China
China at Spoot: Spotted Early is a file of 3 stories. The newest of them: “This 13-foot mecha wants the jobs too dangerous for you”, “Coolpad steals the foldable's screen without the folding trick”, and “Honor's new flagship packs a camera Arri helped shape and a battery that refuses to quit”. A Beijing company just dropped a 13-foot hydraulic-electric humanoid that stands as tall as a monster truck and can still move with precision finer than a hair's width. The Coolpad Cool X Wide has a screen that's basically the same size as a closed Galaxy Z Fold 8 or an iPhone Duo, but it doesn't fold. Spoot: Spotted Early New things, caught while they're still new and a little weird. Spoot finds fresh gadgets, clever inventions, crowdfunding campaigns,… The list below is every China story on Spoot: Spotted Early, newest first.
This 13-foot mecha wants the jobs too dangerous for you
A Beijing company just dropped a 13-foot hydraulic-electric humanoid that stands as tall as a monster truck and can still move with precision finer than a hair's width. It wants the jobs too dangerous for you, the heavy lifting, the toxic environments, the tasks that grind down human bodies. This is not a render. It is not a concept. It is a machine built for work, and it makes me wonder how long before we stop calling these things "robots" and start calling them coworkers. The engineering is genuinely wild: hydraulic power for strength, electric control for finesse, and a scale that forces you to look up.
Coolpad steals the foldable's screen without the folding trick
The Coolpad Cool X Wide has a screen that's basically the same size as a closed Galaxy Z Fold 8 or an iPhone Duo, but it doesn't fold. It just sits there, being wide, and that's the whole point. The folding-phone aesthetic, that tall, tablet-like aspect ratio, is bleeding into regular slab phones, and Coolpad is the first to catch it without the hinge tax. No crease anxiety, no $2,000 price tag, no repair bills that make your eye twitch. It's available for preorder in China for 999 yuan, which is roughly $140. That's absurd. It makes you wonder why everyone else is still building folding phones for people who just want a big screen that fits in a pocket.
Honor's new flagship packs a camera Arri helped shape and a battery that refuses to quit
Honor's Magic 9 Pro Max has a camera island that looks like it was machined from a 1937 Arriflex 35 turret, complete with knurled grip texture, and that alone made me sit up straighter. The battery is colossal, the mossy green finish is genuinely handsome, and Arri's influence runs deeper than aesthetics: you get LogC3 capture and 14 preset Look LUTs baked in. That's a serious tool for anyone who wants cinema color without the rig. It's also Honor's first flagship since the Arri deal went public, so the pressure was on. I'm gently skeptical about whether the software holds up, but the hardware is talking loud. For more gadget weirdness, our piece on Philips' new toothbrush tracking your brushing is a fun contrast. Stay spooty.