone world. This restriction is partly why Chinese models typically have larger batteries than the global model of the same phone.

The Honor Magic V5 packs a 5,820mAh battery, while the Galaxy Z Fold 7 uses just a 4,400mAh battery. While this might sound like a problem for Honor initially, the trick is that this regulation is per cell, meaning companies have to use dual-cell batteries. The good news is that companies like OnePlus and Honor have been doing this for years.

Using a dual-cell battery also ensures faster charging rates since you can charge two cells in tandem. Samsung, Google, and Apple don't do this, and it's one of the reasons they charge so slowly.

Phones with dual-cell batteries in the table above — that's the OnePlus 13 and Honor Magic V5 — charge substantially faster despite having larger batteries. Swapping out graphite for silicon also reduces weight, making this a win-win situation for design.

Longevity and cost

It's always peculiar when three of the world's largest smartphone manufacturers don't follow a trend. In more than one way, it reminds me of how every company but Samsung, Google, and Apple have made their phones more friendly for PWM-sensitive people (until the iPhone 17 came along, that is).

Some people cite cost as a main reason not to use silicon-carbon batteries, but that doesn't seem to make much sense given the cost of the premium phones from these brands. Packing in a dual-cell battery costs a little bit more money per phone, but it would make sense to use these batteries on ultrathin phones like the iPhone Air, Galaxy S25 Edge, and Galaxy Z Fold 7.

In Samsung's case, the Galaxy Note 7 is still haunting the company, making it hyper sensitive about any major changes in battery or charging tech. The company told T3 that they're developing a silicon-carbon battery that's "reliable," as if current SC battery tech somehow isn't.

The Verge wrote about how silicon degrades faster than graphite, a legitimate concern considering companies like Google are actively throttling phone batteries as soon as 200 charging cycles. But Group14 says its silicon-carbon batteries will exceed the lifetime charging cycles of existing products by a significant amount.

We'll need a bit more time to see if that turns out to be true, as the first major phone with a silicon-carbon battery was 2023's Honor Magic 5 Pro. But even if you bought that phone on day one and charged it every single day since then, you still wouldn't have hit 1,000 charging cycles, which is when Google caps the Pixel 10's battery at 80% capacity.

Using the Honor Magic V5 again as the final example, it's battery is made up of 15% silicon-carbon, making the battery 32% larger than the Galaxy Z Fold 7's. Even at an 80% capacity reduction after 2.5 years, it would still have a larger capacity than a brand-new (and, therefore, unused) Galaxy Z Fold 7.

That's enough of an argument alone to me and a reason why silicon-carbon isn't just the future of smartphone tech; it's the reason you should choose brands not named Samsung or Google.

It's been quite a while since we've seen a new display technology that really catches on. OLED debuted on mobile devices 15 years ago with the release of the original Samsung Galaxy, eventually usurping LCD as the de facto standard display type.

However, the tides are shifting, and customers want something more user-friendly than OLED, a technology that looks great but causes headaches and eye strain in a notable percentage of people. Enter TCL's NXTPAPER technology, a custom type of LCD that includes multiple comfort layers and custom tuning, including a matte anti-glare layer and black levels previously thought unachievable for the tech.

The TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra is the first smartphone equipped with the latest version of NXTPAPER, and it just might be my favorite smartphone display of all time. As someone who regularly seeks out alternative types of displays with better comfort ratings, NXTPAPER greatly appeals to me. Now, with NXTPAPER 4.0, I'm finally seeing the fruits of TCL's labor and can fully recommend it as a legit alternative to OLED. Here are all the details.

Comfort above all

As I said in my Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra display review, all modern flagship phone displays look good. Any rating assigned to one over the other is generally nitpicking between characteristics that the average person simply doesn't see or care about.

That's why comfort is the new benchmark of display quality. A high comfort rating ensures all users can see and enjoy content on a display, no matter if they're looking at it for 5 minutes or 5 hours.

In the modern digital age, where a smartphone is practically essential for everyday life, it's becoming increasingly more important for companies to make devices that work for everyone, including those of us with visual disabilities or limitations.

Reflectivity and brightness

An up-and-coming trend in smartphone displays is glare reduction. All NXTPAPER devices feature a matte anti-reflective layer, but NXTPAPER 4.0 features a redesigned substrate and nano-matrix lithography application to enhance brightness and color accuracy.

This updated anti-glare layer is incredibly effective, reducing reflections so much that the display looks almost identical to full-color paper printing. It's actually wild looking at the screen throughout the day and seeing such a gorgeous, flat-lit display that doesn't force me to squint or strain to see.

The effect is best in any indoor condition or when outside in partial shade. Inside, the anti-glare layer is perfect for reducing those annoying reflections from adjacent lights or any brightly lit object. In this environment, zero reflection of any kind is visible, and it makes the phone a joy to use versus any other display technology I've used to date.

One of my favorite things about NXTPAPER 4.0 is its ability to create a superb picture without following normal display expectations. Take sunlight viewability, for example. At 850 nits, you'd expect this to be difficult to see in the sunlight. The Pixel 10 series hits 3300 nits to ensure it's nice and bright, for instance, but you'll quickly learn that the problem wasn't brightness all along. It was glare.

Outdoor visibility comes with an interesting caveat, though. It's super easy to see in direct sunlight, but only if the sun isn't directly reflecting off the matte surface. I'm writing this at 3 pm, sitting in my car while I wait to pick my son up from school, and it's incredibly easy to see. It's also excellent for dashboard navigation. But if I were trying to type this up on my back deck with the sun overhead, I'd have to hold it at an angle.

That angle is the only really weird thing about this display, as the matte layer will completely occlude the display if the sun is shining straight into your vision. It's not a huge deal since you only have to slightly adjust the angle — you would never keep the sun directly on any other display, either — but it does look different from a normal reflective display. I would recommend using the scheduled light/dark theme option to keep light mode on during the day if you spend a lot of time outside, as that also makes a huge difference for visibility.

Elsewhere, the brightness level is simply brilliant and always feels comfortable. It can even get down to 2 nits when extra dim display is enabled, something that was a problem with previous generations of NXTPAPER. I've always found these displays to be too bright to read in bed at night, but the TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra fixes all that.

The best part is that it achieves this with zero flicker, unlike OLED. That's because OLED normally has to switch to PWM dimming when you get to lower dimming levels, creating an uncomfortable flicker that can cause headaches and eye pain. Not something you want right before bed.

This phone is completely flicker-free and never uses PWM dimming at any time. It's true voltage-adjusted DC dimming, and it's one of the strengths of this display tech.

Eye comfort settings

NXTPAPER 4.0 features a built-in blue light filter that performs exceptionally well. Additionally, the phone features two automated modes that adjust the display's color temperature to match the time of day or automatically based on ambient light temperature. You can enable both modes at the same time, if you like.

Since the screen doesn't use PWM dimming, there's no need to have any kind of flicker reduction option. By default, however, the phone uses temporal dithering to adjust display colors and to create more accurate grey colors. Turning off all three options under NXTVISION display settings reduces the amount of dithering system-wide.

Sticking to normal and black & white ink modes ensures the least amount of dithering, and using sRGB or Natural color space options seems to disable dithering entirely when NXTVISION is disabled. The phone's Color Paper display mode seems to dither no matter what options are selected.

TCL features a notable number of additional eye care features found under the NXTPAPER zone menu. An automated alert can be enabled that will tell you to take a break after a set amount of screen time to help you stave off digital addiction.

A number of posture alerts can also help you correct problems with normal device use. Staring at the screen too closely can generate a posture alert, and the same will happen if you lie down and read with the phone for too long.

You can also enable alerts for when you're using the phone in an environment that's too shaky — on a train or somewhere else that could cause eye-strain while reading — or when you're in environments that are too bright or too dark to look at the screen for a long time. All of these options can be enabled if you like, and are disabled by default.

Colors and ink modes

One of the most unique parts of NXTPAPER technology is the ability to switch between full color, "color paper," and black & white "ink" modes with the switch on the right side of the phone. Switching takes a few seconds and is accompanied by a beautiful animation to show the progress.

NXTPAPER devices have always had these three options, so they're no different visually from those. Normal mode is what you expect: a full-color experience that looks like a modern smartphone display. Color Paper makes all the whites a warm, off-white color and changes most colors to pastel. Ink Paper makes everything black and white.

A fourth mode, Max Ink mode, uses the black & white visual appearance of Ink Paper mode but closes all apps except for the ones you whitelist. The idea here is to not only save battery life but also to act as a "digital detox" mode for when you need downtime or want to be less distracted.

As with the "reading modes" or "e-book modes" on some phones, these modes just alter the color of the display. They don't adjust the backlight itself or change the nature of the display itself, so they're not quite the same as using an E Ink phone for eye care.

Motion, resolution, viewing angles

The TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra's display automatically swaps between 120Hz and 60Hz, but you can select to keep it at 60Hz for battery or eye comfort reasons. At 7.2 inches, this massive display looks a little soft with 2340 x 1080 resolution.

I don't think the display looks traditionally low-resolution, which normally infers that you can see the individual pixels or that edges of icons and text have a stair-stepping pattern to them. Everything here is clean and clear, it's just softer than you might expect because of the additional light scattering and matte filters above the panel.

Lastly, we'll take a look at some of the traditionally weakest points of LCDs: motion blur, viewing angles, and black levels. Viewing angles and black levels are downright spectacular and are the best I've ever seen on an IPS-based display. Most of the time, I can't tell the difference between the black levels on this display and an OLED, although OLED continues to have better overall contrast.

When using the phone to scroll in dark mode or in low light, you'll be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and a high-quality OLED panel. Most OLEDs tend to "bleed purple" when you slowly scroll in low light or in dark mode, and that effect is equivalent to the slight motion blur you'll see from the slower-refreshing pixels of NXTPAPER's IPS base.

That difference becomes more readily apparent when using light mode or when the backlight is turned up brighter, especially when scrolling with black text on a light background. This effect is less apparent in videos or while gaming.

In short, motion resolution is worse than OLED but better than a traditional IPS display. I can easily read words as I scroll, even if I flick the screen quickly, so I would still rate this as "good" even if it's not the best.

Verdict

The TCL NXTPAPER 60 Ultra has one of the most incredible displays I've ever used on a smartphone. It's fully flicker-free and offers relief for both people sensitive to PWM dimming and dithering, something that's simply unheard of in 2025 when phones either use some form of dithering or PWM-style dimming, which both introduce flicker to the experience.

NXTPAPER 4.0 also breaks from expectations of LCDs, offering superb black levels and viewing angles, excellent color reproduction, and tons of eye care modes. Outdoor visibility is still the weakest point of the experience, but it is significantly better than any previous NXTPAPER display by a wide margin. It's not hard to see in sunlight, but it's not as easy as E Ink or some OLED displays.

The overall appearance of the display is incredibly captivating thanks to a combination of several bespoke visual filters and a matte surface, giving it a unique look and feel. Readability is much better on this display than most, and I found myself entranced by the display over the past week. It's gorgeous to look at, and ushers in a new era for IPS displays and TCL as a new quality contender.

The title of "slimest smartphone in the world" isn't one that's easily slung around. Honor has captured the, ahem, honor of the title two years in a row now, first with the Magic V3 in 2024 and now with the vegan leather Magic V5 this year.

But that crown usually means tradeoffs that aren't always desirable. Thankfully, between impressive battery tech and class-leading camera AI, Honor is able to make an ultra-thin foldable phone that doesn't feel like using a big old collection of compromises.

I got the opportunity to further discuss this with Luo Wei, Chief Imaging Architect at Honor, and find out what makes the Honor Magic V5's cameras tick and how they can often be so much better than the competition.

Zoom in on that detail

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 might measure as thin as some Honor Magic V5 models, but its telephoto sensor is half the size of Honor's. Even the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold uses a smaller camera sensor that was common in flagship phones 10 years ago.

Meanwhile, the Honor Magic V5 uses a huge 1/2-inch 64MP sensor behind a 3.5x telephoto lens. Not only that, but Honor is using the Magic V5 to launch its new AiMAGE software backend. That gives it the clear advantage of physics, in addition to a tried-and-true AI-powered computational layer.

Wei explained AiMAGE this way: "Building on the imaging advancements of the HONOR Magic7 Pro and HONOR Magic V3, the HONOR Magic V5 delivers even finer detail through an AI RAW model powered by device-cloud synergy. Whether shooting on the main or telephoto camera, this intelligent model enhances texture and definition with striking precision."

The shot I took above perfectly illustrates what Wei was talking about when he said AiMAGE "enhances texture and definition with striking precision." The amount of texture in the Honor Magic V5's shot, especially compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, is simply unreal.

The use of physically larger sensors also ensures the Honor Magic V5's images come out looking more like images taken from a dedicated camera instead of a phone. This image I took of a blueberry bush at 3.5x from the standard photo mode perfectly showcases what a large sensor can do: incredible depth of field without the need to use software portrait mode calculations.

Ironically, Wei told me he believes "2025 marks a turning point where AI breakthroughs allow smartphones to overcome hardware limitations, making high-end photography easier and more accessible, even for entry-level users. With more direct and intuitive interactions, AI takes on the heavy lifting once reserved for professional photographers."

And that brings me right back to AI, of course. Honor launched AI Super Zoom with the Honor Magic 7 Pro earlier this year, but the Magic V5's implementation of it goes even further than on that phone. "It is the industry’s first solution to utilizes a powerful fusion of multi-frame super-resolution and generative reconstruction, powered by multiple transformer-based algorithms deployed in the cloud. This breakthrough allows HONOR to significantly enhance image clarity and fidelity, especially at extreme zoom levels."

I left AI Super Zoom off for all of the photos on this page except this one, where I very specifically tried to find a detailed subject at 100x zoom to see what it could do. The results didn't disappoint.

As a photographer, using generative AI to create photos feels a bit dirty. But I think there's room for AI enhancement where it makes sense, and that begins at extreme zoom levels from a smartphone camera sensor.

Wei agreed and built upon that, saying, "while generative AI tools like Midjourney are now commonly used for text-to-image, image-to-image, and even video generation, we believe photography is ultimately about being present in the moment. Fully AI-generated visuals can often feel impersonal and lack emotional depth. That’s why we believe real-world capture, combined with AI-powered enhancement, offers the most meaningful results."

A lot of this hybrid AI approach plays out behind the scenes, even in functions you might not expect. "On-device AI is responsible for time-sensitive tasks such as focus tracking, exposure adjustment, real-time semantic segmentation, and initial enhancement, ensuring instant feedback with low power consumption," Wei told me.

That ensures that your data stays local when you want it to, yet can still benefit from brilliant AI-powered tricks like automatic motion capture. The photo you see above, for instance, was automatically captured by the Magic V5. I didn't press the shutter button at all, just pointed the camera where I knew my son would jump, and I ended up with a fantastic photo.

The other two photos were taken manually from a Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. They turned out just fine, but you'll notice the Honor Magic V5 did a better job with both movement clarity and exposure of the subject. Google's photo has pixel-by-pixel movement artifacts, while Samsung's image is a bit on the dark side.

And, when you want that enhanced zoom detail beyond 30x, you can toggle the AI Super Zoom button that appears in the viewfinder to utilize cloud processing. "Cloud-based AI supports post-processing functions like advanced denoising, detail enhancement, and stylization, enabled via HONOR’s collaboration with Google Cloud and self-developed large vision models."

Wei added that "this approach allows users to enjoy professional-level results without compromising speed or privacy," and that "Honor is committed to protecting user privacy and has implemented a comprehensive and industry-leading information security system. As a global company, we ensure our product solutions fully comply with local laws and regulations in every market where we operate."

Honor's partnership with Google Cloud for its AI-driven tasks helps reduce some of the uncertainty brought about by the nebulous concept of cloud computing.

Of course, you still need at least decent hardware in a smartphone to achieve good results, even if AI is helping enhance the image, and that's not easy in a phone that's 4.1mm thin. You'll notice the camera bump on the back of the Magic V5 is larger than the competition, despite the phone being thinner, and that was a purposeful decision on Honor's behalf.

"A 64MP sensor with 1/2-inch size and f/2.5 aperture strikes the ideal balance for telephoto photography, enabling 3x optical and up to 100x digital zoom, with enhanced clarity and fidelity - especially when paired with our AI Super Zoom," Wei said.

The Magic V5's telephoto sensor is nearly twice as large as the Galaxy Z Fold 7's, and that makes a massive difference in real-world zoom quality, even at more reasonable zoom levels like 10x. One look at the gorgeous depth of field on the Magic V5's shot below compared to the extremely flat-looking shot from the Z Fold 7 and you'll start to understand why sensor size matters a lot.

So where does this take smartphone-based AI in the future? Wei says he believes that "on-device AI can empower consumers by conducting all processing directly on their smartphones or personal devices, ensuring that data remains secure and is not exposed to external threats," but that there's still plenty of room for more powerful cloud computing to take over when the user wants it.

"We believe that smartphone photography is entering the era of intent-driven imaging, where users express creative goals and the device interprets and executes them. AI will play a central role, not only in scene capture but also in pre-shot guidance, real-time correction, and intelligent editing."

We're seeing some of this play out on other phones, where AI is being used to help coach users on how to take better shots using the live scene data gathered from the smartphone's camera.

"We foresee seamless integration of generative models, volumetric capture, and adaptive aesthetics that personalize imagery based on mood or purpose, while keeping user control and authenticity at the core," Wei told me. "HONOR is investing deeply in this direction, aiming to turn smartphones into both lenses and storytellers."

If there's any one place I can get behind AI, it's when it helps a human do a better job rather than doing the job for the person. The fact that Honor seems to be pushing this avenue is encouraging to me, and it makes me feel great about using a generative approach to enhance certain imagery rather than making up for bad hardware with hallucinating AI agents.

The unveiling of the Google Pixel 10 series is less than a week away now, and like most other Google device launches, the leaky faucet is now in full hose mode. All the secrets Google is likely trying to hold close to its proverbial chest are being pried away and revealed ahead of the announcement, and that includes one big surprise for the company's third-generation foldable: a new hinge.

But this isn't just any normal folding phone hinge, if we can even call that normal. It's rumored to be a fully dust-resistant hinge, something the industry at large has struggled to figure out. We first saw this leak appear in late June, noting that the upcoming Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold would be IP68 water and dust-resistant, marking a first for any foldable phone.

This comes on the heels of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7's release, which didn't move the needle for dust resistance at all, packing in the same IP48 rating as the Fold 6. For note, the 4 in the IP48 rating means that the device is dust resistant down to 1mm particles, which is good enough for most things, as JerryRigEverything's video shows (timestamp 6 minutes).

But I expected the first fully dust-resistant hinge to come from the Honor Magic V5, or a company like Oppo or Vivo. Definitely not Google, as the company is rarely among the hardware engineering elite. After all, the Pixel 9 unabashedly looked like an iPhone, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold hardly stood out among a crowd of far more unique foldable phones.

What's in a foldable hinge

Nearly every foldable phone on the market uses a different kind of hinge. While all early foldables used gears, most recent foldable phones have switched to a gearless system. While gears make it easy to lock the hinge in place, they also provide a point that allows dust to enter or, at the very least, a point of failure if dust were to ever get inside the hinge.

Since the Galaxy Z Fold 4, Samsung has been using gearless hinges. They're interlocking metal parts that slide together and stay open via cleverly designed angles. You can see them in action in JerryRigEverything's Z Fold 4 video (timestamp 9 minutes), and Google has been using gearless hinges in its Pixel Fold phones for the last two years, as well.

But Pixels aren't historically known for their durability or long-term use. From overheating processors to problems with warranty claims and even parts falling off, Google doesn't exactly have a great name in this area. Again, as JerryRigEverything's Pixel 9 Pro Fold video (timestamp 6 minutes) shows, Google has work to do on durability when compared to the competition.

So, how in the world is it that Google will supposedly be the one with the first dustproof hinge? The "6" in that rumored IP68 rating means the hinge is completely sealed off from dust of any type or size, which means the Pixel 10 Pro Fold's hinge is going to be as airtight as the International Space Station.

Hyperbole aside, that takes a lot of bespoke engineering hours to accomplish and, again, is something that not even Huawei, Honor, Vivo, Oppo, or Samsung have been able to accomplish with all the money they've dumped into foldable phone R&D over the years. I'm not saying it's out of the realm of possibility at all, but I certainly didn't expect it from Google's Pixel engineering team, which is only on its third generation foldable product.

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold durability is just part of the picture

But let's be fair to Google, it looks like the Pixel 10 is going to bring Google into an entirely new realm of engineering excellence. The new Tensor G5 processor rumored to be inside the Pixel 10 is now supposedly made by TSMC, the Taiwanese manufacturing giant that makes the best chips in the world.

Previously, Google used Samsung Semiconductor for all its Tensor chips, the same company that makes Exynos chips, and that should tell you everything you need to know.

Google's tease of the Pixel 10 Pro Fold doesn't exactly reveal much about its hinge, but it does focus on the fact that this is a folding phone and seems to suggest that something new and exciting is happening with its folding nature.

If Google is able to deliver a foldable phone with IP68 ingress protection, it'll cement the idea that the Pixel 10 series is on another plane of existence from the rest of the Pixel series, and that's good for Google's Pixel division all around.

For more news and information on Google's upcoming phones, check out our Ultimate Guide.

About 18 months ago, I got my hands on the Onyx Boox Palma, a phone-sized e-reader that totally redefined what I thought of E Ink devices. The screen was fast enough to run all my normal apps, and the processor was even fast enough to play modern games. The only problem was that, while it was the size of a phone, it didn't have support for SIM cards, so it was ultimately just a tiny Kindle in disguise.

While Onyx released a follow-up device a year later, it still didn't include SIM support. Thankfully, Bigme has answered the call and created the HiBreak Pro, a device that not only is the same size as the Palma but also features an even better E Ink display, haptic motors, and, most importantly, a dual-SIM tray.

While most E Ink phones seem to focus on being "minimalist phones," the Bigme HiBreak Pro tosses that idea in the trash and, instead, works exactly like the Android phone you're probably already using. The big difference is that it has a Kindle-like E Ink display that makes daily reading a joy. Plus, it's so much easier on your eyes since you can turn the backlight completely off with the click of a button.

I took the HiBreak Pro on vacation with me last week and have continued using it for an additional couple of days, and I still can't believe this phone is real. It's a dream come true for anyone trying to avoid the negative effects of PWM dimming or is just trying to get away from staring at a backlit screen all day, all without trying to take away all the apps and experiences you love on your smartphone.

Different from the rest

I've used several E Ink phones up until now, and all of them seem to suffer from one big issue or another. I compared the Minimal Phone and the Mudita Kompakt back in April because both phones aim to provide a more minimalist experience to cure your digital addiction. While this is admirable, it's extraordinarily difficult for many people to stop using apps, social media, NFC payments, and other modern necessities.

I say 'necessities' because, try as I might, someone like me can't use a minimalist phone daily and still perform my job effectively. If you fall into this category but still want the eye-friendly experience created by an E Ink display, the Bigme HiBreak Pro is your only viable option on the market. That sounds like you'll be compromising, but the reality is that you really won't.

The only real "downside" to the phone is that the display is black and white only. It doesn't use color E Ink like some of Bigme's other devices, although that version is supposedly in the works for a later release. Instead, it uses a lovely 6.13-inch E Ink screen with a very fast refresh rate; much faster than the one on the Minimal Phone or Mudita Kompakt, and it makes a world of difference in daily use.

Watching videos on a black and white screen is a bit strange, but people did it less than a hundred years ago, so it just takes some getting used to. Even the contrast is good enough for most videos, although darker videos are just plain hard to see on any E Ink device I've used to date.

Apps and all normal smartphone functions work as you would expect. Want to launch the camera quickly? Double-click the power button and take the shot. Want to toggle the backlight so you're not wasting power during the day? Customize one of the two keys on the side as the "light switch."

I set the top button to double-tap for this function, and I've used it constantly over the past week. There's even a fingerprint reader inside the side-mounted power button, a location I far prefer over in-screen readers.

I've also done an immense amount of reading on this phone in that time. I'm already halfway through Project Hail Mary, a book I bought on the Google Play Store last Friday before heading out on the road for vacation. I've read entirely on this device and can't begin to describe the eye relief that comes with E Ink. It's like reading a book, and it feels like magic when you use it.

While you might have trouble telling the Bigme HiBreak Pro apart from the Onyx Boox Palma at first glance, several upgrades make it a better device. Apart from the obvious advantage of 5G connectivity, it also has haptic motors inside, two customizable quick keys on the left side, as well as a fingerprint reader in the lovely red power button.

Unlike some other E Ink devices, the Bigme HiBreak Pro supports full NFC payments, and it even has an IR blaster up top for remote functionality. These are all assumed features of the best Android phones, but they've been anything but standard on E Ink phones so far.

Speaking of "standards," the Bigme HiBreak Pro sets a new standard for E Ink phone camera quality. I took a ton of pictures with the phone over the last week, and while it won't be vying for best phone camera any time soon, it's more than adequate quality.

I highlight this specifically because every other E Ink phone I've tried has had a terrible camera, and I recommended that users keep another phone in their pocket just to take pictures. That, of course, defeats the purpose of going E Ink as it'll just give you the temptation to use the other phone to doomscroll or revert to old habits.

It's actually quite weird to see pictures being taken on this phone, only to see it in full color on another device later and be surprised by the quality. The Bigme HiBreak Pro's camera was good enough that I didn't feel the need to find something else for regular photos, and that is enough for me to give it some kind of award.

Getting E Ink right

One of my biggest annoyances with E Ink devices is having to constantly change the display mode to best fit the content. Most modern E Ink devices do a decent job in the default display mode, but a lot of apps require you to tweak the image to get the best picture.

So far, I've never had to adjust the display mode on the Bigme HiBreak Pro. It understands how to tune it for the app that's running, and that's been a huge quality of life change I didn't expect. The only thing I adjust manually is the brightness level because I like control over the backlight, but even then, you could just set it to automatic and let it do its thing like normal.

Compared to every other E Ink device I have, this one rarely has to do that jarring full refresh cycle you probably associate with E Ink devices. Scrolling through a web page or even a long email looks like a normal display, and it's proof to me that Bigme's software is doing something better than its competitors.

On the topic of software, while I found the default home screen launcher to be a bit underwhelming, I haven't had any issues changing it to something better, like Niagara Launcher. This one's my go-to for any E Ink or more "minimalist" phone, as it provides quick access to everything I need without fuss.

Daily performance and multitasking have been surprisingly good, and I seldom saw any app need to reload unless it had been a notable amount of time since I last used it. The multitasking UI is better than stock Android, as it shows quick cards for the 6 most recent open apps, with additional apps located in pages.

Bigme's UI doesn't use stock Android gesture navigation, though, so there's no support for quick 2-app switching as you'll find on other Android phones. That's not a deal breaker, but it did take me a while to unlearn my regular usage of that gesture.

Even typing on the on-screen keyboard (I use Gboard) was just as fast as any other Android phone I've used. As I said with the camera previously, this is expected on a normal Android phone, but not something that normally works well on E Ink phones. Once again, Bigme surprises in the best way, and I find typing to be a great experience.

Specs, value, and conclusion

The Bigme HiBreak Pro is quite affordable, retailing for $459 on Amazon. That puts it squarely in the mid-range category, and I've found that basically all the specs feel right for the price.

The Bigme HiBreak Pro is made entirely of polycarbonate. I tried to use the phone without this case for a while, but found it to be way too slippery. Thankfully, Bigme includes a silicone case in the box if you don't like the overly slippery plastic build. This case is extremely grippy and offers some decent padding for the device, which further adds to the value of the package.

While a fully polycarbonate phone sounds like a negative, I actually enjoyed the fact that there's zero possibility of breaking the screen if you drop it. That's a weirdly freeing reality in a world where most phones are some kind of metal and glass sandwich.

Overall, I loved using this phone and even found that, even while Bigme doesn't market this as a "minimalist phone," per se, the black & white E Ink display swayed me away from mindless scrolling I'm seldom prone to doing. To me, this is the ideal way to switch to an E Ink device without feeling the shellshock most other similar products create.

And, if you were wondering, yes, this display is completely flicker-free. No PWM dimming. No temporal dithering. Just an eye-friendly experience that feels good to use. Talk about a major win for Bigme!

The highly anticipated Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses are here, and with a new style comes an upgrade spec sheet and a higher price tag.

Oakley Meta HSTN swaps out the 1080p camera for a 3K one, delivers longer battery life than Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, and has those trademark Oakley lenses and styles. But how much better is that new 3K camera?

I took both limited-edition smart glasses out for a spin on a hot summer day, taking pictures and video of anything I could find to see if the new Oakley price tag is worth its weight in gold-plated plastic. What I found surprised me, and it'll likely surprise you, too.

Oakley Meta HSTN specs

In many ways, Oakley Meta HSTN feels like a v1.5 upgrade. Most of the overall design and concept are the same, with all buttons in the same places, speakers in the same places, and even nose pads and charging bridges looking identical. The real difference is in the trademark styles between the two companies, including lenses, as well as the cameras used on the front of each.

Both glasses capture in 3:4 portrait mode, and there's no option to rotate the video. Likewise, both glasses only support 30FPS recording at this time, although the wording in the Meta AI app seems to suggest that more options might be available in the future.

Unlocking 3K resolution

By default, Oakley Meta HSTN Smart Glasses only record at the same 1080p resolution as Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. That's probably fine for most people, and it will result in longer battery life, but I wanted to see what the maximum quality difference was between these two products.

To set the Oakley Meta HSTN glasses to 3K quality, you'll open the Meta AI app, tap the settings icon next to your Oakley glasses, tap media, select video settings, then select 3K resolution from the list. With that set, you'll get the highest resolution video possible from Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses; however, the resolution may not always be the same. Here's what I mean.

I compared the stats for all the videos I took side by side between the two glasses, and while the Oakley Meta HSTNs were always around 1,000 pixels taller than the Ray-Ban Metas — a roughly 50% resolution increase — that resolution number was never the same.

It seemed to fluctuate depending on what was happening in the video. If I moved around a lot, the glasses had to do a lot of cropping to ensure the video looked smooth and stable since they both use electronic image stabilization. I also noticed the bit rate fluctuated a lot, and sometimes the Oakleys didn't have the highest bit rate even though they produced better image quality.

Still best in the light

As I sorted through the dozens of pictures and videos I took during my Friday excursion to compare Oakley Meta HSTN smart glasses and Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, I realized that the differences between each glasses' video quality largely depended on how much light was available.

There was never a time when the Ray-Bans did a better job than the Oakleys, so there's a definite improvement between generations, but the difference wasn't as stark as I expected most of the time. Let's start with low light, where I found the two glasses' camera performance to be identical, regardless of what resolution I chose.

For my comparisons, I lined the two videos up next to each other and took a freeze frame to compare the video quality.

As you can see, there's no noticeable difference between these two glasses in low light despite the Oakley Meta HSTN Smart Glasses having 50% higher resolution video capture.

I found that both glasses performed best during good lighting conditions, which makes sense given how small the camera sensor has to be to fit into a pair of glasses that weigh just 50g.

But let's be real, unless you're trying to recreate that famous 1984 song about wearing sunglasses at night, there's no reason you'd be taking a pair of dark shades into a dark room. These babies are made for the light, and that's where you'll find they really shine.

I've got the full video above, but let's break it down into sections so you can see the differences. They're subtle at first, but taking a closer look reveals the improvements resolution can bring, especially with objects in the distance.

For the first section, I walked through a big greenhouse which is filled with detail, color, and various lighting conditions. Some rooms, like the Orangerie, are very bright. Other rooms, like the first two examples, are filled with large, overhanging plants that make it quite a bit darker, even during broad daylight.

Oakley Meta HSTN glasses produce a crisper image than Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses at all times, but that difference can sometimes be more subtle than you had hoped for.

In many settings, like this bright Orangerie, I couldn't tell the difference between the two smart glasses videos when watching them side by side, even though the Oakleys sport a 50% resolution increase.

Zooming in revealed some differences, but they were subtler than I was expecting. There's some obvious compression and detail loss in the Ray-Ban video because it's a lower resolution, particularly around the fan, but I'm not sure how many people will be zooming in this far just to find out.

It's hard to tell exactly why this was the case, though, as this scene was just as bright as the sunflower scene, yet that scene exhibited more obvious differences, as you'll see.

On a phone-sized display, I couldn't tell the difference between the Oakley and Ray-Ban glasses' camera quality, but it became much more prominent when I pulled up those videos on a monitor. Oakley Meta HSTN's video quality is notably cleaner, and you can really see the difference when zooming in.

The Oakley Meta HSTN also have much sharper video here, showing significantly less image compression and a lot more fine detail. It seems like parts of the image with the higher contrast benefit most from the newer camera.

Many other times, though, you'll struggle to tell the difference between the video quality of these two smart glasses. In the first example, I'm under a dark, thick free canopy that forces both glasses to ramp up the ISO and, as a result, kill a lot of the fine detail.

Throughout most of this video, there's no visible difference between the two glasses. If I zoom in and scrub through, I can find only a few times when the Oakley's remain sharper than the Ray-Bans, which I've picked out as a 500% zoom image found below.

Walking through the bamboo cluster reveals the same results. Because it's much darker in here, the ISO ramps up and both glasses produce a similar soft image. The difference only becomes apparent as I get into the clearing and look up, allowing the ISO to drop and the Oakley's higher-resolution camera to shine through.

A lower-resolution camera can muddy up the details in the tree canopy, and the Oakley Meta HSTN's camera does a great job of pulling out just a little more fine detail overall. Zooming in reveals that detail, but it's mainly lost if you're looking at the whole image on a phone screen.

In all of these examples, I didn't notice any real difference in dynamic range, color accuracy, or other similar factors. These are purely a resolution and clarity upgrade, and it's not as big of a difference as the raw stats would make you think.

Pictures are identical

Despite the resolution difference between the video recording quality of both glasses, photos taken from each look identical. I tried several different lighting conditions and different subjects (both near and far), but I struggled to find any difference between the pictures taken from either set of smart glasses.

Photos from the glasses mostly look good, but they struggle to balance things out when there's too much light in a scene. The picture with the rose is a perfect example of this, as it's in broad sunlight and looks overexposed. Similarly, the second shot with the bright pink bougainvillea is both overexposed and ultra-saturated, giving it a fake look.

In general, photos are extremely saturated, bright, and very Instagram-worthy. That all makes sense since Meta wants you to use these for Instagram and has deep tie-ins with the social media service, so you can directly post pictures, video, and even livestream from the glasses to Instagram.

Oakley Meta HSTN: Better, but not by much

I've already taken dozens of photos and videos with Oakley Meta HSTN, and I can confidently declare that, while Meta improved video recording quality, it's not quite the leap I expected. Oakley Meta HSTN sports a 50% resolution increase over Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses, but the difference is subtle in most situations.

We're seeing a substantial improvement in image stabilization, though, which means Meta is mainly using the higher resolution camera to drive enhanced electronic image stabilization rather than delivering notably higher image quality.

Still, if you want the best quality from any smart glasses camera to date, Oakley Meta HSTN is the right choice. Given Meta's pedigree with regular updates and feature additions, there's little doubt that we'll see tweaks, new features, and maybe even image quality upgrades as these are on the market longer.

Over the past few years, something hidden has been happening to the millions of pixels that make up our displays. Once created to solve a problem, temporal dithering has created its own monster of a problem that's slowly infecting new and old devices alike, rendering them unusable to a portion of the population, and Android users have had enough.

On July 9, an official bug report was filed to Google's Android issue tracker system, outlining the ways that system-wide temporal dithering was negatively affecting users. The symptoms sound an awful lot like an article I wrote over two years ago about how the flickering effects of PWM dimming were causing me headaches and making me nauseous.

However, unlike PWM dimming, temporal dithering can be introduced to a phone after purchase, sometimes years later. Apple's iPhones are among the worst offenders of this tactic, forcing users to find ways to "downgrade" the iOS version to an older one (often iOS 17) or face debilitating issues.

Plenty of Android phones are at fault too, and while Android users have a far wider range of choice than Apple provides, the list of phones that are both certified flicker-free and the ones that don't use temporal dithering has dwindled to near-zero. Now, it's time for Google to put in the work for new accessibility options to help an entire swath of users from having to put down smartphones altogether.

What is temporal dithering?

Displays are usually made up of millions of pixels, all individually displaying colors that make up the images we see on our phones. To make these colors, pixels adjust the hue each of their red, green, or blue colored subpixels. Think of it a bit like when Bob Ross dips his paintbrush into a crimson red, then an azure blue to make some kind of lovely purple for a mountainscape.

But temporal dithering, also known as FRC or Frame Rate Control, is different. Instead of just showing a solid set of colors to create one color, temporal dithering flashes subpixels back and forth between colors to create a color that doesn't exist. Your eye sees this "new" color because that's how the human eye works. Flash something fast enough in front of one, and it starts seeing a solid or moving image instead of a series of flashing images.

It's a clever engineering trick that saves companies R&D dollars, allowing them to use cheaper panels and still get away with saying their phones or displays show "billions of colors," even if they technically can't. But of course, just as is the case with PWM dimming, displaying a flashing light or color to some people will cause them to get headaches, nausea, or, at worst, a seizure.

Avoiding it is nearly impossible

People sensitive to temporal dithering have a much harder time finding suitable devices for three main reasons. First, while some monitor companies readily list FRC on spec sheets, smartphone companies do not.

That means the only way to know if a phone or tablet uses dithering is by either experiencing symptoms or finding a review that dives deep into the display. I try to include these numbers on any review I publish, but I'm just one person, and there are far too many devices for me to be able to test on my own.

Aside from finding the existence of flickering itself, there's no published rate at which these pixels flicker. At least with PWM dimming, most manufacturers now advertise the existence of PWM dimming and the dimming rate. Phones from brands like Samsung Galaxy and Google Pixel run at a very slow 240-480Hz rate, while other brands like OnePlus and Honor push that number up to between 2160Hz and 4320Hz. The faster, the better for humans.

No one knows how fast pixels flash when temporal dithering is used, outside of the engineering teams that create the algorithms, of course. Because of this, there's no way to know which phones have a "safe" level of flickering and which are bad for you. All we know is that when phones employ temporal dithering, some users experience real pain and cannot use those phones.

Lastly, there's no specific color, app, or even activity on the phone that could trigger temporal dithering to activate. Some companies use temporal dithering around the edge of text to make it smoother or more "readable," while other companies may use it to enhance animations and make them more attractive looking. It's a total mixed bag, and it makes figuring out the right phone an extraordinarily difficult process if you're sensitive to it!

If you want to test for yourself, I recommend this $20 smartphone microscope from Amazon. Find a phone that can do at least 240FPS slow motion video capture — I prefer the OnePlus 12 or OnePlus 13 because both phones can capture 480FPS slow motion — and run the microscope over different parts of the screen.

I often test around the edges of text, on different icons on the home screen, and on both a rainbow gradient and a grayscale gradient. If you see pixels "dancing" between colors, it's likely your display dithers. Check out the GIF above to see what it might look like, as an example.

The subpixels on the right side are flashing between two colors constantly, while the display on the left is displaying solid colors. This was captured on what looks to my eyes like a solid color, so this movement isn't the result of an animation on screen.

What's the solution?

The most immediate thing you can do right now is hop over to the AOSP issue tracker and click the +1 on the temporal dithering issue. If you're affected, share your story in the comments and officially put your name on the tracker. It's like signing a petition, but with a lot more weight behind it. This tells Android engineers that this issue needs to be prioritized in future Android updates. Otherwise, they have no idea there's a problem!

Now, on to the companies that make the smartphones. Since 10-bit color has become the new industry standard for display excellence, companies need to use 10-bit displays whenever possible. An 8-bit screen can display 256 different shades of red, green, or blue in its subpixels, while a 10-bit screen ramps this up to a possible 1024 hues per subpixel.

In general, only OLED can properly display 10-bit color without any sort of dithering nonsense. If you see an LCD that claims it's 10-bit, the manufacturer is likely being misleading. Even many 8-bit LCDs use 6-bit panels and employ FRC/dithering to achieve an 8-bit or 10-bit color palette.

The problem with OLED is that it cannot be fully DC-dimmed like a traditional lightbulb. There is no such thing as a completely flicker-free OLED. It's impossible. Instead, there are "safe ranges" that exist for most users, but a subset of users will never be able to use OLED because of this problem.

Those folks need an accessibility option that allows them to disable dithering or FRC completely. Otherwise, the only safe options are E Ink phones, and all of those have some sort of significant limitations for modern workflows or usages. I recently wrote about how TCL has removed temporal dithering on its latest NXTPAPER 4.0 tablets when using specific settings, and we need to see other manufacturers start doing the same.

This is particularly important for LCDs, as users who are the most sensitive to flicker either have to choose between an LCD or an E Ink device. Introducing something like FRC/dithering to an LCD completely defeats the point of these displays as a safe medium, and both hardware manufacturers and OS developers like Google need to implement ways of turning this off completely.

The aforementioned Android bug report has already been assigned to an engineer and tagged as a "feature request" in hopes of getting a new accessibility option for affected users. Google has had accessibility options in place for color blind users for years, which statistically make up less than 4% of the world's population. We don't know the number of people negatively affected by color dithering, but we know that people who are affected by it cannot use any phone with it at all.

This is an important differentiator between some accessibility options, which are made simply for comfort or convenience reasons, and the one we're asking Google to make. Without this new option, an entire subset of users may be unable to use any Android phones at all, especially as support for older phones ends.

Android is, by far, the world's largest operating system, and that statistic isn't changing anytime soon. Now that we know Google is combining ChromeOS and Android, that number is only going to get higher. Now is the time to act, Google. I know you can do it, and now that you know it's a problem, I hope it's only a matter of time before we get a fix.

In my quest to find a display that looks good and doesn't hurt my eyes, I've narrowed it down to a small handful of choices. E Ink is often lauded as the most eye-friendly type of display available, and while it certainly looks and feels a lot more natural than a traditional display, companies like TCL are attempting to bridge the gap between E Ink's readability and a traditional display's smoothness.

With the launch of the NXTPAPER 11 Plus tablet at the end of June, TCL is ushering in a new era of display technology with NXTPAPER 4.0, the next-generation entry into TCL's fascinating ePaper technology. NXTPAPER 4.0 is brighter, more color-accurate, and features a slew of new eye-friendly enhancements that set a new standard for LCD technology.

Like previous NXTPAPER devices, the NXTPAPER 11 Plus features a protective layer on top of the display that's not only matte — similar to Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra display — but it's got a paperlike texture underneath to simulate a more natural appearance. It also features three separate color modes that can be used to best recreate a paper-like experience: regular mode, color paper mode, and ink paper mode, all with a tap of the new NXTPAPER key at the top of the tablet.

Even better, the tablet is dirt-cheap, retailing for just $249 at Walmart. The U.S. version doesn't ship with a stylus, but it's available as a $39 add-on if you want it. Now, if we could just get more of the TCL 60 series in the U.S. with NXTPAPER 4.0 displays, things would be really good.

The colors, Duke

While I deeply appreciate the paper-like appearance of the imagery presented on the 11-inch tablet's screen, it's the enhanced color accuracy that makes the biggest difference for sensitive eyes. It's not because more accurate colors inherently mean a display is more comfortable. Rather, a display that can naturally display more colors is best because it doesn't have to fake it to make it.

A non-insignificant number of modern displays use what's called color dithering to make the display appear higher quality than it actually is. This clever engineering trick flashes a pixel quickly back and forth between two colors, making your eyes see a color that doesn't actually exist. The problem is that, like with PWM dimming, any sort of quick flickering like this can give users splitting headaches (or worse).

TCL NXTPAPER 3.0 and earlier used color dithering because the technology wasn't capable of displaying 8-bit or 10-bit color naturally, but NXTPAPER 4.0 changes that. In regular color mode, you can disable all the NXTVISION features in display settings, fully removing all color dithering in my tests.

I measure this by hooking a OnePlus 13 up to an inexpensive smartphone microscope that I picked up on Amazon for $20. I use this phone specifically because it's able to use 480FPS slow motion, while most flagships (iPhone, Galaxy, and Pixel) top out at 240FPS.

I then pull up several different images and hold the microscope up to the display for a moment to capture any potential pixel movement. My tests include a rainbow gradient, a grayscale gradient, three different gray images set to 25%, 50%, and 75%, plus a look at the edges of text and icons on the home screen.

The most common place you'll find dithering is around the edges of icons and text, as well as on grays 50% and darker. In regular mode, the TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus didn't show any signs of dithering, something flicker-sensitive users have been begging for in an era when display and phone manufacturers entirely ignore science and opt for more vibrant displays instead of prioritizing the long-term health of their users.

Unfortunately, NXTPAPER's two additional display modes, color paper and ink paper, both use dithering to achieve their unique visual effects. Users who aren't sensitive to dithering — which, thankfully, seems to be more people than not — will enjoy these other two modes for different kinds of content.

Matte for the win

Adding a special matte layer on top of a display is one of the things that makes the best E Ink tablets such a joy to read on, and it's one of the reasons NXTPAPER looks as nice as it does, too.

Matte layers cut down on reflections and both make it easier to see the display in any light, plus help diffuse the light in a way that's generally considered easier on the eyes. In fact, these layers are often so diffusive that you can't see the individual pixels under the matte layer, even with a microscope.

NXTPAPER has, as you might expect, the most paper-like diffusion layer. It has a texture that resembles plant fibers, as you'd expect to see when viewing a piece of paper under a microscope.

In the image above, I compared the NXTPAPER 11 Plus with the Daylight Computer, which uses a reflective black & white LCD display, a Bigme B1051C Pro, which uses a color E Ink Kaleido 3 display, a Pixel Tablet, which uses a standard LCD screen, and a good old fashioned piece of paper.

The Pixel Tablet's glossy screen is representative of all traditional displays. Whether it's LCD, OLED, micro-LED, or something else entirely, all of these displays see you staring straight at a collection of millions of pixels that are typically made up of red, green, and blue subpixels.

Not only does the diffusion layer help cut down on the eye strain that comes with staring directly at a light source, but it also provides an appearance that looks more like natural fibers. That means reading a web page or even watching a video makes the display look and feel more like looking at them on the pages of a book.

The problem with a traditional matte layer like this is that it significantly reduces the perceived brightness. While it's impossible to see how bright this display could have been without the matte layer, my light meter tells me that it tops out at around 500 nits. That's a lot lower than the Galaxy S25 Ultra's outdoor brightness, which tops out at around 2,000 nits.

TCL could circumvent this by allowing the display to accept natural light, similar to how E Ink and RLCD work, but that would require significant re-engineering. TCL doesn't advertise this as an outdoor-friendly display anyway, though, so this wouldn't be necessary unless the company is planning to branch out.

I also found that the display's minimum brightness was still too bright for my liking, something that was pretty easily fixed by enabling the Extra Dim accessibility setting. Thankfully, the NXTPAPER 11 Plus doesn't use PWM dimming at all, so dropping the brightness isn't detrimental to my eyeballs. This is a true DC-dimmed LCD panel and features no flickering at all when using standard color mode.

The viewing angles could also use a lot of work. NXTPAPER's unique structure makes this challenging to solve, but given TCL's display expertise and the significant advancements this technology has made in a few short years, I'm confident they'll be able to solve it in the future.

If you plan to do a lot of outdoor reading, E Ink tablets from companies like Bigme and Boox, as well as RLCD tablets from companies like Daylight, are the way to go. Its display gets brighter than E Ink or RLCD tablets, but the display isn't able to accept natural light like those displays, so it's harder to see outside.

For indoor reading, however, the TCL NXTPAPER 11 Plus is a superb choice, offering some interesting color modes and a uniquely soft, eye-friendly image. The matte display means you can read near or under a light without having to awkwardly angle it to avoid a reflection, too. That, combined with the flicker-free, soft image, makes this incredibly pleasant and advances NXTPAPER technology in a way I had hoped for.

As you step out into the blazing sun this summer, it's almost guaranteed that you'll have to squint to see your phone's display. While smartphone displays have gotten stupidly bright in the last few years, many are still difficult to see in direct sunlight.

That's where the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra comes in. While some of the best Android phones have brighter displays, the Galaxy S25 Ultra turns the tables by implementing a brilliant anti-glare layer that makes it dead easy to see in the sunlight, and that's great for anyone who spends a lot of time outdoors, especially this time of year.

But not all is rosy with Samsung's latest flagship display. While the display excels in several areas, lingering problems from the Galaxy S24 Ultra haven't been properly addressed. Let's take a deeper dive into what makes the Galaxy S25 Ultra so good to use outside and why it's a little tougher to enjoy indoors.

And with Prime Day right around the corner, be sure to check out some Galaxy S25 Ultra deals ↓, as some pretty hot ones are already live.

Comfort is key

In the modern era, all flagship phone displays look good. This applies to most phone specs these days, from performance to camera quality, which means differentiating products usually comes down to one or two categories that a product is strongest in.

Most display reviews and analysis focus too much on lab tests and not enough on the human part of the equation. Most people don't care about the difference between 97% and 99% color accuracy, and it's unlikely most people will ever notice that difference anyway, even if you hold two phones next to each other. Instead, I want to focus on the human quotient for these display reviews.

In the case of the Galaxy S25 Ultra, its display is weakest in the comfort category, but it has some standout attributes that are noteworthy. Let's start with the positive!

Reflectivity

Samsung's anti-glare filter, first introduced on the Galaxy S24 Ultra, is one of the best things Samsung has ever done for screen visibility. In the above images, I compare it to the OnePlus 13, our current favorite Android phone, and one with higher peak brightness capabilities than the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

Despite being a brighter display, the OnePlus 13 is harder to see outdoors because of the reflectivity of the glass. The Galaxy S25 Ultra is incredibly clean and vibrant, while it's just plain difficult to see the OnePlus 13. Now, to be clear, I'm not picking on OnePlus here. Nearly every other phone on the market is just as hard to see, and it's because almost no other company uses the type of anti-glare glass the S25 Ultra has.

The only problem here is that most screen protectors for the phone don't have an anti-glare layer applied, meaning everything that makes the display so visible outdoors gets ruined. Make sure you get one like this official Samsung anti-reflection film to keep the display's best attribute from being ruined!

Eye comfort settings

Samsung's blue light filter, which the company calls "Eye Comfort Shield," helps block blue light by reducing the intensity of blue subpixels. This makes the display appear much yellower and does a good job of reducing blue light emissions.

You can see this in action in the image above, which I captured with a microscope using a pure white image on the screen. Note how the intensity of the blue subpixels is notably reduced when Eye Comfort Shield is enabled.

By default, the mode will automatically adjust blue light based on the time of day. During daylight hours, blue light will be close to the default setting as if the mode were disabled. At night, the blue light will be automatically reduced to help better match the circadian rhythm of the human body, since most natural blue light only occurs during the day from sunlight.

Unfortunately, Samsung's only real eye care solution is blue light blocking, a problem that you'll learn more about in the brightness section below.

Color accuracy and depth

When the Galaxy S24 Ultra first launched, the display was considered "washed out" by some long-time Samsung fans. Samsung answered by adding in a vividness slider and enhancing the colors of the display. These same tweaks also made it to the Galaxy S25 Ultra.

The color calibration looks identical between both phones, but the Galaxy S25 Ultra does a better job of keeping colors more accurate when viewing the screen from an angle than the S24 Ultra does.

Samsung's AMOLED panels on both the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Ultra exhibit color banding that's not seen on most other modern flagship phones. The main problem is that Samsung continues to use 8-bit panels in their phones despite the entire industry switching to 10-bit as the standard.

For the test, I used an 8-bit and 10-bit gradient comparison image found on GitHub. On the Galaxy S25 Ultra's panel, there's little to no difference between the 8-bit and 10-bit gradients. The OnePlus 13 shows additional colors throughout all the gradients, although the green gradient showed up best on camera.

Many users have complained about color banding on wallpaper and other images, even ones taken with the Galaxy S25 Ultra's camera, since that camera can capture 10-bit images. And while Samsung absolutely needs to upgrade their displays to 10-bit to keep up with the pack, I want to commend them for not stooping to using color dithering to fake 10-bit color. Some other companies, like Xiaomi, use color dithering to fake deeper colors and it's painful for some users because of the flickering pixels.

Brightness and dimming

Everything this phone tells you about its brightness levels is a lie. Setting the brightness slider at 100% never actually means 100% brightness under any circumstance.

Normal "100%" brightness, like most phones, doesn't come close to the advertised peak brightness. That's normally reserved for the dedicated "sunlight mode" that gets activated when a bright light, like the sun, shines on the screen's light sensor. We can force this by holding a flashlight up to the display and measuring the nit output. Even in sunlight mode, the display tops out at around 2,000 nits.

At normal 100% brightness, this number sits at around 800 nits, which is surprisingly low for a modern phone. Extra brightness mode brings this number up to around 1,500 nits, which is closer to an expected value from "100% brightness," but that's not the biggest problem with this display's brightness capabilities.

Instead, that comes down to Samsung using Pulse Width Modulation (PWM dimming) to control brightness. This means there is no point in time where the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display hits its maximum brightness potential, the way the Galaxy S24 FE's display does, for example.

Worse yet, Samsung is still using a very low frequency 480Hz PWM rate for the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display. Phones like the Honor Magic 7 Pro use 4320Hz PWM dimming and, even then, Honor's phones only use this at low brightness to keep colors accurate and pixels evenly lit.

Despite all this, the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display still suffers from mura, an effect that means pixels are not evenly lit across the entire panel.

At 20% brightness, a grain pattern is clearly visible on the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display. While you can see it at varying ranges of brightness, it's most visible at low brightness levels and was a problem even back when the Galaxy S24 Ultra launched. While we thought Samsung had fixed this in the S25 Ultra's display, clearly the problem has not gone away.

Compare it with the OnePlus 13's display above on the same flat grey background at the same brightness level, and you'll see the difference. The OnePlus 13's pixels look evenly lit across the board, while the Galaxy S25 Ultra's have a clear "dirty" or grainy pattern.

Some people are more sensitive to this than others, and the effect tends to be worse on some colors than others. In other words, your mileage may vary depending on what you do and how much this effect annoys you.

Streaming and Gaming Performance

With the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Samsung introduced a new ProScaler display engine that automatically upscales lower-resolution content to fit your screen. In other words, does the Galaxy S25 display hold up when streaming in 1080p vs. 4K?

The answer lies in the display resolution you've chosen. Out of the box, the Galaxy S25 Ultra is set to FHD+ resolution (2340 x 1080). However, ProScaler isn't active unless you manually enter display settings and change the resolution to QHD+ (3120 x 1440). In other words, most Galaxy S25 Ultra users probably will never see this feature in action.

Once you set the resolution to QHD+, ProScaler is automatically active and will do its best to upscale content to fit the phone's panel resolution better. There's no way to turn it off if QHD+ resolution is selected.

The idea here is that a 720p or 1080p image doesn't fit perfectly pixel-for-pixel on a QHD panel, so AI upscaling is needed to attempt a best fit. People have learned from the Nintendo Switch 2 that stretching a lower resolution image on a higher resolution screen makes it look worse because the image is "blurry" or "fuzzy," while a lower resolution panel at the same size would look slightly sharper.

That's because the pixels are virtually stretched to fit onto a higher-resolution panel. Upscaling only makes sense for lower resolution sources, so an older movie like Shrek is a good fit for the tech. After all, a native 4K video doesn't need to be upscaled to QHD since 4K is already higher resolution.

As a whole, I think ProScaler does a nice job of making 720p and 1080p images pop better on the Galaxy S25 Ultra when the phone is set to QHD+ resolution. The difference is subtle, and I'm not sure most people would notice it, although the placebo effect is sure to trick more than a few people into thinking they see something significantly better than what this is designed to deliver.

Good, but not the best

While the Galaxy S25 Ultra represents the best Samsung phone the company has ever made, that doesn't mean that every component is the best the company has to offer. The display on the Galaxy S25 Ultra shines particularly bright outside, where the anti-glare filter makes it more easily visible than any other phone I've ever used. It's a brilliant spot of engineering that I wish more phones would copy!

But while blue light control and color accuracy are good, Samsung's continued use of 8-bit panels means color banding is more common on the Galaxy S25 Ultra than on any other competing phone in this price range. Luminance consistency and brightness management are also mediocre, with noticeable grain at low brightness and low-HZ PWM dimming at all brightness levels.

While the display looks good on the surface and does a great job of highlighting the strengths of AMOLED — vibrant colors, deep blacks, and no ghosting — the quality of the panel Samsung is using leaves a lot to be desired for a $1,300 phone. Even budget Android phones offer better dimming methods and faster PWM rates, native 10-bit depth, and no mura.

Does this mean the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display is bad? No, not at all, but there's plenty of room for improvement on the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

As many of us anticipate the announcement of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, leaks and rumors continue to point to it being the thinnest phone Samsung has ever made. At a rumored 3.9mm thin when unfolded, it makes the 5.6mm Z Fold 6 look like a chonker. However, it also raises a few simple questions, such as: how would Samsung achieve this without making big sacrifices, particularly in the camera performance?

Aside from a thinner phone, one of the biggest requests from Z Fold users has been for Samsung to improve the cameras. Galaxy Z Fold phones have never had bad cameras, but there's never been a Z Fold that could outperform the best camera phones. This has long been a perplexing problem, given that the Z Fold costs nearly $2,000 and has never been "thin," but can Samsung really make the Galaxy Z Fold 7 thin and give it an award-winning camera?

Yes, absolutely, and two other ultra-thin foldables are proof. In our review of the Oppo Find N5, which is currently the thinnest phone in the world and a book style foldable like the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Harish said "the cameras on the Find N5 are better than the Galaxy S25 and Pixel 9, and that's a big deal in and of itself." Even Samsung's own Galaxy S25 Edge with its 200MP camera sensor proves it's possible.

Since the upcoming Honor Magic V5 is set to be the most direct competitor to the Galaxy Z Fold 7 and is said to be at least as thin as Samsung's phone, I thought it would be fun to take last year's Honor Magic V3 and test its cameras against the best flagship cameras of 2025. The results show that Samsung can deliver a truly stunning flagship camera experience on its upcoming ultra-thin foldable if it really wants to.

Honor Magic V3: Primary cameras

The Honor Magic V3 comes in at 4.4mm thin unfolded and sports a sizable camera island around back with a 50MP main sensor. Honor has impressed us with its photography prowess over the past few years, particularly with motion capture capabilities, including a powerful suite of software tricks behind it.

So we'll begin in the late spring garden, which is still full of flowers and vibrant colors.

If I had to choose one main attribute to critique the Honor Magic V3's photos, it's that they're often underexposed, and the dynamic range is a bit lacking when compared to the OnePlus 13 or Honor Magic 7 Pro. All three phones use different sensors for the main camera. The Magic V3 actually uses a nearly identical size sensor as the Galaxy Z Fold 6, so physical size isn't helping Honor's ultrathin foldable at all.

Some of these parameters are tweakable in the software, but the main issue is that this Sony IMX906 sensor is often found in mid-range phones, and the performance reflects that. Still, I think most of the shots from the primary sensor of the Magic V3 look good, even if they aren't fully up to flagship standards at every level.

Honor Magic V3: Ultrawide cameras

Like most flagships, the Honor Magic V3's ultrawide camera features autofocus, so it doubles as both an ultrawide camera and a macro camera. It uses a lower megapixel count than the other four phones I pitted it against and, oddly enough, no one seems to know what sensor Honor used here. The company doesn't usually divulge its camera sensors, and the usual software tools I use to find out don't want to tell me, either.

The Honor Magic V3's ultrawide camera produces seriously stunning macro shots, and it's hard to tell the difference between its images and ones from the other flagship phones I tested. It's impressive just how close you can get the phone to an object and still get a clear focus.

Standard ultrawide shots look a little softer on both Honor phones when compared to the OnePlus 13 or Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, and Honor's tuning tends to lean toward cooler colors, while Samsung likes more vibrant, warm colors. I prefer Samsung's tuning in that arena, but the OnePlus 13 is normally quite spot on with color science on the ultrawide camera. Either way, the Magic V3 did a good job keeping up with the flagships here.

Honor Magic V3: Telephoto cameras

Telephoto cameras have gotten really interesting over the past few years. Manufacturers all seem to opt for very different sensor types, sizes, and lens zoom distances, with the Galaxy S25 Ultra offering up an additional fourth zoom lens when compared to most other flagship phones.

At 3-10x zoom using the camera viewfinder, the Honor Magic V3 holds up quite well. In the 10x shots, you can tell the Magic V3's shot is slightly softer, but on its own, I doubt anyone would notice this. The telephoto camera is quite good and does a great job of zooming in on things. Like the primary camera, this one also struggles with underexposure and dynamic range at times.

Zooming in beyond 10x is far less advisable, though. Both 30X shots show how much more detail a flagship phone with a significantly larger sensor can pull in, even with the slight 0.5x zoom advantage the Magic V3's telephoto lens has over the OnePlus 13 and Honor Magic 7 Pro.

Honor Magic V3: Front cameras

Folding phone manufacturers still include a small front-facing camera above the cover screen on book-style foldables like the Honor Magic V3 and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold series, but these are usually smaller sensors than regular flagship phones. Because of that, companies like to encourage users to open the phone and use the rear sensors as a selfie camera.

Despite the razor-thin frame, the front-facing camera of the Magic V3 is impressively capable. Unlike some of the other cameras, there's no real difference between the quality of the Magic V3's front facing camera and that of the rest of the flagships. If anything, Honor's color science is ever so slightly off, as my shirt in one of the shots was teal, not dark blue. The OnePlus 13 nailed the color in that one.

You can do it, Samsung!

Based on what I'm seeing, there's no reason Samsung can't outfit the Galaxy Z Fold 7 with a flagship-level camera if it truly wants to deliver the "ultra experience" it's been teasing. The latest leaks show an ultrathin phone with a sizable camera hump, and that gives me hope that we'll see some big upgrades this time around.

A larger 200MP main sensor is expected, which should put it on par with the Galaxy S25 Ultra and the Galaxy S25 Edge. Our Galaxy S25 Edge camera review proves this sensor has what it takes, even in a thin phone.

While I don't have high expectations that we'll get a 5x telephoto sensor in the Galaxy Z Fold 7, an upgraded sensor behind the 3x lens can still produce impressive results, assuming Samsung is able to cram a better sensor under that lens.

And with Samsung teasing a "smarter" camera, it'll be interesting to see how the company utilizes AI to further enhance the camera experience.

For more news and information on Samsung’s upcoming foldables, check out our Ultimate Guide.

I've been on an E Ink kick lately. From phones to tablets, e-readers, and even monitors, I've been trying to get more eye-friendly displays into my daily life to alleviate the strain that backlights put on our eyes and brains.

But while E Ink phones are fantastic, they're not something you switch to overnight. An E Ink phone's display is less capable in most ways when compared to a standard smartphone display. They normally can't display colors at all, although a few color E Ink tablets now exist, and their refresh rates mean that watching videos isn't a pleasant experience.

By definition, most E Ink phones can be considered "minimalist" phones. But is a camera a necessity that falls in with a minimalist lifestyle? Each of these phones has a camera, and while it does take color pictures, you might want to carry a second phone — or a standard camera — around with you.

Color photos, black and white screen

After getting my first E Ink phone, one of the first thoughts that occurred to me was how the camera works. Since these E Ink displays are only black and white, does that mean the camera sensors are also black and white? After all, black and white camera modules were all the rage on smartphones less than a decade ago.

It turns out that the camera sensors on the Minimal Phone and the Mudita Kompakt are just regular, albeit not very good, camera sensors. Let's take a look at a few photos from each.

Neither phone will win any awards for camera quality, but the Mudita Kompakt takes better pictures, in general. Its images are softer, but colors are far more accurate, dynamic range is substantially better in most circumstances, and it's less likely to take blurry photos than the Minimal Phone.

Ironically, the Minimal Phone is the one that's got a better camera software experience. All of this revolves around speed, though, not quality. You can quickly launch the camera by double-tapping the power button on the Minimal Phone, something Android fans have gotten used to and love, while the Mudita Kompakt requires you to unlock the phone first, then tap the camera.

Once you're in the camera app, the viewfinder speed and photo capture speed on the Minimal Phone are also quite a bit faster. The problem is that the screen's refresh rate is sometimes buggy, and launching the camera will default to the slowest refresh rate, making image capture a pretty awful experience until you switch the refresh rate back. The video above will show you this in action.

Opening up the possibilities

A friend of mine with a Minimal Phone tipped me off to a camera hack that works pretty well most of the time. Instead of using the built-in camera app, just download the Open Camera app from the Google Play Store and use the camera2 API.

That last part seems daunting, but it's actually quite easy and can be done with any Android phone. Just open the Open Camera app, click the settings wheel in the top right, scroll down to camera API, then select camera2 from the list. This setting will stick, so you shouldn't have to do it again.

For the most part, using this app with camera2 selected makes a notable difference in camera quality. I found some exceptions, but I'd say it's better 80% of the time. Here are a few examples as proof.

In general, Open Camera, with the camera2 API selected, regularly delivers better image detail, a wider dynamic range, and more accurate colors. I included the selfie one as one weird example that doesn't jive with the others, although Open Camera still delivered better color accuracy than the built-in Minimal Phone camera app.

If you pick up a Minimal Phone, I recommend switching to Open Camera as your default camera app. The occasional quality enhancement is worth it.

Regardless of which of these two phones you pick, however, I'd recommend sticking a second phone in your other pocket to use as a camera. Even an older phone will do, just wipe the data on it and use it only as a camera for the most important moments. If nothing else, a compact digital camera will also do the job.

Either way, E Ink phones are best for staving your digital addictions and healing your eyes, not taking good photos. If you're not ready to jump onto the E Ink phone, maybe try picking up an Android-powered, phone-sized e-reader like the Boox Palma or Palma 2 and ease your way into the experience, instead.

Chances are, you've used an Amazon Kindle before. The first time I set my eyes on that gorgeous paper-like display told me it was the future of display technology, but its obvious limitations meant that future was likely decades away.

As we near the 20th anniversary of the first Kindle, E Ink is better than ever. It not only supports thousands of colors for a more magazine-like experience, but with refresh rates at around 40Hz, it's finally good enough for all kinds of content, not just books. As a result, we've got E Ink tablets, monitors, and even smartphones that can do basically everything you need.

But another display technology may replace it in most devices. It's called Transflective Liquid-Crystal Display or Reflective Liquid-Crystal Display, often abbreviated as RLCD. RLCD takes a "traditional" LCD subpixel structure and gives it the reflective properties of E Ink, making it visible in any kind of light without using a backlight, all with up to a 120Hz refresh rate. It sounds like a win-win, but like anything, it's not without its faults. Let's break them down.

Daylight, meet computer

I've been using a tablet for the past few weeks called the Daylight Computer. While the tablet is typically marketed toward the same crowd that would be interested in a minimalist phone, I'm most interested in it because I can use it outdoors during the summer without squinting my eyes.

The tablet itself doesn't look particularly special at first glance, but its design is thoughtful and impressive in a way that doesn't shine on a spec list. It has sizable bezels, which is actually beneficial on a tablet, as it provides a convenient area to hold.

The back of the Daylight Computer is made of a soft-touch material, giving it grippiness that aluminum tablets don't have. Plus, it's got a nice contour that fits your hand, unlike the rest of the overly thin and flat tablets.

And while these design traits are wonderful, it's the display that really shines for me, pun fully intended. Go outside, turn off the backlight, and enjoy the brightest, fastest display you've ever seen. It's 120Hz, so it's liquid smooth, no matter what you're doing. More importantly, the refresh rate ensures that it doesn't feel slow or sluggish, unlike even the fastest E Ink displays.

Daylight Computer's founders ensured that the bespoke display was 100% flicker-free. While many displays claim to be flicker-free via TUV Rhineland certification, most of the time that means there's no perceivable flicker, not that the display is actually flicker-free. Daylight Computer is fully flicker-free, doesn't use color dithering or FRC, and is completely eye-safe based on my own testing.

Its reflective nature also ensures that it works perfectly in any kind of light, and the dual color backlight means it's comfortable to use even in dim light. I particularly love that there's no perceivable ghosting, the way many LCDs suffer from, and the backlight doesn't have that faint glow that most LCDs have, either.

It's not the first RLCD device by any means, but it's one of the best examples of how good the technology can be. Of course, like any technology, there are a few downsides. First, Daylight Computer's RLCD is black & white only. While it'd be fair to assume this was done for "minimalist purposes," it was actually due to reflectivity, according to the company's founder and CEO, Anjan Katta.

Katta told me that transflective LCDs become significantly dimmer when color is added to the mix due to the way pixel color filters operate. As a result of testing, the company decided that daylight visibility was more important than color. This review of the HannsNote 2, a color RLCD tablet, shows this off well. Check the 3:50 mark to see what I mean.

RLCD vs E Ink

So what's better, RLCD or E Ink? As with any display technology, the answer depends on your needs. E Ink has been the go-to standard for a long time for anyone concerned with eye health and the negative effects of backlights with PWM dimming, but RLCD is also completely flicker-free.

In fact, it's more flicker-free than any current E Ink product because the 120Hz refresh rate falls in the safest range, according to research. E Ink needs to refresh the display fully from time to time, and the relatively slow refresh rate (under 40Hz) has the potential to bother people susceptible to epilepsy.

E Ink also heavily relies on using specific screen modes relative to the content. Faster refresh rates used for videos and website scrolling reduce the overall contrast and detail in order to make E Ink's magnetic dots move faster. RLCD uses a traditional display pixel structure, so the lights are either on or off and don't need to change modes for different content.

The RLCD screen on the Daylight Computer produces more detail than any of the E Ink tablets I have because of its higher contrast image, but it still somehow comes off looking "softer" than E Ink. Preference will dictate which look you prefer, but there's no denying the difference in contrast the Daylight Computer's RLCD provides.

Furthermore, color RLCD has issues with contrast on deep colors, based on existing color RLCD tablets, while color E Ink looks great across the board.

Whites on E Ink also look a lot better as they're actually white. The RLCD on the Daylight Computer has a very warm, green tint to it, which doesn't bother me, but it's worth noting as a quirk of the technology. Viewing angles are also poorer than E Ink, but again, I'm not sure how much this affects actual use of the product.

RLCD also requires constant power to display an image, while E Ink magnetizes the image once, and it stays there until physically changed again. Think of E Ink a bit like an Etch a Sketch; once the image is there, it doesn't go away until you change or erase it.

That means RLCD tablets like the Daylight Computer can last days on a charge, but E Ink tablets may last weeks, even with regular use. Regardless of this, RLCD's 120Hz performance may be worth the tradeoff. It certainly is for me.

I've previously used an RLCD monitor, the EazeEye 1.0, and while that was illuminated from behind by natural light to ensure it's bright enough for normal computer use, I'm confident that a bit more time will produce something similar in a tablet that will eclipse color E Ink for most people. The HannsNote 2 is a great start for color RLCD tablets, and I hope to see more color RLCD tablets with great frontlights in the future.

It's hard to believe considering how long it took for Samsung to deliver the One UI 7 update, but the first One UI 8 beta is already here for the Galaxy S25 family. One UI 8 brings Android 16 to the Galaxy S25 for the first time, letting select users try out new features before they're publicly released to everyone.

For the most part, One UI 8 is an iterative update with UI tweaks and new feature additions for several of Samsung's core apps, including Samsung Health, Reminders, Routines, Internet, Calendar, Contacts, and more.

The update also refreshes important parts of the UI, including a revamped Quick Share UI that makes it easier to send and receive files, additional accessibility options for users with sight and hearing impairments, plus fixes for hard-to-find UI elements like Auracast.

While the update includes dozens of changes, I've picked out my eight favorite, with a few follow-up favorites found during my time with the beta on the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

AI Select meets Speed Racer

With One UI 7, Samsung upgraded its aging Smart Select tool to what it now calls AI Select, adding important context-sensitive actions that make the tool far more useful than it used to be. But it took seemingly forever to start up in One UI 7 and got quite irritating to use on a regular basis.

That's been completely fixed in One UI 8. It used to take roughly 5 seconds from tapping the "AI Select" button to the time you could actually select content on your screen. Now, tapping AI select makes the feature effectively immediately available, taking me about 2 seconds to circle an image on the Galaxy S25 Ultra's display.

Multitasking is 90:10 better

When the OnePlus Open came out in 2023, it blew our minds for several reasons, but the phone's multitasking capabilities were among the best features to use daily. Paramount to that was something called OnePlus Canvas, a feature that let you dock an app to 10% of one side of the screen and quickly switch between any running app by tapping the window.

Android 16 and One UI 8 have adopted this 90:10 feature, as it's called, letting you resize a split window down to 10% of its normal size. This lets you easily juggle two apps with a single tap without feeling like the app is squashed, as normal split screen tends to feel. Holy cow is it ever a massive upgrade on the normal split window multitasking, and it'll give me a reason to finally use more than one app at a time.

Quick Share got some quicker tweaks

Quick Share has been one of the most useful additions to Android in quite some time, but receiving files from people who aren't contacts has been a bit of a hassle. A fancy new UI change from Samsung makes this much easier, and it all starts when you tap the Quick Share button in the quick toggles pane.

The familiar Send screen is still the default when opening Quick Share, but a new Receive tab makes it simple to quickly get files from anyone so long as the window is open. No more selecting from the "no one, contacts only, or everyone" options. Just open the Receive window and you're good to go, no matter who the other person is.

More powerful reminders and routines

One of the dumber things Google ever did was remove the ability to add a location to reminders in Google Assistant. That makes tools like Samsung's Reminder app much better to use, as you cna have it remind you of something when you get to a location, at a certain and or date, and more. The upgraded Reminders app now also includes quick category buttons at the top, making it easy to find everything you need at a glance.

Routines also got an upgrade, now letting you select from new preset routines like weather, which is pretty slick if you need a reminder to grab your umbrella or rain coat before it rains, or sunscreen when the cloudy days end.

Samsung Health gets a bulk up

Once upon a time, I tried to log my food intake so I could track calories, macros, and just do better. The problem is that I always forgot to input my meals, and wouldn't remember until I had forgotten the exact details of what I ate. Now, Samsung Health can remind you to log meals throughout the day, circumventing this common problem.

As you eat better, you can also now use the power of peer pressure to help you workout more often. An upgraded Together feature in Samsung Health lets you issue run distance challenges to all your contacts, setting goals to be the first to run a specific distance each week. It's a great upgrade on the usual step count race.

The better to see (and hear) you with

If you've ever found yourself in need of the zoom tool, found in accessibility settings, you'll know it's a little convoluted to zoom in or out with. One UI 8 fixes this by letting you pinch-to-zoom right in the magnification window, making it far easier to drag the window around and zoom in as you need.

A handful of additional accessibility features are also now available, like keyboard zoom, which enlarges the keys as you need them, or a new mouse pointer that you can control with keyboard keys.

Auracast without the 50-step process

Auracast's announcement last year had Android Central's Derrek Lee feeling like he was in the future. After all, connecting your Bluetooth earbuds to a public broadcast feels like such an alien concept for what has always been a very personal communication standard, but finding and connecting to an Auracast wasn't exactly the most user-friendly task.

Thankfully, Samsung's One UI 8 now lets you scan a QR code to connect to an Auracast, something that's almost certainly going to become commonplace as public spots implement the technology. So long, 50-step process of yesterday!

DeX isn't dead

While the Dex for PC app was killed off in One UI 7, Samsung isn't done with DeX just yet. Hooking up your Samsung phone or tablet to a monitor or TV is easy, and One UI 7 gave the storied feature a fresh coat of paint.

Now, One UI 8 is introducing more options for monitor compatibility, including the ability to choose a resolution (imagine that), or even rotate the projected display in 90-degree increments. That makes it easy to fit on basically any monitor, even if it's mounted sideways.

So much more to see

One UI 8 won't be the huge overhaul that One UI 7 was, which is good. We don't need big overhauls every release. It's just not necessary. So, Samsung is focused on making One UI 7 even better with helpful features and changes that seem to make a lot of sense. Even the weather app, seen above, has a more realistic feel, giving you a better idea of the weather the moment you open it.

Some users on Reddit have reported bugs already, which makes sense since this is a beta release. If you want to check out One UI 8 early, open the Samsung Members app on your Galaxy S25, Galaxy S25 Plus, or Galaxy S25 Ultra, then tap the One UI 8 Beta option in the image carousel at the top. Once you're enrolled, it'll download and install the system update. We don't recommend doing this on your only phone, as bugs could cause problems for any number of apps.

If you come across a bug, use the bug reporting tool to let the developers know so that they can get it fixed in the next beta release. This helps everyone — not just you — so users are encouraged to use the tool as often as possible, even if Samsung knows the bug already exists. This is Samsung's fastest One UI update ever, and it's great to see Samsung working so hard to deliver on that seven year update promise for the Galaxy S25 series so quickly.

Honor is back with another fantastic mid-range flaship phone that looks and feels much more impressive than the price lets on. With IP68 and IP69 water and dust resistance, a 200MP main camera, DC-dimmed display capable of 3840Hz PWM dimming at low brightness, and six years of software updates coming, there are plenty of reasons to be impressed with the Honor 400 Pro.

While there are many parts of a phone you might care about, a phone's display and camera system are the most important things to me. But Honor has steep competition at this price. From the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, the Google Pixel 9a, or even the iPhone 16e, there's no shortage of options to choose from.

I'm taking a look at how the Honor 400 Pro compares with the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE camera, in particular, as it's the phone most people would likely choose if given a lineup of similarly-priced devices. Honor also has the standard Honor 400, and that goes up against the Galaxy A56.

Honor 400 Pro camera review: specs and modes

The camera hardware on the Honor 400 Pro looks a lot more like a flagship phone than a mid-range one. Not only does it have three rear cameras — something that gives it an immediate advantage over the Pixel 9a and iPhone 16e — but Honor's camera software is basically unmatched in its quality, too.

Last year, I was blown away by what Honor was able to do with AI. While it wasn't quite the all-encompassing buzzword it is today, Honor has fully leaned into the AI domain and describes nearly every mode and feature with the term. It's overused, for sure, but it doesn't make the results any less impressive. Here's a list of all the main modes and editing options you'll get with the Honor 400 Pro:

Honor image engine

• AI Super Zoom
• AI Portrait Snap
• AI Enhanced Portrait
• Al Focal Lengths Portrait
• HD Moving Photo
• Film Simulation Mode
• Harcourt Portrait Mode
• AI Motion Sensing Capture

AI editing

• AI Image to Video
• AI Eraser
• AI Erase Passers-by
• AI Remove Reflection
• Moving Photo Collage
• AI Outpainting
• AI Upscale
• AI Cutout
• AI Face Tune

Honor 400 Pro camera review: Main camera

The Honor 400 Pro's 200MP main camera is impressive on paper and in action. When compared to the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE, there's a clear stylistic difference between the two cameras. Samsung pushes for maximum dynamic range, which often results in very bright shadow areas and sometimes washed out colors.

In both daylight examples below, the sky is the wrong shade of blue and the green hue of the plants is a little too bright on Samsung's photos. Honor opts for a much richer, deeper color palette and it ends up looking a lot more realistic because of the decision.

As we move indoors and into darker environments, we see the same scenario play out. Samsung's goal is seemingly to make the brightest image possible, often at the detriment of color accuracy. Neither photo looks bad by any means, but Honor's processing ends up looking better and sporting more realistic colors because the company pushes for a more contrast-heavy look, something Pixels have been renowned for historically.

One of the biggest differences between the photos is the handling of bight light sources in dark rooms where the Honor 400 Pro takes a serious lead. The windows are totally blown out in the Galaxy S24 FE's shot. Meanwhile, they're not only well balanced in the Honor 400 Pro's shot but you can actually make out details.

Honor 400 Pro camera review: Motion capture and portraits

Since the Magic 6 Pro, Honor's motion capture capabilities have become second to none. The company uses a highly-trained AI algorithm to help understand what the camera sees and capture moving objects based on that algorithm. The result is that you almost always get a crisp subject even when the person, pet, or thing is moving the entire time.

I tested this out on several subjects, but these two examples illustrate the main differences between the Galaxy S24 FE and the Honor 400 Pro's motion capture capabilities. Even in broad daylight, the Galaxy S24 FE struggles to capture an object in motion, something that should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever used a Samsung phone.

Honor pointed out that the Honor 400 Pro can capture moving subjects even when using portrait mode this time, and I found the results to be very impressive, so I put it to the test indoors where the light isn't so bright. The Honor 400 Pro did a fantastic job capturing me swinging a sword around in VR, even getting the colors and little details on the headset crisp. The Galaxy S24 FE's colors are not only wrong, but I'm very blurry because of the movement.

Samsung phones have produced some of the best portrait mode photos for years, but last year's Honor 200 Pro gave Honor the edge it needed. Honor is still using the Harcourt portrait-style processing that gives you three main color options, in addition to a new AI portrait mode that can be enabled for greater clarity, especially while using 6x zoom.

As you'll probably expect at this point in the review, the Honor 400 Pro does a superb job of capturing a better photo than the Galaxy S24 FE. Honors portraits are brighter, more vibrant, have better detail, and do a better job of prioritizing lighting on the subject rather than the background. I also found the colors to be a lot more accurate on the Honor 400 Pro, especially with black and brown colors as you'll see on my shirt and one of my chickens.

Honor 400 Pro camera review: Telephoto and zoom

Both the Honor 400 Pro and Samsung Galaxy S24 FE feature a 3x telephoto camera on the back, something you won't find on the Google Pixel 9a or an Apple iPhone 16e, despite being in the same price range. But the Honor 400 Pro features a 50MP sensor behind that lens, while the Galaxy S24 FE has just an 8MP sensor.

Megapixels aren't everything, but there's a very clear difference in the results. Let's start with 2x shots, which are just a crop of the main sensor on both phones. In the two darker indoor shots, the Honor 400 Pro nailed the color of the wood and did a superb job with the lighting. The contrast on the Honor 400 Pro's photos are excellent, while the Galaxy S24 FE is too bright in both shots, particularly in the library with the light leakage from the windows.

Even during the day, there's an obvious different in color accuracy, clarity, and overall details on the Honor 400 Pro versus the Galaxy S24 FE.

Zooming in 3x or greater uses the telephoto sensor on both phones, and it's once again clear which ones does it better the moment you look at any photo. Details, color accuracy, and contrast are all better on the Honor 400 Pro no matter what zoom level is used, resulting in a better photo every time.

Zooming in beyond 10x is a mixed bag on both phones, but the Honor 400 Pro has a greater chance of producing something usable than what I've found from the Galaxy S24 FE. Honor has a built-in AI enhancement mode that can be toggled when zooming in at 15x or further, but I've found this to be less useful than I'd hoped. The 18x zoom of the scarab beetle, for instance, looked exactly the same with AI mode toggled on or off.

Honor 400 Pro camera review: Ultrawide, macro, and selfie

On paper, there's not much of a difference between the Honor 400 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE's ultrawide cameras. Both are a 12MP sensor, but the Honor 400 Pro's is capable of autofocus, helping it to double as a macro camera. To get the same types of macro shots on the Galaxy S24 FE, you'll have to use the 2x zoom button to use the main sensor rather than getting up close to the subject. The result is a significantly better photo from the Honor 400 Pro, with crisper details and better contrast.

Otherwise, ultrawide camera performance is largely identical between the two phones. As a rule of thumb, it seems like the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE's ultrawide camera captures marginally better fine detail, while I prefer the colors and contrast of the Honor 400 Pro's ultrawide camera.

The front-facing cameras couldn't be more different on paper. The Honor 400 Pro uses a new 50MP front-facing camera sensor, while the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE uses a 10MP one. Both are fixed focus sensors with no real depth to them, so using portrait mode is important if you want that classic photo feel.

I expect good portrait results from both companies and neither phone disappoints there. Both feature clean cutouts of me and my pet hen, but the Honor 400 Pro's background blurring is more subtle than the Galaxy S24 FE's. As has been the case in this entire review, the Honor 400 Pro's colors and contrast are better, giving it a better overall look.

Darker environments showcase less of a difference between the two, but those differences remain the same. The Honor 400 Pro has better contrast and colors, even if it's to a much smaller degree than we've seen elsewhere in the review.

Honor 400 Pro camera review: The new mid-range camera champion

The Honor 400 Pro won this test hands down, and it wasn't even close in the vast majority of the categories. Honor's processing is just plain better than Samsung's, with better contrast, more accurate colors, more correct emphasis on prioritizing subjects over backgrounds, substantially better motion capture quality, and greater zoom detail overall.

It's actually hard to find a weak point with the Honor 400 Pro's camera, as it does everything exceedingly well and doesn't seem to struggle no matter what mode is selected. The worst thing I can say about it is that its ultrawide camera isn't better than the Galaxy S24 FE's when taking wide-angle shots, but that changes when getting in close as the Honor 400 Pro's ultrawide camera can use autofocus, allowing it to be used as a 50MP macro camera.

If you're in the market for a good new mid-range phone, there's no better choice than the Honor 400 Pro. It's got a great eye-friendly display which is significantly better than the Pixel 9a or Galaxy S24 FE's screen, six years of software updates to come, a stronger build and design than most phones (not just mid-range ones), plus what's clearly the best mid-range camera you'll find anywhere.

I remember when the first Kindle debuted. "It looks just like paper," they said, and I didn't believe it until I finally got my hands on one several years later. Since then, E Ink has evolved into an entire display category that covers the gamut of devices, from smartphones to tablets, smartwatches, monitors, and even full-fledged PCs.

But, unlike its early iterations, E Ink doesn't have to be just black and white. Like real ink, E Ink now comes in a variety of styles that allow up to 4096 colors to be displayed, giving you a sort of muted, pastel palette. E Ink provides a contrast level that's similar to OLED when the frontlight is off, giving you literal inky blacks in the darkest parts of the image.

While I've had the chance to mess around with most of the best E Ink tablets to date, I only recently got my first color E Ink tablet, the Bigme B1051C Pro. Sure, it's not a name that rolls off the tongue, but you'll forget that the moment you pick it up. It's 1.5mm thinner than our favorite color E Ink tablet, the Onyx Boox Tab Ultra C, and it comes in at 45g lighter than that tablet, too.

Plus, with 50% more RAM and a version of Android that's 2 years newer, you can do a lot more with it than you probably expect.

What the heck is color E Ink, anyway?

You might already know what E Ink is and how it works, but just in case, here's a quick refresher. Traditional displays use a backlight that is then filtered through a red, green, and blue color filter to create colored pixels. The image you see is made up of millions of these pixels aligned in a grid pattern, which is what the resolution of a display means.

E Ink uses magnetically charged spheres that are either black or white. These spheres are then physically pulled to the surface to create the image you see. Instead of a resolution measurement, E Ink is usually measured in DPI — that's dots per inch, like an ink printer is measured. E Ink is reflective by nature and is easier on the eyes since it doesn't require artificial light to illuminate the display.

Color E Ink is a hybrid of these two technologies, utilizing the magnetically charged sphere design of E Ink, which is collected into color filters more like a traditional display. This means that color E Ink retains the reflective, eye-friendly nature of E Ink displays while allowing for some of the color produced by a traditional display.

To see this in action, check out the video above at the 1:15 timestamp. As you watch, pay attention to how the display uses each of the red, green, and blue "sub-pixels" while the image on the screen changes. When those negatively charged white particles are pulled into one of these chambers, you'll start to see color appear.

The colors on screen have a pastel hue to them because the white particles are the base color, effectively making each color filter lighter than it really is. When a positively black particle is pulled into the chamber, it goes completely dark, looking properly "inky black" just as an OLED might be described.

All of this combines to make the Bigme B1051C Pro's display look like each frame was printed on a piece of paper. It's incredible, and the fast refresh rate of the E Ink Carta particles inside ensure that it's more able to keep up with the demands of modern apps than previous generations of E Ink displays could.

A regular tablet, but different

OK, so how can a color E Ink tablet be "a regular tablet" but also be different? Like any technology, the Bigme B1051C Pro has its advantages and disadvantages. If you have a tablet and regularly use it for web browsing, emailing, reading books, comics, or manga, or just use it as a secondary device for social media or communication apps, this tablet is going to blow you away.

However, if you just use your tablet to binge-watch shows, something like an Honor Pad V9 is probably a better choice. I don't watch videos on tablets, though, so this product makes a lot of sense for me. This is effectively a laptop replacement for me because I do almost all the same things on it that I do on my work laptop — the big exception being the photo and video editing that's required for my work.

Outside of those, though, everything from reading forums and researching topics to writing articles and even watching YouTube videos is entirely possible on the Bigme B1051 C Pro. You're likely not going to want to binge-watch the latest Netflix shows on this display, but watching anime on it is uniquely interesting because it feels like watching a manga that came to life.

The Bigme B1051C Pro is powered by Android 14 and comes with Google Play support out of the box, plus the inclusion of several Bigme exclusive apps. One of the highlights is BigmeGPT 4.0, which Bigme says is available for life without a subscription and enables realtime translation, transcription, and all sorts of useful note-taking features.

Each tablet comes with a stylus that feels more authentic to write with than the S Pen on Samsung Galaxy phones, for instance. The matte layer on top of the Bigme B1051C Pro's screen has a texture that feels a bit like writing on construction paper and it's impressively tactile and comfortable, unlike writing on glass.

The stylus doesn't need to be charged, yet it looks and feels like one that does. While it doesn't have pressure levels like some active styluses provide, it does magnetically dock on the top of the tablet for easy storage.

Bigme sent me its keyboard case with the unit, as well, and it feels a lot more capable and comfortable than cases I've used for other E Ink tablets. First off, it's actually sturdy and doesn't feel like it's doing to fall over if I don't have it perfectly positioned. The kickstand is part of the cover and folds back to any position you need.

The keys have excellent travel and feel similar to most modern laptops, which are all pretty similar to the MacBook Pro design these days. The keys are a little more cramped than those on bigger laptops, though, so it's worth noting that bigger hands may have trouble.

I also love the touchpad provided, as it's an ideal size relative to the keyboard and is impressively responsive. When the tablet is attached to the case, it's activated via POGO pins and automatically registers with the tablet. That gives you instant mouse and keyboard support without any pairing or charging nonsense.

My one complaint with the tablet is the battery life, which is not terrible, but it's not quite to the level I expected out of an E Ink tablet. You'll get several hours of use on a single charge, but I expect something more along the lines of days of use out of a device like this. At least it uses USB-C, which is ubiquitous these days.

Why color E Ink matters

The obvious question is, why would you opt for only 4096 colors on an E Ink display when LCD and OLED tablets can give you millions or billions of colors? The main reason is eye health.

Since E Ink doesn't require a backlight to be visible, you can opt for environmental lighting that's significantly easier on your eyes over time. That's most important for the devices that you're using for hours every day, as it cuts down on eye strain from backlit LCDs or direct-lit OLEDs over time.

It also means that the ultra-bright displays of today aren't needed to overcome the sun when outdoors, since E Ink displays accept and reflect a portion of the light just as a normal piece of paper or a book does.

But aside from the limited color palette, E Ink isn't the perfect alternative to LCD or OLED just yet. The biggest problem is the refresh rate, which falls squarely into the photosensitive epilepsy range of 3-30Hz. E Ink Kaleido 3 has the potential to refresh at up to 60Hz, but it often falls close to the sub-20Hz range.

Companies like Bigme don't normally highlight the specific refresh rate of these types of devices, normally sticking to marketing terms like "SSS super speed" instead of an actual number. Whatever the exact number is, it's not quite 30FPS as it doesn't match the smoothness of an LCD or OLED display running 30FPS content side-by-side in my testing.

This means that while color E Ink checks almost all the boxes required to help the most flicker-sensitive users, it still needs improvement with the refresh rate so that the full screen refresh cycles don't result in visible white/black/white flickering. The E Ink Corporation is hard at work on Kaleido 4, which is expected to deliver something like this, but until then, E Ink devices remain the most useful for reading, taking notes, writing, and light web browsing.

I love gardening. I've been doing it since I was a kid, and it's something I look forward to every spring. But I've got a full-time job. My wife is a full-time teacher. We've got one kid and are fiercely protective of our family time, despite all the extracurricular activities that come with having an 11-year-old boy. Plus, we've got a house, pets, and a seemingly endless supply of things to fix and people to visit.

All of that means there's relatively little time for gardening, even though we love it. Thankfully, I've got a little weed-eating robot named Tertill to help me with the arduous task of weeding, and a clever AI-powered app called Seedtime that helps me plan everything I want to do this season.

I've been using Tertill for years, and this marks the first season since its inception that the product is officially sold out for the foreseeable future. The little $150 robot roams around your garden plot like an old Roomba, covering as much ground as it can in short bursts of time.

The robot runs off a solar-powered rechargeable battery and has cambered wheels so it's stabilized even when the ground isn't perfectly flat. Sensors keep it from running over tall plants, while another sensor on the underside senses small weeds and uses the built-in weed wacker to remove them from your garden’s existence.

While Tertill has helped me over the years with one of the most time-consuming tasks in the garden, it wasn't until this season that I found an app to help me with the rest of the work.

It's early in the gardening season still — we're not even supposed to put things in the ground here until after Mother's Day — but this delightful combo of “robots + AI” has been a massive help in getting things started on time this year.

It's Seedtime

I first heard about Seedtime in March of this year, and it immediately caught my eye. It's a garden planner app that helps you understand when the plants you want need to be sown, planted, and ultimately harvested. All the calculations are done for you! All you have to do is follow the task list that's automatically created. I've got it running on a BigMe B1051C color E Ink tablet, which is perfect for using outdoors.

Seedtime has a massive database of garden plants, including all the vegetables and herbs you're likely to plant, no matter where you live. The app is free, but I've been using the premium subscription as part of the testing and review process.

Anyone starting out for the first time this year can stick with the free option, as it provides plenty of functionality and doesn't force you to pay for the basics. If you find you need some of the premium functionality, upgraded accounts start at around $4.55 per month.

You'll begin your Seedtime journey by giving your garden a name, selecting the region you live in, and then adding in all the crops you plan to plant this year. Seedtime automatically calculates the best time to seed your crops, prepare the beds, transplant plants that need it, and even start looking for things to harvest, all added neatly to the calendar in the app.

There's even a tasks section that makes it easy to understand what needs to be done right now. Even if you're late to a task — I was several weeks late planting a few crops — Seedtime will automatically catch up your tasks and recalculate when the next action needs to happen based on when you check tasks off your list.

This part of the app blew me away, as it completely cut out the guesswork often associated with when you need to plant/transplant/harvest, even if the back of the seed package gives you rough estimates. If nothing, it completely solves the daunting task of writing down everything you want to plant and trying to calculate when you need to do things.

Initially, I felt adding drops was overwhelming because there are so many sections you can fill in, but can is the operative word. Everything you need is filled in by default, so long as the app has a premade crop entry.

Of course, that means that Seedtime doesn't have entries for everything you might want to plant. While it has a million different types of tomatoes, herbs, carrots, and most other staples, you won't find entries for fruit trees or bushes just yet, although those may be added in the future.

You can manually add these things, and the basic seeding/transplant/harvest/etc sections will still automatically calculate things out for you, but it's a bit more manual work than crops that already have entries.

Once you've got a list of crops selected, you can take those into the layout section of the app and create a full visual garden layout. This part of the experience only works on a web browser for now, although I had no issue opening it up in Chrome on an Android tablet. If the calendar portion of the app impressed you, the layout section is going to blow you away.

While Seedtime is working on more automated ways of creating layouts in the future, the process is still manual at this time. You'll drag out squares, rectangles, circles, or a number of other shapes and give them a name.

After your beds are in the layout, you can drag out each crop and position it where it belongs. It'll even show you the proper spacing, letting you iron out all the nitty-gritty details with very little effort.

This doesn't just give you a pretty garden layout, though; it also gives you a visual layout of all your calendar entries. A quick glance at the layout portion of the app will let you know what you need to do and where to do it, just in case you forgot where you planted those radishes. The combination of colored calendar entries and visual locations of garden plots is a game changer, and it's going to make the rest of my gardening season a breeze.

AI you'll actually want to use

The most recent update of Seedtime added an AI-powered companion planting section, giving you five immediate ideas of what to plant near all your favorite crops. This includes staples like marigolds, which can help ward off nematodes, and other companion plants like dill, which can be paired with cucumbers to enhance their flavor. Seeing these companion plants right on each crop’s tile is one of the most genius ways to integrate AI that I've seen yet, and it doesn't stop there.

Let's say you're adding a specific cultivar of broccoli that the app doesn't have, and you don't know when you need to plant it. On the “add crop” card, you can tap a little sparkly AI button to perform a calculation based on your crop type, cultivar, region you live in, and more. After a few seconds, the app will return a suggested date, plus make any other necessary changes to the crop’s card.

When Seedtime CEO Paul Dysinger told me about this feature during an interview, I was seriously impressed. A lot of AI-powered features on our devices are cool, but they're not always implemented in useful ways. While AI could always make a mistake and give you the wrong date, Seedtime lets you make a decision before implementing it and gives you other suggestions based on the response, which helps introduce a level of trust in the process.

For now, AI functions are unlimited since this is a brand-new feature, but the company will implement a token system once the process has been finalized. Free users will get a few tokens to use for basic tasks, while paid users will have much wider use with the concept and more tokens included every month.

The new companion crop planting feature just launched last Tuesday, so a lot of this new AI-driven content is very fresh and shows that the company is adding features that are actually helpful, not just fluff.

When I asked Dysinger about the potential of adding crop rotation schedules and a few other features like it, he said they weren't out of the question and have been requested in the past. As far as features go, this was the only big one I could think of that would be extremely helpful for many gardeners when planning next year's garden.

I'm excited to see how Seedtime affects my gardening this year and if I end up being more productive because of it. My biggest problem every year is that I often get overwhelmed with the number of things that need to be done and often miss important dates because of it. Seedtime should fix that entirely, and hopefully it helps you out a lot, too!

One of the hallmark traits of the CMF Phone 1 was that it felt like a phone twice the price in the most important respects. From general performance to camera quality, an excellent display, and even a unique build, the CMF Phone 1 quickly became our favorite budget phone of 2024.

The CMF Phone 2 Pro follows up with a slight price increase and a significant quality improvement, once again pushing the boundaries of what's expected from a sub-$300 phone. While the phone features improvements across the board, three features have stood out to me since I started using it last week.

Chief among these is the camera experience, followed closely by a significantly improved display. The third doesn't take as much analysis to explain, but it positively affects the experience palpably: the haptics.

Haptics on the CMF Phone 1 felt like those of every other cheap phone on the market — straight-up awful — but the CMF Phone 2 Pro upgrades the haptics to match the rest of Nothing's more expensive portfolio, and it rounds out a trio of upgrades worth celebrating.

CMF Phone 2 Pro display review

Everything about the CMF Phone 2 Pro's display is better than the panel on the CMF Phone 1. While both are AMOLED panels, the CMF Phone 2 Pro doesn't exhibit the slight rainbow color shift that is visible when tilting the Phone 1's display at an angle. The bezels are also noticeably thinner, and while they're not quite as thin as a flagship phone like the OnePlus 13, they're thinner than basically any other phone you'd expect to find in this price range.

Additionally, Nothing nearly doubled this phone's brightness levels and the PWM rate compared to the first generation model. The CMF Phone 1 achieves a brightness of nearly 900 lux at 100%, while the CMF Phone 2 Pro reaches nearly 1400 lux with the same settings. HDR mode will see the display hit near 3000 nits in the brightest areas. I can't see brightness getting any better in this class.

The display isn't LTPO, so it doesn't feature the better energy savings found in more expensive OLED panels, but it can dynamically shift from 30Hz to 120Hz — in 30Hz increments — when needed. You can also lock the refresh rate at 60Hz by selecting "Standard" in the display settings. Locking to 120Hz, however, requires enabling the "Force peak refresh rate" setting in Developer Options. LTPO would make things even better, but I don't see that being realistic in this price range.

The CMF Phone 2 Pro follows in the footsteps of the Nothing Phone 3a series, featuring a more eye-friendly display that should work nicely for anyone sensitive to PWM dimming. The CMF Phone 2 Pro uses DC dimming at 50% brightness and above, sporting 7-15% modulation at 60Hz, while 120Hz roughly doubles those numbers. Very sensitive users should stick with 60Hz since it's the most flicker-free option.

Regardless of the refresh rate, the phone switches to 2160Hz PWM dimming at 49% brightness and below. This is 10 times faster than phones like the Google Pixel 9a, making it significantly more comfortable in the dark and far better for your eyes over time.

Overall, this is an excellent display and is essentially unmatched in this price range. I would expect this level of quality from a $500 phone, not a sub-$300 one.

CMF Phone 2 Pro camera review

One of the reasons for the "Pro" moniker in the phone's name is the camera performance. A rear triple-camera system with a manual camera mode qualifies it for this naming convention, and the results certainly feel more in line with similarly named phones, such as the Nuu B30 Pro.

Compared to the CMF Phone 1, the CMF Phone 2 upgrades the main 50MP camera with dual-pixel PDAF and a larger 1/1.57” sensor with 1.0-micron-sized pixels. That's in comparison to the 1/1.95" sensor with 0.8-micron-sized pixels on the CMF Phone 1. The CMF Phone 2 Pro also features a new 1/2.88” 50MP 2x telephoto camera and a 1/4” 8MP ultrawide sensor. The only sensor that remains unchanged is the 16MP selfie camera.

However, before we delve into quality comparisons, it's worth noting that Nothing has given the camera UI a slight overhaul to add features and, in some cases, make it more user-friendly. List-style menus have been revamped to a more standard tile style.

While I appreciate the visual change, I prefer the previous style, which presented all the options upfront. With this new design, you have to tap each tile an unknown number of times to cycle through all the available options. I don't find either design to be more or less friendly for one-handed use.

The settings overhaul may not be an improvement, but the new Presets feature is a significant enhancement that should spark some interesting community creativity. The phone comes with four pre-installed Presets — Soft Focus portrait, B&W Film, Wide Angle, and Lenticular — and it's as easy as pie to import or create your own Preset.

Presets include a cover photo, name and description, camera mode, front or rear lens, and focal length selection, exposure value, filters, and even advanced settings. This, coupled with the powerful manual camera mode, helps make the "Pro" moniker make more sense than some other Pro phones.

A new portrait lighting engine was added, offering five different types of bokeh and lighting looks; however, I struggled to discern a noticeable difference between any of these in practice.

On the quality side, the CMF Phone 2 Pro is mostly an improvement over Phone 1. The inclusion of an ultrawide-angle camera gives you more control over your shots and video. The ultrawide camera and the front-facing camera are both limited to 1080p30 quality, while the main and telephoto sensors can push 4k30 or 1080p60 video.

The ultrawide camera on the CMF Phone 2 Pro is quite good and has surprisingly excellent dynamic range. It doesn't double as a macro camera like some other ultrawide-angle cameras do, but that's usually reserved for more expensive phones, anyway.

The new 50MP telephoto camera noticeably enhances zoom performance compared to the original phone. While it's only a 2x lens, the phone can perform "lossless" 4x zoom thanks to pixel binning. I've found that quality degrades beyond 6x zoom, although you can find notable quality differences between Phone 1 and Phone 2 up to 10x zoom.

Nothing has improved its HDR algorithm from the CMF Phone 1, and the CMF Phone 2 Pro typically exhibits a very wide dynamic range from all camera lenses. This means, for example, that subjects are illuminated well while keeping the sky blue and natural instead of grey and overly bright.

However, there are times when something is amiss with it. In one scenario, pictured below, a picture of a flower had very strange, overly bright artifacts across the brightest parts of the image. In another indoor scenario, the lights were blown out, but the bright white shirts that some people wore looked perfectly balanced. Nothing has a little bit of fine-tuning to do here, but it's generally an improvement over Phone 1's dynamic range.

Color accuracy appears to improve during the day, but a distinct warm shift occurs in low light. The CMF Phone 1 also does this, but the Phone 2 Pro is slightly warmer than that. Neither phone takes great pictures of moving subjects, but I was able to snap a few decent ones of my pets and son, so not all is bad.

The front-facing camera is pretty hit-or-miss. When HDR is required, the front-facing camera is a significant improvement, as illustrated in one example below. At other times, the quality appears worse than that of the CMF Phone 1, despite using the same sensor, as the Phone 2 Pro's image tends to look softer. This will likely get fixed in a software update down the road.

Overall, if you're upgrading from CMF Phone 1 or just choosing a new budget phone, know that Nothing has most improved the dynamic range, color accuracy during the day, added an ultrawide-angle camera, and improved zoom detail by a notable amount from the telephoto camera.

Aside from that, the CMF Phone 2 Pro boasts a superior build, enhanced display, improved haptics, additional accessories, and a more refined overall experience compared to the first-generation release.

As we approach Summer, I'm gearing up for a busy travel season. Between work trips and vacation, there's no shortage of reasons I'll be away from my desk for the next few months.

But while traveling with the best Chromebooks or other laptop usually means you have to forego some of the productivity a multi-monitor home or office setup provides, portable monitors will help fix that problem.

That's because monitor tech has come a very long way over the years, and while you won't be carrying around a massive 36-inch ultrawide monitor in your carry-on bag, you could pack in two specialized monitors that are built for on-the-go productivity. I've tried monitors from brands like KYY and Jsaux, plus some non-traditional solutions from companies like Xreal and others that you absolutely must see!

One monitor, please

Realistically, if you're packing a Chromebook, you're probably trying to keep things light. The KYY K3 Portable Monitor 15.6'' is the right choice in this case, as it can usually be found for around $80 or less and comes in an incredibly elegant package. The monitor itself looks a lot like the best Android tablets because it comes with a preinstalled triangular folding folio case.

This case includes a hard backing that protects the monitor when it's in a bag and you'd have a hard time telling the difference between it and a tablet. As with a tablet, you fold it back into a triangle to prop the monitor up on any table or desk, and a single USB-C connection to your laptop delivers power, video, and audio. It's literally as simple as it gets, and it barely takes up any space in a bag because it's so thin.

If I had to pick any one solution, it would be this just because it's not only easy to carry but it's also easy on the eyes. The 1080p LCD panel is bright and vibrant, doesn't use PWM dimming, and really just looks great. It's not just the most affordable solution on this list but it also sort of proves that simple is best, especially when you're on the go. I brought this one to my mom's back at Christmas time (hence, the decor) and have used it on several occasions since.

Portable dual monitors

It might sound ridiculous, but two companies make excellent portable dual monitor solutions that'll deliver maximum productivity even in a small coffee shop. My favorite is the KYY X90 Laptop Screen Extender, which is a portable dual-monitor setup that you can use either to full capacity — shown above — or in one of a few different, less head-turning configurations.

The monitor comes in a single, folding package that includes a fully movable kickstand. The kickstand and monitors can be unfolded to nearly any angle and hold their place, letting you fully customize the angle of the monitors, as well as the angle of the stand. It's got two USB-C ports, one for charging and the other for display out, and the included short braided USB-C cable makes it convenient to use on a table without getting cords everywhere.

But my favorite thing about this setup is that it's not only portable — there's a built-in handle that makes it easy to carry around — but that you can fold the second monitor in and just use this as a one-monitor setup. That makes it super versatile, especially since you can tent the second monitor and make the whole thing a tall vertical monitor setup.

It's also made of aluminum, so it feels solidly put together and can withstand a reasonable drop without shattering. It's fairly heavy for a monitor, but not something that would feel uncomfortable in a backpack alongside your laptop. Be aware that it is a bit on the thick side since it's got a metal mid-section plus the two monitors that swivel out, so carrying it in your backpack with your laptop is going to feel like carrying four laptops.

The display quality is pretty reasonable, with 60Hz LCD panels that have a good range of brightness. While these won't win any awards for their visual quality, they're not bad at all and, on the bright side, won't hurt your eyes since they don't use PWM dimming. Also, since they just connect to your laptop via a single USB-C cable, you don't need to worry about a secondary power cable or something like that, but they'll definitely pull your battery life down quite a bit.

As you can tell from the photos, this setup takes up a decent amount of space. There's no chance you'd ever get any extended monitor solution on a plane but this one might have trouble even on small cafe tables. If nothing, this is a great solution for working from a hotel room or a dining room table.

The second, more premium but less portable solution is the Jsaux FlipGo, pictured on the right in the image above. It's a pair of 16-inch touchscreen monitors that stack vertically instead of being positioned horizontally like the KYY monitors are. This makes it easier to position on a smaller table since it takes up space vertically.

The vertical alignment also means that the topmost monitor will be more comfortable on your neck than the rest of the setup or your laptop since you won't have to look down at all to see it.

Brady Snyder has been testing this unit for Android Central and told me, "after using this, I honestly don't think I could ever use those laptop-mounted displays." Like the KYY setup above, the Jsaux one connects to your laptop via a single USB-C cable that carries both video and power.

Brady told me, "there are desk stands like I pictured, and also folio stands for when you're out and about," so there's quite a bit of versatility with this setup. The monitor folds into a clamshell that's "kind of a laptop size, but a bit thicker," Brady said. "It looks cool connected to my Yoga Book 9i (which already has two screens), but it also works with any old laptop or desktop."

What's also cool is that this doesn't have to run as two individual monitors. Brady said that it can be run as one giant monitor if you wish, making it feel more like a tall canvas or even a giant foldable phone if you tent it like a laptop (pictured above).

The biggest downsides to this unit are its price — it's more than twice as much as the KYY dual monitor setup — and the bulkiness factor. Jsaux didn't make it one cohesive unit like KYY did, so you have to attach a cable between the two monitors and store it in "a clunky briefcase."

Smart glasses

It's likely you've heard that the best smart glasses offer a "personal monitor on your face" anywhere you go. It's true, and my favorite pick for this solution is Xreal One. These glasses plug into the USB-C port of your laptop, phone, or even consoles like the Steam Deck, then project a giant screen that conveniently rests on your face.

These glasses weigh 84 grams and feature super comfortable nose pads and a glasses arm design you can wear for hours without discomfort. They also feature the first-ever custom silicon inside a pair of smart glasses, enabling what's called 3DoF — that's 3 Degrees of Freedom — movement. In short, this means that the virtual monitor is "anchored" in place like a traditional monitor, even though it doesn't actually exist in physical space.

Some other smart glasses have offered this with special software you have to install, but Xreal One does it automatically with no additional software or configuration. You put them on and they just work. It's as effortless as the single monitor solution above and offers the best image quality thanks to the micro OLED displays behind the lenses, but they'll cost you almost as much as the dual touch screen monitors from Jsaux above.

Plus, since these glasses are light and the virtual monitor doesn't take up any physical space at all, you can even enjoy a giant 200-inch screen while sitting in a cramped airplane seat.

A solution for everyone

I prefer smart glasses for many scenarios, as they're the simplest to set up and offer a giant monitor without needing the physical space. But there's something about having a physical monitor that's irreplaceable in some situations.

For that, the space-saving nature of the KYY single monitor setup is quite ideal, as its tablet-like form factor and simple USB-C connection also make it easy to get connected without hassle, lots of cables, or even hunting for an outlet. This makes the most sense to carry around with a portable Chromebook like the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus which works perfectly with all the monitors and smart glasses you see here.

Portable computing solutions have come a long way in the past few years alone, with different configurations that'll fit any budget or lifestyle. From powerful dual monitor solutions to simple, affordable single monitors, or even advanced smart glasses that give you a massive screen anywhere you sit, pick something from this short list and I'm confident you'll be happy.

I'm a little late in the game, but I finally got my hands on the Samsung Galaxy S24 FE in late March so I could do some additional testing. I enjoy camera deep dives and display analysis for Android Central Labs, and while I fully expected this to be a run-of-the-mill Samsung release, the display really surprised me.

But it's not the color accuracy or some other "normal" display metric that impressed me. It's the High Brightness Mode (HBM). This special mode exists on all modern phones and typically turns on when the automatic brightness sensor detects something as bright as sunlight. But the Galaxy S24 FE's does something different from every other Samsung phone I've tested: it switches to DC dimming, unlocking the full brightness potential of the display.

Typically, all Samsung Galaxy phones with AMOLED screens use PWM dimming at all brightness levels, withholding the display's true maximum brightness level. Not only that, but PWM dimming makes people like me feel awful within just a few minutes, hurting my eyes and giving me a headache. That gives the S24 FE's HBM a unique advantage that other Samsung phones don't have, and it makes me wonder why Samsung doesn't use it more often.

Forcing high brightness mode

My normal display testing procedure involves a light meter to determine brightness levels and flickering potential, a microscope to see the subpixel arrangement and if the display dithers, and a flashlight to force High Brightness Mode so I can separately measure how a display behaves in the sun.

It was during this flashlight test — where I turn on the torch on a smartphone and hold it near the top of the display — where I found the S24 FE's special mode kick in. Theoretically, we could make Samsung flagships more eye-friendly by forcing High Brightness Mode on all the time and then using a screen dimmer app to reduce the brightness a different way, but we have to figure out how to force HBM all the time in the first place.

I checked all my usual sources on Reddit, Telegram, and even among other groups of tech journalists and no one seemed to know how other than what I had already done. It's not exactly viable to walk around holding a flashlight up to your phone, so there had to be another way.

Searching the Google Play Store for apps that do the job returns lots of results. I spent money on several apps but none of them worked. Google has changed a lot on the backend of Android in recent years and system-level functions like HBM aren't typically accessible to apps without root access, so this was a dead-end.

So I turned to ADB, the command line solution for all your Android modification needs. I dialed down into /sys/class/backlight/panel and found the max_brightness setting I was looking for. You can force HBM on some Android phones by using a command like "echo 1 >> /sys/class/backlight/panel/max_brightness" to change this setting to 1, which means "enabled."

Unfortunately, I got a "permission denied" response, which meant I had to have root access to do this. Rooting a Samsung phone is bad news, as it trips Knox security and requires all kinds of tomfoolery to get things working properly again so, yet again, this was a dead-end.

So then I got more desperate. What could possibly trick a sensor into thinking it's in the sun? I tried applying a piece of foil to the screen, but that didn't work. Light sensors are passive acceptors of light, not producers, but I hoped the foil would cause some kind of loop by reflecting the display and causing it to think it was under brighter lighting conditions. Oh well.

Maybe taping an LED to the screen and covering it would work? Sure, this was a potential solution but it not only requires some kind of external power supply for the LED, but it's obviously not a full-time solution as it's both bulky and trashy looking.

No, the only real solution is for Samsung to allow users to enable High Brightness Mode manually, something we'd have to petition en-masse to achieve.

High brightness, full potential

The Samsung Galaxy S24 FE's high brightness mode is the only AMOLED-powered Samsung Galaxy phone I have in my posession that switches away from PWM dimming to DC dimming. If you're not familiar with PWM dimming, here's the quick gist.

AMOLED has the ability to quickly turn on and off its pixels, delivering better motion resolution with little to no ghosting, unlike some LCD panels. But AMOLED also has a problem: reducing voltage can sometimes introduce lower color accuracy and random noise patterns. Engineers have cleverly borrowed pulse width modulation (PWM) from other types of electronics — like fans and pumps — which turns the voltage off and on to "regulate" the amount sent to the component.

On the display side, this essentially turns your phone's display into a strobe light. Normally, you can't see this strobing because it's done so quickly. Instead, your eyes perceive the display as brighter or dimmer depending on how long the display stays off during this flickering behavior.

But while this behavior ensures better color accuracy and smoother details in some circumstances, it also introduces negative health effects and artificially limits the maximum brightness of your phone's display. Flagship Samsung phones like the Galaxy S24 Ultra and Galaxy S25 Ultra never reach their actual maximum brightness potential because they use PWM dimming at all times, even during high brightness mode.

You can see this illustrated in the image above. On the left side, you'll see what Samsung calls "100% brightness" with the "extra brightness" option enabled. It's pretty obvious the display isn't actually outputting "100%" brightness as the thick black lines detected with a 1/6400 camera shutter speed show how long the display stays off during the PWM dimming cycle. Clearly, "100%" in this case is an arbitrary number crafted by Samsung rather than the actual maximum output of the display.

The Galaxy S24 FE on the right is using High Brightness Mode, triggered by me holding a flashlight up to the top of the display for a few seconds. This recreates sunlight conditions and kicks the display up to its actual maximum brightness which, based on my measurements, is double the brightness level of "100%" brightness.

During this special high brightness mode, the display stays on most of the time and doesn't use the harsh PWM flickering cycle it typically uses at all other brightness levels. This dimming method is known as "DC-like" dimming on OLEDs because it more closely follows how a traditional lightbulb or LCD dims itself, which is substantially more eye-friendly than the artificial methods Samsung typically employs.

It's actually quite surprising that Samsung doesn't give users full access to the different brightness modes available, including different dimming options, given the company's penchant for letting users fully customize their phones.

Instead, Samsung continues to limit its displays in bizarre ways. Not only do you only have access to about half the potential brightness of your display — or less on the Ultra models — but you're forced to use harmful low-Hz PWM dimming on most Samsung phones.

Samsung, it's time to give users the full range of choices they want on their displays. That "extra brightness" setting should mean enabling High Brightness Mode, not some arbitrary number you come up with. Users should be allowed to choose the dimming method that works for them, not just the one you decide on an arbitrary basis. Samsung devices are commonly about being everything to everybody, and it's time Samsung delivers on that promise with its displays.

Every major phone has some claim to fame that makes it worth considering. The Google Pixel 9 family has unique AI-powered experiences like Pixel Screenshots, Add Me, Call Screening, and more. The OnePlus 13 sports the most rugged IP rating around, plus epic battery life, charging speed, and performance.

So what do Samsung phones like the Galaxy S25 Ultra have? Samsung Good Lock. No, that's not me misspelling "good luck, Samsung." That's the name for Samsung's epic software and UI customization suite, which debuted in South Korea in 2016 and has since expanded in scope and presence worldwide.

As One UI 7 rolls out to more Galaxy phones this month, users will find that Good Lock has been completely redesigned from the ground up for Samsung's latest Android release. The old, confusing UI elements are gone, replaced with a single list of all Good Lock modules that makes it far easier to find what you want.

Samsung is the only company that offers anything like Good Lock. Some companies offer several different UI customization elements — things like optional split notification shades or ways to tweak UI colors — but Samsung Good Lock lets you change, tweak, and even add massively helpful features and new functionality to the phone you already love.

It's the best reason to buy a Samsung phone, and Samsung only has a few more steps to take to make Good Lock a one-stop shop for phone customization.

Something for (almost) everyone

Samsung Good Lock is the company's attempt to please everyone with options and settings that most other phones (including its own) don't offer. From the complete customization of the quick toggles and other UI elements, multiple multitasking UI choices, unique home screen customization, and even accessibility features not found elsewhere, Good Lock is hard to beat.

But it's also more challenging to find than it should be. Good Lock is still only available on the Samsung Galaxy App Store (for now). That means not only do customers need to know about Good Lock's existence beforehand, but they also need to understand that the Galaxy App Store is different from the Google Play Store.

Samsung announced that Good Lock would be coming to the Play Store with One UI 7, so it's only a matter of time as the update has just begun rolling out at the time of writing.

At the very least, Samsung should include the Good Lock launcher preinstalled on every Galaxy Phone, as it only takes up a paltry 34 MB of space as of One UI 7. This would make it much easier for users to customize their phones out of the box without having to research it and would give Samsung a wow factor that most people likely don't know exists.

Thankfully, the improved UI in the One UI 7 release makes finding what you want in Good Lock easy. That's quite a change from the old style, which includes weird names like QuickStar, Nice Shot, MultiStar, RegiStar, and plenty more. Some of the names make a lot more sense — Camera Assistant and Routines+ are pretty self-explanatory — and I think it would do Samsung some good to rename the weird ones into something more basic.

The new UI now includes a row of UI chips up top. These little buttons help you find settings like wallpaper, notifications, keyboard, lock screen, and others. I'd love to see Samsung add a proper search to Good Lock so we can quickly find settings throughout the suite of modules Good Lock offers, as that would offer a complete solution to finding what you want.

Lastly, I want to see some modules reach their full potential, particularly the newest one, Display Assistant. This new module was teased as giving users "total display control" but that's not actually true. The main feature revolves around giving users the ability to change the refresh rate per-app, so you can set some apps to 120Hz while others can be restricted to a lower rate to save battery.

And while Samsung gives you the option to force high brightness for longer — even if your phone starts to get very hot — it doesn't give users the option to disable PWM dimming. Every phone from Motorola and OnePlus offers this option, while some phones from brands like Honor, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo also offer this, all without having to install an additional app to do it.

My favorite Good Lock modules and settings

The first thing I do when I get a Samsung Galaxy phone is download Good Lock, then install the Home Up module. This module lets you customize not only your home screen but, most importantly for me, the multitasking UI. I absolutely abhor the stock Android multitasking UI and rank it among the absolute worst multitasking UIs in existence. Samsung's default UI isn't much better, but Good Lock makes quick work of that.

I prefer to use the grid format UI for multitasking as it places six apps at my fingertips at all times. You can find this in the Task Changer section of the Home Up module in Good Lock, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Head to the Home Screen section of the Home Up module and turn on DIY Home Screen for an experience customization junkies are sure to love.

Once you're done there, grab the QuickStar module and customize the quick toggles and notification area to your liking. I love a dense quick toggle pane as it gives me the option to quickly choose from 10-12 settings with a single tap, while the default offers just 8. It also lets you turn off some of those annoying status icons like NFC or VoLTE that don't do anything for anyone.

Next, check out both the NotiStar and Nice Catch modules. NotiStar gives you an easy way to see your notification history so you can finally figure out what notification you accidentally swiped away. I don't know about you, but this scenario happens to me all the time and it drives me crazy, but NotiStar completely fixes the issue. Nice Catch gives you even more ways to dive into notification history, including toast notifications, phantom vibrations, and more.

Lastly, Camera Assistant can help people who have specific problems with Samsung cameras. Don't like Samsung's aggressive HDR algorithms? Turn it off! Have issues with the software taking too long to actually take the picture after you press the shutter button? Enable quick tap shutter!

There are even options to adjust lens distortion correction, picture softening, auto lens switching, or even to prioritize focusing on a subject over capture speed. It's mostly a little something for everyone, even if it may not encompass every little nook and cranny.

What are you waiting for?

After nearly 10 years of Good Lock's existence, it's great to see Samsung's renewed interest in building out the feature to make it the ultimate customization suite. No other brand offers something like Good Lock, even if a handful of its features are included on some others phones without an additional download.

Samsung only has a few things it could do to improve the app, mainly revolving around surfacing the app itself as well as making it easier to find specific settings. Most Good Lock modules have been built out quite a bit, but the company could offer a few more options that would really seal the deal. More display accessibility options are an absolute must, while things like the ability to add labels on quick toggle icons would be nice.

If you've got a Samsung Galaxy phone and haven't tried Good Lock, what are you waiting for? It's the best reason to own a Samsung phone and a fantastic way to make the phone feel more like your phone rather than just another smartphone.

As I pulled the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra out of my pocket, an unfamiliar friction met my fingers. This wasn't the matte glass texture that I'm used to feeling from Samsung's latest flagship. No, instead, was it the coarse texture of a brush or, dare I suggest it, turf grass?

Indeed, it was the feeling of the latest DBrand skin drop, Touch Grass, which allows you to place your very own little field of dreams on your favorite device. The company says over 100 devices are supported for this limited edition drop, and while it is an April Fool's joke of sorts, DBrand is actually selling this limited edition set of skins to willing customers (so get it while it lasts!).

Given how much I've loved Dbrand's previous limited edition drops — like the leather one — I couldn't pass up the opportunity to touch grass and see how it felt, so I got a pack for a few phones in my possession and hastily installed them. If you're a nerd who's ever been told to "touch grass," this might be the perfect opportunity without having to go outside to do it.

Ending slippery phones, one blade at a time

Despite the unique texture, the DBrand Touch Grass skin installs the same way as any other DBrand skin. You'll use the included microfiber cloth to wipe off any grease or smudges on the back of your phone, peel off a portion of the 3M paper on the back of the grass skin, align it with the camera modules, and then slowly peel back the rest of the 3M paper as you press the skin's adhesive back onto the phone's glass surface.

Unlike some of the full-coverage skins, the Touch Grass skin doesn't require a hair dryer for application. Instead, you'll just use the included microfiber cloth to rub the edges 15-20 times until they "melt" into the edge. This works particularly well with any phone that has a flat back and a slightly raised lip around the edge, as it'll help conceal the edge of the skin so you don't accidentally peel it off with a fingernail.

The skin is thicker than most DBrand skins because of the raised grass texture, which comprises thousands of electrostatically flocked polyethylene strands. Dbrand told me that flocking — a process that "shoots hyper-thin strands into adhesive and has them stand up like actual grass" — was the only method the company could find to fit the vision for the product properly.

"There were definitely 'fuzz' alternatives that we took one look at and abandoned. They were more akin to moss than they were actual strands of grass," DBrand CEO Adam Ijaz told me.

A mixture of green and yellow colors scattered throughout gives it a strangely natural look on the back of a wholly synthetic device, and it adds some serious grip to an otherwise slippery glass and metal sandwich of a phone.

The coarse grass texture reminds me quite a bit of one of those little brushes you use to clean the underside of your fingernails. It's not unpleasantly coarse but it does have a texture that could be irritating to sensitive skin. This isn't soft, natural spring grass. Thankfully, DBrand has ensured that it's a dry-feeling texture, not the slimy plastic you might be familiar with when you hear "turf grass."

As it has a significantly grippier texture than matte glass, this one will hold fast in your pocket even if you decide to do a handstand. How do I know that? I did it, of course. It'll also probably make your pocket go inside out every time you pull it out, especially if you wear shorts or pants with mesh pockets.

So this skin can finally make phones like the Google Pixel 9 Pro not slippery, but what else can it do? Eliminate wobble on phones like the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra. One of the worst smartphone trends in recent years is the obnoxiously large camera lenses that are placed off-center on the back of phones. That makes them wobble when you put them down on a table.

But this skin completely fixes that, and it even makes it so the phone doesn't slide off a slightly slanted surface. As you might expect, adding the Touch Grass skin will make it impossible to use a case with your phone. If this is a concern, DBrand has its own line of cases that are built to be used with its skins, as you'll put the skin on the case instead of your phone.

Goodbye, glass

I hate glass phones. I'm not sure what genius thought covering a smartphone in breakable glass was a good idea, but here we are. Sure, it made things like waterproofing and wireless charging easier for a time, but those days are behind us, and I hope to see more phones like the OnePlus 13 that recognize this.

Motorola's entire lineup, from the $200 Moto G 2025 to the $999 Motorola Razr Plus 2024, is clad in different grades of "vegan leather." Vegan leather can be made of anything from pieces of plastic to cactus leaves, each base material giving the final product a different texture. Phones like the Spring Green Razr 2024 or the Midnight Ocean OnePlus 13 use a very soft, cloth-like texture that feels less like leather and more like a suede shoe.

I definitely prefer that sort of smooth texture as it not only provides much-needed grip to modern phone designs but also removes a breakable surface. These phones don't use some kind of skin adhered to a layer of glass. Instead, this texture is factory-applied to a non-glass backplate and tucked behind the side frame, ensuring it will never peel off. These have also proven to be just as durable, if not more durable, than glass over time, earning phones like the OnePlus 13 a rare IP69 water and dust ingress rating.

As for DBrand's limited edition Touch Grass skin, Ijaz ensured me that it was made for daily wear and tear.

"The biggest one was definitely around durability - especially at the edges. Early in development, we found that our traditional die-cutting method produced clean lines but led to grass strands gradually shedding from the edges (think: receding hairline).

To solve this, we switched to laser cutting. The laser's heat effectively melts (cauterizes) and seals the polyethylene strands at the perimeter, bonding them together to prevent shedding over time. Additionally, embedding each strand securely into an adhesive base layer (covering about 25% of its height) was critical in ensuring long-term stability. Balancing the novelty factor with real-world usability was an interesting challenge, but we're pleased with how well it turned out."

Of course, like with some other things, some of the biggest brand names simply aren't doing anything interesting in this area. The bright side is that if you've got an iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, or Google Pixel phone, you can order a DBrand skin to mostly fix this problem. It might still be glass underneath, but at least the outside won't feel like a slippery, breakable surface anymore when you slap a skin on it.

For years, Samsung has crafted some of the finest displays ever made by humankind. Ching Wan Tang and Steven Van Slyke might have created OLED technology at Eastman Kodak back in 1987, but it was Samsung who popularized its use in mobile devices with the launch of the original Samsung Galaxy line in 2010.

Over the years, however, Samsung has been slipping. Of course, you'd never know this by looking at smartphone display rankings on websites like DXOMark, where 9 out of the top 10 smartphone displays are all made by Samsung. Look a little deeper, though, and you'll start to understand the real problem: these displays are built to rank at the top of charts by using some nasty tricks that cause users real pain.

It's a similar "cheating" concept we saw years ago when smartphone manufacturers would specifically tweak their phones' performance profiles to push harder during a benchmark to achieve a top-rank score. The difference now is that it's not a company's pride on the line; it's our eyes.

The pixel dance

HDR standards have been around for a long time and are commonplace on spec sheets. Even $200 phones support the HDR10 standard, but not all of them achieve 10-bit color naturally. Rather, many phone displays — including the $1,300 Galaxy S25 Ultra — only ship with a screen that can display 8-bit color.

As you might imagine, a pixel can't just magically jump from being able to display 256 shades of red, green, or blue up to 1024 shades unless it was built to do so. That's four times the number of each of the primary shades, which takes a significant engineering effort to create.

So, how does an 8-bit phone display achieve 10-bit color? By using something known as dithering, or more often known on displays as Frame Rate Control (FRC). You'll often see this on a spec sheet as "8bit + FRC" to represent the shift from 16.7 million colors — that's the total number of colors in an 8-bit palette — all the way up to 1.07 billion colors for 10-bit.

If you look closely at the above image I captured of the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra's display through a microscope, you can see FRC dithering in action. An 8-bit panel, like the one on this Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra pictured above, will quickly flash between two different hues to "create" a color that doesn't exist. I captured this video at 480FPS with a OnePlus 13, which makes it possible to see the pixels flash more easily.

This phenomenon is possible thanks to the way our eyes work when they see a "moving" image. In video, pictures are often shown at 24 or 30 still images per second (frames per second), creating a smooth-looking movement. Likewise, color dithering flashes two colors to create a nonexistent color to our eyes, similar to spinning a color wheel.

For many people, this works to help create a sense of deeper or more vibrant colors. It's one of the ways Samsung ended up adding a more vibrant color option to the Galaxy S24 Ultra last year, and it's present on the S25 Ultra this year.

I spoke with Michael Hamilton, ISF calibration instructor at AVPro South, who helped explain why companies should try to use native 10-bit panels in premium products instead of resorting to 8-bit with FRC dithering.

"8-bit with Frame Rate Control does not do a very good job of preventing 'banding' and can still exhibit flicker or dithering (like in sky scenes where gradient transients are very subtle)," Hamilton explained.

"Additionally, when an 8-bit panel with FRC rapidly flashes, 'temporal' artifacts manifest such as a judder-like appearance to motion, or 'floating,' which areas of the image appear to be in motion [when they should not be] and directly adjacent areas are not, such as long-range shots of trees where some appear to be moving in a breeze while others are not, or an expansive water surface moves unnaturally and even the shoreline may appear to be moving.

Since they are not visible with a static image or patterns, a viewer may see ghosting or motion blur or otherwise motion glitches, and then, to confirm, they pause the video, and the anomaly subsides."

Hamilton works exclusively on TV calibration, where banding is more noticeable because of the size of the panel. Because of its size, it's unlikely you'll ever notice banding on a smartphone screen, but that hasn't stopped some Redditors from pointing it out.

Samsung, the flicker king

This methodology is clever from an engineering perspective, but it presents two problems. First off, Samsung is cheating you out of your money by using an 8-bit panel on a $1,300 phone. The Honor Magic 7 Pro uses a true 10-bit panel that doesn't need to dither to show all 1.07 billion colors for the HDR10 standard and provides the same seven-year software update commitment as Samsung.

The OnePlus 13 does the same thing for even less, even if it only gets six years of software updates. Despite all the display problems with the Galaxy S24 Ultra last year, Samsung is still using the same M13 AMOLED panel on the Galaxy S25 Ultra, just with a few software hacks to mask the problems it's having with display manufacturing quality.

Second, and maybe most egregiously, Samsung's use of color dithering causes some users real pain. This is a similar effect to PWM dimming, another problem Samsung displays suffer from. Samsung uses low-Hz PWM dimming to save money and achieve a very specific display metric at different brightness intervals.

Hamilton also explained a few reasons companies use PWM dimming on TVs, although the same concept transfers over to phones:

"By rapidly flashing the backlight LEDs on and off, a less expensive power supply may be used. The byproduct of this is 'flicker,' which tends to vary depending on the picture mode. Some viewers detect this strobing and flashing, and with fast-moving objects, blurring or 'comet tailing' can be seen.

Uniformity issues tend to be exacerbated by fewer backlight zones due to cost reduction, and the image can look unevenly illuminated and unnatural in some scenes. These issues can be overcome: just 'bring money.'"

The end is the most illuminating aspect here. Samsung is putting profit margins ahead of the health of its users, particularly the ones most susceptible to the ill effects of display flicker.

The rest of the industry knows and understands the problems that color dithering and low-Hz PWM dimming can have on some users and has enacted positive change for everyone.

There's a reason companies like BOE and Visionox — which are found on phones from companies like Nothing, OnePlus, Honor, Motorola, and more — are making OLED panels with native 10-bit reproduction and support for both DC-dimming and significantly faster PWM dimming when needed.

The Honor Magic 7 Pro is capable of 4320Hz PWM dimming at low brightness while the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra uses 480Hz dimming at all brightness levels. There's a clear spec difference here on multiple levels, and Samsung isn't winning any awards for having the best hardware. Just the best tricks to achieve a specific goal.

Simple solutions for an unnecessary problem

Aside from pure profit margins, companies like Samsung Display choose to use PWM dimming and dithering on OLED screens because of how the tech works. Because OLED response time is in nanoseconds, unlike LCD, engineers have learned that dialing in the display calibration can achieve near-perfect scores on display quality tests. In other words, Samsung is designing its displays for measurement and calibration tools, not the humans who actually use them.

Dylan Raga, a display reviewer at XDA Developers, explained it very well. Speaking on the subject of calibration and color matching, he told me that "the best current strobeless solution would be for native 10bpc panels with multiple well-calibrated voltage states, using pixel-level dimming in-between them with active spatial DPU dithering."

In other words, Samsung is doing exactly what's needed to achieve the best scores on display tests, and therein lies the problem.

Raga went on to say that "a true 12-bit DAC would be ideal, but we’re not really near having those on consumer displays. Our only options that maintain reference picture quality involve using a higher base power for better signal control and modulating it down by some means."

At this juncture, it seems we're presented with two main solutions to this problem: make displays more like BOE and Visionox or provide users with accessibility options that allow them to disable any "display quality" features that cause them physical harm.

These other OLED manufacturers have slowly improved their display quality over time while offering eye-friendly options like DC-dimming, which can lower display quality on OLEDs at some brightness levels but always reduce eye strain.

However, until companies like Google, Apple, and Samsung acknowledge the problem, we're stuck with phones like the Pixel 9 Pro and Galaxy S25 Ultra. Both of these phones top the charts for display quality because of the tricks they use to achieve these metrics. Thankfully, plenty of other companies have acknowledged these problems, but, as usual, it's the big three that refuse to accept the science.

Google added colorblind modes to Android L all the way back in 2014, and there's no reason the company can't add a way to disable color dithering or display flickering at the system level. Google has the power to set these accessibility options for users at the operating system level, but the company seems clueless about a problem that most of the industry has actively acknowledged. What's it going to take, Google? Samsung? Apple? The ball is in your court.

After nearly a decade, Vulkan is finally becoming the graphics standard in Android when Android 16 debuts sometime after April. Google highlights it as one way to enhance graphics, while the Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) can dynamically scale graphics in a game when your phone gets hot. It's a two-pronged attack that aims to solve real-world issues with mobile gaming.

My colleague Andrew Myrick talked about how Vulkan will help accelerate gaming on dedicated handheld Android consoles, but what about phones? Several Android games already utilize Vulkan to help accelerate performance and include advanced graphics features like ray-tracing. Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile, Pokemon TCG Pocket, Summoners War: Chronicles, Diablo Immortal, and PUBG: New State all use Vulkan by default.

While Vulkan concentrates on providing advanced graphics options and enabling more efficient multicore performance, ADPF ensures that games run at a consistent rate no matter how long you play. If I've learned anything about high-end processors, it's that they tend to run very hot after 30-minute (or longer) gaming sessions.

Nothing makes a high-end phone feel more disappointing than when your favorite game still runs terribly on it after just 30 minutes of game time. That's where I think ADPF is going to come in clutch, as it'll help games scale graphics quality on-the-fly to match the thermal requirements of your phone, keeping the frame rate high all the time while ensuring the best graphics possible throughout.

Vulkan for visuals

Don't confuse Vulkan for the Star Trek race of the same pronunciation. Vulkan is a replacement for Open GL, a graphics library that's been around since 1992 but has been substantially upgraded since. While Open GL has been great for a long time, its existence is a little long in the tooth and it doesn't support many modern graphics features.

A glance at the latest Unreal Engine features table will show you substantial differences in capability when using Vulkan versus Open GL ES, mostly related to lighting and texture quality on mobile devices. It also enables new technologies like ray-tracing which makes lighting and reflections substantially more realistic.

But what about performance? Vulkan was built with multicore processors in mind while Open GL has historically done a poor job of utilizing all the lovely cores that are packed inside a processor like the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

So I put it to the test against several different classes of phones including flagships like the OnePlus 13, mid-range offerings like the Nothing Phone 3a, and budget options like the Moto G 2025, and older phones like the OnePlus Nord N30 5G. What I found was incredibly disappointing.

For the test, I ran a few games and benchmarks that allow you to choose between Open GL ES and Vulkan. I also used the 3DMark Slingshot Extreme benchmark, specifically, as well as PUBG: New State and the Dolphin emulator. Each of these options all ran better in Open GL ES than on Vulkan. This seems like a paradox considering Vulkan is heralded as a paradigm-shifter in performance, but a lot of this depends highly on the game in question and the hardware it's running on.

The 3DMark test on the OnePlus Nord N30, which runs on a 2022 Snapdragon 695 chipset and Android 14, performed quite a bit worse using Vulkan than Open GL. Graphic test 1 ran 2FPS slower on average using Vulkan, while the physics test was 50% slower than using Open GL. I expected exactly the opposite.

OK, so how about newer hardware? The Nothing Phone 3a uses a Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 which debuted two and a half years after the Snapdragon 695. The phone also runs on Android 15, yet we see a similar pattern. The graphics test portion was a wash between the two APIs — 0.5 FPS faster on one test and 0.5 FPS slower on the second — while the physics test was nearly 100% slower running on Vulkan. Wow.

PUBG: New State and the Dolphin emulator didn't seem to benefit from Vulkan, either. On the three lower-end phones, Open GL ran Dolphin a few FPS better than Vulkan. I didn't see any difference between the two APIs in PUBG: New State. I couldn't find anything that stressed the OnePlus 13 enough to find a difference between Vulkan and Open GL, either.

If you expected Vulkan to give old games an immediate performance boost on older hardware, you might want to adjust those expectations. I previously wrote about how much Vulkan improved performance in games like Valheim, which saw an immediate 50% performance increase when using Vulkan on certain hardware. That gave me false hope, as it turns out things are a lot more complex than I imagined.

,To get a better understanding of why this strange dichotomy occurs, I spoke to the developer of the highly-rated game GRAB on the Meta Quest, Slin, who told me Vulkan "can be a silver bullet, but only in some cases and only if done right." GRAB uses a custom Vulkan-based engine rather than big names like Unreal or Unity.

"It does, for example, have this subpass feature which allows to do some basic post-processing on mobile without the major performance hit" you'd usually get from Open GL.

Vulkan works very well on Quest and other Snapdragon-based mobile chipsets but some engines, like Unity, don't always offer an easy way to switch from Open GL and get the best performance. But building a game in Unity using the Vulkan backend exposes features that simply aren't available with Open GL, stressing the importance of Vulkan-only development going forward.

Games like Valheim were likely putting more strain on the CPU using Open GL, while Vulkan freed up the process and let the GPU do more work. However, implementing Vulkan in an existing game is a lot of work. Translating the old language — Open GL — into the new Vulkan language is a skill some people will inherently be better at than others.

I hoped that enabling Vulkan would be like flipping a switch, but that's simply not the case. "My guess is that it’s a problem with Unity retrofitting it into their huge legacy codebase and having to make it work well for everyone with every feature," Slin told me.

Vulkan certainly can boost performance under the right circumstances but it's not likely that old games will see much difference even if it's natively implemented. Other people came to the same conclusion when comparing the two, but Android's switch to Vulkan-only should help in the future.

What you should expect is that games like Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile were able to deliver better graphics in a new game using Vulkan. In other words, this change is forward-thinking rather than for backward compatibility, and Android 16 is likely to deliver more of a difference than current versions of Android.

ADPF for performance

Adding ray-tracing to the ice reflections in Diablo Immortal is cool but very few people are going to be able to notice the nuance differences feature like ray-tracing add to a game on a 6-inch screen. Rather, mobile gamers want better and more consistent performance out of their mobile games.

A number of games with crazy good graphics — like Fortnite, Call of Duty, Diablo, etc — support automatic graphics scaling that aims to keep your frame rate as smooth as possible, but the calculation to get there isn't exactly intelligent. Games that support dynamic visual scaling features often base this scaling on sheer performance numbers. If the game was running at 60FPS when it started but is now dropping to sub-50 FPS, the game will change the resolution, texture quality, or other assets to raise the frame rate again.

While this isn't a bad idea, it doesn't take device thermals into account. Sure, reducing these values will reduce CPU and GPU load which will eventually lower the temperature of your device, but without knowing the actual temperature it's difficult for a game to understand why and when it needs to scale. That's where Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) comes in.

ADPF was announced over a year ago but, as with many things, implementing it takes time. In a nutshell, ADPF allows the game and the system to talk to and understand each other in a way that wasn't possible before. Games can now understand how hot a phone gets and why it's getting so hot, helping to schedule upcoming graphics quality changes to keep the phone from getting hot in the first place.

The chart below shows the sustained performance difference after 30 minutes in Ares: Rise of Guardians between running the game at the highest graphics settings and a second session where ADPF was enabled. Pay specific attention to the yellow line. The improvement couldn't be greater.

During the high-quality graphics test, the game's frame rate hovered just under 30FPS with slight drops to 25FPS. By 10 minutes in, the game was wildly fluctuating between 15FPS and 28FPS. By the roughly 23-minute mark, the game held steady at an unplayable 15FPS.

Meanwhile, with ADPF enabled, the game was able to maintain a consistent 25-30FPS throughout the entire 30-minute play session. In addition to that, the thermal profile graphs were managed much better, keeping the device under the thermal warning level for longer.

It's a brilliant way to implement device intelligence and share pertinent information that helps everything work better together. While ADPF still needs to be implemented for each game — again, this isn't a switch that Google can magically turn on or off — it represents a greater possibility to provide more consistent performance across a wider portfolio of devices than anything else we've seen before.

It's here where I think the vast majority of users will see the biggest improvement. Mid-range devices like the Samsung Galaxy A-series are often the best-sellers in any given quarter, and it's these phones that'll likely see the biggest impact with dynamic graphics scaling. Being able to push the best graphics during the slow parts of a game could result in a big wow factor for new phones and games, ultimately driving people to play games on their phones even more than they already do.