Technologies
CES 2026: The Biggest Tech Show of the Year Is Back. Here’s What to Expect
From Samsung to Sony, from LG to Lenovo and from cutting-edge TVs to futuristic robots, CES 2026 will set the tech agenda for the year ahead.
CES is the flashiest tech show of the year and is set to inject some much-needed excitement into the January gloom. Our CNET editors will travel to Las Vegas, where we will be on the hunt for the defining tech products of 2026.
Stick with us as we showcase the best across all key product categories, from TVs to laptops, and hopefully ignite your imagination with fun and future-facing concepts that give you a glimpse into what your next favorite gadget might look like.
Read more: CNET Is Choosing the Best of CES 2026 Awards
What is CES?
CES is one of the largest and most significant tech trade shows in the world. It’s attended by all the major, established tech companies, as well as numerous up-and-coming companies from around the world.
Samsung will be bringing its largest-ever CES showcase to this year’s convention, and Lenovo is taking over the Las Vegas Sphere for its keynote, which, if it manages to rival Delta’s event at the venue last year, should be quite a show. Another event we’re excited about is the Sony Honda Mobility Exhibit, where the two companies will unveil the pre-production Afeela 1 EV, set to go on sale in California in 2026.
Together with press, investors, and business leaders, these companies and others will gather in the conference halls and hotel suites of Las Vegas to showcase their newest innovations and set the agenda for the year. CES 2025 drew over 140,000 people, 40% of whom came from outside of the US, which should give you a solid idea of the enormity and importance of this show.
Some of the products and ideas we’ll see at the show are concepts that tease next-generation developments in technology. Other devices will go on sale during or shortly after the show — and we’ll be sure to tell the early adopters among you exactly what they are.
What are the key dates?
The official dates for CES 2026 are Jan. 6 to 9, but CNET will arrive in town a few days before for an early look and exclusive press-only previews before the show doors even open. Some side events are scheduled as early as Jan. 3.
Monday, Jan. 5, will be the first major day of the show for us, as we attend back-to-back press conferences, where the biggest names in tech unveil their latest products and devices to the world.
How to watch along
Don’t want to miss out? The best place for all the latest CES news is right here at CNET. Our expert team of reporters and reviewers has decades of combined experience covering the show. We’ll show you everything we deem interesting and important, and we’re not just admiring new products from afar. We’re touching, tinkering with and trying not to drop them, so be sure to follow us across X, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Bluesky, too.
CES 2026 major trends
We couldn’t escape AI at CES 2025, and we expect this year to be much the same. One of our tasks — as your eyes, ears and hands on the ground — is to discern between AI that’s genuinely useful and elevates a product or device, and AI that is simply marketing fluff, or overpromises and underdelivers.
We’ll also be keeping a close eye on the chip companies: Arm, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm and Nvidia. They’re often at the forefront of advances in AI — on-device AI in particular — so we’re keen to see what they might have to say or show off at this CES.
Another major trend we’re expecting to see this year is a focus on digital health. This is likely to span devices and services, with companies such as Withings, Samsung, and Ultrahuman showcasing developments in personal health technology.
Then there’s auto tech and mobility. Volvo is set to hold a keynote at CES 2026, and we expect to see an emphasis on connected vehicles and transportation at this year’s show.
These are the three major trends highlighted by the Consumer Technology Association, which organizes the event. But CNET’s veteran experts also have their own predictions. Here’s what we’re excited for.
Our experts’ CES predictions
Ty Pendlebury: TV and audio
There’ll be two main improvements from the TVs announced at CES 2026 — better brightness and better colors.
The newest Dolby Vision 2 specification, and Samsung’s HDR 10 Plus Advanced, will help drive TVs to be even brighter than before; in some cases, they’ll be over twice as bright. OLED TVs will also get a boost, and we’ll likely see more of the four-stack technology LG debuted last year. It essentially stacks two OLEDs on top of each other for a brighter image.
As far as colors are concerned, we’ll see TVs which boast expanded colors up to 100% of the BT.2020 standard — something that hasn’t been done before now. One of the ways TV manufacturers will accomplish both of these improvements is with new LCD backlights, including new color filters or the Micro RGB tech, which Samsung debuted last year.
Meanwhile, the best and most surprising audio of CES is usually from new companies. Multiroom audio, desktop speakers, personal music players: these devices are usually shown at events the day before the show starts and are often the best things we’ll see all week.
Meanwhile, the bigger audio companies will also be exhibiting. The Harman group, now owned by Samsung, is one of the most reliable presences at CES. As with every year, you can expect new soundbars, Bluetooth speakers and possibly AV separates. In that vein, Klipsch and its new partner, Onkyo, will likely have some more soundbars and speakers on show. As far as high-end audio, though, it will be there, but hi-fi shows are more important than CES nowadays and its presence will be limited.
Josh Goldman: Computers
It might come as a surprise, but CES is a pretty big show for what’s coming next in the world of PCs. A wide variety gets unveiled, too — from ultraportables to the latest for gaming and content creation — so it really is a «something for everyone» kind of event. Additionally, there are usually major chip announcements; you have to have something powering all the new laptops and desktops, after all. CES is also where PC makers come to showcase eye-popping concepts and prototypes for both computers and peripherals, so expect to see all of this and more.
Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm have been battling it out to see who can deliver processors that are equally powerful and power-efficient. We’re already seeing laptops that get more than 24 hours of battery life and have good processing performance. At CES, we can expect to see the first models from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, MSI, Samsung and others featuring new laptops built around Intel’s Panther Lake chips. If the leaks are to be believed, these laptops will not only be thin and light with excellent battery life, but have significantly better graphics performance without the additional cost — or heat — of a discrete GPU. Another version of these chips might also find its way into new gaming handhelds at the show.
Abrar Al-Heeti: Mobile
Events like CES are always packed with fun, futuristic concepts for personal devices, and I’m sure we’ll see our fair share of bendy screens and innovative wearables again. But in the past several months, two key descriptors have defined the most cutting-edge smartphones: thin and foldable. And that’s likely to continue into 2026.
Phone makers from Samsung to Honor to Huawei have debuted wildly slim handsets (some of which also fold), and Apple’s iPhone Air arguably helped to legitimize the thin category. And these companies are just getting started. Get ready for Samsung’s new Galaxy Z TriFold, which has three display panels instead of two — similar to Huawei’s Mate XT Ultimate Design. More concepts like this will probably be on display at CES, and some may even see the light of day. Several others will merely live on in our collective imagination.
Oh yeah, and lots of mobile AI. Companies aren’t quite ready to ease up on that.
David Watsky: Home
Advanced AI continues to drive home tech and, frankly, we’re not surprised.Last year, we were charmed by the first-ever robot vacuum with a robotic arm, although it didn’t wow our vacuum expert, Ajay Kumar, quite as much in testing. We anticipate more home robotics at CES that assist in everyday chores, including laundry, cleaning, cooking, home security and general smart home management.
Large appliances continue to become smarter, offering varying degrees of helpfulness. I anticipate fridges, ovens and washing machines with more advanced hub screens (in the future, all refrigerators will have them — mark my words) and smarter app integration to help homemakers move through their to-do lists.
It’s unlikely that a laundry-folding robot that any of us can afford will be ready for primetime this year, but it soothes me greatly to know it might not be too far off.
As with other parts of CES 2026, we expect AI advances to be front and center for the smart home, including more intelligent video scanning for security cameras, a trend that’s been on the rise all year.
We’ll also see AI-powered conversational voice assistants that can talk from your doorbell, help set home routines for you — generally making smart home management less complicated and more hands-off. Another tech trend to look for is presence sensing, or using disturbances in Wi-Fi signals to map activity patterns around the home for better analysis.»
Scott Stein: Future tech
We’ve seen big tech companies trying to figure out smart glasses for years, but things are getting serious now that Google and Samsung are involved, with glasses on deck for 2026. CES is going to be a wild west showcase for all the other glasses hopefuls’ evolving ideas and demonstrating how some of the internal tech could improve. Next-gen displays, wearable interfaces like rings and watches, and next-step products from companies like TCL, Rokid, Even Realities and others should be on deck.
I also expect a wide range of wearable AI accessories, in various forms, including wristbands, pendants and camera-equipped devices. OpenAI is expected to evolve its own AI device in the next few years, and even though ghosts of the Humane AI Pin haunt the space, there’s a lot of room for plenty more startups.
I’m keeping an eye on neural tech, especially now that Meta has come out of the gate with its own EMG-based neural band.
And there’s robotics. Weird robots have been CES eye candy for decades, and it’ll be impossible to measure how practical any of them could be in a vacuum of a trade show, but we should see at least a few eye-popping demos.
Antuan Goodwin: Cars
Car technology is set to shift into high gear at CES 2026, driven by language-based AI that is rapidly gaining dominance in the dashboard experience. I expect we’ll see smarter cars that can predict the driver’s habits and needs, and even identify their own maintenance issues. Think natural language voice assistance, where you can just chat with your car to get things done or get answers to random questions.
However, AI in cars isn’t limited to the dashboard. At CES 2026, it’s also set to significantly enhance safety and self-driving technology. That means souped-up driver assistance systems and big news about autonomous driving and robotaxi services are all fighting for the spotlight.
I’m also expecting big things in air mobility this year, particularly more «flying car» prototypes emerging and more detailed information regarding the testing and rollout of electric air taxi services in major cities. Plus, you should keep an eye out for cool consumer electronics announcements this year, focusing on dashcams and other aftermarket automotive gear.
Technologies
AI Is Taking Over Social Media, but Only 44% of People Are Confident They Can Spot It, CNET Finds
Half of social media users said they want better labels on AI-generated and edited posts.
AI slop has infected every social media platform, from soulless images to bizarre videos and superficially literate text. The vast majority of US adults who use social media (94%) believe they encounter content that was created or altered by AI, but only 44% of US adults say they’re confident they can tell real photos and videos from AI-generated ones, according to an exclusive CNET survey. That’s a big problem.
There are a lot of different ways people are fighting back against AI content. Some solutions are focused on better labels for AI-created content, since it’s harder than ever to trust our eyes. Of the 2,443 respondents who use social media, half (51%) believed we need better AI labels online. Others (21%) believe there should be a total ban on AI-generated content on social media. Only a small group (11%) of respondents say they find AI content useful, informative or entertaining.
AI isn’t going anywhere, and it’s fundamentally reshaping the internet and our relationship with it. Our survey shows that we still have a long way to go to reckon with it.
Key findings
- Most US adults who use social media (94%) believe they encounter AI content on social media, yet far fewer (44%) can confidently distinguish between real and fake images and videos.
- Many US adults (72%) said they take action to determine if an image or video is real, but some don’t do anything, particularly among Boomers (36%) and Gen Xers (29%).
- Half of US adults (51%) believe AI-generated and edited content needs better labeling.
- One in five (21%) believe AI content should be prohibited on social media, with no exceptions.
US adults don’t feel they can spot AI media
Seeing is no longer believing in the age of AI. Tools like OpenAI’s Sora video generator and Google’s Nano Banana image model can create hyperrealistic media, with chatbots smoothly assembling swaths of text that sound like a real person wrote them.
So it’s understandable that a quarter (25%) of US adults say they aren’t confident in their ability to distinguish real images and videos from AI-generated ones. Older generations, including Boomers (40%) and Gen X (28%), are the least confident. If folks don’t have a ton of knowledge or exposure to AI, they’re likely to feel unsure about their ability to accurately spot AI.
People take action to verify content in different ways
AI’s ability to mimic real life makes it even more important to verify what we’re seeing online. Nearly three in four US adults (72%) said they take some form of action to determine whether an image or video is real when it piques their suspicions, with Gen Z being the most likely (84%) of the age groups to do so. The most obvious — and popular — method is closely inspecting the images and videos for visual cues or artifacts. Over half of US adults (60%) do this.
But AI innovation is a double-edged sword; models have improved rapidly, eliminating the previous errors we used to rely on to spot AI-generated content. The em dash was never a reliable sign of AI, but extra fingers in images and continuity errors in videos were once prominent red flags. Newer AI models usually don’t make those pedestrian mistakes. So we all have to work a little bit harder to determine what’s real and what’s fake.
As visual indicators of AI disappear, other forms of verifying content are increasingly important. The next two most common methods are checking for labels or disclosures (30%) and searching for the content elsewhere online (25%), such as on news sites or through reverse image searches. Only 5% of respondents reported using a deepfake detection tool or website.
But 25% of US adults don’t do anything to determine if the content they’re seeing online is real. That lack of action is highest among Boomers (36%) and those in Gen X (29%). This is worrisome — we’ve already seen that AI is an effective tool for abuse and fraud. Understanding the origins of a post or piece of content is an important first step to navigating the internet, where anything could be falsified.
Half of US adults want better AI labels
Many people are working on solutions to deal with the onslaught of AI slop. Labeling is a major area of opportunity. Labeling relies on social media users to disclose that their post was made with the help of AI. This can also be done behind the scenes by social media platforms, but it’s somewhat difficult, which leads to haphazard results. That’s likely why 51% of US adults believe that we need better labeling on AI content, including deepfakes. Support was strongest among Millennials and Gen Z, at 56% and 55%, respectively.
Other solutions aim to control the flood of AI content shared on social media. All of the major platforms allow AI-generated content, as long as it doesn’t violate their general content guidelines — nothing illegal or abusive, for example. But some platforms have introduced tools to limit the amount of AI-generated content you see in your feeds; Pinterest rolled out its filters last year, while TikTok is still testing some of its own. The idea is to give every person the ability to permit or exclude AI-generated content from their feeds.
But 21% of respondents believe that AI content should be prohibited on social media altogether, no exceptions allowed. That number is highest among Gen Z at 25%. When asked if they believed AI content should be allowed but strictly regulated, 36% said yes. Those low percentages may be explained by the fact that only 11% find AI content provides meaningful value — that it’s entertaining, informative or useful — and that 28% say it provides little to no value.
How to limit AI content and spot potential deepfakes
Your best defense against being fooled by AI is to be eagle-eyed and trust your gut. If something is too weird, too shiny or too good to be true, it probably is. But there are other steps you can take, like using a deepfake detection tool. There are many options; I recommend starting with the Content Authenticity Initiative‘s tool, since it works with several different file types.
You can also check out the account that shared the post for red flags. Many times, AI slop is shared by mass slop producers, and you’ll easily be able to see that in their feeds. They’ll be full of weird videos that don’t seem to have any continuity or similarities between them. You can also check to see if anyone you know is following them or if that account isn’t following anyone else (that’s a red flag). Spam posts or scammy links are also indications that the account isn’t legit.
If you want to limit the AI content you see in your social feeds, check out our guides for turning off or muting Meta AI in Instagram and Facebook and filtering out AI posts on Pinterest. If you do encounter slop, you can mark the post as something you’re not interested in, which should indicate to the algorithm that you don’t want to see more like it. Outside of social media, you can disable Apple Intelligence, the AI in Pixel and Galaxy phones and Gemini in Google Search, Gmail and Docs.
Even if you do all this and still get occasionally fooled by AI, don’t feel too bad about it. There’s only so much we can do as individuals to fight the gushing tide of AI slop. We’re all likely to get it wrong sometimes. Until we have a universal system to effectively detect AI, we have to rely on the tools we have and our ability to educate each other on what we can do now.
Methodology
CNET commissioned YouGov Plc to conduct the survey. All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. The total sample size was 2,530 adults, of which 2,443 use social media. Fieldwork was undertaken Feb. 3-5, 2026. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all US adults (aged 18 plus).
Technologies
My Galaxy A17 Review: Samsung’s $200 Phone Does It All… Slowly
Samsung’s lower-cost Galaxy phone hits all the right check boxes, but it’s easily overwhelmed when multitasking.
Our Experts
Pros
- Big and bright screen
- Good photos for the price
- Six years of software and security support
Cons
- Multitasking can be rough
- Noticeably sluggish
Samsung’s $200 Galaxy A17 5G makes me thankful that Android is so flexible. That’s because during my three weeks using the most affordable 2026 Galaxy phone, I kept running into roadblocks with the phone’s underpowered hardware.
Whenever I tried to run a navigation app on the phone at the same time as streaming music, I found that either the song had noticeable pauses and dips or the navigation app would automatically quit without any notice. This was especially frustrating when I realized I missed my subway stop while trying to make it to my friend’s concert. When the phone is doing just one of these tasks, the A17 loads them up fast and even feels smooth.
It’s a shame because the phone otherwise feels like a great value. It has access to nearly all the same apps and services found on more expensive Galaxy phones. I appreciated having Samsung’s Now bar, with dynamic notifications showing how much time is left on timers and important boarding pass information for my flights. Samsung’s Smart View lets me use Miracast to stream my phone’s display to a Roku TV, while most Android phones lately only include Chromecast support. Plus Samsung’s six-year promise of software and security updates is unmatched in this price range.
So while I do feel the Galaxy A17 is one of the best phones available for most people looking for a new device that’s under $200, it’s not an enthusiastic recommendation.
This phone could be great for someone who just wants a device that keeps things simple: Yes, you can make calls, send texts, take decent photos and stream videos from your favorite social media app for a low price. Just don’t expect the Galaxy A17 to excel at tasks that require some app juggling.
My Galaxy A17 navigation and music fix
I discovered a quick fix for when keeping multiple apps open puts too much strain on the phone, like when I used Google Maps and Apple Music at the same time. Open Settings: Search for Memory and you’ll bring up a page that lets you list your most important background apps as Excluded apps. This tells the Galaxy A17 to stop policing how much memory these take up, as the phone is actively checking and turning off apps that you might not need in the background. And with a limited 4GB of memory, I hit this strain constantly.
While Samsung does let you convert some of its onboard storage into an additional 4GB of memory, the Galaxy A17 simply does not have enough space to make multitasking easy. While it’s not uncommon for phones in this price tier to struggle with complex tasks, it’s frustrating to see the Galaxy A17 stumble in common multitasking processes such as navigation or listening to music.
Samsung Galaxy A17 design, software, battery
The Samsung Galaxy A17 might not have the trendy vegan leather look of the Moto G, but the A17 does make plastic look as good as you can get. My review unit came in black, and there’s also a blue option. The design mimics the newer Galaxy phones by assembling its rear cameras into a vertically aligned oval camera bar.
Along the front is the phone’s nice and bright 6.7-inch display, which runs at a 1,080p resolution. For its affordable price, the phone’s display is a highlight, and it runs smoothly at a 90Hz refresh rate. This made the phone particularly good for watching videos and browsing the web. While games looked good, the phone’s limited memory and processing power got in the way of them working well.
The Galaxy A17 comes with 4GB of memory and 128GB of storage, which have become fairly standard for phones at the $200 price range. But what bugs me is that this configuration is the same as what the Galaxy A15 offered two years ago, and when I reviewed that phone I also felt like the device struggled with some tasks. While Samsung has a RAM Plus setting to virtually expand the memory by «borrowing» from main storage, the limited space quickly became apparent whenever I tried to use the phone for multiple tasks.
The Galaxy A17 uses Samsung’s Exynos 1330 processor. In benchmark tests, it scored slightly lower than the MediaTek Dimensity 6300 powering the $180 Moto G Play that I recently tested. Even without the tests, it’s clear that you need to take things easy with the Galaxy A17. The phone would often crawl when I used it for basic tasks: When I swipe down from the top of the screen to look at notifications, there’s a noticeable delay between the swipe and the action on the screen. Playing music while texting sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. And sometimes when opening an app, I’d be greeted with a blank white screen while I waited for assets to load.
3DMark Wild Life Extreme
Geekbench 6.0
- Single-core
- Multicore
But when the phone works, I’ve been delighted by the way Samsung has been able to scale down its myriad of services to its $200 phone. Samsung Health, Samsung Wallet and Samsung’s Weather app are fully functional and even colorful. While audio plays only from a single speaker, it gets quite loud when I put on my news podcasts in the living room. Samsung no longer provides a headphone jack for its under-$200 phone, which began with last year’s A16, but it’s easy enough to listen through a Bluetooth-connected pair of wireless earbuds or a cast audio to a speaker.
The 5,000-mAh battery helps the phone last a little longer than a day of normal use. I typically ended a day with 30% to 40% of battery left. You’ll probably want to charge the phone every day and luckily it’s 25W wired charging speed filled the battery from 0% to 54% in 30 minutes. That’s quite good for the price, and likely means you’ll be able to charge the phone up while getting ready for the day.
In our 3-hour YouTube streaming battery test, the Galaxy A17 performs a hair better than Motorola’s $160 Moto G Play. It depleted to 81% by the time I’d finished testing its 5,000-mAh battery. The Play has a slightly bigger 5,200-mAh battery, which dropped to 79% during testing.
Galaxy A17 cameras
The cameras on the Samsung Galaxy A17 5G perform fairly well for the phone’s price. There’s a 50-megapixel wide-angle camera, a 5-megapixel ultrawide and a 2-megapixel macro for shooting close-up subjects. The photos I took at the pirate-themed Gasparilla Festival in Tampa, Florida managed to capture all the action without too much blurring. That said, the photos themselves aren’t very detailed, showing the camera suite’s limited capabilities.
The overcast day helped make colors come out, however it’s clear that the cameras don’t have a wide dynamic range and aren’t advanced enough to separate out dark hair from shadows. But for this price, that’s acceptable, as I’m glad to see so little motion blur.
The cameras were challenged more when trying to zoom in. Images taken with the preset 2x zoom had an abundance of crushed shadows making dark colors and textures, like hair, appear to blend together.
With a more stable subject under decent lighting, such as the chicken stir fry bowl I got at the parade, the images have a lot of detail when I didn’t use the zoom.
The phone’s autofocus was on the chicken, rice and vegetables, but the grass behind it and the fallen beads on the ground blend together because the main lens’ natural bokeh, which looks crunchy (instead of buttery smooth and dreamy).
This ultrawide photo of the same subject fares better, with some loss of detail on the dish. The background looks clearer as the ultrawide lens keeps more of the image, the grass, beads and trash in focus.
Like many phones in this price range, you’ll get the best results in environments with good lighting. In this photo from The Book Lounge in St. Petersburg, Florida, the bookshelves are on full display and the A17’s cameras are able to depict the text of most of the book covers. It does struggle with a few: Skin in the Game by William Miller in the top-right is slightly out of focus, which is probably due to the lower quality of the main camera’s optics.
And in this 2x photo, the shelf appears softer because the A17 has to crop in since there’s not a dedicated zoom lens. But the variety of the book colors still looks true to life.
Selfie photos taken with the 13-megapixel front-facing camera get the job done, but they’re not great. I’d share them with group chats, but probably wouldn’t post them publicly. I took the selfie below in a well-lit Manhattan diner. The image has a lot of detail in my face: Note my skin texture and hair.
Samsung Galaxy A17 5G: The bottom line
The Samsung Galaxy A17 5G’s big selling point is its $200 price and access to many modern Galaxy features. This phone might even be offered for free with a carrier deal. When it comes to basic tasks, the Galaxy A17 is capable of doing most of them, including phone calls, texting, tapping into the subway using Samsung Wallet, web browsing and simple photography in well-lit environments.
But if you find yourself multitasking, just know that the Galaxy A17 quickly becomes frustrating.
If you need a cheaper phone, the Galaxy A17 is currently the choice I’d recommend most for its variety of features. Just be easy with it.
Samsung Galaxy A17 5G vs. Motorola Moto G Play (2026), Motorola Moto G Power (2026)
| Samsung Galaxy A17 5G | Motorola Moto G Play (2026) | Motorola Moto G Power (2026) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display size, resolution | 6.7-inch AMOLED, 2,340×1,080 pixels, 90Hz refresh rate | 6.7-inch LCD; 1,604×720 pixels; 120Hz refresh rate | 6.8-inch LCD, 2,388×1,080 pixels, 120Hz refresh rate |
| Pixel density | 385 ppi | 263 ppi | 387ppi |
| Dimensions (inches) | 6.5×3.1×0.3 in | 6.6x3x0.3 in | 6.6x3x0.3 in |
| Dimensions (millimeters) | 164.4×77.9×7.5mm | 167.2×76.4×8.4 mm | 167x77x8.7mm |
| Weight (ounces, grams) | 192 g (6.8 oz) | 202 g (7.1 oz) | 208 g (7.3 ounces) |
| Mobile software | Android 16 | Android 16 | Android 16 |
| Camera | 50-megapixel (wide), 5-megapixel (ultrawide), 2-megapixel (macro) | 32-megapixel | 50-megapixel (wide), 8-megapixel (ultrawide) |
| Front-facing camera | 13-megapixel | 8-megapixel | 32-megapixel |
| Video capture | 1,080p at 30fps | 1,080p at 30fps | 1080p at 60fps |
| Processor | Samsung Exynos 1330 | MediaTek Dimensity 6300 | MediaTek Dimensity 6300 |
| RAM/Storage | 4GB + 128GB | 4GB + 64GB | 8GB + 128GB |
| Expandable storage | Yes, microSD | Yes | microSD |
| Battery/Charger | 5,000 mAh | 5,200 mAh | 5,200 mAh |
| Fingerprint sensor | Side | Side | Side |
| Connector | USB-C | USB-C | USB-C |
| Headphone jack | None | Yes | Yes |
| Special features | 25W wired charging, One UI 8.0, Smart View, Samsung Health, Samsung Wallet, IP54 dust- and water-resistance, six years of software and security updates | Two years of software updates, three years of security updates, 18W wired charging, NFC, Gorilla Glass 3 | 30W wired charging, RAM Boost, Dolby Atmos, NFC, IP68 and IP69 water and dust resistance |
| Price off-contract (USD) | $200 (128GB) | $180 (64GB) | $300 (128GB) |
How we test phones
Every phone tested by CNET’s reviews team was actually used in the real world. We test a phone’s features, play games and take photos. We examine the display to see if it’s bright, sharp and vibrant. We analyze the design and build to see how it is to hold and whether it has an IP-rating for water resistance. We push the processor’s performance to the extremes using standardized benchmark tools like GeekBench and 3DMark, along with our own anecdotal observations navigating the interface, recording high-resolution videos and playing graphically intense games at high refresh rates.
All the cameras are tested in a variety of conditions from bright sunlight to dark indoor scenes. We try out special features like night mode and portrait mode and compare our findings against similarly priced competing phones. We also check out the battery life by using it daily as well as running a series of battery drain tests.
We take into account additional features like support for 5G, satellite connectivity, fingerprint and face sensors, stylus support, fast charging speeds and foldable displays, among others that can be useful. We balance all of this against the price to give you the verdict on whether that phone, whatever price it is, actually represents good value. While these tests may not always be reflected in CNET’s initial review, we conduct follow-up and long-term testing in most circumstances.
Technologies
Nothing to Launch the Phone 4A On March 5, and Hints at Possible Pink Design
Nothing promises the Phone 4A will feature a «bold new experimentation of color.» We think we might know what that means.
British tech company Nothing has set a date for the launch of its upcoming Phone 4A. The latest midrange offering from the design-forward phone-maker will make an appearance on March 5 at the renowned London art school Central Saint Martin’s.
The phone launch will take place during one of the busiest weeks in the tech calendar, brushing up against both MWC (March 2-5) and Apple’s «special experience» on March 4, where the company might unveil the iPhone 17E. Still, what we might see at these rival events remains largely a mystery for now. Nothing, on the other hand, has given us a much clearer idea of what to expect when it livestreams the launch of the Phone 4A at 10.30 a.m. GMT (2.30 a.m. PT).
«We’re going to be focused on levelling up our A series with the 4A,» said Nothing CEO Carl Pei in a video he posted last month. «It’s our best-selling series and we’re really excited about taking this even closer to what a flagship experience is going to be across the board from materials, design to screen, camera, etc.»
The Phone 4A is the successor to the Phone 3A, which Nothing launched at a similar time last year. But it also builds on the success of the Phone 3, Nothing’s first true flagship, which arrived last summer. CNET reviewed both phones and we were especially taken with the Phone 3A series
«The Nothing Phone 3A Pro impressed me enough with its combination of value and performance that I awarded it a coveted CNET Editors’ Choice award,» said CNET Editor at Large Andrew Lanxon. «I want to see Nothing continue its focus on affordability while offering a phone that’s capable of handling all of the everyday essentials. I’d love to see some vibrant colors too as, let’s be honest, phones aren’t as interesting as they used to be.»
Pei has already promised that the phone will offer a «bold new experimentation of color,» and he might just have given us a hint as to what color he’s referring to — based on a graphic he posted to Instagram on Tuesday.
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The image features Nothing’s name and the date of the Phone 4a launch event scrawled in bright pink graffiti-style lettering over the top of the invite to Apple’s March 4 «special experience.»
Pei has already said that the Phone 4A will continue the evolution of Nothing’s transparent design principles, and it would be a fun move for this latest device to glow bright pink. But Nothing is nothing if not bold when it comes to design. If any company can make an iconic neon pink phone work in 2026, it’s this one.
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