Facebook turns 10 tomorrow, and it’s pre-empting the inevitable “Facebook is dying” news by reinventing itself a day early. Paper is the latest smartphone app from the world’s largest social network, which has a miss-and-miss-again history when it comes to apps. It’s a mobile version of the social network’s News Feed, but serves as more than just an extension to the social network – it’s a complete re-imagining of the Facebook feed.
Paper appears to be doing its best to distance itself from the company behind it. The Facebook logo is not even in the app, though it is mentioned. Even when looking at items shared by your friends, it never feels like you’re scrolling through your news feed in the same familiar way that you have in the past decade.
Gone are the cluttered columns of the Facebook homepage, with text and photos fighting for attention as you scroll. Paper puts them at center stage, making the most of the full screen space they receive. Photos shared by friends and pages alternate at the top of the screen, which is a featured section of sorts, while a full list of what’s being shared on your news feed can be viewed across the bottom. If a story catches your eye, a tap brings it into full-screen focus.
Once you’re in a story, you get to see Paper at its finest. Photos turn into panoramic shots that you can turn your iPhone to view in their entirety. The article preview sits and waits to be explored, requiring you to slide the page up as if opening a folded card. The seamless motion transition is beautiful and natural, playing right into the simple theme of the app. A video introduction shows people writing letters and mailing cards from various locales, a blunt analogy for the way users share stories within the app. Status updates serve as postcards from around the Web, taking users to that destination briefly, like reading a friend’s experience abroad, then pulling users back into their own world.
That’s another key to Paper: This is your feed. Usually Facebook news feeds are subject to the content placed in them by friends, family members, and followed pages. This is, in equal parts, a blessing and curse because not all interests are shared, but all stories are. Paper solves this by supplementing the Facebook feed with curated categories you choose. The app prompts you to add feeds in categories like Headlines, Tech, Planet, Ideas, and other buzz words of interest. These diversify the stories you see within the app and allows you to escape the noise of the standard Facebook news feed without having to leave the app.
Some of the curation could use some fine tuning, or just more specific section titles. Many of the stories in the feeds land there because of the publication sharing it rather than the content of the story. Part of this is because there are only 40 publishers featured right now, a small handful compared to what’s out there. The lack of an offline reading mode will also prevent Paper from replacing popular news-reader apps.
Even though Paper seems to put an arm’s length between itself and Facebook, all of the well-worn Facebook features are present. Friend requests, messages, and notifications are all viewable through their standard icons, which are always on screen when browsing feeds. You can view user profiles by tapping on people instead of stories, create your own posts in-app, Like or comment on a photo, etc. Facebook is still here, it just isn’t all that noticeable. We’re fine with that, and it appears Facebook is as well: There’s a setting within Paper that allows you to receive your Facebook push notifications in Paper instead of the standard Facebook app.
It’s strange to say that an app from Facebook could be a Facebook killer, but that’s what Paper feels like. Between its clear and simple design, interactive interface, and ability to provide you with the best parts of the Web and your feed, Paper outdoes everything that Facebook has tried before it. There’s minimal evidence of Facebook itself, a site that has done little to reimagine itself over its 10 years of existence. Paper is Facebook moving past the news feed to be more than just a social network – it’s as much about you as it is about your friends. There are some improvements that can be made, but it’s an excellent start for a new stage of Facebook. And most importantly, Paper is a venture into mobile that finally works.
Paper is available for download for free for iOS from the iTunes App Store.
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.
Apple's first foldable phone is now on shelves, in short supply, but with an unreal amount of buzz around it. After all, it's the first foldable iPhone, and there's plenty that this phone gets right. But there's also a lot that is either broken or underwhelming. What's peculiar is the dialogue around this phone, and how it has completely overshadowed every other attempt at making a phone with a similar form factor.
I've spent some time with the iPhone Duo, and I've used the Galaxy Z Fold 8 for almost three months now. In my opinion, Samsung deserves more credit. When the Galaxy Z Fold 8 arrived earlier this year, it was celebrated in some circles and ridiculed in others for supposedly copying what Apple would eventually deliver with the iPhone Duo. The dialogue was pretty odd, for multiple reasons. Samsung has been making foldable phones for years, so claiming that it copied a product Apple hadn't even launched was simply absurd.