These 8 New Phone Features Were the Best and Weirdest of 2025

We’ve seen some incredible phones in 2025, from the iPhone 17 Pro and its bright orange color to the Pixel 10 Pro’s use of AI. Then there’s the Galaxy S25 Ultra, Oppo Find X9 Pro and Xiaomi 15 Ultra, all of which want to be the only camera you carry around.

Most of these phones have a lot in common, from their powerful processors to features like water resistance. But this year we’ve seen phone makers really up the ante by adding a whole host of new tricks and accessories to help them stand out from the competition. And a few of these additions really caught our attention.

Here are our favorite phone features that became common in 2025. Will they continue in 2026?

Massive silicon-carbon batteries

Batteries may seem the same as they’ve always been, but in fact, battery technology is constantly evolving, just like any other part of your phone. The most recent shift is silicon-carbon batteries that promise more energy-dense cells, providing longer lifespan without you having to carry around a phone the size of a house brick.

Both the Oppo Find For reference, the S25 Ultra – despite its gargantuan 6.8-inch screen – only has a 5,000mAh battery. The iPhone 17 Pro Max battery is similar at 5,088 mAh.

But don’t get overexcited about nearly doubling your phone’s battery life. Although the latest handsets from Oppo and OnePlus performed extremely well in our battery tests, the iPhone 17 Pro Max remained one of the best battery performers we’ve ever had, and that comes down to the efficiency Apple is able to achieve in producing all parts of the phone. Still, silicon-carbon battery technology is undoubtedly a step forward that will hopefully mean you’ll be less likely to find yourself running out of power in the middle of your day.

Removable telephoto lenses

While I’m talking about the Oppo Find X9 Pro and Vivo X300 Pro, I have to mention the massive telephoto lenses that both companies offer with their devices. Both phones can be purchased with photography kits that include a case and a large, all-metal telephoto lens that, when attached, looks like you’ve added a little chair leg to the back of your phone. These detachable telephoto lenses can take your zoom up to a usable magnification of 40x, or about a 920mm focal length on a normal lens, which far exceeds any of the zoom lenses I own for my professional cameras.

The result is that you can take great close-up photos from long distances, making these lenses great fun for wildlife photography or street photography, where you don’t want to be noticed. Because the lenses use real optical elements, image quality can be superb and the natural bokeh around your subject allows you to take photos that look like they were taken with a regular camera and a zoom lens.

Ultra-thin phones

Last March, my excellent colleague Abrar Al-Heeti was surprised by the plethora of phones with ultra-thin designs. Samsung had its S25 Edge, while the Tecno Spark Slim concept promised a body just 5.25mm thick. Until the end of the year, we’ve since had Apple’s take on thin phones with the arrival of the iPhone Air.

These phones promise a more refined aesthetic than their competitors, allowing you to tuck them into your jeans pocket without causing an undignified bulge where you might not want one. But it’s in foldable phones where this slim design really makes an impact. Oppo’s Find N5 and Honor’s Magic V5 both offer ultra-thin designs that mean when you close the phone – and essentially double its thickness – you don’t end up with a bulky brick. Samsung also wowed with its ultra-trick Galaxy Z Fold 7, which measures just 4.2mm when unfolded.

Dust-resistant foldable phones

But while I’m singing the praises of ultra-thin foldable phones, I have to give a shout-out to the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Google’s latest foldable is the first of its kind to offer an IP68 rating that promises to keep water and dust out of its delicate hinge mechanism.

Previously, the superior foldable models offered, at best, some level of water resistance, with dust resistance limited to particles 1mm or larger – which wasn’t very useful in a dusty area or if you were answering a call during another visit to your local flour factory. But Google went further by keeping dust out as well. That means you can finally open your foldable phone at the beach to read an ebook, confident that the sand won’t ruin your expensive device.

Sure, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is a bit bigger than the ultra-thin foldables mentioned above, but Google has traded sleekness for durability – and that could mean your phone lasts a lot longer.

Square image sensors

The most recent iPhone 17 lineup included a major overhaul of its front camera with the introduction of a square image sensor. The idea is that you can hold your phone in a comfortable portrait position for your video call, but the video will still be in landscape mode without using any cropping that would reduce quality. Or vice versa. No matter how you hold your phone, a square sensor means you’ll always get full-width sensor resolution.

And since you can take selfies (horizontal or vertical) when you hold the phone in portrait orientation, you don’t get that weird, off-kilter camera angle you’d get when holding the phone in landscape mode. Everyone is pretty, symmetrical and centered.

It’s a great idea, and it’s not just phones that are starting to benefit from it. The recent DJI Osmo Action 6 action camera also uses a square image sensor, allowing you to crop your images to portrait or landscape after the fact without any loss of quality. It’s ideal for creators who want to shoot long-form and social content simultaneously, and I expect this to become a trend on more phones and cameras in the long term.

AI camera coaching

As a professional photographer, I was impressed by the camera quality of Google’s Pixel 10 Pro when I took it on a photo walk around Paris. But what if you’re not a pro but still want to take good photos? Then the Pixel Camera Coach could be for you.

It uses Gemini AI to analyze the scene in front of you, then gives you a set of step-by-step instructions on how to capture a better image. Take a photo of your friend? Camera Coach might suggest switching to Portrait mode, taking a few steps to the right, and maybe even shooting from a lower angle for a more dramatic position.

CNET’s Patrick Holland – himself a talented photographer – used the tool and concluded: “I see amateurs becoming passionate about photography after using Camera Coach. In an age where AI is everywhere, it’s nice to see Google using Gemini as an educational tool.”

Qi 2.2 for faster charging and magnetic accessories

Apple’s MagSafe has long been a standout feature of the iPhone, but the company has brought elements of its technology to the open Qi2.2 standard, meaning Android makers will now be able to use it as well. Not only will this bring faster wireless charging speeds to more Android phones, but it will also open the door to shared accessories: Android phones using Qi2.2 will be compatible with some Apple MagSafe accessories, and vice versa.

Google has jumped on the bandwagon by equipping its latest Pixel 10 lineup with what it calls PixelSnap. Ignore the name; it’s basically the same as MagSafe and works using the same Qi2.2 standard. Have you purchased a new wireless charging station for your Pixel 10? Great, your iPhone-owning friends can use it too, and if you change allegiances later, you won’t need to buy a new dock. Cool stuff.

Watch this: The Google Pixel 10 Pro XL’s camera is so smart, it almost took the photos for me

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