This Week in Mobile: The iPhone Duo Lands, Prices Climb Across the Board, and AT&T Looks to Satellites

Apple's Tuesday event dominated the week, and for good reason: the company finally entered the foldable category with the iPhone Duo, refreshed the 18 Pro lineup, and then — less flatteringly — quietly raised prices across nearly every iPhone still on sale, hardware changes or not. It was a reminder that "new generation" doesn't always mean new hardware; sometimes it just means a bigger number on the price tag.

While Cupertino soaked up the headlines, the Android side of the industry had a quieter, more uneven week. Samsung kept last year's foldables current with a features drop, Google split the difference between fixing one problem (Pixel 10 trade-ins) and creating another (discontinuing the Pixel Tablet), and two of the biggest carriers used the week to talk infrastructure rather than phones, locking in fiber and satellite deals built for the next five years rather than this quarter.

• Apple Finally Has a Foldable iPhone, and It'll Cost You at Least $1,999: Apple's long-rumored entry into foldables gives the category mainstream legitimacy, but its $1,999 starting price doesn't undercut any of its rivals, putting real pressure on Apple to prove the form factor is worth the premium.
• iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max: What's New, What It Costs, and When You Can Buy One: Beyond the usual chip and camera bumps, the real story is price: at $100 more than last year, with all three major carriers matching each other's trade-in offers almost dollar-for-dollar, upgrading is really a question of whose fine print you're willing to read.
• Older iPhones Just Got More Expensive, Even Without Any Upgrades: Paired with another free year of satellite features for iPhone 14, 15, and 16 owners — Apple raised prices across its entire existing lineup with zero hardware changes, then softened the blow for older-device owners with a free perk, a reminder that quiet price hikes and generous-sounding freebies tend to travel together.
• Apple Watch Series 12 Debuts a Feature That Rewinds Recent Conversations: Live Rewind is a genuinely useful trick for catching missed details, but it also means Apple's watches are now holding onto a rolling buffer of nearby audio, a tradeoff privacy-conscious buyers will want to think through.
• Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 Are Getting Galaxy S26 and Fold 8 Features Too: Samsung pushing new software down to year-old foldables just a week after debuting it on current flagships is a good sign for how long the company intends to support big-ticket devices.
• Google Removes the Pixel Tablet and Its Entire Category From the Store: Quietly retiring the Pixel Tablet without an announcement suggests Google's tablet ambitions are shelved for now, not just paused.
• Google Owns Up to Pixel 10 Trade-In Problems and Promises Refunds: A database error left customers in limbo for weeks; Google's fix is straightforward, but the month-long silence before it arrived isn't a great look for trade-in trust.
• Android's New Feature Fixes One of the Riskiest Parts of Switching Password Managers: Moving passwords without an unencrypted export file closes a real security gap, and it's the kind of behind-the-scenes fix that matters more than most headline features.
• Galaxy A07 Owners Report Lag and Touchscreen Freezing After Latest Update: Samsung's best-selling budget phone hitting update-related bugs, with no fix or acknowledgment yet, tests the software-support promise that helped sell it in the first place.
• AT&T Becomes First Major US Carrier to Offer Amazon Leo Satellite Service: Folding satellite into AT&T's existing network architecture, rather than selling it as a separate product, signals where carriers see connectivity heading for customers who can't rely on ground infrastructure alone.
• Verizon's New Fiber Deal With Corning Is Built for Broadband and AI Alike: An 80-million-mile, five-year fiber commitment shows Verizon betting that home broadband growth and AI data-center demand will draw on the same infrastructure rather than separate ones.
• Trump Mobile's T1 Phone Jumps From $499 to $749 Overnight: A $250 increase with no explanation and no hardware changes puts the T1 in flagship pricing territory it isn't equipped to compete in.
• Metro by T-Mobile Teams Up With Tajín for a Limited-Edition Giveaway: A lighter note to close on: a small brand-collab perk rather than a network or pricing story, but a reminder that carriers are still fighting for everyday loyalty with more than just discounts.

In the end, this week wasn't really about one product — it was about the price of admission going up almost everywhere at once. Apple's foldable debut, its across-the-board price hikes, and even Trump Mobile's unexplained jump all point the same direction: phones are getting more expensive, and manufacturers are getting less shy about saying so.

Underneath the sticker shock, though, the more interesting story might be what carriers are quietly building for later. AT&T and Verizon spent the week talking about satellite integration and fiber capacity meant to pay off years from now, while Google and Samsung worked through a mix of useful upgrades and unresolved bugs. Taken together, it's a snapshot of an industry pricing today's phones for tomorrow's costs while still laying pipe (literal and figurative) for whatever comes next.