Google previews Android 16's desktop mode
Android's long-awaited native desktop mode is finally coming to Android 16, and Google gave a sneak preview during its I/O 2025 developer keynote. It was co-developed alongside Samsung – a logical move given Samsung's experience with DeX, which first launched on the Galaxy S8 series back in 2017. We got a glimpse of the upcoming desktop interface at the 20:55 mark in the video below.
Android's native desktop mode looks similar to Chrome OS with a row of apps pinned in a taskbar on the bottom. We can see some of Google's first-party apps like Gmail, Chrome, YouTube, and Google Photos all lined up.
Android 16 desktop mode
It will feature 'enhanced windowing capabilities' and Google also confirmed that adaptive apps will automatically scale for desktop mode, Android Automotive and Android XR.
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Motorola Razr 2025 Review: The budget foldable that cuts a few corners
Motorola's latest Razr Ultra is one of the better alternatives to Samsung's Galaxy Z Flip 7, but it still commands a pretty hefty price tag, far higher than similar foldable devices. To combat that, Motorola has also launched two more devices in the Razr 2025 range: the Razr Plus (2025) and this here Razr (2025). The latter is, all things considered, a pretty affordable take on Motorola's now-classic foldable phone, with humble specs but a pretty decent set of features. You get a slightly smaller inner and outer screens in comparison with the Ultra and the Plus, as well as a slightly humbler MediaTek chip, a slightly less capable camera system and slower charging. All of that is normal to expect from a foldable phone that goes for $700. Other than that, everything else is pretty decent value. The Motorola Razr+ (2025) has finally been announced. You can buy the high-end flip phone with a Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip at the Motorola Store. You can trade in an eligible device to score some savings. Buy at Motorola Don't want to pay top dollar for your next flip phone? Consider the Motorola Razr (2025), now available for purchase. The handset features a MediaTek Dimensity 7400X chip and sports AI features. Buy at Motorola As evident, the phone suffers due to the lower scores in performance and camera, as well as the unimpressive battery results. Still, it's not that bad, as it has lots of strenghts as well. Table of Contents: Here is an overview of the Motorola Razr (2025) specs: (Image by PhoneArena) Design-wise, this here regular Razr is pretty much the standard clamshell device that Motorola has been perfecting for the past few years, with each generation becoming a more and more refined version of the previous one, and the Razr 2025 is no exception. With a stylish aluminum frame, vegan leather or nylon-inspired acetate rear plate, this phone is unmistakably Razr. The hinge is just as robust as the one on last year's Razr, allowing you to position the phone in different configurations, which wasn't exactly the case with some older Razr foldables. Unfolded, the regular Razr isn't exactly razor-thin, measuring 7.25mm thick, but doesn't feel excessive in the hand. Folded, it's a fairly thick at 15.9mm, which is a bit more than the Galaxy Z Flip 6, but still in the ballpark of "normalcy" for a clamshell foldable. Aside from that, the phone is light enough at 188 gr, just as much as the Razr Plus (2025) and the Galaxy Z Flip 6 . It feels fairly comfortable in the hand, and it's a joy using it. The Motorola Razr 2025 is outfitted with IP48 water and dust protection, just like the Galaxy Z Flip 6 . This should give a peace of mind in most life situations, but always have in mind about the "4" digit in the IP48 designation: while it means the device is protected from particles larger than 1mm, dust and sand may still find their way inside the hinge and potentially damage it, so be mindful of where you put your device. In terms of colors, Motorola is one of the manufacturers that still use fun, vivid colors for its phones and the regular Razr (2025) is no different. The device is available in PANTONE Spring Bud (green), PANTONE Lightest Sky (cream), PANTONE Parfait Pink (pink), and PANTONE Gibraltar Sea (dark blue). Inside the box, you will find: the Motorola Razr (2025) itself; USB Type-C cable SIM ejector tool Manuals and leaflets (Image by PhoneArena) Display-wise, we get a 6.9-inch internal screen, an OLED one with FHD+ resolution and up to 120Hz or smooth refresh rate and 120% coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut. There's a slight crease on the display, but nothing out of the ordinary. The screen is super-sharp and vivid, so it's a joy to look at! The external screen is a 3.6" OLED one, only interrupted by the dual camera cutouts. It's slightly larger than the Galaxy Z Flip 6 's 3.4-inch screen, but smaller than the Razr Plus ' 4-inch display. It's an LTPS panel, meaning that it can only go up to 90Hz, so not as smooth as the inner screen. The peak brightness is also lower, only capable of hitting 1700 nits in high-brightness mode. Excellent inner screen (Image by PhoneArena) According to our in-house benchmark readings, the main display of the Razr can achieve 2,000 nits of peak brightness, which is just about enough to ensure good outdoor legibility. The Razr Ultra (2025) and the Galaxy Z Flip 6 are significantly brighter at around 2,400 nits measured, so you will have a better experience with those two. That said, the standard Razr still does a decent job in terms of legibility. However, the minimum brightness, just like on pretty much any other Motorola phone, is fairly high, so you won't have a pretty good experience in the dead of night. The fingerprint scanner on the phone is embedded right into the side-positioned power button. It's an old-school capacitive fingerprint scanner, and you can't really argue with that: it is fast and accurate and just works. (Image by PhoneArena) The Motorola Razr (2025) comes along with two cameras, a 50MP main and a 13MP ultrawide, a setup very similar in terms of hardware to the Galaxy Z Flip 6 . The inner screen houses a large 32MP sensor that's perfect for selfies. However, the overall capabilities of the Razr's camera aren't spectacular, as evident from the results in our camera benchmark above. With a cumulative score of just 125, it falls far behind the other current Motorola foldables as well as the Galaxy Z Flip 6 . The phone mostly struggles in terms of video-recording, where the phone struggles. Here are some camera samples to drive our point across. 1X 1X The main camera is fairly competent, all things considered, delivering strong performance in overall and subject exposure. The color temperature is also very decent, but the detail is somewhat disappointing due to the oversharpening that sours the soup. 2X zoom Zoom is digital past the native 1X point, and the quality is fairly good at 2X, with very usable results at this point. Some oversharpening is present here, but detail is fairly clean. 4X zoom 10X zoom However, as evident in the samples above, the more you zoom in, the worse results you get. At 10X, the images are barely usable. We'd say 4X is the maximum you should zoom in here. The ultrawide camera is fairly decent, too. It has good dynamics and accurate colors, but corner sharpness and finer details in particular fail to impress. Still, very usable for the most part. 1X 1.2X While you can take a selfie with the rear camera setup, the inner front camera is mighty capable, delivering lovely and true-to-life colors, especially in the facial area, good dynamics, and some decent sharpness. (Image by PhoneArena) Inside the Motorola Razr (2025), one would find the 4nm MediaTek Dimensity 7400X, a fairly new octa-core mid-range chipset that's a perfect fit for an affordable device of the Motorola Razr's caliber. However, from a performance standpoint, this MediaTek is a far cry from proper flagship chips like the Snapdragon 8 Ultra inside the Razr Ultra, binned or not. While the regular Razr will perform more than acceptable in most tasks, you will notice a difference in heavier tasks and especially in gaming. In the CPU-tasking Geekbench tests, the Motorola Razr (2025) performs pretty much identical to its predecessor, which was outfitted with the previous MediaTek Dimensity 7300X chip. The Galaxy Z Flip 6 with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and the Motorola Razr Ultra with the Snapdragon 8 Elite are far ahead in the distance in terms of raw performance. GPU Performance The same is absolutely true for the graphics as well. In our 3DMark Extreme benchmark tests, the Motorola Razr (2025) performs better than its predecessor. However, it's easily getting dominated by both the Galaxy and Motorola Razr Ultra. In some instances, the Razr Ultra performs times better in graphics performance, which is huge! Gaming on the Razr is an okay experience, provided that you tone down your expectations and don't play very heavy and demanding games. There are much better options if you're a devoted gamer. The phone comes with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 256GB of UFS2.2 storage. Both the memory and the storage are utilizing ancient speed standards, which is somewhat disappointing to see. The UFS 2.2 storage, in particular, is not very snappy, leading to noticeable loss in overall performance during loading a game, an app, or working with large files. Motorola Razr (2025) Software We get Android 15 on the Motorola Razr (2025), which is a fairly stock-ish take on Android, but sprinkled with the familiar Moto features on top. Among those are the useful Moto Actions that let you activate certain features with gestures, and other useful additions to the interface. Interesting here is the Moto AI on board, which you can access by double-pressing the power button. Interestingly, the new Motorola Razr Ultra sports a dedicated AI key, but it's absent here on the regular Razr. Conversely, as with most Android phones out there, you can make full use of the Gemini assistant by long-pressing the power button. Overall, Motorola's user interface is all about simplicity, as there is no bulk and it runs fairly smoothly. The outer screen is very functional. You can customize its overall appearance (fullscreen or a cutout), personalize it with various styles and wallpapers, but the biggest quality-of-life feature here is the ability to access most of the apps on your phone without having to open it. What's new this year is the addition of AI into the interface: A double-press of the power button provides access to the following features. Catch me up, which gives you a summary of your notifications (unless you have tons of missed notifications, I found it useless) Pay attention (starts a voice note recording with an AI summary) Remember this (captures a screenshot with an AI summary) Magic Canvas (generates an image in one of 10 different styles like Cartoon, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Realistic and more) These AI-annotated screenshots and voice notes are saved in the new Journal app, which is a mix between the Screenshots app on Pixel phones and the Essential space on Nothing Phones. We are not sure if we are going to use that Journal app a lot, since taking these AI screenshots takes a bit more time and a couple of extra taps, so we actually used the regular screenshot features more. But we don't completely discount the idea. Among these features, we found the Magic Canvas the most impressive just because of the sheer speed of image generation (much faster than others), but that might be because it's a brand-new platform and as more users join in, the speed could drop. Unfortunately, you cannot feed the Magic Canvas your own images to create AI variations of them, and of course, it is not as powerful as the leading image generators, so you don't have total creative freedom. In other words, you cannot tell it to just generate you an image in the Studio Ghibli style, which is quite popular. The Razr comes with a 4,500mAh battery, which is marginally smaller than the Razr Plus and the Ultra, but also larger than the 4,000mAh battery inside the Galaxy Z Flip 6 , for example. However, the MediaTek chip inside apparently isn't very efficient, as the marriage between the chipset and this particular battery has not resulted in any magic. The Motorola Razr (2025) achieves a cumulative battery life of six hours and a half in our battery life estimate, which isn't particularly good and well below the average of seven hours. The phone performs the best in our web browsing test, which is conducted with the screen set at 200 nits. The device lasts for 15 hours and 48 minutes there, slightly less than the average result. This means that the phone will fair okay if you are using it for browsing and social media mostly. 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At $700 for the only available version with 8GB RAM and 256GB of memory, the Razr is definitely the phone to consider if you're on a tight budget. To achieve such a price tag, some corners had to be cut. Well, the main weaknesses here are the overall performance of the phone's MediaTek chip and slow storage and memory. The camera quality also fails to make a particularly strong statement, both in still photography and video-recording. The battery life is okay, but won't "wow" you, that's for sure. On the up-side, the phone has two beautiful and functional screens that can get very bright. The design is certainly a highlight, and so is the friendly interface with fairly useful AI features. It's a phone that can surprise you if you come in with adequately toned expectations. Overall, it's a foldable phone for those who aren't really concerned about having the best specs around.
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Samsung hit with $112M verdict in Maxell patent fight, and the drama's far from over
Just when you think the patent wars might be slowing down – bam, another tech giant lands in hot water. This time, it's Samsung, facing a hefty $112 million judgment in the U.S. after a court ruled it stepped on Maxell's intellectual property. And yes, this drama includes smartphones, smart home gadgets, and even a past deal gone cold.A U.S. District Court ruled that Samsung infringed on three patents registered by Japanese firm Maxell, and ordered the South Korea-based tech giant to pay $112 million. Of course, Samsung may appeal this judgment to a higher court if it finds that the ruling isn't satisfactory to it. A report from The Korea Herald indicates that the Court in Texarkana, Texas, said in its verdict that Samsung Galaxy phones, tablets, SmartThings, and even some home appliances are infringing on the patents. The patents are numbers 8,982,086, 10,176,848 and 11,017,815 by Maxell. These patents are focused on new methods of device unlocking, processing of information, networking, and even reproduction of images and videos. Maxell requested almost $130 million in damages, but the jury ordered Samsung to pay almost $112 million. This lawsuit started in 2023. It covered a wide range of electronics-related patents that Samsung was claimed to have violated. Back in 2011, Samsung signed an agreement with Hitachi Consumer Electronics (which was a parent firm back then) to use ten patents from Maxell for a period of ten years. Curiously enough, the company didn't renew the agreement, and obviously, the ten-year period ended in 2021. However, it seems Samsung continued to use the patents in its products. Maxell then contacted Samsung, but the tech giant reportedly claimed the patents were now invalid. The Japanese firm then sued Samsung in multiple markets, including Germany, Japan, and the U.S. At the moment, it's not clear whether Samsung will agree to pay or whether it will appeal the decision and continue the drama. Whether Samsung decides to pay up or fight it out in a higher court, this is just another chapter in the ongoing tech patent drama. And it's not just Samsung – other big names like Apple have had their fair share of these legal battles too. In the world of gadgets and smart devices, it seems there's always something to argue over, it seems.
