Other Good International Phones

Haven’t seen anything you like? The following phones are also worth considering:

Xiaomi 17T for £649 and 17T Pro for $870: If it weren’t for Honor’s high pricing, one of these phones (probably the 17T) would have claimed the best mid-range spot above. Compared with the Honor 600, the 17T offers slightly better performance with more RAM and a more reliable camera that has superior zoom capability. Unfortunately, it also has bags of bloatware, and the software requires some tinkering to get the best it offers. The 17T Pro adds wireless charging, a bigger battery, much better performance with a faster chipset, and a larger screen—but it’s even more expensive, pushing the top end of what I’d consider midrange.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Oppo Find N6 for $1,943: Touting an 8.12-inch display, the Find N6 is a beautifully engineered folding phone that’s impossibly slim and light. Despite its promise of being creaseless, the fold is still discernible. You’ll hardly notice it when the screen is on, though you’ll feel it if you use the optional stylus. Performance is impressively slick, with enough stamina to see you through a busy day, and the camera system is excellent. It’s a big step up from last year’s N5, with a 200-MP main shooter, 50-MP telephoto, and 50-MP ultrawide, though it can’t quite compete with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra above. The global model is enabled to use familiar Google apps, but you’ll have to import those, as the phone won’t officially be released in the West, which is the main reason it fails to edge out Honor’s foldable above.

Xiaomi 15T Pro for $745: This phone is fast, with a large, high-refresh-rate screen; a versatile Leica-tuned camera system that includes a 50-MP telephoto lens offering 5X optical zoom; and a solid list of extras, including generous and speedy UFS 4.1 storage and Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6 connectivity. The big downside here for most folks is the quirky software, but with a bit of effort, it’s possible to customize it into shape. There’s also some bloatware to remove, and Xiaomi doesn’t match some competitors on software support. The regular 15T is almost the same size but has a slightly weaker chipset and camera, a plastic frame, and misses out on wireless charging.

Infinix Note 60 Ultra for $750: Designed with the help of Pininfarina, famous for iconic cars from Ferrari and Maserati, the Note 60 Ultra looks interesting, with a distinctive curved glass section over the camera module that also houses a small matrix display. The phone arrives in a grand box with a curvy car-shaped wireless charger. The specs are solid, apart from the distinctly not “Ultra” chipset (MediaTek’s Dimensity 8400 Ultimate), but availability seems limited for now.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Xiaomi 17 Pro Max for $1,039: A refreshing design featuring a second, smaller screen on the back that houses the camera lenses is the main way the Xiaomi 17 Pro Max differs from the 17 Pro. Xiaomi came up with various cute ways to employ this auxiliary display, including a selfie preview for superior selfies with the main camera, music controls, customizable themes, and virtual pets. There’s even a retro gaming case that lets you play Angry Birds, though it feels a bit silly when there’s a 6.7-inch screen on the other side. Aside from the second screen, the 17 Pro Max is a typical Xiaomi specs beast, and the 17 Pro isn’t far behind, but neither has been officially released outside China yet.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Oppo Find X9 Pro for £1,099: Photography fans simply must check out the Oppo Find X9 Pro. The 200-megapixel telephoto lens supports 3X optical zoom and can take excellent shots at 6X zoom by cropping images down to 50 megapixels. To maximize camera capabilities, though, you’ll need the detachable Hasselblad Teleconverter Kit ($399). This enormous lens slots into place on the case and adds another 3.28X zoom, though it’s tricky to use without a tripod. An additional trio of 50-MP lenses, with all supporting 4K video recording at 60 fps with HDR, makes this a great pick for creatives. Impressive specs include a 6.78-inch flat display, IP66/68/69 ratings, and a 7,500-mAh silicon-carbon battery that’ll last for two days.

Xiaomi Poco F8 Ultra for £497 and F8 Pro for £331: Xiaomi’s cheaper, fun, youthful brand Poco provides room for experimentation, but the company’s own 15T Pro is a better buy in this price bracket. What the F8 Ultra offers that you won’t find elsewhere is a fun or awful (depending on your tastes) denim finish on the back. There are also Bose-tuned speakers, an excellent 6.9-inch display, and an enormous 6,500-mAh battery. It also has a flagship-level Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and generous RAM and storage. There’s even a trio of 50-MP lenses in the camera. The F8 Pro is slightly smaller but drops little from the spec sheet, making it the better bargain.

Honor Magic 7 Pro for $999: Honor’s Magic 7 Pro features a solid triple-lens camera, a gorgeous 6.8-inch screen, speedy performance, good battery life, and a dual IP68 and IP69 dust- and water-resistance rating. Honor’s Magic OS boasts polished AI features, and Honor announced an increased commitment to seven years of Android version and security patch updates with this phone. The Magic 7 Pro’s downsides include its large camera cutout on the front, camera processing that’s sometimes heavy-handed, and its ultrawide camera struggling to match the other two lenses.

Xiaomi Poco X7 Pro for $403: Xiaomi’s Poco X7 Pro is a compelling bargain that combines a lovely 6.67-inch display with relatively fast performance, good battery life, speedy wired charging, and IP68 water resistance. The 50-megapixel main camera is decent. The Poco X7 Pro runs Android 15 with HyperOS on top, and Xiaomi offers three Android version updates and four years of security patches. This was my budget pick before the Poco F7 (discontinued), and then the X8 Pro unseated it.

Doro Aurora A20 for £250: Doro is a Swedish company focused on providing devices that are accessible for older folks. It primarily focuses on phones but also sells a decent video doorbell. The Aurora A20 is an odd spin on the flip phone that may help some people transition to a touchscreen device. It’s like an old candy bar HTC Android phone with a flip-out keypad attached to the bottom. There are lots of thoughtful features, including an alarm button, a spacious keypad, and simplified software. It’s also fairly cheap, but I found the performance sluggish, the camera poor, and the design a bit chunky and heavy.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Realme 14 Pro+ for €369: The color-changing finish may be gimmicky, but it’s fun, and this phone looks and feels far more expensive than it is. There are more highs than lows on the spec sheet: You get a triple-lens camera, an IP68/69 water-resistance rating, a 6,000-mAh battery, and a 6.83-inch OLED display with a 120-Hz refresh rate. But the Snapdragon 7s Gen 3 chipset is limited, there’s no wireless charging support, and you don’t get a charger in the box. Even so, it’s still quite a bargain.

Xiaomi 15 for $750: Folks seeking a compact phone could do a lot worse than the Xiaomi 15. It feels lovely and has a 6.36-inch screen, a decent triple-lens camera, and top-notch internals. But it’s a conservative design, and it has software and bloatware issues.

Honor Magic 7 RSR for £1,550: Designed with Porsche, this souped-up version of the 7 Pro above has a fancier design with a hexagonal camera module, a slightly improved telephoto lens, 24 GB of RAM (likely largely pointless), 1 TB of storage, and a bigger battery (5,850 mAh). It’s lovely, but it doesn’t do enough to justify the additional outlay.

Avoid These Phones

These aren’t necessarily bad phones, but I think you’d be better served by an option above.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Nothing Phone (3a) Lite: There’s a retro-cool vibe to Nothing’s translucent hardware and pixelated software, and this is currently the cheapest phone it offers in the UK (it wasn’t released in the US). The screen, battery life, and software are decent, but the camera and bloatware were disappointing. I don’t think the Nothing Phone (3a) Lite is the worst, but you can do better.

Nubia Z80 Ultra: Similar to my gaming pick above, the Nubia Redmagic 11S Pro, the Nubia Z80 Ultra trades off a better camera for slightly diminished performance and screen quality. It’s also a real brick with an enormous camera module on the back, making it awkward to handle, though I do like the dedicated camera button. Despite a very impressive spec sheet for the money, it manages to feel like less than the sum of its parts. Nubia’s software is subpar, and for this phone, it commits to only three years of security updates and a single Android version upgrade.

Oppo Reno 13 Pro 5G: This slim, lightweight midrange phone boasts a 6.8-inch screen (brightness is limited), a triple-lens camera (solid 50-MP main and telephoto lenses with a disappointing 8-MP ultrawide), and an impressive IP69 water-resistance rating. Battery life is good, and wired charging is fast, but there’s no wireless charging. It’s packed with bloatware but also AI features and tools covering transcription, summarization, image editing, and more that may add value for some folks. After some time with the 13 Pro, I feel you can do better for the money.

Xiaomi Mix Fold 4: Officially released only in China, the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 is a stylish folding phone with a 6.56-inch outer screen that folds open to reveal a 7.98-inch inner screen. It also offers solid performance and battery life, but despite having a large quad-lens camera module, the camera is underwhelming. The crease is also pronounced, and using a Chinese model is a bit of a pain, as various items are not translated, and getting the apps you want takes work.

Photograph: Simon Hill

Realme GT7 Pro: This potential flagship killer has a 6.78-inch OLED screen, a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, and an enormous 6,500-mAh battery. You also get a triple-lens camera, but the 50-megapixel main and telephoto lenses are let down by the 8-megapixel ultrawide. It also lacks wireless charging, and it only seems to be on sale in Germany.

Xiaomi Redmi Note 14 Pro+: Here, you’ll get an attractive and durable design (IP68), a 200-megapixel Samsung camera sensor, and decent battery life with superfast charging (120 watts). But those wins come at the price of middling performance, poor ultrawide (8 MP) and macro (2 MP) lenses, and a ton of bloatware. Ultimately, there’s little improvement over last year’s Redmi Note 13 Pro+. Not only are there better phones for the same money—there are better Xiaomi phones.

Power up with unlimited access to WIRED. Get best-in-class reporting and exclusive subscriber content that’s too important to ignore. Subscribe Today.

A dual United States and Estonian citizen has been extradited to the U.S. to face charges alleging he was a member of the Scattered Spider hacking collective.

19-year-old Peter Stokes (who used the online handles “Bouquet,” “Spencer,” and “Jordan”) was arrested in Finland on April 10 while attempting to board a flight to Japan at Helsinki’s airport and is accused of having helped extort millions of dollars from multiple high-profile companies worldwide.

According to court documents, Stokes was involved in at least four Scattered Spider breaches (including a March 2023 hack of an online communication platform, when he was 16 years old) that led to victim companies being asked to pay millions of dollars in ransoms.

The list of victims breached with the suspect’s help also includes an unnamed multibillion-dollar “luxury item retailer” in May 2025, when the hackers allegedly called the company’s IT helpdesk, posing as employees, to reset credentials and gain access to administrator accounts.

While the threat actors demanded an $8 million ransom, claiming to have 100 gigabytes of stolen data, the company refused to pay. However, it still incurred over $2 million due to operations disruption and remediation costs.

Stokes now faces charges of fraud, conspiracy, and computer intrusion and has remained in custody after appearing in federal court in Chicago on Tuesday.

​”The criminal complaint charges Peter Stokes with membership in Scattered Spider, a hacking group that has been involved in over 100 network intrusions, resulting in more than $100 million in ransom payments and millions more in damages to the victims,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva on Wednesday.

“Scattered Spider has repeatedly targeted U.S. companies, extorting employees, inflicting millions of dollars in losses, and disrupting essential operations,” added Assistant Director Brett Leatherman of the FBI’s Cyber Division.

Scattered Spider (also tracked as 0ktapus, Octo Tempest, Scatter Swine, UNC3944, and Muddled Libra) emerged in 2022 as a loosely knit hacking collective mainly composed of teenagers and young adults from the United States and Great Britain.

They are known for using a blend of social engineering, targeted multi-factor authentication (MFA) bombing (aka MFA fatigue), and SMS credential phishing attacks to steal user credentials and sensitive documents for extortion leverage after breaching their targets’ networks.

According to prosecutors, they commonly use the Genymobile Android emulator during their MFA attacks and have also deployed DragonForce encryptor in ransomware attacks against UK retail companies.

Scattered Spider’s list of victims includes many high-profile organizations, including Caesars, MGM Resorts, Riot Games, DoorDash, Reddit, MailChimp, Twilio, Allianz Life, Transport for London (TfL), multiple UK retailers such as Co-op, Marks & Spencer (M&S), and Harrods, and, more recently, WestJet and Jaguar Land Rover (JLR).

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Get the whitepaper

Apple appears to be growing increasingly confident in its first foldable iPhone. A new report claims the company has raised its production plans for the long-rumoured iPhone Fold to 10 million units for the remainder of 2026.

That’s according to Nikkei Asia, which previously reported that Apple was targeting between seven and eight million foldable iPhones this year. The new figure aligns more closely with an earlier 11 million-unit claim from leaker Digital Chat Station.

If the latest estimate proves accurate, it could signal that Apple is preparing for a much bigger launch than many expected.

Previous rumours suggested manufacturing challenges around the foldable display, hinge and internal circuit board could limit production. However, increasing orders would indicate those issues may now be under control.

The report also offers another clue about timing. Since the 10 million figure covers Apple’s 2026 production plans, it adds weight to speculation that the iPhone Fold could still debut alongside the rest of the iPhone lineup in September instead of slipping into 2027. Some rumours have suggested it could be delayed. That said, Apple could still unveil the device this year and delay shipments until later if production runs into problems.

The looks, for instance, are just distinct enough from the usual ‘cylinder of sound’ design to stand out in a showroom. The specification, which includes a 38mm mid/high driver angled to fire upwards through the top of the cabinet, promises authentic spatial audio performance where many a rival relies on digital sound processing in an effort to achieve the effect. And the appearance of Alexa+ as a voice assistant marks the first time a non-Amazon product is using the technology.

Get ready to navigate a free-for-all of social media handles.

How to reserve a username

Restrictions on WhatsApp usernames

Use common sense to avoid scams

Opera has introduced Paste Protect, a security feature designed to block ClickFix-style attacks that trick users into executing malicious commands through social engineering.

ClickFix is a widely used technique where victims are deceived into copying dangerous code or commands to the clipboard and then executing them in the command-line interface.

Typically, the ruse is a verification process or some form of problem-fixing instructions. However, they are only designed to trick the target into performing dangerous actions.

The commands execute with the user’s privileges, bypassing existing security defenses, and many times lead to the delivery of information-stealer malware.

The method is to popular with threat actors that Apple recently introduced a security feature designed specifically to detect risky pastes in the Terminal and block them before alerting the user.

Opera’s approach with Paste Protect is similar: it blocks harmful commands before they are copied to the browser clipboard.

The new security mechanism leverages Hijack protection, introduced in 2021, which can detect attempts from external applications to replace copied content (e.g., URLs or bank account numbers) with malicious alternatives, as well as a new component called Injection protection.

Injection protection blocks potentially harmful commands before they reach the clipboard, regardless if the action is initiated by the user or a website they visit.

Opera says it uses platform-specific detection rules to scan copied content for patterns commonly associated with malicious scripts and commands, supporting Windows, macOS, and Linux.

When Paste Protect detects suspicious clipboard content, it blocks the copy operation, displays a warning, and shows a red security indicator in the browser’s address bar.

“If a potential threat is detected, the copy action is automatically blocked,” describes Opera.

“You’ll see a popup explaining what happened, and a red warning icon will appear in the address bar.”

In such cases, users can view the first 120 characters of the blocked script, and they can approve the process of copying it after a 5-second timeout.

Users will also have the option to create allow-lists with trusted websites to minimize the friction from repeated blocks by Opera’s new security system.

“If you really know what you’re doing, for example if you’re a developer who regularly copies scripts or commands from trusted sources like GitHub, you can also set trusted websites where it’s allowed to copy scripts by selecting “Always allow from this site” in the popup,” explained Opera.

Paste Protect is enabled by default in the latest Opera release, and users can manage it through Settings → Privacy & Security → Paste Protect.

As a general recommendation, users should avoid executing commands they found online that they don’t fully understand and treat all such prompts with suspicion.

Security teams log 54% of successful attacks and alert on just 14%. The rest move through your environment unseen.

The Picus whitepaper shows how breach and attack simulation tests your SIEM and EDR rules so threats stop slipping by detection.

Advertisement

Get the whitepaper

• Nuclear waste may become fuel for decades-long autonomous operations worldwide
• DARPA wants batteries delivering power continuously for up to 30 years
• Project Omega is converting radiation directly into usable electrical energy efficiently

Scientists working with a United States defense programme are developing compact nuclear batteries intended to supply electricity continuously for several decades.

The effort revolves around radioisotope power systems that convert radiation directly into electricity instead of storing energy through chemical reactions.

My biggest pet peeve with meeting apps is that each one has a different shortcut for muting your mic or turning off your webcam. It’s hard to remember which keys do what when you’re mid-meeting and trying to make a point or ask a question. I always wanted a physical, universal button for mute and camera control — something I could hit without thinking. Project Mirage’s Dune, a tiny, three-key aluminum keypad — about the size of a stick of gum — that plugs into your MacBook’s USB-C port, does just that.

The $119 gadget has three buttons, and it changes context based on what app you are looking at. For instance, in meeting apps and sites, it could be toggle mic, toggle video, and bring window to the front. For Excel or Sheets, it could be copy, paste, and undo. For Chrome, it could be refresh, jump to URL bar, and paste. You get the gist. Developers can also use it with apps like VS Code or GitHub to merge, approve, or close a pull request.

The startup builds each unit to match your specific Mac model, so it sits flush against the laptop with no gap underneath. If your ports are already in use, you can connect it through a dongle instead. Dune has no battery and needs no separate charger — it draws power straight from the MacBook.

Currently, the startup supports M2 Air or later and M1 Pro or later models of MacBook running macOS 15 Sequoia or a later version.

The device looks and feels nice, but I felt the keys had more resistance. Right now, it is easy to push a key by mistake. A few times, I mistakenly unmuted myself or killed my camera because my hand brushed the device while reaching for a water bottle or coffee mug. It shouldn’t be this easy to press a key.

Dune ships with a companion app for configuring shortcuts, either per-app or system-wide. Within a given app, you can assign a Dune key to a keyboard shortcut, a command, or a link that opens an app or URL.

Through the app, Dune also syncs with your calendar and surfaces your next meeting a few minutes before it starts, so you can join, dismiss, or send an “I’m running late” message with one tap.

If you want deeper customization, you can write and run your own Python script. If you don’t code, Dune has an easy integration with Claude Desktop: You describe the shortcut you want in plain language, and Claude writes it and assigns it to a key for that app — no manual setup required.

I built a shortcut that, whenever I’m on a startup’s website, pulls up a quick brief on the company: its competitors, investors, and questions I might ask if I booked a meeting with them. For anyone whose job involves sizing up companies quickly — investors, founders, operators — it’s a task tailor-made for Dune. I also built one that converts images to JPEG so I can upload them quickly to WordPress or social platforms. Both were easy to build and needed no manual configuration, though getting a shortcut fully working still takes some back-and-forth with Claude, including debugging once you actually run it.

The app also has a marketplace, from where you can explore skills made by other Dune owners. If the marketplace takes off, it could become core to Dune’s growth and retention strategy — hardware as a thin front end for a Claude-powered skills ecosystem, where each new skill gives owners one more reason to stick around.

However, at the moment, there are only limited skills. Plus, there is no way to test out a skill without assigning it to the hardware button — ideally, the app would let you preview a skill before committing it to hardware. The startup also needs to proactively add more of its own suggested skills for different apps to its users.

Project Mirage’s device retails for $149 after its introductory price expires, and it’s a solid pick for anyone productivity-minded. MuteMe covers just mute/unmute, and Stream Deck offers business-focused macros, but Dune is easier to customize on both hardware and software.