Apple launches the must anticipated and fairly leaked MacBook Neo. A new MacBook which seems to aim to fill the gap between Apple’s iPad experience and entry-level MacBook. But after a routine update bricked my relatively young, but objectively expensive, M3 MacBook Pro. But a recent update has made me completely reconsider anything I have to do with Apple’s ecosystem.
Apple MacBook Neo: A Smart Entry Point, With Caveats
Apple’s latest budget offering lands at around €699, making it the most affordable way into a new Mac ecosystem right now. At that price, it’s hard not to pay attention, but it’s also worth being honest about what you’re actually getting.
What It Does Well
For everyday use, the MacBook Neo will likely punch above its price. The A18 Pro chip should handle web browsing, Office apps, and light creative work without breaking a sweat, and Apple Intelligence features like Genmoji generation will be noticeably snappier than on older M2-based machines. If you’re a student or casual user juggling a typical workload, it will genuinely feel premium in a way that similarly priced Windows laptops struggle to match. Build quality, portability, and battery life for light use are, on paper, all solid.
Where It Shows Its Limits
The 8GB of RAM is where things will get honest. Push it with 20-plus Chrome tabs or a heavier multitasking session and you’ll likely notice the difference compared to an M2 Air. Under heavier workloads, the M3 Air will also edge it out; Photoshop exports, for instance, finish roughly 15% faster on that machine. The Neo is not trying to be an all-rounder.
Who Should Actually Buy It
If your needs are light, this is a genuinely compelling purchase. Students, casual browsers, and anyone upgrading from an ageing Windows budget laptop will find it a meaningful step up. If you’re doing CAD work, video editing, or serious multitasking, it’s worth stretching your budget. A discounted M2 Air around €800 gives you more RAM headroom and better GPU muscle. The M3 Air at €1,099 is the safer long-term investment if future-proofing matters to you.
The Bigger Picture
Apple is clearly targeting the budget end of the market here, and they’ve done it without cutting corners on the things that matter most to everyday users. It won’t satisfy power users, but it was never meant to. For the right person, it’s a smart, well-built machine at a price that’s difficult to argue with.
But argue with it I will, because this week my own M3 MacBook Pro bricked itself during a routine update leaving me wondering why I bother with Mac at all. I’ve already moved away from iPhone, leaving the stickiness of the Apple ecosystem completely shattered.
Apple Just Works: Until it Doesn’t
There’s a phrase that Apple fans reach for whenever someone questions the premium. “It just works.” And in fairness, most of the time, it’s true. The integration is real, the polish is genuine, and day-to-day use is often frictionless in ways that other platforms still struggle to match. But then something breaks, and you get a very different view of what you’ve actually paid for. Take a bricked Mac during a software update. Not exactly a rare failure mode, and not one caused by user error. The update Apple pushed, on Apple hardware, leaves your machine completely unresponsive. Fine. These things happen. The question is: what’s the recovery process?
If you’re on Windows and something goes catastrophically wrong, there are multiple paths back. Boot from a USB stick. Use recovery media. Reinstall from another machine entirely. Apple does offer a recovery mode, but here’s the catch: to revive a modern Mac, you need another Mac running the right software. Not an iPhone. Not an iPad. Certainly not a Windows PC. A Mac. A recent enough Mac, at that. An older Intel model? No good. The software won’t run.
So the safety net for your Mac is another Mac. That’s the ecosystem working as designed. If you don’t have a suitable device to hand, you’re heading to Apple or an authorised service provider. Which is where things get genuinely frustrating. The repair centre, stocked with Macs presumably capable of running the recovery tool, cannot simply plug in your machine and push a button. They have to send it away. Ten to twelve business days. And there’s a reasonable chance that a Mac bricked by Apple’s own update will not be covered under warranty, meaning you’re looking at a service fee to fix a problem you didn’t cause.
The warranty angle has its own wrinkle, too. If you bought your Mac outside your home region, you may find yourself on a shorter warranty than you’d expect, even within a market that legally requires longer coverage. The terms vary depending on where the device was purchased, not where you live.
What makes all of this particularly galling is that this specific failure, a Mac unresponsive after a software update, is fixable. Apple knows how to fix it. The tool exists. Under the hood, it’s not a hardware problem. It could be resolved in minutes with the right cable, the right software, and a keyboard shortcut. Apple has simply built a recovery process that routes you through their service channel rather than letting you resolve it yourself.
That’s a choice. A deliberate one.
None of this means Macs are bad computers. They’re not. The hardware is excellent, the software integration is genuinely impressive, and for most people most of the time, the experience lives up to the reputation. But “it just works” was always a marketing line, not a guarantee. And when it stops working, you find out fairly quickly how much of the ecosystem you actually own versus how much you’ve simply been granted access to.
Worth keeping in mind, next time someone gives you the look for not running macOS. I’ve already moved back from iPhone to Android. I enjoy better cameras, battery, overall features and have more workarounds than ever for quick file transfers.
The Irish banking landscape has a new competitor this morning as Monzo launches early for some customers. I received an email from the neo-bank telling me my chance to set up and account had come early. 5 minutes later, I was done, with a virtual card added to my phone and a €25 welcome bonus on it ready to spend!
What is Monzo?
Monzo is a UK-founded digital bank that built its reputation on doing everyday banking properly on a smartphone. Instant spending notifications, clean budgeting tools, savings “pots” you can ring-fence for specific goals, and transparent fees were its calling card when it launched across the water. It operates as a fully licensed bank rather than just a payments app, which means customer deposits are protected under the relevant deposit guarantee scheme depending on where the account is opened. While the UK has it’s own scheme, Irish customers will be protected by the EU Deposit Guarantee Scheme.
With its launch in Ireland, Monzo enters a market that is already comfortable with app-first money management. The question is not whether people want digital banking. It is whether Monzo offers something meaningfully different.
What is the Difference Between Monzo and Revolut?
Revolut, which already has a significant presence in Ireland, with over 3 million customers in a population of just 5.5 million. Revolut positions itself less as a traditional bank and more as a financial super app. Beyond day-to-day spending, it leans heavily into multi-currency accounts, low-cost foreign exchange, crypto and stock trading, travel perks, and tiered subscription plans. It is broad, feature-heavy and increasingly lifestyle-focused.
Monzo’s pitch tends to be narrower and more banking-focused. It emphasises clarity, budgeting discipline and straightforward current account functionality. I’m looking forward to seeing, in reality, what the difference is.
What is the Difference Between Monzo and AIB, BOI, PTSB etc?
Irish high street banks such as AIB, Bank of Ireland and Permanent TSB still dominate salary accounts, mortgages and lending. Their strengths are physical branches, established lending products and a long track record. Their weaknesses, historically, have been slower app development, more rigid fee structures and less intuitive budgeting tools.
Revolut has grown to such market dominance in Ireland largely down to the technology being great, but also the pure complacency of traditional banks not willing to change or move faster for customers.
While I would never accuse Revolut of moving slowly, it is important that they have someone at their level keeping the pressure on. Monzo will surely do that.
Interested in moving up the waitlist? Because I’m not a customer you can use my referral link if you like. I’ll probably get a kickback if you tick all the boxes, but sure won’t we both be happy out.
Users of Anthropic’s Claude AI had a rough Monday morning. First of all, Claude’s status was mixed with rolling outages reported. Eventually, maintenance status messaging appeared as the app’s developers appeared to be working through the problem.
The good news for customers is that Claude returned, but a cohort of their customers continue to have issues – namely with the Writing Styles feature.
What is Claude.ai’s Writing Styles?
Writing Styles is arguably Claude’s most powerful feature for content creators. You simple take some of your own personal or brand’s content, written before you started integrating AI into your workflow, and give it to Claude. Claude will then review it and take notes on tone of voice, preferred words, rhythm and colloquialisms along with general language.
The notes are passed through Claud’s LLM and a Writing Style is created. It’s an extremely powerful feature that indeed allows AI to create more natural, and authentic, sounding pieces of content that look less like AI slop.
In 2024, I was building my own startup that focused on this very approach of providing AI prompts with more context around style and have always been incredibly impressed with Claude’s content since I discovered this feature.
Where are Claude’s Writing Styles Gone?
Unfortunately, as part of Monday’s outages, Writing Styles have vanished and still not returned. For a majority of customers, this is unlikely to be an issue as it might not even be a feature that’s used or missed. But for writers and content creators, losing a brand or personal Writing Style that’s been honed to accelerate a workflow is a massive pain.
Whether or not the Writing Styles will return remains to be seen. Some iOS users reported getting them back briefly, suggesting there is a backup in Claude’s systems. I’ve reached out to Anthropic for comment.
Finnish tech company Jolla has officially unveiled its new smartphone at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and the numbers around it are hard to ignore. Over 10,000 pre-orders were placed between December 2025 and February 2026, representing more than €5 million in committed sales before a single unit shipped. Now, a new limited batch of 1,000 units is open for pre-order at €649.
What Makes the Jolla Phone Different?
The Jolla Phone runs Sailfish OS, a Linux-based operating system developed entirely in Europe. It sits in rare company: only four commercial-grade mobile operating systems exist in the world right now — iOS, Android, Huawei’s HarmonyOS, and Sailfish. Unlike the other three, Sailfish sends no background data to Big Tech servers and doesn’t require a Google account to function.
There’s also a physical privacy switch on board, letting you cut the microphone, camera, and sensors at will. That’s a feature you won’t find on any mainstream Android or iPhone. For users who want to step away from US or Chinese tech dependencies, this is one of the very few practical options available.
Crucially, Jolla has included its AppSupport technology, which allows Android apps to run on the device. That means banking apps, messaging services, and other everyday tools should work — though how smoothly that plays out in practice will likely be the make-or-break factor for most people.
Specs at a Glance
Display: 6.36-inch Full HD+ AMOLED with Gorilla Glass protection
Processor: MediaTek Dimensity 7100 5G
RAM and storage: 8GB or 12GB RAM, 256GB internal storage expandable to 2TB via microSD
Cameras: 50MP Sony main sensor, 13MP ultra-wide, plus a front-facing wide-angle camera
Battery: 5,450 mAh, fully user-replaceable
Other features: Dual SIM, physical privacy switch, replaceable back cover, pogo pins for future hardware accessories
eSIM support and an official IP rating have not yet been confirmed. Those details are still to follow ahead of the first shipments.
Where It’s Made and When It Ships
Final assembly takes place in Salo, Finland — the same city where Nokia once built the world’s most popular phones. It’s a neat bit of history that Jolla is clearly leaning into. CEO Sami Pienimäki put it plainly: “This is not just a phone — it’s a statement that Europe can still build its own technology, on its own terms.”
The first wave of units begins shipping at the end of June 2026, with the new pre-order batch scheduled for September 2026 delivery. The phone is available to customers in EU countries, the UK, Norway, and Switzerland. To secure a unit from the new 1,000-unit batch, you pay a €99 deposit now, which is deducted from the final €649 price.
Should You Pre-Order?
If privacy and European digital sovereignty matter to you, the Jolla Phone is a genuinely interesting proposition at €649. The hardware specs are solid for the price — you’re not being asked to compromise on screen quality or battery life to avoid Google. The replaceable battery alone puts it ahead of most flagship Android phones.
The honest caveat is app compatibility. Sailfish OS with Android app support has worked reasonably well in previous iterations, but banking apps in particular can be finicky on non-certified Android environments. That friction has tripped up alternative operating systems before, and it’s the thing most likely to decide whether this phone works for you day-to-day.
More details and pre-order information are available at jolla.com/phone.
Let’s be honest. Every grassroots coach has had the same thought:
“We should really be filming our games.”
And then you Google Veo. And then you see €3,000+. And then you close the tab.
So when the XbotGo Chameleon landed as the upgraded version of their AI tracking gimbal, promising smarter tracking and better subject recognition, the real question wasn’t “is it cool?”
It was:
Is it finally good enough to properly replace expensive camera systems for amateur clubs?
Here’s the no-fluff answer.
What Actually Is the Chameleon?
The XbotGo Chameleon is a smartphone-based AI sports tracking system.
You mount your phone. Stick it on a tripod. Select your sport. Hit record.
It tracks the play automatically using upgraded AI recognition.
No towers. No installations. No subscriptions costing you your kit budget.
For clubs like Summerville Rovers, my club where I am heavily involved in grassroots sports, that matters.
This is where the Chameleon improves on the original XbotGo.
Tracking is:
Quicker to lock on
Smoother in midfield
More stable in structured play
Less prone to random drifting
It handles predictable phases very well.
But here’s the truth:
It still reacts.It d oesn’t anticipate.
Long diagonal? Quick counter?Chaotic scramble in the box?
It can still lose the ball for a second or two.And that’s the line between this and a multi-lens AI tower system. I will give credit where it is due. XBot do have a new model called the Faclon out soon, so hopefully we can get our hands on this and give you the test spin.
Real-World Use at Grassroots Level
Used it pitchside. Full-size grass pitch. Proper chaotic Sunday football.bIn good daylight? Very usable. Footage looks clean. Stabilisation is solid. Panning is smooth.
For:
Player clips
Coaching review
Social media highlights
WhatsApp parent groups
Club Instagram content
It absolutely works. Under floodlights? You’re relying on your phone. That’s where the limitations show, when the weather is awful it can really affect things, I can using the Redmi Note 14 and Samsung S25+ as the camera on the device at different times and the results were stark.
App & Features
The app is one of its strongest points. You get:
Live streaming to Facebook or YouTube
Highlight clipping
In-app editing
Cloud storage included
No mandatory subscription, which is a major win considering brands like VEO charge the bones of 1k per year for use of their software. Very Apple. Very not grassroots.
For grassroots clubs, not being locked into monthly payments is a massive win.
Comparison: XbotGo Original vs Chameleon vs Veo
Let’s break it down properly.
Feature
XbotGo Original
XbotGo Chameleon
Veo
Price
~€300
~€400–€500
€3,000+
AI Tracking
Good
Noticeably Improved
Elite
Wide Pitch Coverage
Limited
Better but not perfect
Excellent
Multi-Lens
No
No
Yes
Subscription Required
No
No
Yes
Portability
Extremely portable
Extremely portable
Fixed system
Best For
Kids & socials
Serious grassroots clubs
Semi-pro & above
The Honest Summary
The original XbotGo was good for content.
The Chameleon is good for actual match filming.
Veo is built for performance analysis and elite-level capture.
The Chameleon narrows the gap.
Battery Reality
You’ll get roughly one full match before thinking about charging.
Bring a power bank. Always. Both phone and gimbal drain under constant tracking. Not much more to say here to be honest. It’s heavy on the juice, but we move on.
Who Is This Actually For?
Perfect for:
Amateur clubs
Underage academies
Coaches wanting development footage
Content creators covering grassroots sport
Clubs who want something realistic budget-wise
Not perfect for:
Full tactical breakdown with zero blind spots
Scouting environments
Semi-pro performance analysis
Pros & Cons
Pros
Noticeably improved AI tracking
Portable and easy to deploy
Excellent app functionality
No expensive subscription barrier
Massive price difference vs premium systems
Cons
Still reactive rather than predictive
Wide-pitch coverage has limits
Battery management required
Fully dependent on your phone camera
The Proper Goosed Verdict
The XbotGo Chameleon is the first version that feels properly usable for serious grassroots football. It is a damnsite better than the gimble, but not quite ready to compete with VEO.
It feels more stable. More confident. More refined. But it’s still a grassroots tool — not a professional broadcast system.
But it’s smart, It’s affordable. And it’s realistic.
For 90% of amateur clubs, this is probably the sweet spot.
HONOR used Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week to lay out quite a lot at once. There’s a new flagship foldable, a tablet, a laptop, and then two things that sit in slightly different territory: a concept device called Robot Phone and the company’s first humanoid robot. Here’s what was actually announced and what it means in practice.
Robot Phone: A Concept Worth Watching
Let’s start with the headline-grabber. Robot Phone is being described as “a new species of smartphone,” which sounds like marketing but is at least partially grounded in something real. The device physically moves. It uses a 4DoF gimbal system, housing a micro motor small enough to fit inside a phone’s chassis, allowing the camera and body to track movement, rotate, and reposition itself without you touching it.The specs behind that gimbal are worth noting.
A 200MP sensor sits within a three-axis stabilisation system. AI Object Tracking follows subjects in real time, and a mode called AI SpinShot enables 90 and 180 degree rotational sweeps for cinematic-style shots. Super Steady Video adds stabilisation for high-movement scenarios.
Beyond the camera, HONOR is pitching embodied interaction as a feature in its own right. The phone responds to voice calls by physically following you around the room, nods or shakes in response to prompts, and can apparently dance to music. That last one will divide opinion, but the underlying technology, a self-contained gimbal in a smartphone form factor, is genuinely new.
Robot Phone is a preview, not a product on shelves. No price, no release date. But it signals clearly where HONOR thinks smartphone interaction is going.
Magic V6: The Foldable That Actually Ships
While Robot Phone gets the attention, Magic V6 is the device most people will actually be able to buy, and it’s the more immediately interesting announcement for anyone considering a foldable.
The headline hardware feature is the battery. HONOR has partnered with ATL to use fifth-generation silicon-carbon material, achieving 25% silicon content, an industry first for foldables. The result is a 6,660mAh cell inside an 8.75mm closed profile. That combination has historically been impossible; silicon-carbon allows for higher energy density without needing more physical space.
For context, most flagship foldables compromise heavily on battery to stay slim. Magic V6 is trying not to do that.At MWC, HONOR also showed off a next-generation Silicon-carbon Blade Battery prototype with 32% silicon content and over 900Wh/L energy density, designed to push foldables toward 7,000mAh.
That one isn’t in a product yet, but it shows the roadmap.The displays are dual LTPO 2.0 panels: 6.52 inches on the cover, 7.95 inches unfolded. Both support adaptive 1 to 120Hz refresh rates. Peak brightness hits 6,000 nits on the cover screen and 5,000 nits on the inner display. The inner screen uses ultra-thin flexible glass with SGS Minimized Crease Certification and a 44% reduction in crease depth compared to the previous generation, which should address one of the more persistent complaints about book-style foldables.
Reflectivity has been brought down to 1.5% using a silicon nitride anti-reflection coating, and 4320Hz PWM dimming is included for those sensitive to screen flicker.Under the hood, Magic V6 runs on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, making it the first foldable to do so. It’s rated IP68 and IP69 for water and dust resistance. AI productivity tools are built in, and HONOR is emphasising cross-ecosystem compatibility, including with Apple devices, which matters for anyone who doesn’t run a single-brand setup.
Availability is H2 2026, with regional details to follow.
MagicPad 4: A Slim Tablet With Serious Specs
HONOR’s new tablet is 4.8mm thin, which is notably slim for a device in this class. It’s powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 and features a 12.3-inch 3K OLED display running at 165Hz. AI multitasking tools are baked in, and there’s cross-device collaboration built out for both Android and Apple environments.
One detail worth flagging for developers: HONOR has added a Linux Lab feature in Developer Options. They’ve already demonstrated running the OpenClaw AI assistant natively on the device through this environment, which opens up possibilities for running local AI tools that typically require more traditional computing hardware.
MagicPad 4 is available now in Grey and White. The 12GB RAM version starts at €599.99, and the 16GB RAM version is €699.99. Pre-orders opened today, with retail availability from 3rd March 2026. I’m growing hopeful that HONOR expands product ranges in Ireland to make these more common.
MagicPad 4 and MagicBook Pro 14
Rounding out the announcements are two ecosystem devices.
The MagicPad 4 is an ultra-slim tablet at 4.8mm, running a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chip, with a 12.3-inch 3K OLED display at 165Hz. It also supports Linux via a Developer Options Lab, and HONOR demonstrated running the OpenClaw AI assistant on the device through that environment.
It’s available in Grey and White, with pre-orders open now and retail from 3rd March. Pricing starts at €599.99 for the 12GB RAM version and €699.99 for 16GB.The MagicBook Pro 14 is an Intel Core Ultra Series 3-powered laptop with a 14.6-inch OLED display, targeting portability and battery life alongside everyday productivity.
Pricing and availability for the Irish market haven’t been confirmed yet.
HONOR’s MWC showing is one of the more interesting ones this year, not because everything on display is ready to buy, but because it’s unusually coherent for a company throwing this many things at the wall at once.
The Robot Phone and humanoid robot are clearly long-horizon bets, and there’s a reasonable chance one or both never makes it to a consumer shelf in anything like the form shown in Barcelona. That’s fine. Trade shows have always been as much about signalling intent as shipping product.
What matters more in the near term is whether Magic V6 delivers on its specs when it lands. The battery story is the most compelling thing here: fitting 6,660mAh into a sub-9mm foldable is the kind of practical improvement that actually changes how you use a device day to day. Foldables have always asked a lot of their owners in terms of compromises, and battery life has consistently been one of the worst.
If HONOR has genuinely cracked that without adding bulk, it shifts the calculus on the whole category.The MagicPad 4 pricing is competitive for what’s on offer, and it’s available now, so that one is a simpler call. The MagicBook Pro 14 needs European pricing before it’s worth getting excited about.
Worth keeping an eye on Magic V6 when it gets closer to launch. If the battery holds up in real-world testing, it could be the foldable that finally makes the form factor feel like a sensible choice rather than a premium curiosity.
Xiaomi used MWC 2026 to quietly drop one of the more interesting tracker announcements in a while. Not because it reinvents anything, but because it solves the one thing that’s always made item trackers mildly frustrating: the ecosystem lock-in.
What Is The Xiaomi Tag?
The Xiaomi Tag is a compact, oval-shaped item tracker. Think AirTag energy, but smaller at just 10g and with a much friendlier price tag. It’s IP67 rated for dust and water resistance, which means it can handle being on your keys through a rainstorm or ending up in a bag pocket that also mysteriously contains a leaky water bottle.
It works with both Apple Find My and Android’s Find Hub, which is genuinely significant. Most trackers make you pick a side. Samsung Tags work best in Samsung’s ecosystem, AirTags are firmly Apple territory. The Xiaomi Tag doesn’t care. If you hand your keys to someone with an iPhone and they forget to return them, the tag doesn’t throw its hands up. It just works.
At €14.99, this is hard to ignore. Apple’s AirTag retails at around €35, which means the Xiaomi Tag comes in roughly 57% cheaper. For a single tag, that’s already meaningful. If you’re the kind of person who wants to tag keys, a bag, a bike, and the TV remote that keeps disappearing, the maths starts to look very compelling very quickly.
There’s a two-pack option too at €49.99, which brings the per-unit cost down further if you’re buying in.
The Trade-Off Worth Mentioning
It doesn’t appear to be rechargeable. That’s worth acknowledging honestly, because it means you’ll be replacing a battery eventually rather than plugging it in. It’s almost certainly a CR2032 or similar coin cell, and in fairness, most people don’t find battery replacement particularly burdensome on devices like this. Apple’s own AirTag uses the same approach. Still, if you’re environmentally minded, it’s a consideration.
The upside is that non-rechargeable coin cell trackers typically get excellent battery life, and Xiaomi’s slide shown at MWC suggests roughly a year between changes. At this price point, the lack of wireless charging isn’t really a surprise, and it’s almost certainly one of the factors keeping that cost so low.
Who Is This For?
If you’re fully embedded in Apple’s ecosystem and already own AirTags, the Xiaomi Tag probably doesn’t move the needle much. But if you live across platforms (Android phone, maybe a family member with an iPhone, a Windows machine), or you’re buying trackers for less tech-savvy people who just want something that works, this is worth a serious look.
The cross-platform angle also makes it a genuinely useful gift. You’re not guessing whether the recipient uses Android or iOS. It handles both, without fuss. The real thing here is that these trackers can save you a lot of hassle if you misplace something, and at €14.99, the barrier to entry is remarkably low.
Early Verdict
It’s early days and hands-on time will tell us more about real-world accuracy and reliability. But on paper, the Xiaomi Tag is targeting exactly the right gap in the market: an affordable, platform-agnostic tracker with solid fundamentals. If the software experience holds up, this could be the tracker recommendation that actually works regardless of what phone someone has in their pocket.
At €14.99, the barrier to trying it is low enough that it almost doesn’t matter if it turns out to be second-best. But it might just be the sensible first choice.
There’s a particular type of phone that comes along every couple of years and genuinely shifts your expectations of what a smartphone can do. Not because it ticks more boxes on a spec sheet, but because you pick it up, take a few photos, and find yourself genuinely surprised. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra is one of those phones. Xiaomi has taken a camera-first philosophy and pushed it further than anyone has managed to do before on a smartphone. There are trade-offs, as there always are at this end of the market, but if your priority is imaging quality, very little else comes close right now.
Design
Last year’s Xiaomi 15 Ultra was, quite simply, one of the best smartphone cameras ever made. Not just good. Incredible. But its design was divisive.
I understood what Xiaomi was going for. This wasn’t just a phone with a good camera; this was a camera that happened to be a phone. The optional Photography Kit, with its dedicated shutter button and grip, pushed that idea even further. It blurred the lines between smartphone and dedicated camera in a way that made complete philosophical sense, but it wasn’t for everyone. What was for everyone, though, was the output. It was arguably the camera of the year. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra continues that exact same philosophy and refines the execution considerably. The camera module is still massive, rightly so given what lives inside it, but it’s surprisingly well balanced. The central positioning means the weight distribution feels deliberate rather than awkward. It doesn’t feel top-heavy; it feels planted. Purposeful.
Despite packing a 1-inch sensor and a full mechanical optical zoom system, Xiaomi has managed to keep the 17 Ultra to just 8.29mm thick, making it the thinnest and lightest Ultra they’ve ever produced. That’s no small feat when you consider what’s been squeezed in here, including a 6000mAh battery and a 200MP telephoto system. The phone measures 162.9mm x 77.6mm and weighs in at 218.4g for the Black and White versions, with the Starlit Green edging it to 219g. The Starlit Green, incidentally, uses genuine mineral particles in its finish and looks genuinely striking.
The included case is functional rather than premium. It’ll do the job for early protection, but it slightly undermines the hardware it’s meant to complement. A phone at this level deserves better, and I’d recommend sourcing a proper third-party case early.
One thing worth flagging is the audible rattle from the camera module when the phone is shaken. It can be slightly disconcerting at first. It’s not a flaw, though; it’s a byproduct of increasingly complex optical stabilisation systems and mechanical zoom components. As smartphone cameras edge ever closer to genuine optical hardware, this is becoming the norm rather than the exception.
Camera
Simply put, this is the best smartphone camera I’ve ever used.
Just a few shots in, I was genuinely blown away. Photos feel alive in a way that’s hard to articulate; there’s depth and texture and atmosphere that you don’t expect from a phone. More tellingly, it’s the camera I find myself reaching for in moments where I’d normally say “just live it, a phone won’t capture this properly.” Xiaomi is getting dangerously close to proving that assumption wrong.
The starting point is that 1-inch sensor, and it’s worth understanding why the size matters so much. Most smartphone sensors are tiny; increasingly clever at compensating for that through software tricks, but ultimately limited by physics. A 1-inch sensor is closer in size to what you’d find in a premium compact camera, and that extra surface area means it gathers significantly more raw light per shot. In practice, shadows retain detail rather than turning muddy, highlights don’t blow out as aggressively, and in low light, where smaller sensors produce that familiar grainy, smeared look, the 17 Ultra holds its composure far longer.
The telephoto system is where things get genuinely interesting, though. Rather than a fixed zoom lens, the optics here physically move to cover a range of focal lengths; think of it less like a smartphone camera and more like a compact zoom lens that happens to live in your pocket. The result is that you can shoot at different zoom levels without losing any image quality in the process, which is not something phones have been able to do before. The resolution behind it is high enough that even zooming in heavily on a shot retains a sharpness you’d normally only associate with dedicated cameras. It also handles close-up macro shots down to 30cm, which is a genuinely useful addition for food, product, or detail photography.
The ultra-wide and front cameras are well-matched to the rest of the system, which matters more than it sounds. A common frustration with multi-camera phones is the noticeable shift in colour and tone when you switch between lenses. That’s largely avoided here, giving you a more consistent set of results regardless of which camera you’re using.
Leica’s involvement goes deeper than the badge on the lens. The glass itself is engineered to minimise the kind of ghosting and colour fringing that tends to appear around high-contrast edges, particularly in the telephoto. These are the sorts of optical artefacts that software correction handles imperfectly, so dealing with them at the source makes a real difference to the end result.
Video has had a meaningful upgrade too. You can now shoot 4K at 120 frames per second with the kind of HDR encoding that plays back beautifully on modern screens. For anyone who edits their footage rather than just posting it directly, there’s also a Log recording option that preserves far more detail to work with in post. That combination has historically required dedicated video cameras to access; finding it on a phone is a genuine step forward.
Night photography is exceptional. Portraits look natural. Telephoto shots are sharper than they have any right to be. This isn’t a camera system that’s incrementally better than what came before; it feels structurally different.
Display
The display on the Xiaomi 17 Ultra is genuinely excellent, and on this particular phone, that matters more than it might elsewhere. When you’re carrying a camera system capable of this level of detail and colour accuracy, the screen you’re reviewing those shots on needs to be worthy of them. Here, it is.
It’s a 6.9-inch OLED panel with a resolution of 2608 x 1200, an adaptive refresh rate that scales between 1Hz and 120Hz depending on what’s on screen, and a peak brightness of 3500 nits. That last figure is the one that earns its keep in daily use. Plenty of phones claim impressive brightness numbers that only materialise in specific, narrow conditions. This one stays genuinely readable in direct sunlight, which sounds like a low bar but remains a real problem on a surprising number of devices. The glass covering it has been updated too, and Xiaomi claims a meaningful improvement in drop resistance over the previous generation, which is always welcome on a phone at this price point.
Where it really distinguishes itself, though, is in how it handles the photos you take on it. There’s a particular pleasure in shooting something you’re proud of and being able to review it on a screen that does it justice. Colours are rich without being oversaturated; the kind of calibration that takes restraint to get right, because the temptation is always to push things a little too vivid to impress in a shop. Detail is rendered with enough precision that you can actually use the display to judge whether a shot is sharp before you decide to keep or delete it, which isn’t something you can say about every phone screen.
It also makes a genuine difference to everyday use in ways you don’t fully appreciate until you go back to something lesser. Watching video is noticeably better. Scrolling through photos, browsing, even reading long articles all feel more comfortable and immersive. The refresh rate adapts smoothly enough that you stop noticing it, which is the point. It’s the kind of display that recalibrates your expectations quietly, so that returning to a lesser screen feels like a step back rather than a return to normal.
It’s been a while since I’ve used a phone where the display alone made me stop and take notice. This is one of those phones.
Performance and Battery
The 17 Ultra runs on Qualcomm’s latest flagship chip, which at this point is less a differentiator and more a given at the top end of Android. What matters more is how the phone manages that performance over time, and this is where a lot of devices quietly let themselves down. Sustained workloads, particularly the kind this camera system generates, generate heat. Heat leads to throttling. Throttling leads to that frustrating experience where a phone performs brilliantly for the first few minutes and then quietly slows down when you’re mid-way through shooting something important.
Xiaomi has taken this seriously. There’s a vapour chamber cooling system built into the 17 Ultra that’s designed to spread and dissipate heat during exactly the kind of sustained use this phone invites; long video shoots, burst shooting at full resolution, or running demanding AI processing on-device. In practice, the phone stays composed under pressure in a way that not every flagship manages. You can run extended 4K recording sessions without the camera app warning you about temperature or dropping quality to compensate.
Storage options are 16GB of RAM paired with either 512GB or 1TB, which is sensible given the file sizes this camera produces. A full-resolution shot from the 200MP telephoto takes up meaningful space, and if you’re shooting video at the higher quality settings, storage fills up faster than you might expect. The 1TB option is worth considering if this is going to be your primary camera.
Battery life is where the 17 Ultra is genuinely impressive. The 6000mAh cell is large by any standard, and Xiaomi has managed to fit it into a phone that’s 8.29mm thin by using a higher-density battery chemistry than most competitors currently offer. Day-to-day, you’re unlikely to be reaching for a charger before bed, even with heavy camera use. When you do need to top up, 90W wired charging gets you back to full quickly, and 50W wireless charging is available if you prefer that. The phone is also rated IP68 for dust and water resistance, which at this price point should be expected, but is always good to confirm.
One thing worth noting is that the 90W charging speed requires a compatible adapter to achieve its full rate. It ships without one in some markets, so it’s worth checking what’s included in your region before assuming you have everything you need in the box.
Verdict
At €1,499 for the 16GB/512GB model, Xiaomi is happy to park the 17 Ultra right alongside the iPhone 17 Pro Max at the same price point. The difference, as is often the case, is that the non-Apple device has maxed out the specs to a degree Apple simply doesn’t. The camera system and display alone justify serious consideration here, and when you factor in everything else on offer, the value proposition is hard to ignore.
The Photography Kit Pro is available separately for €199 if you want to lean further into the dedicated camera experience. The standard Xiaomi 17 starts at €999 in 12GB/256GB, available in Venture Green and Black, for those who want the family without the flagship price.
Both go on sale from 1 March 2026. The Xiaomi 17 is stocked at Harvey Norman, Tesco, Eir, Vodafone and Sky Mobile, while the Ultra is available at Harvey Norman and Tesco Mobile. Promotional offers and dates may vary by retailer, so worth confirming directly before you buy. If you’re shopping in the flagship space this year, the Xiaomi 17 Ultra has a very strong case for being the smartphone of 2026.
Disclaimer: As is often the case with reviews, Xiaomi supplied the 17 Ultra to me on loan to review. I was also invited to MWC Barcelona by Xiaomi for the launch of their 2026 flagships. This included by flights and hotel. Totally normal, but I’d rather be transparent.
Another year is already motoring by, and Mobile World Congress 2026 is just days away. MWC has been one of Europe’s top tech conferences for years and globally one of the biggest smartphone events on the calendar. But what should attendees and phone fans expect from 2026’s offering?
Jolla to Launch European Smartphone
I’m particularly excited about the launch of Jolla Phone. With the world in ever growing instability, EU consumers have started seeking products closer to home for privacy and political reasons. Jolla is in the right place at the right time. Since launching the Jolla Phone in late 2025, the company has secured over 10,000 pre-orders from eager shoppers.
The Jolla Phone is proving popular by being one of just a handful of smartphones from the EU. Even more impressive is the Linux-based SailfishOS which is also gathering momentum. Enough to genuinely pose a European challenge to iOS and Android alongside Huawei’s HarmonyOS from China.
I’ll be getting my first look at Jolla phone in Barcelona this weekend and I cannot wait.
Xiaomi to Launch 17 Ultra
My lips are sealed for now beyond confirming the Xiaomi 17 Ultra will launch in Barcelona this weekend. I’ve had the phone for the past few weeks and have been mightily impressed with the phone, and in particular the camera.
After being mightily impressed by the Google Pixel 10 Series, the affordable reduced bells and whistles version launches during MWC.
Priced at €559, the Pixel 10a promises to offer enough spec to challenge the upper-mid-tier smartphone market with classic vanilla Android UI and an interestingly designed body which is perfectly flat. Rare these days.
I’ve been playing with this phone for the past few weeks too and will be bringing you a full review on March 4th.
HONOR Goes Robotic
Out of nowhere, HONOR teased its Robot Phone late last year. A bizarre take on a gimbal-focused creator camera and a top-tier smartphone. Now, all these months later we finally get to see what the phone actually looks like properly and hopefully get some hands-on time too.
HONOR will also reveal the Magic V6, which I’m particularly excited about given it’s the latest upgrade to my current daily driver.
I’ll have the latest from MWC on this around the 1st or 2nd of March – depending on schedules. Might be worth following my on TikTok where I’ll post some rough and ready news from the floor of MWC.
Samsung Galaxy S26 Gets Its Barcelona Moment
Samsung held its Galaxy Unpacked event on 25th February in San Francisco, so the S26 series will already be official by the time MWC kicks off. That said, Barcelona will likely be the first chance for the wider public and press to actually get hands-on time with the new flagships. Samsung has previous form here: the company brought the Galaxy S25 Edge back to MWC last year after its Unpacked debut, so there could be a surprise or two waiting on the show floor. Worth keeping an eye on.
Nothing Builds the Hype
Nothing has confirmed a Phone 4a series launch event in London on 5th March, right after MWC wraps. The company rarely misses a chance to generate buzz ahead of a release, and Barcelona is the obvious place to do it. Rumours point to two devices this time around: the Phone 4a and 4a Pro, with refreshed cameras, a new chipset, and Nothing’s trademark transparent aesthetic. The brand has already ruled out a flagship for 2026, so these mid-rangers carry a lot of weight. Whether we get a formal tease at MWC or just some carefully placed noise, expect Nothing to dominate a few headlines regardless.
Lenovo Goes Weird Again
Lenovo has quietly become one of the most entertaining exhibitors at MWC, consistently showing up with concept hardware that makes you wonder what they’re putting in the water. Last year it was a laptop with a transparent display. The year before, rotating screens. Nobody knows exactly what’s coming in 2026, but that unpredictability is half the appeal. Motorola, Lenovo’s phone brand, is unlikely to drop anything major on the floor, but prototypes and concept devices from the wider Lenovo stable are almost guaranteed to generate some genuinely baffling and brilliant moments.
Qualcomm and MediaTek Look Further Ahead
Beyond the phones themselves, the chipmakers will have plenty to say at MWC this year. Qualcomm has confirmed it will be showcasing 6G technologies on the show floor, and notably, these won’t just be theoretical demos. Live applications are promised, which is the kind of claim that either impresses or disappoints in equal measure once you’re actually standing there watching it. MediaTek, meanwhile, has its ‘AI for Life’ keynote scheduled for 4th March, focusing on new products and partnerships. Neither company will be selling you anything directly, but what they show tends to shape what ends up in your next phone eighteen months down the line.
Tecno Keeps Swinging Big
Tecno has quietly carved out a reliable slot at MWC as the brand that brings genuinely bold hardware without the flagship price tag. The CAMON 50 and POVA 8 series are both confirmed for the show, but if history is anything to go by, the real talking point will be whatever concept device they have tucked away. Last year they managed to fit serious specs and a bigger battery than the Galaxy S25 Edge into a slim chassis. There’s no particular reason to think they’ll play it safe this time around either.
I expect to see plenty of other wild products from the rugged phones of RugGear to Petnow animal biometrics. There’s nothing quite like a good tech conference and I’ll be covering it all, here and over on my TikTok.
I’ve been a 1Password customer for a long time. I got a free licence for a few years to review and ended up paying substantial annual fees (€38 per year) to keep it. Not because it was sticky, but because it was easily the best password manager on the market. I’ve seen a few renewal hikes over the years, but when today’s notice landed with a price increase of over 33% for Euro customers, I knew I’d be writing this article. 1Password is hiking prices to just shy of €50, and customers (including me) are angry.
This isn’t the slow creep of a couple of euro every few years that you quietly accept. This is the kind of jump that makes you stop and actually think about what you’re paying for.
The F1 Problem
The number on its own would be annoying enough. But the context makes it worse.
At the same time that long-term customers are absorbing a significant price hike, 1Password logos are appearing on Formula 1 cars. That’s not cheap. Revolut are sponsoring an F1 team, but my monthly subscription hasn’t increased for that. And there’s no meaningful grandfathering or loyalty pricing for the people who were evangelising the product when it was small and relatively unknown.
What stings isn’t just the price. It’s the disconnect. You helped build the brand by recommending it to friends, family, and colleagues. In return, you get the same renewal notice as everyone else, except now it costs noticeably more. As a customer relationship story, that’s a difficult one to feel good about.
To make it worse, the email included a list of improvements to justify the decision. Among them: “AI-powered item naming.” Nobody asked for that. The HN thread that appeared within hours of the email going out was merciless about it, and fairly so. If you’re going to ask loyal customers to absorb a 33% price jump, the justification list probably shouldn’t lead with features that read like they came from a product brainstorm nobody vetoed.
EU customers got an extra twist: some received a version of the email requiring them to actively consent to the new price at my.1password.com/billing, or face automatic cancellation at their next renewal. That’s almost certainly driven by EU consumer protection law rather than any great act of consideration on 1Password’s part. But it does mean EU subscribers have a clean, no-friction exit if they want one.
To be clear: this isn’t an argument that 1Password shouldn’t spend money on marketing or product development. It’s about the optics of how you treat the customers who were there before the F1 deal and the VC money.
1Password Is Still Very Good
Credit where it’s due. 1Password remains one of the best-designed password managers available. The apps are polished across every platform, the security model is solid, and for families especially, the sharing and recovery flows are genuinely thoughtful. For security software, that UX quality actually matters. Friction leads to mistakes, and 1Password tends to reduce friction.
I’m not leaving because 1Password went bad. I’m leaving because the value equation shifted enough that I’m willing to do the work of finding something else. And I’m writing this because 1Password was already a tough enough sell to consumers who can’t fathom why paying that much for a password manager is worth it. That 33% jump is aggressive in any market, let alone one where switching is relatively easy. Choosing the right alternative, though, is not.
Where I’m Actually Headed: Bitwarden
The short-term answer to which password manager I’m switching to is that I don’t know for certain. But my first lead is Bitwarden, for two reasons.
First, I’m on a self-hosting journey. I have a home server, and I’ve been replacing subscriptions with self-hosted solutions where it makes sense. It’s not the answer for everyone, but it’s a genuinely compelling option for people in that position. Open source, transparent codebase, and you can run your own instance if you want full control over your vault. No price hike because someone signed a sponsorship deal.
Second, price. Even if self-hosting doesn’t work out, Bitwarden’s official cloud costs roughly half what 1Password charges and is consistently well-regarded. I’m hedging my bets, and Bitwarden has enough going for it to hold my attention either way.
If you want to go even further down the self-hosted route, the HN thread surfaced Vaultwarden, a lightweight Bitwarden-compatible server that’s easier to run than the full official stack. Some people in that thread had their migration done in under an hour.
But I’d be dishonest if I glossed over the trade-offs, because they’re real and most people will find them either confusing or genuinely off-putting.
If your Bitwarden instance only lives on your home network, you lose access the moment you’re travelling. If you expose it to the internet, you’re now running the security and uptime story yourself: DNS, TLS certificates, firewalls, backups, patching. A self-hosted password vault is an attractive target, and a misconfigured one is worse than trusting a well-run commercial cloud. For most people, that’s a non-starter, and that’s a completely reasonable position.
So my current approach is pragmatic rather than ideological. I have a month to get self-hosted Bitwarden working like I expect it to work. Otherwise I fallback to Bitwarden premium at a fraction of 1Password’s cost. One additional grace I have is that at the lower price I felt 1Password fairly priced. My renewal is two days before the price hike, meaning I could also stick this out for one year if I don’t work out self-hosting.
But what other options are there?
On LastPass: Just Don’t
Pay for 1Password. Don’t venture this way. I used to use LastPass but was terrified at where the company went. The string of security incidents, the way vault data was obtained in breaches, and the handling of those incidents in terms of both communication and technical response eroded confidence in a way that’s hard to recover from. For a product where you’re trusting someone with access to everything, that trust matters more than the feature list. LastPass doesn’t make my list of alternatives worth considering.
Six 1Password Alternatives Worth Considering
Bitwarden (cloud) is the obvious first stop after 1Password. Open source, audited, end-to-end encrypted, and priced very reasonably with a generous free tier for individuals. The UI isn’t quite as polished as 1Password’s, and onboarding less technical family members takes a bit more patience. But for most people, it’s more than good enough. If I weren’t interested in self-hosting, this is where I’d land without much deliberation.
Bitwarden (self-hosted, or Vaultwarden) is the same product running on your own hardware or a VPS. Full control, no dependency on a third party, and your costs are hosting rather than subscription fees. The trade-off is that you become the admin: uptime, backups, patching, and monitoring are your problem. If that sounds exciting rather than exhausting, it’s a genuinely compelling setup. Vaultwarden is worth a look if you want a lighter-weight deployment.
Dashlane is probably the closest thing to a 1Password spiritual successor in terms of consumer polish. It bundles extras like VPN and dark web monitoring, which either adds value or adds noise depending on whether you actually want those features. It’s not cheap, so you’re not escaping higher pricing so much as choosing a different vendor.
NordPass, from the NordVPN stable, is intentionally simple. Clean interface, modern encryption, and a “set and forget” experience for people who don’t want to spend time in settings menus. Less feature-rich than Keeper or Bitwarden for power users, but a solid choice if simplicity is the priority. There’s just something about Nord’s aggressive advertising that I don’t like.
Proton Pass is another premium, but cheaper alternative to 1Password. Proton has a well-established reputation built on Proton Mail and Proton VPN, so the trust credentials are solid and well-known to a privacy-conscious audience.
Proton Pass supports passwords, passkeys, TOTP (two-factor codes), and has decent browser extensions and mobile apps. It’s newer than the others so it doesn’t have the same depth of features as 1Password or Bitwarden yet, but it’s improving quickly.
All three of these options, Dashlane, NordPass and Proton Pass, have one massive bonus in today’s political climate; they are non-US solutions – based out of France, Lithuania and Switzerland respectively. If you want to keep your vault in EU hands entirely, Dashlane and NordPass are the cloud options with European roots.
Keeper makes more sense if you’re thinking beyond personal use. The granular sharing, audit logs, and file storage features are strong for small businesses and teams. The interface can feel a bit busy compared to 1Password, and the add-ons push the price up if you want the full feature set.
Enpass is worth a look if you want local-first storage without running a full self-hosted stack. It syncs through your own cloud provider (iCloud, Dropbox, and similar), and depending on your platform there are one-time purchase options rather than perpetual subscriptions. The sync story is a bit less slick than the premium options, but the pricing model alone makes it interesting for a certain kind of user.
The Bottom Line
A price hike doesn’t make 1Password a bad product. It just forces an honest question: is this still the right product for me at this price? A 33% hike is just ridiculous. But I can already see a lot of online chatter saying 1Password is worth the extra money.
The apps are genuinely excellent, and for families who want something reliable and low-maintenance, 1Password is hard to beat even at the new price. But for long-term customers who feel the value equation has shifted, and who are tired of paying loyalty pricing to a product that doesn’t offer any in return, there are solid alternatives on the other side. I hope this helped clarify what they look like.
