7 smartphone trends you wish would disappear by 2026

Overall, 2025 was a pretty good year for Android phones. Some brands have stepped up their more respectable upgrade policies, a variety of manufacturers now offer phones with absolutely gigantic batteries, and high-end devices have an incredible amount of horsepower.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, however, as we also saw a number of disappointing practices across the industry in 2025. So here are the smartphone trends I don’t want to see return in 2026.

I was surprised by the 40W wired charging back in 2018 when I bought my HUAWEI Mate 20 Pro, and initially dismissed criticism that the phone charged extremely slowly via USB-PD. Fast forward to 2025, however, and it really bothers me that some phone doesn’t support super-fast charging via the easy-to-use USB-PPS protocol. So I really hope we don’t see shitty speeds through this protocol in 2026.

The good news is that recently more brands have joined Google and Samsung in adopting fast charging through PPS. Phones like the Xiaomi 17 series and the POCO F8 Ultra actually offer 100W speeds via PPS. Even devices like OPPO Find X9 Pro and realme GT8 Pro offer speeds of up to 55W through these sockets. Unfortunately, the OnePlus 15 reportedly maxes out at 36W via PPS, but 80 or 120W via the SuperVOOC adapter. However, things are definitely going in the right direction, but it’s time for some laggards to catch up.

I don’t remember anyone asking for super slim phones last year, but Samsung and Apple released slim devices anyway. We saw the 5.8mm Galaxy S25 Edge in May, while the 5.6mm iPhone Air was unveiled in September.

Apple and Samsung made big sacrifices in their camera hardware, battery capacity, and other areas to offer these thin and light designs. Is it, therefore, surprising that both phones were supposedly commercial failures? Needless to say, I don’t really want to see more ultra-thin phones in 2026. If anything, I’d rather see more small phones.

A major trend we’ve noticed in several Snapdragon 8 Elite phones is that they prioritize top speeds over sustained performance. This means we get phones that excel in single synthetic benchmarks, but absolutely struggle to maintain that performance in stress tests due to high temperatures. This has real-world consequences when playing demanding mobile games and cutting-edge emulation.

Unfortunately, it tentatively looks like manufacturers are continuing this practice with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones. We noticed sustained poor performance on phones like the OnePlus 15 and the realme GT8 Pro. Fortunately, OnePlus has addressed this issue with a subsequent update, but I really hope this isn’t a sign of what’s to come from other flagship Android phones in 2026. Hey smartphone makers, it’s okay to prioritize stability and a cool device instead of trying to beat the iPhone for a PR win. cheap.

The practice of adding dummy camera lenses to smartphone camera bumps has been around for years, but I still find it ridiculously annoying and downright stupid in 2025. There’s simply no way to justify it, as it appears to be a concerted effort to trick customers into thinking a phone has more cameras than it actually does.

Budget phones from brands like OPPO, Xiaomi/POCO, Motorola, and realme tend to be the most notable offenders here. In any case, it’s about time these companies stop taking this frankly stupid approach to smartphone design. I can accept a flash located in one of these camera cutouts, but not a dummy camera lens that serves no real purpose.

Upgrade policies for high-end phones have come a long way in the last five years. It’s not uncommon for flagship devices to get five, six, or even seven years of Android operating system and security updates. Unfortunately, many cheap phones are still lagging far behind with extremely short upgrade promises.

Motorola is perhaps the worst offender, with devices like the Moto G Stylus 2025 only offering two major Android updates and three years of security patches. Similarly priced phones from brands like realme, HONOR and Xiaomi are also disappointing. But not everything is bad. For example, the $200 Samsung Galaxy A16 5G gets an impressive six years of Android OS updates. But this commitment will be an exception and not the rule in 2025.

In any case, I expect promises of short updates to be a thing of the past across the board in 2026. I don’t expect seven years of updates for $200 or $300 phones, but five or six years would still be a major update.

Whether it’s image generation, audio transcription, or summary intelligence, it seems no Android phone launch is complete without mentioning its generative AI capabilities. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen a trend over the years of using generative AI to hide the lack of hardware upgrades.

Samsung is perhaps the most prominent example, if nothing else, of this unwanted trend. The Galaxy S25 series actually only offered a new processor, so the company decided to highlight new Galaxy AI features like Now Brief, Sticker Generation, and natural language search. This way you didn’t have to address the fact that you’ve been using the same camera sensors and batteries for years.

I really wish the Galaxy S26 phones would buck this trend and offer some major hardware upgrades. However, leaks generally point to more of the same in 2026.

I understand. Phone makers sometimes restrict launches to a few markets for various legitimate reasons. They may only have enough stock for a small-scale launch, it could be a phone designed for a specific market, or they could be testing the waters with a concept before launching a successor more widely.

However, we saw several excellent phones launch in 2025 that didn’t see widespread release. This includes the OPPO Find X8 Ultra, the vivo X200 Ultra, the OPPO Find N5, and the vivo

The good news is that this prominent leaker Yogesh Brar says the upcoming Ultra phones from OPPO and vivo will finally go global. I really hope this leak comes true.