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

Today’s NYT Connections: Sports Edition Hints and Answers for March 26, #549

Here are hints and the answers for the NYT Connections: Sports Edition puzzle No. 549 for Thursday, March 26.

Looking for the most recent regular Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle and Strands puzzles.

How good are you at unscrambling letters to make a new word out of an old one? Today’s Connections: Sports Edition requires you to do just that — for the purple category, naturally. If you’re struggling with today’s puzzle but still want to solve it, read on for hints and the answers.

Connections: Sports Edition is published by The Athletic, the subscription-based sports journalism site owned by The Times. It doesn’t appear in the NYT Games app, but it does in The Athletic’s own app. Or you can play it for free online.

Read more: NYT Connections: Sports Edition Puzzle Comes Out of Beta

Hints for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections: Sports Edition puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Touch ’em all!

Green group hint: It’s outta here!

Blue group hint: Working one’s way up to the majors.

Purple group hint: Unscramble these words.

Answers for today’s Connections: Sports Edition groups

Yellow group: Slang for home run.

Green group: MLB home run leaders in 2025.

Blue group: Minor league baseball leagues.

Purple group: Anagrams of MLB teams.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections: Sports Edition answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is slang for home run. The four answers are dinger, homer, jack and round-tripper.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is MLB home run leaders in 2025. The four answers are Judge, Ohtani, Raleigh and Schwarber.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is minor league baseball leagues. The four answers are Carolina, International, Pacific Coast and Texas.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is anagrams of MLB teams. The four answers are Bucs (Cubs), parties (Pirates), spread (Padres) and stem (Mets).

Toughest Connections: Sports Edition categories

The Connections: Sports Edition puzzle can be tough, but it really depends on which sports you know the most about. My husband aces anything having to do with Formula 1, my best friend is a hockey buff, and I can answer any question about Minnesota teams.

That said, it’s hard to pick the toughest Connections categories, but here are some I found exceptionally mind-blowing.

#1: Serie A Clubs. Answers: Atalanta, Juventus, Lazio, Roma.

#2: WNBA MVPs. Answers: Catchings, Delle Donne, Fowles and Stewart.

#3: Premier League team nicknames. Answers: Bees, Cherries, Foxes and Hammers.

#4: Homophones of NBA player names. Answers: Barns, Connect, Heart and Hero.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for March 26 #753

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for March 26, No. 753.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle should appeal to musicians of all kinds. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: I blew it!

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: I’m in the band.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

NORM, CARL, MODE, MODES, LUTE, COME, COME, BEND, NITE, TINE, HARM

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

OBOE, FLUTE, CLARINET, RECORDER, HARMONICA

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is WINDINSTRUMENT. To find it, start with the W that is at the bottom of the far-left vertical row, and wind up and across.

Toughest Strands puzzles

Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.

#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.

#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.

#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.

Technologies

Ring Finally Goes Wire-Free for Its Latest 4K Video Doorbells

The launch of battery-powered versions of the company’s powerful AI doorbells has been highly anticipated.

Security company Ring on Wednesday announced a significant expansion of its video doorbell line, notably battery-powered versions of both its 4K and 2K models, priced from $80.

Both Amazon’s Ring and Google Nest debuted high-resolution video doorbells with new AI features in the fall of 2025. But they were wired only, and in my tests, I kept thinking, «I sure wish there were battery models available.»

Wireless video doorbells are far better for most front doors than models that require connecting to your existing doorbell wiring, which is often poorly positioned for a security camera. Mine, for example, is located on a wall beside my door that’s useless for any kind of video views, no matter how you angle a lens.

«Enhancing image quality in battery-powered doorbells means customers can enjoy reliable performance with the flexibility to install devices in a way that suits their space, whether renting or living in homes without existing wiring,» a Ring spokesperson said.

At first, I wondered whether the higher 4K resolutions and more advanced AI features would use too much power to support batteries. If so, Ring is the first to fix that issue with this suite of doorbells, including these models available for preorder right now:

Ring Battery Doorbell Pro — $250: This model offers up to 4K resolution and 10x zoom, and Ring says it features a redesigned internal architecture to support battery power.
Ring Battery Doorbell Plus (2nd-gen) — $180: This model includes a quick-release battery pack along with 2K video.
Ring Battery Doorbell (2nd-gen) — $100: This video doorbell includes 2K video, a 6x zoom and what Ring calls a «streamlined, rechargeable design,» which means you take the entire video doorbell to charge it, not just the battery — a design I greatly prefer, since Ring’s battery packs can get fiddly.

There’s also a new version of a Ring wired doorbell with 2K resolution, starting at $80. It wouldn’t be Ring without a plethora of doorbell devices to confuse newcomers, which is why I have a guide specifically for Ring video doorbells that will need some updating once I finish testing these new models.

Resolution plus an intelligence upgrade

Ring’s ordinary subscriptions of the Ring Protect plan give you cloud video storage and intelligent alerts for people, packages and vehicles, which are important but not really advanced AI. But spring for the $20-per-month Ring AI Pro cam, and this new generation of cameras opens up other capabilities.

Ring’s AI features include AI video descriptions, so if you get an alert, you can also get a summary of what the doorbell saw, including people and activities. A similar feature lets you search your video history with specific terms, such as «bike,» «truck» and so on. You also get the beta version of Ring’s Familiar Faces feature, which can ID logged faces of people who approach.

If these AI features make you uneasy and you’d rather protect your privacy, the best option is to avoid a subscription altogether or choose a lower-tier plan that gives you cloud storage without AI.

I also have a guide on how to turn off Ring’s detection and data-sharing features that might make you nervous, so you can keep what you like while ditching what you don’t.