7 smartphone trends I wish would die in 2026

On the whole, 2025 was a pretty good year for Android phones. Some brands stepped up with more respectable update policies, a variety of manufacturers now offer phones with absolutely gigantic batteries, and top-end devices have a crazy amount of horsepower.

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

I was amazed by 40W wired charging back in 2018 when I bought my HUAWEI Mate 20 Pro, and I initially dismissed criticism that the phone charged extremely slowly via USB-PD. Fast-forward to 2025, though, and I’m downright annoyed when any phone doesn’t support super-fast charging via the user-friendly USB-PPS protocol. So I really hope we don’t see crappy speeds via this protocol in 2026.

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

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

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

One major trend we noticed with several Snapdragon 8 Elite phones is that they prioritize peak speeds over sustained performance. This means we get phones that excel at one-off 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 bleeding-edge emulation.

Unfortunately, it tentatively looks like manufacturers are continuing this practice with Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 phones. We noticed poor sustained performance in phones like the OnePlus 15 and realme GT8 Pro. OnePlus has thankfully addressed this problem with a subsequent update, but I really hope this isn’t a sign of things 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 cheap PR win.

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

Budget phones from brands like OPPO, Xiaomi/POCO, Motorola, and realme are frequently the most high-profile offenders here. In any event, it’s high time that these companies stop with 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.

Update 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 OS and security upgrades. Unfortunately, many cheap phones still lag far behind with extremely short update promises.

Motorola is perhaps the worst offender, as devices like the Moto G Stylus 2025 only offer two major Android upgrades and three years of security patches. Similarly priced phones from brands like realme, HONOR, and Xiaomi are also disappointing. It’s not all bad, though. For example, the $200 Samsung Galaxy A16 5G gets an impressive six years of Android OS upgrades. But this commitment is an exception rather than the rule in 2025.

In any event, I hope short update pledges are a thing of the past across the board in 2026. I’m not expecting seven years of updates for $200 or $300 phones, but five or six years would still be a major upgrade.

Whether it’s image generation, audio transcriptions, or summarization smarts, it seems like no Android phone launch is complete without mention of its generative AI capabilities. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen a trend over the years of generative AI being used to hide a lack of hardware upgrades.

Samsung is perhaps the most prominent, if only, example of this unwelcome trend. The Galaxy S25 series only really offered a new processor, so the company chose to highlight new Galaxy AI features like Now Brief, Sticker Generation, and natural language search. This way, it didn’t have to address the fact that it’s been using the same camera sensors and batteries for years now.

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

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

Nevertheless, we saw several excellent phones launching in 2025 that didn’t get a wide release. This includes the OPPO Find X8 Ultra, the vivo X200 Ultra, the OPPO Find N5, and the vivo X Fold 5. The Ultra phones in particular were two of the best camera phones we’ve seen in a while.

The good news is that prominent leaker Yogesh Brar says OPPO and vivo’s upcoming Ultra phones are finally going global. I really hope this leak becomes reality.