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Welcome to ZDNET's "Breakthrough" Awards for 2025, our latest contented that celebrates the astir innovative and forward-thinking technologies to transverse our editors' desks this year.
Over the past 12 months, we've spent countless hours challenging the inferior of foldable phones that dominated the mobile conversation, lived full enactment weeks done the lens of caller smart glasses and VR headsets, and benchmarked much robots than ever, from ones that tin ideate and propulsion context done the lenses of our phones, to ones that tin sweep, vacuum, mop, and execute each chore successful between.
Also: The 40 champion products we tested successful 2025: Editors' picks for phones, TVs, AI, and more
Amidst this relentless question of maturing -- yet, perpetually innovating -- merchandise categories, identifying a existent 'Breakthrough' has ne'er been harder. These awards don't conscionable spell to the fastest chipset oregon the astir premium design; they spell to the products that fundamentally changed the conversation, acceptable a caller barroom for innovation, and showed america a glimpse of the exertion that volition specify the remainder of the decade.
In nary peculiar order, present are the recipients of the ZDNET Breakthrough Award for 2025.
1. Huawei Mate XT Ultimate: The archetypal tri-foldable of many
While Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Z TriFold continues to predominate the headlines astatine the extremity of the year, it was a competing tri-foldable telephone that near the biggest footprint successful 2025. The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate launched globally backmost successful February and saw contiguous fanfare. We witnessed the hype successful idiosyncratic astatine Mobile World Congress successful Barcelona, arsenic hundreds of journalists, analysts, and tech enthusiasts flooded the Huawei booth to get a consciousness of the Chinese tech giant's shape-shifting handset.
Unlike accepted foldable phones that tin lone crook astatine the center, the Huawei Mate XT Ultimate features 2 inward-folding hinges, converting a azygous 6.4-inch surface into a larger, tablet-like 10.2-inch display. The effect is simply a existent multimedia depletion instrumentality that tin acceptable into pants pockets, backpack sleeves, and more.
While the deficiency of Google services was a notable caveat of the Huawei foldable, we recovered its wide functionality and different uncompromising diagnostic acceptable admirable.
ZDNET's Prakhar Khanna enactment it best: "The Huawei Mate XT Ultimate sets a caller benchmark for tri-fold phones, showing they're nary longer conscionable experimental -- but a bold measurement toward the aboriginal of mobile computing."
2. Roborock Saros Z70: Literally a helping hand
Robot vacuums continue to play an indispensable relation successful thousands of households, but is determination country to grow beyond vacuuming and mopping? Roborock enactment its wealth connected "literally moving obstructions" successful 2025 with the Saros Z70 model, and it near a lasting content connected ZDNET's astute location expert, Maria Diaz.
The Saros Z70 featured an OmniGrip mechanical limb susceptible of detecting and picking up lightweight objects, specified arsenic socks, tissues, and sandals, truthful agelong arsenic they weighed nether 300 grams. From our tests, the motorized diagnostic was palmy astir of the time, though the automation required clip and practice.
Thanks to a built-in camera, users tin besides remote-control the Saros Z70 from their phones, driving the vacuum portion operating the mechanical limb similar a claw machine.
"The Saros Z70 is the adjacent level successful robot vacuum technology, and it's pioneering the thought of a functional, multipurpose household robot that you tin genuinely trust on," said Diaz, and that's wherefore it's earned a spot connected ZDNET's database of Breakthroughs this year.
3. Samsung Micro RGB TV: A color-perfect future
Several TV manufacturers launched their archetypal micro-scale RGB LED TVs successful 2025, marking a important advancement successful LCD backlighting and colour accuracy. The cardinal exertion is exceptionally tiny RGB LEDs -- with Samsung's iteration measuring astatine little than 100 micrometers each -- that let the TV to screen the afloat spectrum of the BT.2020 colour standard.
We saw Samsung's 115-inch Micro RGB TV successful person, and the precocious level of colour precision, contrast, and brightness made adjacent OLED sets airy successful comparison. Notably, the Samsung Micro RGB does not utilize the brand's ain self-emissive MicroLED display; instead, the latest TV employs idiosyncratic backlights (LCD) to show color. Although confusing, our takeaway from seeing the TV successful idiosyncratic was that the implementation is good worthy it.
Ultimately, the Samsung Micro RGB TV is simply a beauteous paradox. It is some a glorious last section for the property of the backlit LCD and a brilliant, confusing prelude to the epoch of existent mini LED. Expect to spot much contention successful the abstraction successful the years ahead.
4. Meta Ray-Ban Display: The adjacent frontier of astute glasses
Riding connected the popularity of Ray-Ban-branded astute glasses, Meta went for a homer this twelvemonth erstwhile it launched the Ray-Ban Display astatine Connect. While the astute glasses retained indispensable features similar hands-free photograph and video capturing, they besides introduced a waveguide, full-color show that projected contextual accusation -- realizing the existent multimodal capabilities of AI wearables.
Also: I tried the Meta Ray-Ban Display glasses, and they got maine excited for the post-smartphone era
Through a companion accessory, an EMG neural wristband, users could navigate the floating interfaces with assorted manus gestures. Our squad was capable to larn and familiarize itself with the controls wrong minutes of testing. From past on, the Ray-Ban Display became a conveyance for ambient information, ranging from unrecorded captions during conversations to Meta AI responses and incoming notifications.
The Meta Ray-Ban Display's bundle terms remains a constituent of strength, selling for $799. Within the archetypal weeks of release, the latest astute glasses saw preservation demos pushed backmost by months. The question present is however competitors similar Google, Samsung, and perchance adjacent Apple volition respond successful 2026.
5. Antigravity A1: A drone that ne'er misses a shot
Antigravity, a sub-brand of fashionable camera shaper Insta360, launched this summer, and its archetypal merchandise acceptable the barroom high. ZDNET's Cesar Cadenas tested the A1 drone successful Los Angeles and recovered its 360-degree video signaling to beryllium a game-changer for contented creation. Effectively, you tin ne'er miss a changeable with the A1's 8K sensor, and its 249-gram value falls conscionable nether the US government's 250-gram bounds for recreational drone-flying.
Also: I replaced my question video cogwheel with this 360-degree drone wrong minutes of investigating it
The Antigravity A1 works successful tandem with a Grip Controller and Vision Goggles, the second of which provides the idiosyncratic with a first-person presumption of the drone's sensors arsenic they drift done the sky. Thanks to the goggles' micro-OLED displays and commendably low-latency video streaming, Cadenas was near impressed with the afloat formation experience.
"Yes, it's costly [at $1,599], but I'd inactive urge the A1 to anyone funny successful drones. Its easiness of usage makes it large for newcomers, and creators volition beryllium impressed by the video quality," said Cadenas.
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