My big tech wish for 2026: I just want a phone that excites me

As a tech enthusiast in my private as well as my professional life, 2025 was a bit of a mixed bag, to use the old cliché.

There were exciting personal purchases, ranging from the bracingly simple (I love my Hario coffee decanter) to the ridiculously expensive (I finally dipped my toe into the audiophile stereo world). But in terms of the kind of tech I actually write about most of the time? Not so much.

The Nintendo Switch 2’s blandly refined hardware turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, if I’m being brutally honest. The OLED display on the iPad Pro M4 I bought in March was nice, I guess, but didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel.

I bought an iPhone 17 Pro as my day-to-day phone, as well as to serve as a handy benchmark for any flagship phone reviews. Love the orange. Brilliant selfie camera. Still very much an iPhone.

Inevitably, this general sense of tech ennui crept into my professional life. I’m just going to come out and say it: 2025 was a boring year for phones.

Samsung and Google are treading water

Here’s my main problem: too many smartphone makers have been resting on their laurels – or worse – over the past year.

Let’s start with the two main Android taste makers in Samsung and Google. Their 2025 line-ups were almost indistinguishable from the 2024 rosters.

The Google Pixel 10 series at least added Qi2 support and a dedicated telephoto camera to the base model. But even the latter came accompanied by a rollback in the quality of its main sensor.

Indeed, while some manufacturers trotted out the same old hardware, others arguably regressed. I’ve read several rave reviews of the OnePlus 15, but both the camera and the screen hardware are arguably inferior to their OnePlus 13 predecessors.

Elsewhere, Nothing ditched its Glyph system for the Nothing Phone (3), abandoning one of the last genuinely interesting smartphone innovations to come forth.

You could argue that smartphone design in general is getting less interesting. All of the phones I’ve mentioned so far have essentially adopted the current iPhone design. All have flat rims and surfaces, framed by tightly curved corners.

While some manufacturers trotted out the same old hardware, others arguably regressed

While the Xiaomi 17 is looking to add something interesting in its secondary display (itself not a new concept), it’s essentially the same shape as the iPhone 17 Pro.

Perhaps our salvation from this smartphone design uniformity lies in Apple’s hands, then? Not so fast. Reports suggest that the next big iPhone design overhaul isn’t coming until 2027, to coincide with the pioneering smartphone’s 20th anniversary.

Reasons for hope in 2026

It’s all looking a little dull and dreary as we head into 2026 – and I can’t even bring myself to discuss the tiresome obsession with AI that seems to be afflicting every smartphone manufacturer.

But enough with the negativity. There were some promising glimpses of smartphone progress in 2025, along with signs that we could get something truly interesting in 2026.

This was a pivotal year for battery life in phones. Lingering concerns over the long-term capacity and even safety of silicon-carbon battery technology aside, 2025 was the year in which smartphone stamina took a huge leap forward.

2025 was the year in which smartphone stamina took a huge leap forward

I’ve spoken already about my disappointment in the regressive elements of the OnePlus 15, but one huge advancement it made was with its battery life. It’s the first smartphone that I’ve used for any length of time that could conceivably last into a third day of usage – and the good news is that there are more on the way.

This was the one area where smartphones took a massive step back from their feature phone forebears. Battery technology simply hasn’t kept up with advances in processors and displays, resulting in battery life dropping from multiple days or even weeks to the point where making it to bedtime is considered an achievement.

Finally, the balance looks to be on its way to being restored. I’m expecting a phone (or even multiple phones) to be released in 2026 that I can take away with me for a long weekend without needing to throw in a charger. That’s an exciting prospect.

2026: the year foldables finally go big

Elsewhere, foldables are definitely on the track to becoming valid propositions, if they’re not there already.

Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7 was arguably its most interesting phone of the year, with a significantly slimmed-down design that I actually didn’t mind lugging around.

The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold, meanwhile, showed that proper dust resistance was a possibility – even if the jury remains out as to the durability of its claims.

There’s plenty of reason for hope that 2026 will offer something a little more substantial than a few AI tricks

Then, at the very end of the year, something genuinely new and exciting emerged. The Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold popped up with a foldable form factor that seemed to live up to the original ‘tablet in your pocket’ promise. Technically, the Huawei Mate XT debuted the form factor in China in late 2024, but this was the first product of its kind with global potential.

With widespread reports that Apple could launch its own foldable iPhone late next year, 2026 could finally see foldables going mainstream. And when a product category goes mainstream, that tends to mean better hardware and lower prices.

While I maintain that 2025 was one of the most boring years in consumer technology, then, there’s plenty of reason for hope that 2026 will offer something a little more substantial than a few AI tricks.