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Don't call it a recession indicator, but leaks say Apple is releasing low-end iPhones and MacBooks and expects them to be popular.
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The world's largest mobile tech show kicks off today and CNET is on the ground covering announcements from Samsung, Xiaomi, Honor, Google, Huawei and more.
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 Qualcomm's Snapdragon Elite chips are reserved for the best Android phones and laptops, and now the company has introduced the first in the Elite series for wearables. The Snapdragon Wear Elite processor is designed for smartwatches and AI devices like pendants and promises up to a fivefold increase in single-thread CPU performance, Qualcomm announced.
The new processor is built on a 3nm process to improve speed and efficiency over previous models, while boosting the number of cores to five (one big core at 2.1GHz and 4 little cores at 1.9GHz). With those changes, the company is promising up to five times faster single-threaded performance, with GPU speeds boosted up to seven times.
Qualcomm
The Snapdragon Wear Elite is also equipped with a new NPU that allows low-power AI use cases like keyword recognition along with noise cancellation. It's also the first Snapdragon wearable processor with a dedicated Hexagon NPU supporting AI models with two billion parameters. That will
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 MWC 2026 officially gets underway on March 2 and will continue through March 5, but the announcements are already pouring in ahead of its start. We can always count on the annual tech event to bring tons of new phones, laptops and tablets, and we're expecting to see some robots and other gadgets too — plus plenty of AI news, of course. In addition to the announcements, MWC is our chance to get hands-on time with some of the most interesting new devices, like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Honor's Robot Phone.
Engadget's Mat Smith is on the ground in Barcelona, and we'll be updating this story as the week goes on to keep you in the loop on everything that caught our attention. Keep checking back here for the latest MWC news.
LenovoHow silly does this look when its flexible display is fully extended in portrait mode?Sam Rutherford for EngadgetLenovo pulled up to MWC with a bunch of new products and concepts, but if there's one thing everyone's going to be talking about, it's the Legion Go Fold. (Check out Sam Rutherford's coverage of the
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Anthropic may have lost out on doing business with the US government, but it's gained enough popularity to earn the number one spot on the App Store's Top Free Apps leaderboard. At the top, Claude beat out both ChatGPT and Google Gemini, which respectively sit at the second and third spots on Apple's free apps charts.
The sudden surge in user downloads isn't random. It follows news that President Trump has barred any federal agency from using Anthropic's Claude or other AI tools after the AI company refused to concede on certain guardrails. After declining to have its AI models be used for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, Anthropic was also threatened with a "supply-chain risk" label by the Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The very public spat led to a wave of user support that finally allowed Claude to dethrone OpenAI's ChatGPT on the App Store as the most downloaded free app.
While OpenAI has stepped into Anthropic's shoes after agreeing to a deal with the Department of Defense, the CEO still offered up some thoughts about the debacle during an AMA on X. Even though Claude is a competing model,
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 Apple has advised its retail store employees to expect a "major rush" of customers this week, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman.
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Lenovo has given the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition a refresh for 2026 and launched the new device at this year's Mobile World Congress. The convertible laptop comes with a new Canvas Mode when the Yoga Pen Gen 2 case it's bundled with is attached to the A-cover. When you lay the device down on a flat surface with the case attached, you'll get a slight elevation on the display, which may make it easier to sketch or draw.
The Copilot laptop is powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 3 processors with integrated graphics, has up to 32GB in memory and runs Windows 11. Its 14-inch screen has a resolution of 2,880 x 1,800 pixels, has a variable refresh rate of 120 Hz and supports multi-touch. In addition to the new Canvas Mode, the device also supports Tablet, Tent, Stand and traditional Laptop Modes like its predecessors do. The Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition Gen 11 will be available in May, with prices starting at $1,949.
Lenovo has also launched the new Yoga Pro 7a at MWC 2026. This Copilot laptop is powered by AMD Ryzen AI Max Series processors and comes with up to 128GB of RAM, so it can be used for heavy AI tasks. It has a 15.3-inch 2.5K PureSight Pro OLED display and is equipped with a big Force Pad trackpad that doubles as a drawing tablet. You can get the device starting in August this year for at least $2,099.
For a more affordable option, there's the new IdeaPad Slim 5i Ultra laptop, which also has Copilot features. It's powered by Intel Core Ultra processors and comes with either a WUXGA OLED or a WQXGA IPS LCD 14-inch display that has a VRR of 120 Hz. The device was designed for portability, with its thinnest part measuring just 11.9 mm in depth, and weighs 2.5 lbs. It will be available starting in October for at least $799.
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 While Honor has already made plenty of product announcements, with tablets, foldables and more, its most interesting device at MWC 2026 is the Robot Phone — and maybe the humanoid robot that came alongside it.
After briefly showing off a model at CES, Honor isn't quite ready to launch its Robot Phone. However, we got more specs, tech demos and a closer look following the company's MWC press event in Barcelona. The Robot Phone is currently set to launch later this year.
Image by Mat Smith for Engadget
Honor has put a lot of effort into ensuring its camera gimbal is highly mobile, to the point of creating a tiny personal robot that is, dare I say, adorable? The Robot Phone's pop-up camera can cock its head, shake to say no, nod to agree, and even "flip" - or at least rotate 360 degrees. According to Honor's presentation, it can even bop along to songs. A spokesperson told me that it's got five songs in its repertoire, so it's not clear whether they're programmed for these kind of demos, or will be a feature of the final retail device.
Another demo here at MWC showed how you could make the Robot Phone "sleep" by covering its gimbal eye, though it's odd that the camera is still exposed rather than folded away. My main concern with the Robot Phone is the robustness and durability of its robotic mechanisms. We've lived through several waves of smartphones that at
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Using iPhone's "Find My" feature can help you locate your phone, long after the battery has depleted.
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Unveiled at MWC 2026, this book-style foldable has a lot going for it.
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Commentary: Yes, Apple's $599 iPhone 16E is a good buy, but its successor could launch immintently, possibly at a March 4 Apple media event.
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From phones you can wear like a bracelet to weird AI gadgets packed with lasers, these products went hard and then went home.
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