Browsing: Smartphones

The Enough Phone targets a 5.3-inch screen, a battery you can swap by hand, and a Kickstarter campaign that needs 20,000 backers. It arrives four months before an EU rule that was supposed to make swappable batteries normal, and that rule has a loophole.

Chinese flagships are shipping 7,000mAh and larger silicon carbon batteries while Apple, Samsung, and Google stay near 5,000mAh. The split comes down to one tradeoff: capacity now against cycle life later, and both sides have a real argument.

Google Assistant starts being removed from Android on September 4, and there is no way back once your device switches. Here is which of your devices are affected, the two features Gemini still cannot replace, and the ten minute check worth doing before Friday.

Qualcomm has confirmed two Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chips for September 22, including the first phone CPU to reach 5GHz. The split is not generosity, it is a response to 2nm wafer costs and a memory crisis, and it changes what the word flagship means on an Android spec sheet.

After 13 years, Fairphone is selling a phone directly in the United States. The Gen 6+ costs $649, comes apart with one screwdriver, and carries a five-year warranty. The specs are mid-range on purpose.

Leaks ahead of tonight’s Made by Google keynote point to a $100 increase across the Pixel 11 lineup, a pricier Pixel Watch 5, and Google’s first AirTag rival. The memory shortage explains most of it.