I've had a solid hour with the Galaxy Z Flip, going over its every curve and getting acquainted with this new form factor. Here are my initial takeaways.

Huawei overtook Apple to become the world’s second best selling smartphone manufacturer in 2019, according to reports from Strategy Analytics, Counterpoint Research, and Canalys. Over the course of the year, the Chinese manufacturer reportedly shipped around 240 million phones, compared to just under 200 million for Apple. Samsung retained its comfortable lead in first place, shipping just shy of 300 million devices. Xiaomi and Oppo rounded out the list of the top five manufacturers.

Even with its many flaws — and Samsung's eye-watering $2,000 asking price — customers have flocked to the company's first foldable phone, which has already sold half a million units. That's half of what a Samsung exec previously claimed, but it's impressive nonetheless.

U.K.-based Zanco thinks you have space in your pocket for another phone, and from the looks of it, the Tiny t2 won’t take up much space at all. What the company’s calling the “world’s smallest phone” appeared on Kickstarter this week, becoming fully funded in less than a day.

A United States–funded mobile carrier that offers phones via the Lifeline Assistance program is selling a mobile device pre-installed with not one, but two malicious applications. Assurance Wireless by Virgin Mobile offers the UMX U686CL phone as their most budget conscious option. At only $35 under the government-funded program, it’s an attractive offering. However, what it comes installed with is appalling.

Samsung has quietly launched a new Galaxy smartphone. Called the Galaxy XCover Pro, the device is the latest addition in Samsung’s range of rugged smartphones. It succeeds the XCover 4 which had was launched back in 2017.

Think your phone isn’t tracking you and sharing your every digital move? Think again. It definitely is. That’s according to research shared by the New York Times based on their investigation of leaked data. The investigation was coordinated by the New York Times Privacy Project and used a leak from a location data company, one of many unknown businesses from an under-reported industry dedicated to using electronic data to track every single one of us everywhere we go.

Samsung's Galaxy Note 10 Lite and S10 Lite have finally been announced after several leaks. They'll be on display at CES 2020.

In an era when our most important personal tech devices are all starting to merge into one hardly distinguishable, super-powered glass slab, smartphone makers will do anything to stand out. They’ll ship flexible displays. They’ll boast about faster screen refresh rates. They’ll peddle nostalgia.

Samsung has once again managed to beat Google's Pixel lineup and started rolling out the January security update for the Galaxy Note10 in Germany. Some Pixels are still stuck on the November patch.

The rotary telephone was still being used in 1953.

We've already seen indications that American consumers are holding onto their smartphones longer than before, posing challenges for companies like Apple and Samsung for whom mobile phone sales are important to the bottom line. A new NPD report reiterates that point but adds that fewer than 10 percent of American smartphone buyers spend more than $1,000, effectively ruling out flagship phones like the iPhone 11 Pro and the Samsung Galaxy Note10 that gather most of the marketer and media attention.

After using Google's new Recorder app, you'll never want to use another voice memo app again. It's true. Instead of simply recording the audio of a lecture or interview like all the other apps do, Recorder transcribes whatever it hears in real-time -- on the device -- without sending any information to Google. In fact, it doesn't require a data connection at all.

Your phone should get better over time. Your Pixel automatically updates regularly with fixes and improvements. Now, your Pixel will also get bigger updates in new Pixel feature drops. Our first one, coming this month, includes a new way to capture portraits, easier Duo calls and automatic call screening.

Most recently, the company rolled out a stable Android 10 update for last year’s ZenFone 5Z. However, it hasn’t extended the same priveledges to some other devices. For instance, the company dropped plans to update the ZenFone 4 to Android Pie late last month. Thankfully though, it doesn’t seem like the first-gen ROG Phone is going to get the same treatment.

Fountains of virtual ink have been spilled over the Pixel 4's stamina and how the phone's battery life isn't all that it could be. Me? After living with the Pixel 4 for a few weeks now, I'm not quite as down on its staying power as some folks were whilst working up early reviews of the device. I think somewhere between "okay" and "borderline acceptable" sums up my experience with the phone's endurance thus far:

Everyone knows the rise of smartphones has put powerful cameras in our pockets, but we forget these cameras can also be transformed into powerful microscopes. Enter DIPLE, a Kickstarter that promises to supercharge your phone with up to 1,000 times magnification, allowing you to examine microorganisms, bacteria, and even your own blood cells.

As good as the Galaxy S10 is, Samsung's flagship has fallen behind the iPhone 11 Pro and Pixel 4 when it comes to photo quality. We've seen it with our own eyes in face off and after face off.

Ever since 2016 with the Galaxy S7 duo and its Exynos 8890, Samsung has been using its in-house developed Mongoose CPU cores. It seems this will no longer be the case as Samsung is looking to shut its custom CPU department in Austin, Texas. The decision will result in the layover of around 300 employees and is expected to come in effect starting December 31.

Samsung is one of the biggest phone manufacturers in the world, and with good reason — it makes some pretty incredible phones, combining outstanding hardware design with long lists of handy features that differentiate its phones from the competition. The Galaxy S10+ is the company's top phone, but there's also a range of other devices that hit different sizes, price points and value propositions.