Honor enjoyed a great 2025! It's been hard to find any losers in the maker's lineup, thanks to thoughtful upgrades and great deals throughout the year. Let's look at how it did. Winner: Honor Pad X9a and MagicPad 3 Honor made a few solid tablets in 2025, but the affordable Pad X9a and flagship MagicPad 3 were able to stamp their authority on markets such as Malaysia, where Honor was the number one tablet maker!
Here's a thought many of us have these days: if only we weren't on our damn phones all the time, we would surely unlock a better self-one that went on hikes and talked more with our children and felt less rank jealousy about other people's successes. It's a nice idea; once a day, at least, I wonder what my life would be like if I smashed my phone into bits and never contacted AppleCare.
Whether you've read our reviews and agreed or disagreed, here's your chance to help decide what was the best tech of the year in our Readers' Choice Awards. Which phone was your favorite? Was it an Android device or one of the five iPhones (six if you count the biggest iPhone 17 Pro Max as separate) that Apple released throughout the calendar year? Or did foldables like the super thin and light Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 finally win your hard-earned money?
The smartphone changed all this for one simple reason. Everything and everyone became connected. The fundamental importance of this shift cannot be overstated. When everyone is connected - and, by 2020, there will be 4bn people online with 4bn smartphones - new startups are able to utilise this to offer a superior customer service. Suddenly, the consumer can have what they like, when they like it, where they like it.
Xiaomi has published its Q3 2025 financial report and the numbers are glowing - this is the fourth consecutive quarter with more than CNY 100 billion in revenue. Xiaomi's smartphone business is well established at this point and it continues to perform - the company shipped 43.3 million units globally, which marks the 9th consecutive quarter of growth. Globally, Xiaomi is in the Top 3 and it is #2 in China.
Despite the average Briton spending more than three hours a day on their phones, people simply never dream about their devices. In fact, scientists say there are five things that you will never see in a dream. Besides smartphones, dream researchers say that our sleeping minds either can't or won't recreate common details of the waking world. That means words, numbers, smells and tastes, and even our own reflections, almost never show up in dreams.
As a nation of committed trivia buffs, it was unsurprising that we leapt on news of a quizmaster in Manchester who outed a team for cheating. Just where, we asked, is the special place in hell reserved for those quizzers who take a sneaky look at their phones under the table? According to the BBC, a massive whodunnit ensued after the landlord at the Barking Dog in Urmston revealed that the cheats were whispering questions into their smartphones, but refused to name and shame them.
"Our users are very young," Pei said on Alex Heath's Access podcast this week. "It's pretty much impossible to be popular among everybody in the world at the very beginning, so we got to pick a lane." Pei said the company has found that its products resonate best with younger consumers who are motivated by a desire to "be different" and find their "own identity" in the devices they choose.
Apple delivered its best results ever in a July quarter, while Samsung achieved its strongest July-quarter growth on record. Demand for Apple's new iPhone 17 lineup was robust, with pre-orders surpassing those of the previous generation. At the same time, Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Galaxy Z Flip 7 outperformed all earlier foldable models, creating renewed momentum for the foldables segment.
Customers who wish to upgrade their smartphones can enjoy discounts of up to 45 percent on the latest models. The Redmi Note 14 Pro+ 5G, with a launch price of Rs. 34,999, will be available at an effective sale price of Rs. 24,999. This translates into savings of Rs. 10,000. Similarly, the affordable Redmi A4 5G price will drop from Rs. 10,000 to Rs. 7,499 during the Xiaomi Diwali sale.
The Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers California and most of the Western U.S., just delivered good news for digital privacy: abandoning a phone doesn't abandon your Fourth Amendment rights in the phone's contents. In United States v. Hunt, the court made clear that no longer having control of a device is not the same thing as surrendering the privacy of the information it contains.
With our ever-present smartphones linked to everything from banking to kids activity schedules, switching off can seem impossible. But there is a way to step back. With summer over, it may be hard to even begin thinking about holidays. But the next time a few days off do swing around, can I make a recommendation?
In November 1980, I was 13 and making my way to Firhill from East Kilbride alone, arriving at the game to discover there was no manager in the dugout. It seemed very strange but, as I went on my own and was too shy to speak to anyone while I was there, it wasn't until the next day that I found out via the Sunday Mail that Bertie Auld had resigned and gone to Hibs.
