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An iPad-Sized Gaming Tablet With Its Own Liquid Cooling System: RedMagic Astra 2

RedMagic built its reputation by shoving desktop grade cooling into devices that had no business needing it, starting with fans strapped onto gaming phones back when that idea still seemed ridiculous. The company’s 11 Pro phone proved a miniaturized liquid cooling loop could fit inside something you carry in a pocket. Now that same engineering obsession has scaled up into the Astra 2, a tablet that treats visible liquid cooling as its main selling point rather than a novelty. Most tablet makers spend their engineering budget on thinner bezels and lighter frames. RedMagic spent its on keeping the thing from overheating under real, sustained gaming load. That choice alone says a lot about who this tablet is actually built for.

The Astra 2 measures 9.06 inches, close enough to an iPad mini that the comparison writes itself, yet it runs hot enough inside to need actual liquid moving through it. RedMagic says the screen refreshes at up to 185Hz and gets bright enough to use comfortably outdoors, numbers most tablets never bother chasing. Battery life gets a boost too, backed by fast charging that promises short waits between long sessions. Pricing in the US starts at $750, climbing higher for more storage and memory. RedMagic already sells this tablet in China under a different name, and a global release is set for August 26.

Designer: RedMagic

RedMagic runs an actual liquid loop through the chassis, moving heat away from the processor the same way a gaming desktop does, just shrunk down to fit a slab you hold with two hands. A large vapor chamber spreads that heat across a wider surface before it ever gets a chance to build up in one spot. Layered on top is something RedMagic calls Liquid Metal 3.0, a thermal compound that conducts heat far better than the paste most devices settle for. None of this needs to work perfectly to feel like a genuine design statement. Just seeing the concept committed to at this scale is the interesting part.

Powering all that heat generation is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, paired with RedMagic’s own RedCore R4 chip built specifically to keep frame rates steady during long sessions. That combination explains why the cooling system needed to grow up in the first place. A 9.06 inch OLED panel adds its own heat on top, running at up to 185Hz with brightness RedMagic rates at 1,600 nits, figures that would turn heads on a laptop, let alone a tablet. An 8,300mAh battery and 75W fast charging round things out, aimed squarely at people who game for hours rather than minutes.

Apple and Samsung have spent years convincing buyers that tablets should stay quiet, sealed, and forgettable on the inside. RedMagic is betting there’s an audience that wants the opposite, a device that shows its work and treats visible engineering as a feature rather than a flaw. Whether that logic holds up once the Astra 2 ships in August remains the real test, but the idea itself is hard to ignore.

The post An iPad-Sized Gaming Tablet With Its Own Liquid Cooling System: RedMagic Astra 2 first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Red Underline Got a Glow-Up and Now It Holds Your Keys

Nobody has ever looked at the red squiggle under a misspelled word and thought, “that should be a wall hook.” Nobody, apparently, except four designers from Korea who looked at the most universally annoying symbol in digital life and decided it deserved better. The result is Redy, a 2025 ambient product series by Jiwon Kim, JeongWoo Eom, Davina Jeon, and Seunghyun Nam, and it might be the most fun a design concept has had with a single visual idea in a while.

The premise is straightforward: take the red underline, strip away the judgment, and rebuild it as a physical object that quietly signals what needs your attention before you head out. But the concept only gets you so far. What makes Redy genuinely worth paying attention to is how committed the design is, across every piece, to making that idea look really good.

Designers: Jiwon Kim, JeongWoo Eom, Davina Jeon, Seunghyun Nam

Start with the color. That specific red-orange is not subtle, and it’s not trying to be. It’s the same energy as a correction mark on a page: urgent, graphic, impossible to miss. But then the inner surfaces of every piece are lined in pale blush-pink or off-white, and that contrast completely changes the mood. The two-tone treatment adds depth to the forms, softens the intensity of the exterior, and highlights the negative spaces in a way that feels far more considered than a simple colorway decision. It’s the detail that makes the whole series feel designed rather than just styled.

The Hanger is where the concept lands most cleanly. It mounts to a wall as a single continuous tubular form that loops up and down in a curving wave profile, with four downward-pointing hook tips at the base of each arc. In silhouette, it is unmistakably the red underline in three dimensions. Each hook tip is smoothly rounded and capped with a small flush-mounted LED indicator, sitting at the very end of the tube like a tiny lit eye. When one activates to signal a reminder, it reads as a design detail first and a functional alert second. That’s a hard balance to get right. Redy gets it right.

The desk organizer takes the squiggle in a different direction. Its rectangular base sprouts wave-form dividers that create open slots for cards, notebooks, and flat objects. Seen head-on it looks almost typographic, like a letterform you can’t quite name. From the side it reads closer to ceramics than product design. It’s the quietest piece in the series and the one most likely to confuse someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking at, which is frankly part of its appeal.

Then there’s the umbrella stand, which takes the most creative liberty with the motif. Instead of one continuous wave, it clusters cylindrical columns together, with the gaps between them curling into S-shapes that echo the underline’s profile. It’s the most abstract piece, and because of that, the most interesting to study up close. Empty, it reads as a sculptural object. With a single umbrella dropped into it, it still looks like it belongs somewhere considered. Most umbrella stands cannot say that.

The thing that elevates Redy from clever concept to genuinely impressive design work is the consistency of the language across three objects that do completely different things. Wall, desk, floor: the series covers an entire entryway without repeating itself or losing coherence. Each piece is fully resolved on its own. Together they make a space feel like someone actually thought about it, which is rarer than it should be.

Redy is still a concept, currently featured in Behance’s curated product design gallery. But it has that specific quality of feeling like it already exists somewhere and you just haven’t found the right store yet. The red underline spent decades telling us we got something wrong. Turns out, all it needed was the right designers to finally get it right.

The post The Red Underline Got a Glow-Up and Now It Holds Your Keys first appeared on Yanko Design.

Pulsar Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition mouse has active cooling fan inside for sweaty gamers

Long gaming sessions often bring the unavoidable problem of sweaty palms. As stress levels rise during competitive gameplay, grip can become slippery, affecting both comfort and precision. While ergonomic gaming mice have evolved with lightweight designs and faster sensors, active cooling has remained a rarity. Pulsar wants to change that with the Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition, a gaming mouse developed in collaboration with cooling specialist Noctua.

First showcased at Computex 2025, the mouse has undergone several refinements before its official launch. It is scheduled to go on sale on July 21, although pricing has not yet been announced. Since the standard Feinmann F01 retails for around $179, the Noctua Edition is expected to command a premium.

Designer: Pulsar

Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition stands out with a ventilated carbon-composite shell that accommodates a 40mm Noctua NF-A4x10 5V PWM fan. Instead of relying solely on perforations for passive airflow, the integrated fan actively pushes air through the mouse to keep the user’s palm cool during extended gaming sessions. The fan features five adjustable speed levels, allowing users to balance cooling performance with battery life and noise based on their preference.

Despite housing an internal cooling system, the wireless mouse weighs only 73 grams, making it considerably lighter than many high-end gaming mice. The standard Feinmann F01 weighs 46 grams, so the added weight is a reasonable trade-off for users who prioritize comfort during marathon gaming sessions. While active-cooled gaming mice are not entirely new, the Zephyr Pro introduced a similar concept years ago. Very few manufacturers have explored the idea further, making Pulsar’s latest effort a notable exception.

Beyond the cooling system, the mouse packs flagship-grade hardware. It is equipped with the XS-2 optical sensor capable of tracking up to 42,000 DPI, an 8,000Hz polling rate for reduced latency, and the 54L15 MCU to process inputs efficiently. Optical switches promise quicker actuation while offering a rated lifespan of 80 million clicks, ensuring durability for competitive players.

This interesting collaboration with Noctua extends beyond the internal fan. The mouse adopts the cooling brand’s instantly recognizable beige-and-brown color scheme, paired with a matching dark brown charging dock that gives it a distinctive look among the sea of black gaming peripherals. While the retro-inspired color palette may divide opinions, it clearly signals the partnership between the two companies.

With its combination of flagship gaming specifications and an integrated active cooling solution, the Pulsar Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition is for players who value long-session comfort as much as raw performance. Whether the built-in fan becomes a genuine competitive advantage or simply a niche luxury remains to be seen, but it is undoubtedly one of the most unconventional gaming mice to arrive this year.

The post Pulsar Feinmann F01 Noctua Edition mouse has active cooling fan inside for sweaty gamers first appeared on Yanko Design.

REDMAGIC Astra 2 Review: The Gaming Tablet That Finally Keeps Its Cool

Gaming tablets have long chased desktop-class performance, but thermal throttling has always been the real ceiling. The more demanding the session, the more heat builds up, and the more the chip has to dial back to protect itself. Vapor chambers and cooling fans have helped, but none has fundamentally changed the equation. The gap between peak specs and what a device can actually sustain has remained difficult to close.

REDMAGIC’s answer is the Astra 2 Gaming Tablet, which brings liquid cooling to a consumer tablet for the very first time. It pairs that with a 9.06-inch OLED display running at 185Hz and the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset, all in a design that’s as visually interesting as it is capable. And rather than just a bullet item on a spec list, the Astra 2 makes that defining feature visible for everyone to see. But does it deliver on its promise, or is it just another design gimmick to woo gamers? We take it for a spin to find out.

Aesthetics

Most gaming tablets announce themselves loudly, with aggressive angles and bold branding that leave little to the imagination. The Astra 2 takes a different approach. Its body is flat matte aluminium in dark charcoal Eclipse or light silver Starfrost, with a subtly embossed REDMAGIC trident at the center of the rear panel. There’s no camera bump, no competing surface details, nothing vying for attention against the one element the design clearly prioritizes.

That element is the transparent cooling strip along the top edge of the rear. Beneath it, serpentine liquid cooling channels glow in blue RGB, with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 badge and “COOLING SYSTEM” lettering etched into the surround. It reads like a nod to gaming PC culture, where lit, windowed hardware has long been a mark of serious intent. Here, that reference is earned.

The front face is equally considered. With 4.9mm bezels and a 90.1% screen-to-body ratio, the display fills almost all of the face, and the front camera is practically invisible at 1.9mm in diameter, the smallest on any tablet. A red Magic Key provides the only real color accent, small but deliberately placed. Between colorways, Starfrost makes the blue cooling strip more dramatic, while Eclipse keeps things precisely controlled.

The REDMAGIC Astra 2 offers a tasteful middle ground between loud gaming gear and professional tech gadget. It has a head-turning design that doesn’t distract constantly, letting that first impression last even when you’re no longer paying attention. It has that character of maturity that gamers of this generation are looking for in their gear, especially when they’re out and about.

Ergonomics

At 363g and 6.9mm thin, the REDMAGIC Astra 2 is genuinely comfortable to hold through extended sessions. The flat back sits flush on any surface without rocking, which matters more in practice than it sounds. The 9.06-inch size puts on-screen controls within natural thumb reach in landscape mode, and the rounded corners distribute the weight evenly enough that the tablet doesn’t become a burden during a long session.

The dual USB-C layout is the real game-changer here, pardon the pun. A USB 3.2 Gen 2 port on the short side and a USB 2.0 on the long edge means a charging cable is always accessible regardless of orientation without blocking your hands, allowing comfortable play while charging. The Magic Key is customizable beyond its default GameSpace launch, and both fingerprint and face unlock work in wet conditions, a practical benefit for a device regularly used during intense gaming sessions.

Performance

The Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 runs on a 3nm architecture with a peak clock speed of 4.6 GHz and notably lower power consumption than its predecessor. Alongside it sits REDMAGIC’s RedCore R4 co-processor, which dynamically allocates CPU, GPU, memory, cooling, and touch resources in real time based on what each game demands. You also get 12GB or 16GB of RAM, depending on your configuration, which is plenty not only for games but for some heavy-duty multitasking.

The AquaCore Cooling System 2.0 is what makes extended performance possible, with REDMAGIC being the first mass-produced tablet brand to pioneer liquid cooling. A piezoelectric micropump circulates fluorinated liquid through micron-laser-cut channels inside the device body. Liquid Metal 3.0 transfers chip heat rapidly to a large vapor chamber, which distributes it across the entire device. Together, these three components maintain stable performance during prolonged gaming sessions in a way conventional cooling simply can’t match.

What all these mean in practice is that you get higher FPS stability and faster responsiveness with lower power draw and less heat. Performance is stable and optimized, whether you’re gaming, enjoying a video binge, or, on rare occasions, being productive thanks to the plethora of apps available on Android 16. As with gaming PCs, good gaming hardware tends to result in good performance across the board, and the REDMAGIC Astra 2 proves it.

The 9.06-inch H5 OLED panel runs at 185Hz, currently the highest refresh rate on any OLED gaming tablet. Resolution sits at 2.4K, or 2400×1504, and peak brightness reaches 1,600 nits. These deliver a screen that is bright, vibrant, and a joy to look at, both for gaming and other visual content. The next-gen custom Synaptics touch controller delivers 300Hz average and up to 2,000Hz instantaneous touch sampling, making the screen feel immediately precise and responsive even with sweaty hands.

The battery is rated at 8,500mAh and supports fast 75W charging, though it eschews wireless charging for that feat. On regular tablets, that’s definitely enough to last for a day or two, but gamers know how fast you can burn through that in just a few hours of gaming, especially at max settings. Thankfully, the Astra 2’s dual USB-C design and safeguards not only allow but even encourage you to charge while playing, minimizing downtime as long as you’re near a wall socket.

While the REDMAGIC Astra 2 excels in most cases, it doesn’t have much to show when it comes to mobile photography. The single 13MP camera is, for the most part, decent, while the 9MP front camera is clearly intended for video calls and live streaming more than taking selfies. None of these is surprising, of course, as this is a tablet that’s laser-focused on delivering a super gaming experience first and foremost.

Sustainability

The Astra 2 is built to handle daily wear without fuss. The aviation-grade aluminium frame resists flexing, Corning Gorilla Glass 3 protects the display against scratches and impacts, and an IP54 rating covers dust protection and water splashes from any direction. That’s the appropriate level for a device that lives on desks, in bags, and in hands, covering the real conditions a gaming tablet encounters day to day. That said, it’s not exactly what you would expect from a device at this price point.

The Astra 2 ships on REDMAGIC OS 11.5 running Android 16, starting on the current version of the OS rather than entering the market already a software generation behind. Unfortunately, the brand has not made any commitment to future software updates, which does raise some concerns about its longevity in that department.

Value

The 12GB/256GB Astra 2 starts at $749 in North America and €699 in Europe. At that price, it’s the only tablet available with both a 185Hz OLED display and liquid cooling. Comparable gaming tablets in this range use LCD panels at lower refresh rates with conventional cooling, making the REDMAGIC Astra 2 the clear leader in terms of specifications that define sustained gaming performance.

The 16GB/512GB tier goes up to $849, and the software platform adds real value to both configurations. Frame Rate Boost uses interpolation to smooth gameplay on titles that cap their native frame rate, intelligently inserting extra frames for more fluid motion, while the system upscales games to 2K resolution for a visually impressive experience. The Astra 2 is Wi-Fi only, which is standard for gaming tablets at this level and accurately reflects where serious mobile gaming actually takes place.

USB On-The-Go support means keyboards, mice, and external drives connect directly without needing a computer as a host. DisplayPort output supports external displays at up to 8K resolution at 60FPS, and the Gravity X desktop mode enables full keyboard-and-mouse PC-style play directly from the tablet. It may not have a Switch-like modular design, but the capabilities allow the Astra 2 to meet gamers where they are, be it while waiting in line, in the comfort of their bed, or on an extended session on their desk.

Verdict

What makes the REDMAGIC Astra 2 interesting as a design object isn’t any single specification but how well the decisions relate to each other. The dual USB-C ports, the 185Hz OLED, the flat profile, and the vapor chamber geometry all feel purposeful rather than assembled from a spec sheet. There’s a coherence here that suggests these components were conceived together, not independently justified and bolted on.

The cooling strip is worth one final note, particularly for design-minded readers. Most consumer electronics go to considerable effort to hide their internal complexity behind smooth, opaque surfaces. The REDMAGIC Astra 2 puts a window in the back panel and lets the working hardware be the visual centerpiece, a straightforward and honest position, and one that’s genuinely satisfying to see in a product at this level.

The post REDMAGIC Astra 2 Review: The Gaming Tablet That Finally Keeps Its Cool first appeared on Yanko Design.

China Just Built a Mirrored Heart at the Lake Called ‘The Last Tear

Sayram Lake sits in a remote corner of Xinjiang, China, at an altitude that makes the air feel thinner and the colors feel brighter. It’s the kind of place that deserves a nickname, and it has a good one: “the last tear of the Atlantic.” The story goes that moisture from the Atlantic Ocean travels thousands of miles across the Eurasian continent, losing itself to evaporation along the way, and what finally arrives at Sayram is what’s left. A last, quiet exhale. A tear. It’s a beautiful piece of geography wrapped in a beautiful piece of poetry, and that combination has now inspired a beautiful piece of design.

Beijing-based Zhide Architectural Design Consulting recently unveiled Heart of Sayram Lake, a mirrored installation built along the lake’s edge for Chinese jewelry brand DR (Darry Ring), a label known for its philosophy of “One Life, One Only, One True Love.” The partnership makes sense. DR built its entire identity on the idea of a single, lifelong commitment. Sayram Lake built its mythology on the same idea, just in water. Marrying the two was either an obvious move or a brilliant one, and I’d argue it’s a little of both.

Designer: Zhide Architectural Design Consulting (Beijing) Co., Ltd.

The installation is shaped like a water drop, which reads as a literal nod to the lake’s tearful lore and a visual echo of DR’s engagement-ring sensibility. It’s ground-mounted with circular ripples spreading outward from the base, mimicking the moment a drop hits still water. At its center, two interlocking rings suggest matching diamond bands. It’s sentimental, yes, but the execution keeps it from tipping into kitsch. The full structure is built from mirrored metal, and the effect is genuinely stunning. It doesn’t sit in the landscape so much as absorb it. Snow peaks, meadow grass, the sky, and the lake all fold into its surface, making it look less like an installation and more like a fragment of the world folded back on itself.

Hollow red wire mesh elements run through the design as a secondary layer, contrasting the hard polish of the mirrored metal with something warmer and more open. That contrast works. The red feels intentional against the pale highland palette of the surrounding area: ice blue, snow white, meadow green. The designers clearly understood that the installation would compete with one of the most visually dramatic natural environments in China, and rather than trying to stand apart from it, they let the lake win. The mirror borrows the landscape’s beauty. The result feels collaborative rather than intrusive.

The design also carries a participatory layer that extends its purpose beyond spectacle. Couples visiting the site can place natural Sayram Lake stones and DR custom heart locks inside dedicated compartments built into the installation. As these accumulate, engraved love mottos inscribed on the interior walls gradually become visible. Filled units can eventually be arranged into a larger matrix of interconnected structures, turning the whole thing into something that grows with each visit, each person, each relationship. A landmark that updates itself through the people who come to see it is a more interesting proposition than one that simply stands there being beautiful.

Public art commissioned by brands tends to make critics nervous, and I get it. The line between meaningful cultural contribution and elaborate marketing is often thin. But looking at Heart of Sayram Lake, it feels like the design team at Zhide prioritized the landscape and the experience above the brand’s visibility. Nothing about it screams advertisement. It sits quietly in one of the most dramatic settings in the country, doing its job, which is to give people a way to feel connected to a place and to each other.

Sayram Lake has been turning people poetic for centuries. That a jewelry brand and a Beijing architecture firm found a way to add to that tradition without overwhelming it is worth pausing on. The best design doesn’t shout. It reflects.

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nubia Just Built the World’s First Phone That Does Things on Its Own

Smartphone makers have been adding AI features for a few years now, and at this point, the marketing language around them has become fairly predictable. A phone summarizes your messages, suggests reply text, cleans up your photos, and maybe transcribes a meeting. These are genuinely useful tools, but they’re still responding to individual requests. The phone doesn’t actually do anything on its own. Someone still has to ask.

The nubia NaviX Ultra is making a more ambitious claim. Unveiled at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, it’s being positioned as the world’s first AI agent smartphone, and the distinction matters. An AI agent doesn’t just respond to prompts; it operates across apps and services on behalf of the user, handling multi-step tasks without being asked to execute each one individually. Nubia is calling this system-level integration rather than a feature layer.

Designer: nubia

That distinction isn’t entirely hypothetical for nubia. The NaviX Ultra’s predecessor, the nubia M153 with Doubao AI assistant, debuted earlier this year in partnership with ByteDance and sold out its initial 30,000-unit batch on launch day in China. The NaviX Ultra is the commercial follow-up to that limited run, now carrying the Doubao assistant at a system level that nubia describes as enabling autonomous cross-platform operation. The phone also received the 2026 SAIL Award ahead of its unveiling.

The hardware specifics haven’t been fully confirmed yet. What nubia has revealed ahead of launch is the design: a metal-framed body with exceptionally narrow bezels, a triple rear camera arranged in a horizontal Pixel-style bar, and a dedicated AI button on the frame. The phone comes in four colorways: Blue Horizon, Black, Dreamscape, and White. Whether the internal hardware matches the ambition of the software positioning is still an open question until full specs are released.

What’s interesting about the NaviX Ultra’s framing isn’t just the technical claim. It’s what the AI agent model implies about how people actually use their phones. The friction of switching between apps, re-entering context, and manually chaining tasks together is real, and it’s something that feature-level AI has only partially addressed. A phone that can hold that context across apps and act on it changes the interaction model rather than just adding a new tool to an existing one.

Nubia’s Doubao partnership with ByteDance gives the NaviX Ultra’s AI ambitions a specific cultural and software context. Doubao is one of the most widely used AI assistants in China, which gives this particular agent integration a large user base to learn from. Whether the system-level AI agent lives up to the label is something that will only be testable after the full device is in hand, but nubia is at least asking a more interesting question than most of its competitors have been willing to pose publicly.

The post nubia Just Built the World’s First Phone That Does Things on Its Own first appeared on Yanko Design.

IKEA Finally Made Furniture You Can Carry Out When You Move Apartments

Moving furniture in a city without a car involves a lot of improvisation. You carry what you can, leave what you can’t, and replace what got lost somewhere between the last three apartments. For a lot of renters in their twenties, heavy furniture isn’t something you accumulate. It’s something you abandon. IKEA designers sat with that problem after visiting a series of London homes of young renters and watching the improvised solutions people were actually living with.

The result is KOMPISHÄNG, a collection of 11 portable pieces launching in the US in August 2026, built from solid pine, powder-coated steel, and durable canvas. The brief was direct: design furniture that can be moved with your body alone, without needing a car. Everything in the collection takes that constraint seriously, and the problem-solving starts the moment you pick something up.

Designer: IKEA

The desk assembles with two pulls and two clicks, no tools required, and has a built-in handle underneath so it can be carried from one room to another without putting anything else down. The side table folds almost completely flat and can be carried over the arm like a handbag. The mattress and pouffe have adjustable shoulder straps and travel like a backpack, then unfold into a guest bed or collapse into an extra seat when no one’s visiting.

The two stackable stools, priced at $60 for a set, are probably the most quietly clever pieces in the collection. They nest into each other for storage, but their legs also interlock to form a tiered shelving unit, turning two stools into a small display surface for a plant, a lamp, or a stack of books. It’s the kind of dual-function logic that feels genuinely thought through rather than incidental.

The accessories follow the same thinking. The canvas wardrobe organizer converts to a carry bag with one zip, so clothes travel already sorted rather than packed from scratch. The jute plant pot has large handles and a built-in rolling cover that protects whatever’s inside during transit, removing the usual anxiety around moving a plant. The red metal bookend with handles is one of IKEA’s more self-aware pieces: a bookshelf that knows most rentals don’t have one.

The pieces are priced between $9.99 and $99.99, which keeps the stakes low enough that replacing a piece or passing it to the next tenant isn’t a loss. The creative team behind the collection put longevity on the brief, too: the textiles can be washed, the wood furniture can be sanded and repainted, and the stated hope is that pieces move from one person to the next rather than ending up discarded. For furniture designed around the reality of constant change, the expectation of a long life is a telling detail.

The post IKEA Finally Made Furniture You Can Carry Out When You Move Apartments first appeared on Yanko Design.

Infinix HOT 70 Series Review: Designed Like a Flagship, Not Priced Like One

The affordable smartphone market has long operated on an unspoken rule: you get your camera, your processor, and a solid battery, but genuine design ambition is a luxury reserved for pricier tiers. Walk into any mid-range phone aisle, and you’re likely to face the same predictable cycle, gradient blues and purples on glass-and-plastic slabs that look almost indistinguishable from one another, functional but rarely intentional.

Infinix is trying to challenge that assumption with the HOT 70 series with its Industry-First 12-Colorway Dynamic Shine Design. It comes in two distinct flavors: the HOT 70 and the HOT 70 Pro 5G. Both arrived for this review, the HOT 70 in Quiet Violet and the HOT 70 Pro 5G in Thermo Orange and Mirage Green, and all announced themselves as something genuinely

Designer: Infinix

Click Here to Buy Now: HOT 70 | HOT 70 Pro 5G

Aesthetics

Infinix has long understood something that a lot of phone brands still haven’t fully caught on to: young users aren’t shopping for specs alone, they’re buying something that reflects who they are and what they’re about. The HOT 70 series is the brand’s clearest statement on that front, organized around a “Colorful, Versatile, Fun” philosophy that treats aesthetic identity and personal expression as core design priorities, not afterthoughts.

Both phones share a design language Infinix calls the Dynamic Shine Aesthetic Design, and the common thread across both models is a Baby-Smooth Finish, a surface with an advanced anti-fingerprint coating. That silky, finely soft in-hand texture genuinely holds up in practice. After time with both phones, fingerprints and grease smudges are noticeably less of a nuisance than on most others in this price category, which counts for a lot.

Infinix HOT 70

The HOT 70 arrives in six colorways: Thermo Orange, Night Pulse, Silver Dancer, Dive Blue, Green Texture, and the Quiet Violet reviewed here. Where most phones at this price simply pick a color and commit to it, the Quiet Violet does something more considered. The Lumina Flare Dynamic Flame Texture layers micro-textures beneath the surface, creating a shifting light-and-shadow effect that reads differently depending on where you are.

The Crystal Mood Island camera ring is where the craftsmanship gets more deliberate. It sits around the camera bump as a decorative ring that catches light and bends it into iridescent gloss, shifting tone with every viewing angle. On paper, that sounds like a marketing detail, but in practice, it adds genuine visual contrast between the ring and the rest of the panel behind it.

Then there’s the Active Halo, the light ring surrounding the camera area that pulses softly for calls, messages, charging status, and game launches. It’s tempting to dismiss this as a gimmick, but there’s a genuinely useful case for it: the phone is face down, silent, and the Halo quietly signals an incoming call without making you reach for it every few minutes.

Infinix HOT 70 Pro 5G

The HOT 70 Pro 5G is available in six colorways: Thermo Orange, Mirage Green, Silk Glow Purple, Night Pulse, Dive Blue, and the limited edition Depth Ring White. The Thermo Orange commands the most attention, and rightly so. Its Dual-way Thermo Sensing Skin technology physically shifts between a deeper orange below 0°C and a lighter tone above 65°C, and crucially, holds that state until the temperature resets it.

What the Thermo Orange also enables is DIY customization: cool the phone to its deep state, then press a heated stamp or trace with a hot glue pen at around 65°C to create patterns directly onto the back. The concept is genuinely novel for this price tier, and it’s quite fascinating to see the phone come out of the freezer with a different shade of orange. It also opens up possibilities for DIY designs with the stencils and the careful use of a glue gun to heat up only certain areas, creating eye-catching contrasts of light and dark areas you’d think the phone was designed with originally. Given that you are exposing the phone to extreme cold and hot temperatures, however, proper care should still be taken.

Mirage Green, exclusive to the Pro model, offers a more subtle yet equally stunning color-changing effect. Nearly-invisible luminous particles embedded in the leather-like finish on the back of the phone absorb light during the day. Once the sun sets, these dots glow like stars dots scattered against a dark green night sky. It’s a visual that is both premium and calming, perfectly reflecting its design.

The remaining hero finishes deserve more than a footnote. Silk Glow Purple builds its color from nano-scale structural layers rather than pigment, which means the purple actually shifts and travels across the surface as the angle changes. The Limited Edition Depth Ring White goes further, using a micro-lens array to create what reads as a floating 3D ring against an otherwise flat back panel.

The Active Matrix Cube is the Pro’s most distinctive rear-surface detail, a programmable light matrix that’s a flagship-level feature from Infinix’s premium product lineup. It handles status alerts, ambient lighting, mini-games, and custom pattern displays, and can even share those creations via NFC with a single tap. It turns the back of the phone into a secondary surface that communicates something, even when the screen is dark.

Ergonomics

At just 7.49mm thin and 195g light, the HOT 70’s pocket-favourite design offers effortless portability, slipping easily into pockets or small bags and ensuring smooth one-handed handling for commuting, travel, and everyday use. The HOT 70 Pro 5G is marginally heavier at 204g and slightly thicker at 7.85mm to 7.95mm, depending on the colorway, differences that don’t read as particularly significant in everyday handling.

The One-Tap AI Button on both phones is inspired by the Clous de Paris design, with a three-dimensional textured surface that delivers a refined, premium tactile feel. Its customizable shortcut logic enables One-Tap AI FlashMemo with a short press and activates Folax AI assistant with a long press, allowing intuitive control and more efficient smart interaction by streamlining everyday tasks. That physical anchor makes AI feel genuinely accessible rather than buried in software menus.

Both phones use punch-hole displays with narrow bezels, giving a clean, open canvas for everyday use. The HOT 70 and HOT 70 Pro 5G have very similar screen sizes at 6.78 and 6.76 inches, respectively, so the real ergonomic difference lies in the refresh rate. The HOT 70 Pro 5G’s 144Hz high refresh rate and 240Hz touch sampling rate deliver ultra-smooth scrolling without ghosting while browsing and streaming, while the HOT 70’s 120Hz panel handles daily navigation comfortably. The smooth visuals help ease eye strain while also improving the overall user experience.

Performance

AI is quite the trend these days, and Infinix isn’t one to be left behind. The HOT 70 Series delivers a full AI experience upgrade featuring a physical One-Tap AI Button, with a dedicated AI Button that supports intelligent intent recognition, enabling one-tap capture of ideas, meetings, emails, and more, with auto archiving and smart schedule creation based on content type. Long-pressing the button activates Folax, Infinix’s custom AI assistant, which answers questions based on whatever is on screen, from displayed text to a live camera view, with access to five or more AI models simultaneously. Between FlashMemo’s capture-and-organize logic and Folax’s any-screen contextual awareness, the two together cover most of what people actually reach for their phones to do throughout the day.

Battery anxiety is real, especially among the younger generation, so Infinix naturally has a solution. Both models offer a 15% larger battery capacity than the previous generation, featuring a 6,000 mAh single-cell design or 5,600 mAh in certain regional markets, a capacity difference driven by local regulatory requirements rather than any hardware compromise. Fortunately, both capacities support 45W Lightning FastCharge, and in Super Fast Charging mode, which allowed us to hit 50% in half an hour and fully charge in an hour. Bypass charging routes power directly from the charger to keep the phone cooler during heavy use, a critical safety measure when gaming or using the phone for navigation.

The Infinix HOT 70 runs on a MediaTek Helio G100 Ultimate, a powerful octa-core gaming processor designed for smoother daily use, multitasking, and light gaming. That said, the Helio G100 is a 4G-only chip, which means the HOT 70 can’t connect to 5G networks. The HOT 70 Pro 5G steps up to a MediaTek Dimensity 7100 with 5G support, a meaningfully stronger chip that pushes AnTuTu V11 scores above 780,000, delivers up to 90 fps in supported games, and brings faster 5G connectivity tuned for crowded real-world conditions.

The display difference between the two models is more significant than the size gap suggests. The HOT 70’s 6.78-inch 120Hz Eye-Care Display reaches 700 nits of HBM brightness for sunlight readability. The HOT 70 Pro 5G’s 6.76-inch FHD+ panel pushes that to 950 nits of HBM brightness, a genuine sunlight-legibility advantage, and the jump to Full HD+ resolution adds sharpness that becomes particularly noticeable when reading text or watching video.

Camera setups share a foundation but diverge meaningfully at the Pro tier. Both phones use a 50MP main sensor, with AI Live Photo on both automatically filtering out shaky frames from a burst. The HOT 70 Pro 5G’s imaging toolkit, however, rests on a 50MP Sony IMX882 with a large 1/1.95-inch sensor, f/1.8 aperture, and full-pixel autofocus, plus a 2x lossless zoom shortcut, giving it stronger low-light performance.

In both cases, both images and videos come out clear, detailed, and vibrant, punching above their price tier. Sadly, the lack of a dedicated telephoto or ultra-wide cameras will make you miss out on decent close-ups and breath-taking panoramas. It isn’t the series’s strongest suit, but it at least won’t let you down when you need to preserve important moments and scenes.

Sustainability

The HOT 70 carries an IP65 rating, featuring six-level full dustproofing and IP65 splash resistance, blocking dust, rain, and sweat effectively for safer daily commutes and outdoor use. It also boasts military-grade durability with an SGS-certified 5-star drop protection. The HOT 70 Pro 5G steps up to IP68, Infinix’s highest rating to date, rated for up to 2 meters of fresh water for 30 minutes, with screen and camera protected throughout, and further adds MIL-STD-810 military-grade certification for durability across more demanding conditions.

Both phones deliver long-term OS support, keeping the device smooth, secure, and reliable for years, with guaranteed three years of major XOS version upgrades (only for models with 6GB RAM or more) starting with factory-installed XOS 16, continuously updating to XOS 17, XOS 18, and XOS 19. Three OS upgrades aren’t quite on par with what some flagship brands now offer, but it’s a genuinely generous commitment for this price tier, where software longevity is rarely treated as a selling point at all. One caveat is that certain XOS features only apply if your configuration has 6GB of RAM or more.

Value

The Infinix HOT 70 starts at around $120, depending on configuration and market, and the package it delivers at that price is hard to dismiss. Tactile finishes, a physical AI shortcut, a generous battery, and a sunlight-readable display aren’t common at this tier. The Lumina Flare texture and Crystal Mood Island add visual differentiation that most competitors simply don’t bother attempting.

The Infinix HOT 70 Pro 5G starts at around $200, and the step up from the base HOT 70 is justified on multiple fronts. A faster 5G chip, a sharper and faster display, a more capable Sony camera sensor, full IP68 waterproofing alongside military certification, and the Active Matrix Cube add up to a meaningfully more capable and expressive package.

Neither phone asks for a premium price to deliver a premium-feeling design, and that’s genuinely rare. At comparable price points, the alternatives in this category tend to compete primarily on camera megapixels or battery size, without investing much thought into what the phone feels like to hold, look at, or interact with. The HOT 70 series treats those questions as worth answering, which puts it in a different conversation entirely.

Verdict

The HOT 70 makes a case for what affordable phone design can look like when treated as an actual discipline. The Lumina Flare texture, the Crystal Mood Island camera ring, the Active Halo, and the Baby-Smooth Finish come together in a device that rewards closer attention. It gets noticed on a table or out of a pocket, not because it’s loud, but because it clearly has a point of view. The HOT 70 Pro 5G takes that design ambition further into something genuinely experimental, with four optical behaviors across its colorways, a 5G chip with real gaming headroom, a Sony camera sensor that performs above expectations, and IP68 waterproofing for more demanding conditions.

Together, both phones say something interesting about where considered, expressive design is heading at the more accessible end of the smartphone market. At a price tier where “design” usually means picking between black, blue, or midnight black, the Infinix HOT 70 series is quietly raising the bar for what a phone at this price is allowed to look and feel like.

Click Here to Buy Now: HOT 70 | HOT 70 Pro 5G

The post Infinix HOT 70 Series Review: Designed Like a Flagship, Not Priced Like One first appeared on Yanko Design.

Vagabond Haven’s Evergreen XL Is the Tiny Home That Stopped Pretending to Be Small

Most tiny homes are built around compromise. It doesn’t perform the usual tiny-house tricks — the Murphy beds that fold into walls, the loft you access by ladder, the dining table that doubles as a coffee table that doubles as a desk. Vagabond Haven’s latest modular home simply gives you a proper house, just in a more deliberate package.

The Scandinavian brand built its reputation on the original Evergreen, a two-module design that offered 41 square meters of single-floor living. The XL takes that same structural logic and stretches it. Length extends to 11.8 meters (38 feet), and the width comes in just under 6 meters (20 feet) — more than double that of most tiny houses. The result is 59 square meters (635 square feet) of interior space that reads, honestly, more like a compact apartment than a cabin on a trailer.

Designer: Vagabond Haven

That extra width is where the design earns its keep. Wide homes feel categorically different from narrow ones. Light moves differently. Furniture can breathe. The open living and kitchen area here accommodates an L-shaped sofa, a wood-burning stove, a full entertainment setup, and a six-person dining table — items that typically don’t share the same zip code in a tiny home. The kitchen is equipped with an induction cooktop, a fridge/freezer, a dishwasher (still a genuine rarity in this segment), and both upper and lower cabinetry. It’s a working kitchen, not a galley you tolerate.

The two bedrooms are separated in function as much as form. The master bedroom features a double bed, a built-in wardrobe, and a TV unit. The secondary bedroom doubles as a home office, with a single bed, a desk, dedicated shelving, and its own exterior entrance — which opens up interesting possibilities for a guest room, a studio, or a live/work setup. The bathroom doesn’t cut corners either: a glass-enclosed shower, vanity sink, and a choice between flushing, composting, or incinerating toilet. A dedicated technical room houses the water heater, washing machine, and dryer — appliances that usually get crammed into a closet.

Outside, engineered timber and metal cladding wrap a steel roof, and generous glazing keeps the interior in conversation with the landscape. The home arrives in two sections via truck and is assembled on site — no wheels, no tow hitch, no pretense of mobility. Off-grid solar capability is available as an option, along with flexibility in materials, furnishings, and appliances.

The Evergreen XL starts at around €108,000 (approximately $123,000). For a full-time home that arrives pre-designed and ready to configure, that number is harder to argue with than it might first appear.

The post Vagabond Haven’s Evergreen XL Is the Tiny Home That Stopped Pretending to Be Small first appeared on Yanko Design.

The Folding Chair That Looks Great and Sits Terribly

At some point in our collective design consciousness, we collectively decided that a chair could be aspirational. Not just functional. Not just well-made. Aspirational. And Nor Casa’s folding chair, recently described as “flawed but Instagram-friendly,” is basically a case study in exactly that shift.

The chair is striking. The kind of thing that stops your scroll on a Tuesday afternoon when you’re supposed to be answering emails. It has the visual language of something you’d find in a curated boutique hotel lobby or a design fair in Milan: clean lines, considered proportions, the kind of silhouette that photographs beautifully against a white wall or a sunlit concrete floor. Nor Casa, positioned as a distributor rather than a heritage design house, knows their audience. They’re selling a look, and the look lands.

Designer: Nor Casa (distributor)

But here’s where it gets interesting. “Flawed but Instagram-friendly” is a phrase that deserves unpacking, because it points to what usually gets compromised when form takes the lead over function: structural integrity, seat comfort, longevity, the kind of quiet durability that makes a chair worth keeping for twenty years instead of two seasons. And I’ll be upfront about where I personally stand. I would rather sit comfortably in an unremarkable chair than perch awkwardly in a beautiful one. A chair’s first job is to hold you well. Everything else is a bonus.

Folding chairs have always occupied an awkward rung in the design hierarchy. They’re the furniture world’s equivalent of the understudies: useful, necessary, but rarely celebrated. The good ones tend to be purely utilitarian, the kind you pull out of a closet for extra guests and fold back up with relief when everyone goes home. The beautiful ones have historically been expensive design objects, carved out of rare wood or engineered with mechanisms that cost as much as a small appliance. Nor Casa seems to be attempting a middle path: a folding chair that photographs like the former and costs closer to something accessible.

That balance is genuinely hard to get right. The chair may wobble. The finish may not hold up the way the images suggest. The folding mechanism might feel less elegant in person than it does in a product shot with perfect lighting and a muted background. These are not small concerns when you’re buying something meant to be sat in repeatedly by actual human beings. And yet, I find the effort worthwhile to discuss, even if the execution doesn’t fully deliver.

We are living through a moment where design fluency has become democratized in a way that would have been unthinkable thirty years ago. Millions of people who aren’t interior designers or architects now have an eye trained by years of scrolling through design accounts, renovation reveals, and aesthetic-obsessed content creators. They know what a good chair looks like. They want to live with beautiful things. The demand Nor Casa is chasing is real, and it didn’t come from nowhere.

The issue is that visual aspiration without material honesty is a shortcut that tends to disappoint. A chair that performs flawlessly in a photo but creaks under pressure the first time a real person sits in it is not just a design failure. It’s a trust failure. And once a brand earns that reputation, it’s very hard to unlearn.

So I’d say this to anyone tempted by the Nor Casa chair: go in with eyes open. If you want it for the way it looks in a corner of your apartment, on a terrace, in the background of every call you take from home, it might genuinely deliver that. But if you need it to hold up under daily use, to last, to justify itself beyond aesthetics, do your homework before you check out.

For me, the choice is simple. Give me the chair I can sink into for hours without thinking about it. The prettiest chair in the room is only as good as the conversation you can have sitting in it. And that conversation gets very short, very fast, when your back starts to ache.

The post The Folding Chair That Looks Great and Sits Terribly first appeared on Yanko Design.