The smartphone market in the US has become predictable. If you're willing to import, Europe and Asia are selling feature-packed flagships the US carriers decided weren't worth bringing over. Wired tested some of the best ones you're actually missing, from foldables to ultra-zoom cameras.
Walk into any US carrier store and you'll find the same four or five flagship phones everyone else has. Meanwhile, in Europe and Asia, manufacturers are pushing designs that never make it stateside - foldables with second screens, 200-megapixel zoom lenses, and silicon-carbon batteries that keep phones running for two days straight.
Wired's Simon Hill spent time with over a dozen phones that prove what we're missing. The standouts show real innovation beyond the incremental camera tweaks and processor bumps Americans have resigned themselves to.
Take the Oppo Find X9 Pro. Its 200-megapixel telephoto lens handles 3X optical zoom cleanly, and 6X zoom by cropping to 50 megapixels keeps shots sharp. But the real trick is the detachable Hasselblad Teleconverter Kit - this enormous lens clips onto the case and adds another 3.28X zoom. It's awkward without a tripod, sure, but for photographers, it's the kind of creative freedom US flagships abandoned years ago. At £1,099, it's pricey, but it's also packed with an IP66/IP68/IP69 rating and a 7,500-mAh battery that's good for two days.
The Xiaomi 17 Pro Max takes a different approach to innovation - a second, smaller screen on the back that surrounds the camera lenses. Xiaomi loaded it with playful tricks: selfie preview with the main camera, music controls, customizable themes, even a retro gaming case for Angry Birds. It's frivolous until you realize it actually changes how you interact with the phone. The 17 Pro Max is a specs beast with flagship internals, but it's stuck in China so far.
For Americans wanting a taste without the import headaches, the Poco F7 Ultra (£569) feels like a cheat code. It pairs the Snapdragon 8 Elite with a high-res 6.67-inch display and 120Hz refresh rate. There's wireless charging up to 50 watts, an IP68 rating, and Xiaomi's promising four Android upgrades plus six years of security patches - longer than most US phones. The catch is bloatware and the price bump from previous Poco generations, but it's still half what you'd pay for an Apple or flagship.
