I'm More Excited About Smartphone Colors Than Any Actual New Features In 2026
The best thing about the upcoming hardware season might just be colors.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Want a good sign that smartphones have truly entered the iterative era? I feel like the most exciting thing about the new Pixel 11 series are the colors — and that feeling may extend to the upcoming iPhone 18 Pro and the rest of this year's fall hardware season, as well.
That's not to knock the Pixel 11. Price bumps aside, the Pixel series continues to be one of the best Android options on the market. And, at least in my opinion, the last few Pixels have been among the best-looking phones you can buy. Obviously, most smartphones are just big screens, but Google's design aesthetic hits the spot for me. They've always felt well-constructed and pleasant to hold and they've historically had fun colors, as well. The Pixel 10's indigo blue and 10 Pro's "lemongrass" shades felt distinctive and unique last year, with the former a nice nod to the original Pixel's "really blue" color.
The Pixel series really pops this year
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
This year, though, Google went for an even more bold palette. The Pixel 11 Pro comes in a lovely light orange or peach hue (Google calls it "canyon") with a gold polished aluminum frame and gold accents around the camera "pill." Even more striking, though less subtle, is the magenta Pixel 11 — a bold hot pink that stands about from just about every single other smartphone on the market.
Sam Rutherford
And in a year where the improvements to the Pixel 11 lineup are the definition of iterative, I'm not surprised that fun new colors are the thing literally catching my eye the most. We've been saying this for several years now — smartphones are incredibly mature at this point, with most being more than powerful enough to last people three or four years. There isn't really anything here to convince people to upgrade from the Pixel 10 series, and that's OK. But as someone who has wanted to give the Pixel a proper shot for a few years now, having a few extremely distinctive color options helps make that potential decision a little more fun.
Even Apple is being more daring with colors lately
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Not to be outdone, Apple is also rumored to be putting more life into the iPhone 18 Pro series when it is announced next month. For years now, the basic iPhone colors have alternated between being nicely saturated and distinctive (see the iPhone 14 and 16) and so pale they can barely be called colors at all (the iPhone 15 was a particularly egregious example).
The Pro lineup, on the other hand, has almost always stuck with some variants of black, silver and gold. There's usually a fourth option, like the iPhone 14 Pro in deep purple, but even those colors have been fairly muted.
That changed last year with the "cosmic orange" iPhone 17 Pro, a hue that feels almost copper in the right light. And this year, rumors are that the iPhone 18 Pro will come in a new "dark cherry" along with a lighter blue and the expected silver and black options. I feel like the dark cherry is a bit of a step back from the boldness of the orange iPhone 17 Pro — it looks like it'll be another of the uber-dark shades Apple commonly uses for the Pro series phones. But, as always, these things usually look better in person than they do in renders (particularly ones that aren't even official at this point). We'll find out next month.
Samsung didn't get the colors memo this year
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Samsung's a bit of an outlier, at least this year — the Galaxy S26 series of phones from earlier in the year are all charitably described as "subtle." This is usually the case for Samsung, yet another reason I've always been more of a fan of the Pixel lineup. The recently-announced Z Flip 8, Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra are similarly bland, which feels like a missed opportunity to me — make at least one of these models stand out and help convince someone who is on the fence to take the foldable plunge!
I realize this is the most superficial of things to muse on, both literally and figuratively. Most of the Engadget readership is likely not basing their phone choices primarily on colors. On the other hand, if we're spending even more of our hard-earned cash on devices than ever before (and keeping them longer, too), they should be something that you're actually excited about pulling out of your pocket. Sure, you can buy a new case to switch things up any time you get bored, but not all of us have a budget just for covers, and those things aren't getting any cheaper. For some people, a black or white phone fits the bill — I'm just glad Google is giving us a swath of other options this year.
Reporting from Engadget contributed to this story.
