How can it virtually be 2026? It seems like only a second in the past that we celebrated the start of 2025, earlier than welcoming the Samsung Galaxy S25 collection, then the Google Pixel 10 lineup, and naturally later the iPhone 17 fashions, and… properly, right here we’re in December.
It’s been an enormous yr on this planet of smartphones – we noticed a renewed battle of the bottom fashions because the iPhone 17 and Pixel 10 every launched with {hardware} upgrades to rival the Galaxy S25, cellphone batteries obtained larger than ever culminating within the iPad-beating OnePlus 15 (also the year’s only 5-star phone review), and the folding cellphone market was rocked by super-thin handsets just like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7.
It’s impossible to go through a year like this without wondering what’s next – so I’ve rounded up the TechRadar team to share their smartphone predictions for 2026.
You’ll find folks from the phones desk and beyond sharing their hopes and dreams for sustainability, 5G coverage, mobile AI, and more as we head into the new year. If you want a refresher on what the top tier of the industry is bringing to the table right now, check out our guide to the best phones – in any other case, let’s get proper into it.
Jamie Richards
Even bigger batteries
We saw bigger phone batteries than ever before in 2025. The OnePlus 15 takes the crown when it comes to widely available flagships, with a gargantuan 7,300mAh cell – that’s bigger than an iPad mini’s battery capacity. Elsewhere, the iPhone 17 series saw overdue battery capacity improvements, and the Honor Magic V5 snuck a 5,600mAh battery into the world’s thinnest book-style folding cellphone.
I wish to see this pattern proceed in 2026 – battery life is amongst an important cellphone spec and makes a huge effect on person expertise. Particularly, I hope that is the yr that environment friendly, energy-dense silicon-carbon cells go mainstream – I’ve been utilizing Oppo telephones with SiC batteries for greater than a yr, and the distinction actually is evening and day.
Roland Moore-Colyer
Consistent, less power-hungry 5G
As someone who can’t get fiber internet access at my apartment, I need to tap into 5G quite a bit to download things like games for my PS5 and Xbox Series X; given the ballooning dimension of recent video games it may possibly actually take days to obtain them. The issue is, I discover 5G on my iPhone 16 Pro Max, and certainly another telephones in my expertise, to be moderately spotty and inconsistent on the subject of sustaining regular speeds and a sturdy connection.
By itself this may be infuriating. Add within the considerably elevated battery energy draw and temperature spike utilizing 5G for any size of time causes, and the speedy web nirvana promised by 5G evaporates into nothingness.
So moderately than enhance the velocity of chips, or ever so barely enhance digital camera processing, I’d just like the telephones of 2026 to actually work on sustaining robust, regular and environment friendly 5G connections. That means I can lastly benefit from the future tech luminaires touted for 5G because the starting of my tech journalism profession.
Make Apple Intelligence useful
I’m a longtime iPhone user, and I feel like I still haven’t got a seat on the AI train that Android users have been riding for more than a year now. Siri Suggestions and automatic Voice Memo transcriptions are about the only AI-powered tools I use regularly on my iPhone 17 Pro, and whereas I’m not fussed about Clear Up-beating picture modifying instruments like Generative Edit and Magic Eraser (don’t mess with actuality!), I’m jealous of the vastly superior voice assistants on the best Android phones.
Even with its ChatGPT integration, Siri is nigh-on unusable in 2025, so I’m hoping that Apple a) lastly delivers its long-promised Siri 2.0 improve in 2026, and b) it may possibly genuinely compete with Google’s phenomenal Gemini assistant. Apple can solely distract us with eye-catching iPhone colours for therefore lengthy.
Philip Berne
I hope the AI bubble bursts
I hope the smartphone AI bubble bursts in 2026. I have never seen a worse development in technology than phone makers like Motorola, Samsung, and even Apple, shoehorning half-baked AI options into smartphones. Smartphone AI produces inaccurate outcomes, resorts to dangerous stereotypes, and provides little or no worth to right now’s finest telephones.
No one chooses a cellphone as a result of it has good AI instruments, as a result of there aren’t any AI instruments that make a cellphone price shopping for. It is clear that AI options are a cynical ploy from an business that appears to have run out of actual, progressive concepts. Nonetheless, I hope 2026 is the yr the business lastly involves its human senses about machine studying.
Josephine Watson
Get serious about sustainability
What I want most from phones in 2026 is a real focus on sustainability; more durable, more efficient, better materials.
There’s so much work to be done here, and it won’t happen overnight; so it’s time the big brands put their money where their mouth is and start to make significant changes.
Harry Padoan
Stop the AI bloat
My smartphone hope for 2026, is that the major players pare back some of the AI bloat. I really don’t need AI-generated playlists or notifications summaries. I’m not bothered about AI-generated backgrounds, and I’m generally growing tired of novelty features that I’ll never realistically use.
For me and many others, a lot of these AI integrations feel more like gimmicks than valuable innovations. So, hopefully we can see more of a focus on a streamlined user experience, and less of an emphasis on the unnecessary.
Viktoria Shilets
Where is the iPhone Fold?
I think 2026 could be a very exciting year if Apple launches its first foldable phone. Throughout the long-standing rivalry between Apple and Samsung, each one has consistently pushed the other to innovate. With Samsung releasing the Galaxy Z Fold 7 this year (arguably its best foldable phone but), I can’t anticipate the primary spherical of this pleasant competitors to start.
We additionally know that Apple has one of many strongest advertising groups on this planet. It proved this lately with the iPhone Air (try our full review on YouTube): regardless of comparatively modest gross sales efficiency, it turned one of many loudest product launches of the previous yr, with tech influencers and publications driving huge viewership throughout associated content material. And that is precisely what we want for foldable telephones!
For the second yr in a row, Samsung’s foldable-focused Unpacked event has been the most effective occasion I attend yearly. It’s unimaginable to see how a lot these units proceed to enhance, and actually, I really feel nearer than ever to lastly switching to a Flip. Don’t fold your expectations – let’s get excited!
Mark Wilson
An end to mobile dead zones
It’s almost 2026 and my biggest smartphone frustration is the same as the one I had in 2016 – I still regularly find myself without any mobile signal. This happens when I’m both in central London and out in the countryside. To be fair, this is more of an infrastructure problem than a smartphone one. But before I get agentic AI, a 15x telephoto lens or a flashy UI redesign, I’d love to see this problem fixed.
Hope is on the horizon. Here in the UK, big network mergers like the one between Vodafone and Three are (in theory) promising to decrease the number of mobile ‘not spots’. Meanwhile, the rise of satellite internet from the likes of Starlink and O2 Satellite could soon help with rural dead zones. Will the problem be fixed in 2026? Not likely, but I’d take at least one bar of progress this year.
Desire Athow
Faster USB speeds
I want USB Type-C USB 2.0 to disappear from smartphones forever. That’s a 25-year old technology still hampering mobile handsets with its miserable 80MB/s transfer speed. Moving to higher speeds is instrumental to Google’s plans to bring Android-on-desktop mainstream. Connecting to monitors and other peripherals (e.g. external storage) requires a fast interface, but at the moment it’s a bit of a minefield.
A quick glance at the spec sheet of some popular smartphones brings up quite a few culprits including some of the biggest brands out there. Removing USB 2.0 entirely from the picture would make sense to transform the smartphone (at least on Android) into a truly universal platform.
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