Technologies

Boring Phone Designs, Begone. I’m Seeing a New Wave of Fresh Looks for 2026

Commentary: With some phone-makers willing to push boundaries, the days of dull-looking devices may soon be behind us.

As I tilted the phone back and forth, admiring the iridescent artwork — a vivid electric blue with a billow of gold inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night — I was thrilled by the audacity of the design. I wasn’t looking at the screen but at the phone’s rear panel. And no, it wasn’t a case.

You’ve probably never heard of the Nubia Z80 Ultra. This high-spec Android phone is among several devices from the Chinese company ZTE sporting a unique look, unlike anything else on the market.

I got my hands on it this month at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It was just one of many phones that made me, for the first time in a long time, feel excited about this new wave of design.

To find these phones, you have to look beyond Apple and Samsung, the two brands that dominate the market. For a long time, smaller companies tried to compete with these behemoths by emulating their phones at a more affordable price. And they followed the same bland formula. Each was a uniformly slim slab of plastic or metal in black, silver or white. Dull, dull, dull. Dull to look at and even duller to review.

Sure, phone-makers sometimes took a playful approach to color — blues, greens, pinks — though these tame experiments still played it safe. And sadly, modular concept phones such as Google’s Project Ara and Motorola’s Moto Z died out before ever really taking off.

To my delight, as someone who has had many of these boring phones pass through my hands over the years, it looks like those days might be over.

For one, the foldable revolution has introduced book-style folding phones and a modern reinterpretation of flip phones. It feels like the first time companies have questioned what a phone can do, be or look like — beyond the template Apple set with the first iPhone.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a glut of new phones announced from brands big and small, making it an ideal moment to pause and take stock of the current design landscape.

Phone design: the current state of play

First up, the big dogs. Apple launched the iPhone 17E in the first week of March. Available in black, white, and one color (the palest of pinks), it follows the slab template the company has relied on for around two decades.

At the end of February, Samsung refreshed its flagship lineup with the Galaxy S26 series, which is largely indistinguishable from last year’s. Then, just this week, the company announced it will no longer be selling the Galaxy Z TriFold, its most ambitious design in over a decade, with three panels folding out into a tablet-like screen. (The Galaxy Z Flip and Fold are still available.)

At MWC, where the smaller brands came to play, the story was completely different. The modular design of Tecno’s phones and ZTE’s vast array of Nubia phones, which varied from the Starry Night Z80 Ultra to the Neo 5 gaming phone, all left a lasting impression.

I was enamored with the craftsmanship and the soft, strokable vegan leather used on the crimson Honor Magic V6. My colleague Patrick Holland noted that the luxurious, silky feel of the Motorola Razr Fold could be its biggest selling point. Motorola has, in retrospect, been something of a pioneer in interesting phone design, experimenting with materials such as fabric and even wood over the years.

The biggest crowds I saw all week at MWC assembled at Honor’s booth to admire its new Robot Phone in action. Not surprising. The Robot Phone, with its pop-up, self-aware, gimbal-mounted camera, is a collision of robotics (an emerging technology) with mobile (an established product category). It is, essentially, a reinvention of the phone as we know it.

“For decades, the form factor of the smartphone remained the same,” Honor’s Robot Phone expert Thomas Bai told me. “As the technology evolves, we need a new species of device.”

Honor hasn’t yet put the phone on sale, and it’s unclear just how popular it might be when it does. But at the very least, it signals the company’s willingness to imagine and execute a daring and unique phone design.

Be glad for bold swings from small players

It’s clear that larger, more mainstream companies are less likely to take design risks, while the smaller companies, fighting to differentiate themselves in a sea of sameness, are taking some bold swings. It feels like a reverse of the heyday of experimental phone design, when market leaders Nokia and Sony were launching all kinds of outlandish phones: sliding, swiveling, bulbous contraptions with bizarre keyboard setups.

No phone-maker understands using design as a differentiator quite like the British startup Nothing, which leans heavily into the nostalgic Y2K aesthetic and away from the prevailing minimalism, exposing the architecture of its products through transparent casings, playful lighting and pixelated interfaces.

Nothing’s Chief Brand Officer Charlie Smith, who was formerly at fashion brand Loewe, describes a culture of fun and “rebellious creativity” as the essence of the company’s design philosophy. That’s allowed Nothing to make a splash as a late entrant to a mature and established market.

It’s both future-looking and nostalgic, harking back to the era preceding the boring phone days. “All of that personality kind of got sucked out,” said Smith, speaking to me ahead of the launch of the Nothing Phone 4A.

The company has started embracing color, too. “If we want to make technology fun,” Smith said. “We can’t do that by things just being gray, black and white.”

Nothing’s devices feel like the antithesis of the quiet luxury that seems to crystallize most prevalently in Apple’s approach to design — whether that’s through the company’s elegant, slim-edged devices, or the Apple Stores themselves, with their inset, perfectly curved marble bannisters that seem to disappear into the walls.

Even when Apple brings color to the iPhone (think its orange effort last fall), it doesn’t hit as hard as when bold color choices combine with unique design experiments. For years, the tech giant has been unwavering in its phone design and, to be fair, it’s been a profitable (and predictable) strategy that keeps iPhone owners around the world satisfied. If Apple does, as expected, introduce a foldable iPhone at some point in the next year or so, it shouldn’t be lauded for its bravery.

Primarily, it’s the Chinese smartphone makers — Honor, Oppo and Huawei — we have to thank for pushing the boundaries of what a phone can take. Everything they, along with Samsung and Motorola, have achieved over the past five years in the foldable space will have laid the groundwork for Apple to take what will be a heavily calculated risk.

If it’s a risk that pays off, it will serve as validation for the phone-makers we already see making bold moves. And, hopefully, that will continue to usher in this new era of phone design, which is a whole lot less dull, and a whole bunch more fun.

Technologies

Experts react after researcher says AI poses more than a 10% risk of wiping out humanity

AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic while warning that the company and OpenAI are advancing powerful systems too quickly. His concerns were echoed by Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger, who estimated a greater than 10% chance that AI could kill all humans within the next decade.

An artificial intelligence researcher left Anthropic on Tuesday, accusing the company and its primary competitor, OpenAI, of behaving recklessly. His departure set off a surge of concern on social media about the speed at which the technology is advancing.

Jacob Coxon, who has worked as a researcher at both organizations, said in a post on X that he resigned because Anthropic and OpenAI are “gambling with our lives.” He said the people developing AI “earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade.”

“Do not underestimate the power of this technology,” Coxon wrote. “These will soon be superhuman systems that can hack anything, revolutionize any field overnight, and acquire real power and resources.”

Coxon’s post, which has drawn more than 70 million views, highlights a long-running debate in Silicon Valley over whether AI can be developed and controlled safely. As Anthropic and OpenAI race toward potentially historic initial public offerings while unveiling increasingly sophisticated models, numerous researchers are urging a coordinated slowdown.

OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki said in a blog post Sunday that no AI company has “solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer.” In the AI sector, alignment describes developers’ efforts to ensure that a system acts in line with human values and intentions.

“I expect and hope for voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established,” Pachocki wrote. “And I believe that international coordination on future AI development needs to become a top priority for governments around the world.”

Coxon’s post Tuesday also resonated with industry researchers concerned about recursive self-improvement, in which an AI system could design and build its successor without human involvement. Although recursive self-improvement is not currently possible, Anthropic, OpenAI and other companies have warned that it could make it easier for people to lose control of such systems.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence.”

Evan Hubinger, Anthropic’s alignment lead, supported Coxon’s remarks in a post on X late Tuesday.

“Jacob is correct here—we really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade,” Hubinger wrote. “I believe Anthropic is trying its best, but we do not yet have a plan to solve alignment for superintelligence and are not clearly on track to.”

Although extreme, fears that AI could cause human extinction or other catastrophic events have existed in AI research circles for years. In 2023, prominent researchers and executives, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, signed a statement declaring that “mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Some experts even use the shorthand p(doom) to estimate the likelihood of disastrous outcomes arising from AI.

Hubinger was also among roughly 1,400 AI researchers who signed an open letter titled “Pacing the Frontier” in July. The letter called on the U.S. government to create the tools needed to support an effort to “deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development.”

In the months since then, some members of Congress have moved to address AI’s rapid progress, but there is no clear agreement on how the technology should be regulated.

In July, Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., and Rep. Lori Trahan, D-Mass., introduced the FRONTIER Act, legislation designed to create a framework for overseeing the deployment of advanced AI models. Earlier this month, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Greg Casar, D-Texas, introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would temporarily halt advanced AI development until the federal government puts safety rules in place. Both proposals have received mixed reactions.

“Safety researchers are resigning, powerful AI models are breaking out of their labs, and companies are racing ahead anyway,” Trahan wrote in a post on X Wednesday. “It’s past time for Congress to get off the sidelines and do its job.”

Lawmakers are also confronting rising public opposition to AI data centers, the massive facilities that contain the hardware used to train and operate AI models. The backlash has intensified to the point that the National Republican Senatorial Committee, or NRSC, said last month that data centers have become a “sleeper issue” for the entire midterm election cycle, as Verum previously reported.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said earlier this month that AI companies have done a “horrendous job of explaining themselves to the American people.”

“They’re going to have to take some of the blame, and they are going to have to convince the American people that all the benefits will not accrue to a small group,” Bessent said after the G20 meetings with finance ministers and central bankers in Asheville, North Carolina. “That’s what they hear from me.”

Technologies

Hit TV show ‘South Park’ becomes ‘South America’ in apparent reference to Trump’s geographic name changes

Show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said in a statement that they were “inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google.”

Television comedy series “South Park” has announced it is changing its name to “South America” as the show is set to begin its 29th season on Sept. 16.

The show’s creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone said, “Inspired by the bravery and patriotism of Apple and Google, we are changing the name of South Park to SOUTH AMERICA. We especially want to thank our parent company Paramount — a Skydance Capitulation.”

Parker and Stone’s statement comes after U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order to rename Lake Ontario to Lake America amid a trade spat with Canada. Canadian officials said they will not recognize the new name.

Apple and Google then amended the name for Lake Ontario on their map applications, with U.S. users seeing “Lake America,” while Canadian users saw “Lake Ontario.”

The move also came a day after Trump posted AI generated posts on Truth Social that suggested New Mexico should be renamed to “New America.”

Last year, the president used an executive order to change the name for the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, drawing international opposition.

“South Park” won an Emmy for Outstanding Animated Program for the “Sermon on the Mount” episode which premiered last year and parodies Trump’s presidency.

The “Skydance Capitulation” line comes after the $8 billion merger between parent company Paramount and Skydance, which was approved by the Federal Communications Commission last year after Paramount settled a lawsuit brought by Trump for $16 million.

Trump had alleged an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” in 2024 with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris, was deceptively edited.

Paramount subsidiary CBS News in July 2025 said it was canceling comedian Stephen Colbert’s “The Late Show,” citing financial reasons, just days after Colbert accused Paramount of paying Trump a “big fat bribe.” The final episode of the show aired in May.

Paramount and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Technologies

Trump says he has no regrets about starting the Iran war as U.S. dials up economic pressure

Speaking to Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham, Trump said that he would have attacked Iran despite the impact on the midterm elections.

U.S. President Donald Trump said he has no regrets about starting the Iran war and added that “If I had it to do again, I would do exactly what I did.”

Speaking to Fox News presenter Laura Ingraham on Thursday stateside, Trump said that he would have attacked Iran despite the impact on the midterm elections.

“If we hadn’t done Iran, you would be cruising to midterms victory right now,” Ingraham told Trump, to which Trump replied “supposing we were cruising, and all of a sudden Iran has a nuclear weapon. They would use it.”

He added that if Iran had a nuclear weapon, the Islamic Republic would “wipe out” Israel and the Middle East, and start hitting U.S. cities.

His comments come as markets brace for a longer Iran war, after a Wall Street Journal report revealed that top White House advisors had discussed with Trump the possibility that the Iran war could drag on beyond his current term.

Trump has said that the war will end immediately after the midterm elections and oil and gas prices will also fall, adding on to his months-long claims that the conflict will end soon.

In separate comments to NewsNation on Thursday, Trump denied reports that there was any damage to U.S. assets, after Iran claimed it had hit multiple U.S. fighter aircraft at a base in Jordan.

“No damage. No nothing,” Trump said, when asked if there was any truth to the reports.

Economic pressure

Washington is continuing efforts to isolate Iran from its economic network, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent flagging sanctions against “a large bank” next week.

“We’re going to do it on Monday because we want to honor the memory of our fallen citizens on 9/11. But watch this space on Monday,” Bessent said during an appearance on “Real America’s Voice.”

Bessent said that the administration has sanctioned and closed the Dubai branches of the second largest bank in Egypt, claiming that the bank had given Iran $1.8 billion dollars. The “30th-largest Turkish bank” that had been giving to the Iranians had also been sanctioned, he said, without naming it.

The U.S. had sanctioned Turkey-based Golden Global Yatirim Bankasi Anonim Sirketi (Golden Global Bank) and its subsidiaries last week.

Trump, in the NewsNation interview, was also asked how Iran could continue holding out under the current economic pressure.

“I don’t know that they’re gonna be able to hold out,” Trump said. “But it’ll get settled after the elections. Or maybe sooner. But it’ll get settled right after the election.”

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect that Bessent said the 30th largest Turkish bank had been sanctioned. An earlier version misstated the bank’s ranking.