As I tilt the phone back and forth, I admire the shimmering artwork — a bright electric blue and rich gold inspired by Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night — enraptured by the genius of the design. I was not looking at the screen but at the back panel of the phone. And no, it wasn’t a crime.
You’ve probably never heard of the Nubia Z80 Ultra. This high-end Android phone is among the few devices from the Chinese company ZTE that plays in a unique way, unlike anything else on the market.
I got my hands on it this month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. It was just one of many phones that made me, for the first time in a long time, feel excited about this wave of new design.
To find these phones, you have to look beyond Apple and Samsung, the two brands that dominate the market. For a long time, small companies tried to compete with these behemoths by imitating their phones at an affordable price. And they follow the same vague formula. Each was a small slab of plastic or metal in black, silver or white. Dim, dim, dim. It’s dull to look at and dull to review.
Of course, phone makers sometimes take a playful approach to color — blue, green, pink — even these simple experiments are still playing it safe. And sadly, the modular concept calls for such Google’s Ara project and Motorola’s Moto Z died before it really took off.
To my delight, as someone who has had many of these boring calls pass through my hands over the years, it looks like those days may be over.
It certainly has personality.
First, the folding revolution introduced book-style folding phones and modern reinterpretations of flip phones. It seems like companies are starting to ask what a phone can do, be or look like — beyond the template Apple set with the first iPhone.
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen a slew of new phones announced from companies big and small, making it a good time to pause and take stock of the current state of design.
Phone design: the current state of gaming
First, the big dogs. Apple introduced the program iPhone 17E in the first week of March. Available in black, white, and single (pale pink), it follows the slab template the company has relied on for nearly two decades.
At the end of February, Samsung renewed its flagship program with Galaxy S26 series, which is very different from last year. Then, just this week, the company announced that it would don’t sell anymore i Galaxy Z TriFoldits the most important design in more than a decade, with three panels that fold into a tablet-like screen. (The Galaxy Z Flip and Fold are still available.)
At MWC, where smaller brands will play, the story was completely different. I modular design for Tecno phones and a huge range of ZTE Nubia phones, ranging from the Starry Night Z80 Ultra to Neo 5 gaming phoneeverything left a lasting impression.
Honor Magic V6 looks beautiful in red.
I was drawn to the craftsmanship and the soft, supple vegan leather used in the red. Honor Magic V6. Colleague Patrick Holland noted that the luxurious, silky feel of the Motorola Razr Fold can be its biggest selling point. Motorola, in retrospect, has been at the forefront of interesting phone design, experimenting with materials like fabric and even wood over the years.
The biggest crowds I’ve seen all week at MWC gathered at Honor’s booth for a new look Robot Phone in action. It’s not surprising. The Robot Phone, with a pop-out, self-aware, gimbal-mounted camera, is a collision of robotics (an emerging technology) and a mobile phone (an established product category). It is the reinvention of the telephone as we know it.
“For decades, the smartphone brand has remained the same,” said Honor’s Robot Phone expert Thomas Bai. “As technology advances, we need a new type of device.”
Look at that cheeky little camera sticking out of the phone. It’s lovely, in a way.
Honor has yet to sell the phone, and it’s unclear how popular it might be if it does. But at the very least, it shows the company’s willingness to think and make a bold and unique phone design.
Enjoy the bold twists and turns from the young players
It is clear that large, more conventional companies are less likely to take design risks, while smaller companies, striving to differentiate themselves in a sea of uniformity, take some initiative. It feels like a throwback to the heyday of experimental phone design, when market leaders Nokia and Sony introduced all kinds of weird phones: sliding, swinging, dynamic renderings of weird keyboard setups.
No phone maker understands how to use design as a differentiator like British startup Nothing, which leans heavily on the unconventional Y2K aesthetic and away from minimalism, revealing the design of its products with transparent cases, playful lighting and pixelated interfaces.
Nothing’s Chief Brand Officer Charlie Smith, formerly of fashion house Loewe, describes fun culture and “subversive art” as the core of the company’s design philosophy. Granted, nothing makes a splash like a late entrant into a mature and established market.
It’s both forward-looking and the opposite, harkening back to the era before the boring phone days. “All those personalities just lost their energy,” said Smith, speaking to me before the game’s launch No Phone 4A.
The company has started to embrace color, too. “If we want to make technology fun,” said Smith. “We can’t do that by being grey, black and white.”
Nothing Phone 4A pink.
The devices do not feel opposed to the quiet comfort that seems to be so prominent in Apple’s design approach – whether that is because of the luxury company, the small machines, or the Apple Stores themselves, with their inset, perfectly curved marble bannisters that seem to disappear from the walls.
Even if Apple brings color to the iPhone (think orange effort last fall), it doesn’t hit as hard as when a bold color choice meets a unique design experiment. For years, the tech giant has been relentless in its phone design and, frankly, it’s been a profitable (and predictable) strategy that’s kept iPhone owners around the world satisfied. If Apple does, as expected, introduce ia the foldable iPhone sometime in the next year or so, it should not be praised for its bravery.
In particular, we have Chinese smartphone makers — Honor, Oppo and Huawei — to thank for pushing the boundaries of what a phone can handle. Everything they, along with Samsung and Motorola, have achieved in the past five years in the foldable space will have laid the groundwork for Apple to take what will be a very calculated risk.
If it’s a risk that pays off, it will serve as a vindication for the phone makers we’re already seeing make bold moves. And, hopefully, that will continue to usher in this new era of phone design, which isn’t easy, and a lot more fun.
