- NewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All News
- GadgetsCloseGadgetsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Gadgets
- TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Tech
Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
FollowSee All by Sean Hollister
Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.
FollowSee All by Sean Hollister
Magnet rings have changed my life. I grip and mount and satisfyingly snap awesome accessories on and off my phone all day. Even Samsung sells neat ones like these folding magnetic mirrors. But unlike Apple and Google, Samsung refuses to put the magnets inside the phone.
Why? I asked Samsung’s Won-Joon Choi, the executive in charge of both R&D and operations for Samsung’s mobile business. He says the added thickness of magnets is a bad tradeoff to make, because you’re just going to buy a case anyhow.
“About 80 or 90 percent of people are using a case, and cases with magnets are very popular these days,” he tells me.
Samsung would rather use that extra height to give the phone a larger battery or make it thinner, he says.
That doesn’t mean Samsung isn’t looking into magnets. “We’re still doing a lot of research to make sure we don’t have any sacrifice inside the phone; when we actually achieve that, we’ll integrate,” he says.
Personally, I disagree with Choi’s premise. I want extra battery and magnets, and I’m willing to sacrifice thinness to get it. Phones are thin enough already, except for the ones that fold.
And if Samsung took charge of the magnets like Apple, and replicated Apple’s standard pattern and strength, maybe the magnet case I use with my Galaxy S25 would properly and firmly hold onto magnetic battery packs without them rotating in place. Since there’s no magnets inside my phone, I’m at the mercy of casemakers.
But I get it. Why make the tradeoff if someone will pay for a case anyhow? Seems like we need to ask Apple and Google why they chose differently.
- Sean HollisterCloseSean HollisterSenior EditorPosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All by Sean Hollister
- GadgetsCloseGadgetsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Gadgets
- MobileCloseMobilePosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Mobile
- NewsCloseNewsPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All News
- SamsungCloseSamsungPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Samsung
- TechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All Tech
More in: Samsung Unpacked 2026: everything announced at the February event
- Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’
- Hands on: I’m super impressed with the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s new Privacy Display
- Google and Samsung just launched the AI features Apple couldn’t with Siri
- Corsair is halting Drop sales after March 25th
- Google Gemini can book an Uber or order food for you on Pixel 10 and Galaxy S26
A free daily digest of the news that matters most.
This is the title for the native ad
