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.

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.

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.

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.

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.