The best things I saw at IFA 2026

The concept PCs, cameras, chargers and more than caught our attention in Berlin. The best things I saw at IFA 2026. News The best things I saw at IFA 2026 Smartphones, concept PCs and new challengers were on display.

IFA historically offers a place for wildcard ideas and big swings, while also giving companies a chance to turn their CES or MWC concepts into tangible consumer products. A few trends bubbled up throughout the event this year. One was an ever-growing subcategory of cameras that take a middle route between dedicated professional cameras and smartphone shooters.

Think DJI's hugely popular Osmo Pocket series, but with different ideas, like smartphones with removable cameras. There were even more 360-degree video cameras and gimbal cameras that can double up as an action cam. Are these rivals taking a chance to strike while GoPro figures out its future?

Elsewhere, Lenovo and Dell announced solid-looking, entry-level laptops meant to face off against the MacBook Neo, which has also inspired countless third-party peripheral stalls with new zesty colorways of mice, keyboards, chargers and more. Apple's influence on consumer tech can't be underestimated. Lenovo's Project Swan concept Mat Smith for My colleague Sam went in depth on Lenovo's Project Swan concept, and his write-up made me want to see it for myself.

The biggest announcements and most interesting innovations we saw in Berlin. Best of IFA 2026 Awards: The products that impressed us most in Berlin.

Best of IFA 2026 Awards: The products that impressed us most in Berlin The biggest announcements and most interesting innovations we saw in Berlin. As always, the team was on the ground, working the halls and getting hands-on with as much of it as we could.

This year’s show had no shortage of standouts, from Xiaomi’s wide-screen 18 Fold and TECNO’s zero-bezel concept phone to TCL’s first NXTPAPER AMOLED handset. The smart home had a particularly strong showing too, with Anker’s MindBase hub, the Homey Portal controller, and new cleaning and mowing robots from Roborock and Mammotion.

Add in a new 360 camera from DJI, Motorola’s rugged smartwatch, fresh mobile computing from Lenovo and Dell, and a gaming curiosity from Acer, and there was plenty worth calling out. After digging through the biggest launches and the most interesting prototypes, we’ve picked the products and innovations that impressed us the most.

These are the Best of IFA 2026 award winners. Xiaomi 18 Fold: Xiaomi’s own silicon in its most ambitious foldable Bogdan Petrovan / Xiaomi made its IFA debut this year, and it did not do it quietly.

The company took more than 3,300 square meters of floor space and filled it with over 380 products spanning phones, smart home gear, and even cars, under its “Human x Car x Home” banner. The star, though, was the Xiaomi 18 Fold, which we saw in the real world for the first time here in Berlin after weeks of leaks.

What makes it more than another entry in a crowded category is what’s inside. This is the first flagship phone powered by Xiaomi’s own XRing O3, the latest step in the company’s long push to build its own silicon rather than buy it.

It’s paired with next-generation LPDDR6 memory, rated for speeds up to 12,800Mbps. The wide-screen form factor puts Xiaomi in newly contested territory, arriving on the heels of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 and ahead of Apple’s first folding iPhone, which should feature a similar format.

The first flagship phone powered by Xiaomi's own XRing O3 silicon. The unit on display came in a luscious cherry red finish, with a triple camera arranged along a horizontal bar.

The text on that bar points to a focal range of 17mm to 80mm, which suggests a telephoto of around 3.3x. Xiaomi is holding the full specifications back until the phone’s China launch on September 7, but our interest is piqued.

TECNO Next-Gen Bezelless Concept Phone: The bezel race, taken to zero Bogdan Petrovan / Shaving down bezels has been an industry obsession for years, and Apple is reportedly working toward a zero-bezel device of its own next year. At IFA 2026, TECNO got there first, at least in concept form.

The black border between the 6.7-inch 144Hz display and the frame is essentially gone. Look very closely at an angle and you might catch the faintest glimpse of it, but otherwise the screen simply flows into the edge.

It's like a smartphone equivalent of an infinity pool. To achieve the zero-frame look TECNO had to rethink assembly.

A dual-layer cover glass has its lower layer extending underneath the frame, the display is inserted from the rear rather than the front, and a custom adhesive holds it all together, so the inactive area hides under the frame instead of showing as a border. The rest is pretty unremarkable: a Dimensity 7300e and a 6,000mAh battery borrowed from an existing TECNO phone.