According to Honor, the new Magic7 Lite has a special, industry-first battery inside it, making it slightly more interesting than your average midrange smartphone. But what is new about it? The Magic7 Lite has a silicon-carbon battery instead of the more common lithium-ion battery, which allows for a greater capacity without increasing physical size.
The Magic7 Lite’s silicon-carbon battery has a whopping 6,600mAh capacity, and Honor estimates this will return nearly 26 hours of video playback on a single charge. It will also reliably operate in both hot and cold environments. Using its AI technology, Honor’s software will squeeze a 50-minute call out of the remaining 2% of the battery, which will make it useful in emergency situations. Using silicon can also assist with efforts to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
While interesting, don’t read too much into the whole “industry-first” statement, as silicon-carbon batteries have been doing the rounds for a while, and what Honor appears to mean is it’s the industry’s first silicon-carbon battery with such a large capacity. Honor itself has already put silicon-carbon batteries in phones, such as a 5,600mAh cell in the Honor Magic 6 Pro, while Vivo used a silicon anode in the battery inside the Vivo X200 series, and we expect the trend to continue in 2025.
What about the rest of the Magic7 Lite? It represents the first of Honor’s new Magic7 series to be announced in Europe (don’t expect a U.S. release though). The thin and light phone — 189 grams and 7.98mm thick — comes in two different finishes, Titanium Black and the eye-catching Titanium Purple. Honor claims the body is capable of withstanding drops from 2 meters, and there’s IP65M dust and water resistance for further durability. The 6.78-inch AMOLED screen has a 120Hz refresh rate and 3840Hz Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) dimming.
On the back is a 108-megapixel main camera and a 5MP wide-angle camera, and inside is the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor with 8GB of RAM. The Snapdragon chip was also used in the Magic6 Lite, which also had the same camera system, making it unlikely to appeal to owners of its year-old predecessor. It’s also arriving with Android 14 installed and not the latest Android 15 software.
The Honor Magic7 Lite will be released in Europe and the U.K. on January 15 for 399 British pounds, or around $500.
Are you tired of paying for streaming services you never watch just to get a phone plan feature you actually want? T-Mobile has good news for you! The carrier is rolling out new plans, called T-Mix, in early November to replace its old Experience lineup with a build-your-own perks system called Picks.
The benefits you choose vary from streaming and gaming to food delivery, AI, satellite service, and phone discounts. But if you are satisfied with your existing plan, you can keep it.
Merely days after the iPhone Duo hit the shelves, images of broken screens on the phone started popping up across social media. Until now, it’s been unclear what’s causing the line of defective pixels that appears vertically along the crease, as well as horizontally, on the phone’s inner display.
Apple has finally acknowledged the issue, which has shown up on iPhone Duo units owned by customers as well as demo units in stores. In a statement shared with Bloomberg, Apple says that not all iPhone Duo units are affected and that those that are tend to show the display fault early on. The company added that users who experience problems with their iPhone Duo display should contact AppleCare for a replacement.
Not long ago, Apple treated independent repair like an act of outright hostility. The Cupertino giant locked down parts with serial-number pairing, while repair tools remained firmly out of reach of anyone outside its authorized repair network. More importantly, the company waged a legal and lobbying battle against right-to-repair legislation.
I've covered enough of these fights over the years to know what a shift looks like. That's why what happened in October 2026 genuinely caught me off guard. The day the iPhone Duo went on sale, what may be the most mechanically complex iPhone to date, Apple pulled off a surprising about-face. It published teardown-style repair manuals for a handful of major components.