Mobile

The new midrange Android phone has almost exactly the exact same design and internals as last year’s Xperia 10 VII apart from two meager upgrades: a brighter display and louder speakers. Oh, and at €599 / £549 (around $700-750), it’ll also be € / £150 more expensive when it launches in Europe in “mid-to-late September.” Thanks, RAMageddon.

Just a PSA that if you happen to order a novelty hot dog PopSocket like I did, definitely take a look at the directions before you tear it out of the packaging. Unconvinced? Ask me about the twenty minutes I spent trying to free a tiny plastic disc from another piece of plastic and then coercing it back into its rightful home. Guess a SIM tool is still good for something these days.

The Xring 03 is, a little confusingly, the follow-up to last year’s Xring 01, which appeared in the China-only 15S Pro phone and Pad 7 Ultra tablet. The 3nm chipset, apparently produced by TSMC, has the usual CPU and GPU bumps, plus mobile-first support for LPDDR6 RAM.

The Pura X View will launch next week in China, but Huawei has already revealed its design, including a broad 16:9.5 aspect ratio display. It looks a little like Huawei’s Pura X flip phone did when unfolded, but in a regular slab format. After last month’s Galaxy Z Fold 8, we’re truly in the wide phone era.

Given it’s a minor hardware refresh of last year’s Fairphone 6 it comes as no surprise that the new Fairphone 6 Plus (the company’s first smartphone it will sell directly in the US) was awarded a perfect 10/10 score in iFixit’s teardown test. Disassembly of everything from camera modules to the screen was straightforward using just basic tools.

A person on Reddit says their friend’s phone added craters to the Sun during yesterday’s solar eclipse. The poster doesn’t say what phone this was captured on, but it’s definitely something we’ve seen before.

Sales dropped 64% year-on-year in Q2, according to research from Counterpoint, as manufacturers raised prices or simply stopped shipping cheaper models. Samsung and Motorola have been the only brands to benefit, as smaller companies became unable to undercut them on price. That helped both grow their market share in prepaid phones.

We live blogged almost 90 minutes of a show that was, honestly, better than expected. Our video team cut it down to eight.

Samsung’s online-exclusive “Pistachio” version of the Galaxy Z Fold 8 looks great, and has apparently been selling well. But I’m a much bigger fan of Google’s Pixel 11 finish by the same name. It looks a lot closer to the color of a good pistachio gelato, unlike whatever minty nonsense Samsung is up to.

It’s still a stomach-clenching moment, though. He also did a cool teardown.

Windows Central shared photos showing what appears to be a prototype of a rumored, unreleased Windows phone “that was expected to ship in 2014 under the Surface moniker.” It even has a design similar to a Surface laptop and reportedly included a Qualcomm chip and a 720p display.

As Android Authority points out, a couple of leaks for the next repairable Fairphone have popped up, with NewMobile’s giving us a look at the device in blue, with matching accessories just like the Fairphone 6 has, and 12GB of RAM specs to go with the 256GB storage.

Srini Gopalan in response to SpaceX saying it plans to “acquire quite a few” of T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon’s customers by turning Starlink dishes into tiny cellular base stations using the limited spectrum it acquired from EchoStar:

Co-founder Akis Evangelidis told Times Now Tech that the company may double the number of phones it launches next year while “expanding its product portfolio across multiple categories,” including audio. He also says Nothing’s “looking at different ways” to launch a new CMF Phone next year, after this year’s was cancelled.

9to5Google uncovered code in the Google Contacts app that suggests you’ll be able to give your favorite contacts a “glow color” that appears on the Pixel 11’s built-in light when they call. Based on the code, you might get to choose from blue, cyan, green, orange, pink, purple, teal, white, or yellow.

So long, 2G.

Leaker Evan Blass shared what appears to be marketing materials for the Pixel 11 Pro XL, and it shows the upcoming device in a peachy shade of pink. If the leaks are true, the Pixel 11 might come in a bunch of fun colors this year.

A report from ET News suggests that Samsung is planning to ditch the 10-megapixel 3x telephoto lens on its next-gen flagship, leaving it with a 50MP 5x telephoto lens and third camera. Samsung is reportedly making the change to cut costs amid surging chip prices.

In a new video on Monday, you can catch brief and shadowy glimpses of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, which is set to be fully revealed at an event on August 12th.

The company that showed off a working modular concept phone at MWC is teasing a bezelless concept for the IFA show in September. It looks nice, and attracts attention, but don’t expect to buy it (from Tecno) anytime soon.