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MWC Is Where Cutting-Edge Phones Shine. Too Bad You’ll Probably Never Buy Them

For years, people have decried the monotony of smartphone design. With each annual release, companies tend to recycle the same features — when they’re not borrowing from each other — with minimal upgrades and hardly any aesthetic changes, resulting in an uninspiring sea of sameness and predictability.. That’s why at every tech event I’ve attended over the last several years, the most eager crowds cluster around phones that defy hardware limitations. This year’s Mobile World Congress was no exception. I wiggled my way through hordes of people pushing to get their hands on foldable, flippable and ultraslim devices.. Some of these phones are already available to purchase, like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Trifold and Huawei’s Mate XTs. Others are still concepts, like Tecno’s superthin Phantom Ultimate G Fold and its modular phone. A handful of others I saw are on the way to store shelves, like Honor’s Robot Phone and Motorola’s book-style Razr Fold.. Watch this: Our Experts’ Favorite Products at MWC 2026 | All Things Mobile. As our smartphone options have expanded, our collective tastes have remained largely the same. Global foldable phone shipments hit a record 14% year-over-year growth in the third quarter of 2025, according to Counterpoint Research. But their share of the overall smartphone market was just 2.5% that quarter, keeping foldables firmly in the niche sector. Thin handsets like Apple’s iPhone Air and Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge have reportedly been underwhelming, with marketing buzz not matching up to real-world adoption. Even at a tech conference like MWC, I rarely saw attendees toting anything other than a standard slab phone.. “Just because something looks great, doesn’t mean you want it at the end of the day,” IDC Senior Research Director Nabila Popal told me in December.. Novelty and adoption remain two separate spheres in the world of mobile design. It’s refreshing to see phone manufacturers branch into more ambitious form factors, but those configurations have yet to graduate from spectacle to staple. And perhaps that’s by design; something can only be buzz-worthy if not everyone owns it. But the argument that there’s a lack of interesting phones loses merit with each passing year of hardware innovation — even if flagship devices continue to feel like copy-paste versions of their predecessors.. Much of the gap between niche phone hype and adoption boils down to their needing to be more practical. Foldables, for instance, have come a long way with improving camera quality and battery life, but they still lag behind what you’ll get on high-end flat phones. The same goes for thin phones like the Galaxy S25 Edge and iPhone Air, which have scaled back specs in exchange for lighter builds. Until sleekness can fully coexist with function, most people will keep choosing the latter.. Prices for unique phones are also prohibitive. Book-style foldables cost around $2,000, and a trifold will set you back around $3,000. Even with their more limited c

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The Sonos Play puts the best parts of the Era 100 in a portable speaker

Sonos has just announced its first new products since 2024, when the company’s plans went sideways after a disastrous update to its app. First up is the Sonos Play, the company’s latest portable speaker. Long-time Sonos watchers will recognize the name from the old Play:1, Play:3 and Play:5 speakers, but this new model has little to do with those products of the past. The $299 Play is a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth speaker that sits between the $179 Roam 2 and $499 Move 2 and could be the “goldilocks” speaker in the company’s portable lineup, at least based on what I know so far.The closest comparison for the Play is the excellent Era 100, which Sonos released back in 2023. At 7.6” tall, 4.4” wide and 3” deep, it’s much thinner than the Era 100 which is over 5 inches deep. And compared to the Move 2 (9.5” x 6.3 x 5”) it’s much more portable. That goes for weight, too — the Play is less than 3 pounds, compared to over 6.5 pounds for the Move 2. It’s not the kind of speaker you’ll throw in your bag and forget about, like the tiny Roam 2, but it’s far more portable than the Move 2. Finally, the Play is IP67 rated, just like the Roam 2. That means it can be submerged in up to a meter of water for up to 30 minutes; it’s also dustproof. The grab handle on the back of the Sonos Play.SonosFrom a speaker component perspective, it’s again quite similar to the Era 100. It has two tweeters positioned at a 90-degree angle for stereo separation paired with one midwoofer; it also has two additional passive radiators to increase the bass response in its relatively small case. The Era 100 lacks those passive radiators but is otherwise identical. Obviously, we’ll have to listen to the Play before saying how closely it compares to the Era 100, but this speaker should significantly outperform the Roam 2 simply due to the increased size of its components. The Move 2, on the other hand, is extremely loud and will likely still be the best choice for people who want a speaker to cover a large outdoor space.You’ll find familiar controls on the Sonos Play, which comes in black or white. (Fingers crossed for future color options like the lovely trio that Sonos offers on the Roam.) On the top surface are buttons for play/pause, volume up and down and a microphone toggle. On the back is a power button, a Bluetooth button and a physical switch that disconnects the microphone for increased security. Finally, there’s a new feature here: a removable plastic grab loop. Sonos was keen to note that the Play is a full-featured member of the Sonos ecosystem. Like all of its other speakers, that means you’ll see all Sonos speakers in the app and can group them as you see fit, or have different music playing on different speakers throughout the house. You can also pair two of these in stereo. If you remove one from your network (say you’re outside and away from Wi-Fi), you’ll need to re-pair them though. In addition to controlling playback via th