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Living in the US means getting a great range of cool phones, but some just don’t make it onto store shelves over here. At Snapdragon Summit 2026, I handled a pair of phones that embody the injustice of not getting the cool devices more broadly available in other markets. Where are my cutting-edge phones?
Some blame rests with the peculiar phone payment hegemony run by US carriers, which has primed consumers to pay for their new devices over a few years as part of their monthly mobile service bill. If a new phone brand wants to enter the US market, it pretty much has to be sold through carriers, as OnePlus did and Huawei failed to do. Americans rarely buy their phones at their full price up front.
There are other slight technical reasons, as some of these phones from brands that aren’t established in the US don’t support all the 4G and 5G network bands used by US carriers. And there are political forces at play, as the US ban on Huawei devices has shut it out of the country’s market.
But the end result is that the US misses out on neat phones that I got to try out at Snapdragon Summit, some of which run on the new chips we saw shown off during the keynote. The new Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 and the 8 Elite Gen 6 pack performance upgrades and new AI boosts to mobile gaming.
Novel phone design doesn’t require top-end silicon (though I’m sure it helps); rather, a handful of phones that head to other countries just have bolder designs. Though I’m still delighted by the passport foldables that have come out this year, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and iPhone Duo, there’s something to be said about the phone innovations that won’t reach our shores — but which were tangibly real in my hands.
David Lumb/CNETThe Xiaomi 18 Pro’s rear screen is the future we deserve
Rear screens have started cropping up on Chinese phones, and the Xiaomi 18 Pro is the highest-profile device to feature one, which is nestled to the right of its camera block. The phone will run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 chip, while its larger sibling, the Xiaomi 18 Pro Max (which we didn’t see at the summit), will use the more powerful Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. Both phones have a rear screen.
The moment I held the phone in my hand and saw the rear screen in action, I was hooked. Much like the cover screens on foldables, there’s a limited but potent set of use cases for these small but strategically placed screens. The best advantage is to get a preview of what the main cameras are about to capture, which is a massive help when wanting to use the rear cameras for a selfie — ideal when in a low-light environment in which bigger sensors are needed.
There are other playful and fun use cases for a rear screen, like showing notifications or smaller app widgets. Presumably, you’ll be able to see text previews or info like which song is playing on your media player, which could be helpful if your phone is face down and you don’t want to pick it up to check the whole screen.
Funnily enough, that’s the entire pitch for Google’s HiLight feature on its recent Pixel 11 Pro phones — a small ring around the phone’s rear camera flash that blinks different colors for different kinds of notifications or contacts. Even on its own, I (and others at CNET) felt this was a very weak feature that resembled similar perks from phones years ago. Compared with the Xiaomi 18 Pro’s rear screen, it’s practically prehistoric and wildly less useful.
Where US-designed phones get a colored nightlight, Chinese-designed phones get a small foldable cover screen on their handsets.
“I enjoyed the widgets and animated wallpapers, as well as the upgraded selfie-shooting experience the display unlocks,” said CNET Principal Writer Katie Collins, who saw the Xiaomi 18 Pro at Snapdragon Summit. She was careful to point out that perhaps light-based notification solutions like the Nothing phones’ light glyphs could be healthier for folks trying to avoid screens. Personally, I’d at least like the choice to pick one up in the US.
David Lumb/CNETThe Honor robot phone shows what unique cameras can do
I also got a chance to see Honor’s famous robot phone, which CNET’s Collins covered at MWC 2026 and saw in-depth on a trip to Guangzhou, China, to see it in detail before it launched in that country. The device has a small camera mounted on a gimbal arm for precise control, kind of like a DJI Osmo Pocket camera that extends from and retracts into the back of the phone.
As Collins discovered, you can activate the gimbal camera either manually through the camera app or with a hand gesture (though you’ll have to retract the protective transparent sheet covering the camera first). When I got my hands on it at Snapdragon Summit, I cooed at using touch controls to pan the camera around, getting neat angles without having to turn my phone. Naturally, it also arcs up and over the phone for selfies.
“I was impressed with its features and versatility, but more so by Honor’s boldness. It’s the closest thing I can think of in the phone world to the avant-garde,” Collins said of her early hands-on time with the device in China.
Admittedly, the phone is a bit of a gimmick — an overengineered solution to manually shifting a phone’s rear camera, though I would love to get sharp selfies with the 200-megapixel shooter at the end of its gimbal arm. Moreover, it could also theoretically enable the kind of smooth tracking and panning that DJI’s handheld cameras are known for, providing phone photographers more professional options in their pockets. At 9,999 yuan ($1,483) for the version with 12GB of RAM and 12,999 yuan ($1,923) for the 16GB version, the phone isn’t even that much more expensive than Apple or Samsung’s flagship competitors.
However, Honor phones also aren’t sold in the US, and this one isn’t expected to be sold outside of China, so I would have to import the robot phone if I wanted to take it out for a serious spin. The future was only in my hands for a brief moment to test out its most iconic gimbal feature (I didn’t even try out its Yoyo AI assistant), but it was yet another example of Chinese phone experimentation that wouldn’t reach US shores anytime soon.
It reminded me of pop-up cameras like on the 2018 Vivo Nex for rear cameras that flipped to the front like the 2020 Asus Zenfone 7 Pro, which were short-lived attempts to pack more powerful selfie shooters without sacrificing front screen space to punch holes or notches.
Years later, we still don’t have solutions beyond punch holes and dynamic islands. Honor is at least looking forward to something new and different from the flat candybar phones we’ve seen for nearly two decades. Here’s hoping more innovation reaches US shores soon.
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