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Meta has sued the people and groups behind three scam operations that used images and deepfakes of celebrities to lure users to scam websites. According to the company, the three entities were based in China and Brazil and targeted people in the US, Japan and other countries. The ads promoted fraudulent investment schemes and fake health products.

Meta said that it had filed lawsuits against several people in Brazil who promoted fake or unapproved healthcare products and online courses promoting them. The company also sued a China-based entity it says used ads featuring celebrities "as part of a larger fraud scheme that lured people into joining so-called investment groups." The company didn't provide details on how many ads these groups had run on Facebook, how many social media users had seen or interacted with the ads or how long the scammers had been operating on the platform.

So-called "celeb bait" ads have been a long-running issue for the company. Engadget has previously documented celeb bait scams on Facebook, including ones that frequently use Elon Musk and Fox News personalities to hawk fake cures for diabetes. The Oversight Board has also criticized the company for not doing enough to combat such scams. In its update, Meta says that "because scam ads are designed to look real, they’re not always easy to detect." The company also noted that it has now enrolled "more than 500,000" celebrities and public figures into its facial recognition system that's meant to automatically detect scam ads using the faces of famous people. 

Meta's handling of scammy advertisers has come under increased scrutiny in recent months after Reuters reported that researchers at the company at one point estimated that as much as 10 percent of its ad revenue could be coming from scams and banned products. The fact that Meta has made billions of dollars from problematic advertisers has also caused the company to be slow to take action against repeat offenders.

In addition to the groups behind the celeb bait ads, Meta says that it's upgraded its ability to detect scam ads that use cloaking, which has at times hindered its internal review systems. The company also sued a Vietnam-based advertiser it says used scam ads to hawk "deeply discounted items from well-known brands," including Longchamp.

Meta also took legal action against eight former "Meta Business Partners," who promoted services that would "un-ban" or other "account restoration services." The company says it will "consider taking additional legal action, including litigation, if they don’t comply" with cease and desist orders.

Update, February 26, 2026, 1:16PM PT: This story was updated to specify that Meta’s internal estimates around ad revenue included scams and banned products.

MWC 2026 officially gets underway on March 2 and will continue through March 5, but the announcements are already pouring in ahead of its start. We can always count on the annual tech event to bring tons of new phones, laptops and tablets, and we're expecting to see some robots and other gadgets too — plus plenty of AI news, of course. In addition to the announcements, MWC is our chance to get hands-on time with some of the most interesting new devices, like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Honor's Robot Phone.

Engadget’s Mat Smith is on the ground in Barcelona, and we'll be updating this story as the week goes on to keep you in the loop on everything that caught our attention. Keep checking back here for the latest MWC news. 

Lenovo

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Lenovo pulled up to MWC with a bunch of new products and concepts, but if there's one thing everyone's going to be talking about, it's the Legion Go Fold. (Check out Sam Rutherford's coverage of the Legion Go Fold here). In short, the Legion Go Fold is a concept foldable gaming handheld with a flexible display that can unfurl to a massive 11.6 inches. Or, it can be folded in half to become a 7.7-inch display. It has detachable controllers, and there are multiple mounting points along the tablet so you can switch things up between landscape and portrait mode. The left and right gamepads can also be combined into one controller with an accessory, and the display can be propped up kickstand-style with the folio cover. 

You think we're done here? We're not. The Legion Go Fold can go laptop mode too, with a strip of pogo pins where a wireless keyboard can be connected. Its right gamepad can serve as a mouse, thanks to the inclusion of a little scroll wheel and a hidden sensor. That gamepad also features a tiny circular OLED display below the buttons, which can both show widgets such as the time and be used as a touchpad. 

It is a concept, though, so don't get your hopes up too much about this one going into production. And if it does ever become a real, buyable product, it'll no doubt be expensive. 

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Lenovo also announced its Modular AI PC concept — a laptop with two displays and a detachable keyboard. As Sam Rutherford, who got a chance to check it out in person, explained, "This allows you to move its keyboard and secondary display around at will, so the system can better adjust to its environment or workload." Perhaps even more exciting is that it has hot swappable ports. Lenovo demonstrated it with USB-C, USB-A and HDMI connectors, but said others could be possible too. 

Still, while everything looked pretty polished in the demo, Lenovo says this one will remain a concept.

Lenovo

It hasn't all been concepts at MWC. Lenovo also refreshed some of its existing tablet and laptop lineups for 2026. The company introduced the Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition Gen 11 (with the new Canvas Mode configuration), starting at $1,949, and the new 15.3-inch Yoga Pro 7a, which starts at $2,099. It's updated its more affordable IdeaPad Slim 5i Ultra laptop ($799) as well. All of those new laptops come with Copilot+ features. For students, Lenovo is launching the 13-inch Idea Tab Pro Gen 2, starting at $419, with its Quira AI assistant and AI tools. You can find all the specs and release dates for those here. 

Upgrades are here for Lenovo's ThinkPads too, along with the Yoga-like ThinkBook 2-in-1. And, Lenovo announced a $499 industrial tablet, the ThinkPad X11. 

Honor

Honor teased its Robot Phone this past fall and we just finally got a proper look at it at MWC. And it's pretty freakin' cute. The phone is equipped with a camera that's mounted on a highly mobile 4-degrees-of-freedom gimbal, which tucks away into a compartment on the back when it's not in use (making for a pretty beefy camera bump). In a demo at MWC, the camera, which behaves like a little robot head, bobbed along to music and showed off some of its gesture skills, like cocking its “head” and nodding in agreement. 

Honor didn't reveal too much spec-wise, but the company says the primary camera uses a 200-megapixel sensor. The gimbal will offer three-axis stabilization, which will be coupled with camera modes such as Super Steady Video and AI Object Tracking. The Robot Phone isn't quite ready for release at the moment, but the company says it will launch later this year. 

Be sure to check out Mat Smith's writeup on the Robot Phone for a more in-depth look.

Image by Mat Smith

It's not a humanoid robot reveal without some backflips and a choreographed dance performance. Honor introduced its robot at MWC with all the spectacle we've come to expect (though the bot didn't do any talking).  It’s simply called the Honor Robot, and the company has plans for it to be used in both industrial and domestic settings.

The Robot Phone isn't the only phone Honor showed off at MWC. The company also announced its Magic V6 smartphone, which it says is the thinnest phone in its category, measuring 8.75mm folded and 4.0mm open in the white colorway. The other three colors — black, gold and red — are slightly thicker, at 9mm folded and 4.1mm open.

Not too much has changed from the V5, though, which only came out in August 2025. It does however have the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, with 16GB RAM and 512 GB storage. As for the cameras, there are two 50-megapixel lenses and a 64-megapixel telephoto, plus a 20-megapixel f/2.2 selfie lens on the cover and internal display. 

The international version of the Magic V6 will have a 6660mAh battery with 25 percent silicon content, while the version sold only in China will boast a battery with a rated capacity of more than 7000mAh and 32 percent silicon content. Honor hasn't yet shared details about pricing and availability.  

Honor

Ahead of MWC, Honor also announced what it claims is the thinnest Android tablet in the world: the 4.8mm thick MagicPad 4. We're expecting to hear more about this at Honor's press conference on Sunday, but so far we know it features a 12.3-inch 165Hz OLED display and weighs just 450g. It comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. The thinness doesn't count the camera bump, Honor notes. The MagicPad 4 has 13MP rear and 9MP front cameras. It also boasts spatial audio, with eight speakers.

Just as the display is slightly smaller than the previous MagicPad, the MagicPad 4 has a smaller battery at 10100 mAh. It comes with a 66W fast charger. The MagicPad 4 will run Honor's MagicOS 10. We don't yet know how much it will cost, but we'll update this after Honor's press conference (where we're also expecting to see the company's robot) with any new details.  

Xiaomi x Leica

Mat Smith for Engadget

Xiaomi kicked off MWC this year by announcing the global launch of its 17 Ultra smartphone, which debuted first in China back in December. It's unclear if the phone will ever come to the US, but it's now rolling out in Europe. Xiaomi teamed up again with Leica to make a photography-focused smartphone, and the 17 Ultra sports a 1-inch 50-megapixel camera sensor with a f/1.67 lens, a telephoto setup with a 200MP 1/1.4-inch sensor, and a 50MP ultrawide camera. There's also a manual zoom ring around the camera. 

Check out our hands on for our first impressions of what it's like shooting with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. And there's more to it than just the camera. The 17 Ultra has a 6.9-inch OLED 120 Hz display that peaks at 3,500 nits of brightness, and a 6000mAh silicon-carbon battery. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra starts at £1,299 (roughly $1,750).

Leica also announced a new phone made in partnership with Xiaomi at MWC. It looks a whole lot like Xiaomi's 17 Ultra, but isn't the 17 Ultra, exactly.

Image by Mat Smith for Engadget

Like the 17 Ultra, Leica's Leitzphone by Xiaomi has a 1-inch camera sensor and physical controls for zoom and other settings, using a mechanical ring around the camera unit. It features a Leica-designed intuitive camera interface with the option to show just the essentials when you're shooting, hiding all the modes and labels. There's a monochrome shooting mode and Leica filters. 

The Leica branding is splashed all over it in design and wallpapers, but it's otherwise pretty similar to the 17 Ultra, with the same specs. Like the 17 Ultra, it has a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and a 6.9-inch 120Hz display. This one's priced at €1,999 (roughly $2,362).

Xiaomi

In addition to the 17 Ultra, Xiaomi announced two new tablets at MWC this year: the Xiaomi Pad 8 and Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro. There's nothing revolutionary here, but they're lightweight and thin, with both being 5.75mm thick and weighing 485g, and have a 9200mAh battery. The Pro model is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, while the regular Pad 8 uses the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset. 

Xiaomi also unveiled a new 5000mAh powerbank, the UltraThin Magnetic Power Bank 5000 15W. The 6mm thick power bank comes in three colors with an aluminum alloy shell: orange, silver and charcoal gray. Along with that, the company introduced the Xiaomi Tag, its own take on the Bluetooth item tracker. The Xiaomi Tag has a built-in hanging loop so it can be attached directly to a keyring, and the company says it will work with both Apple Find My and Google's Find Hub for Android.

Tecno

Tecno

We can always expect to see some wild phone concepts at MWC, and this year we're starting with one from Tecno. The company unveiled a modular concept smartphone design that can be as thin as 4.9mm in its base configuration. There’d be 10 modules to choose from based on the announcement, including various camera lenses, a gaming attachment and a power bank, relying on magnets to keep it all together — or Modular Magnetic Interconnection Technology, as Tecno is calling it. 

MWC 2026 officially gets underway on March 2 and will continue through March 5, but the announcements are already coming ahead of its start. We can always count on the annual tech event to bring tons of new phones, laptops and tablets, and we're expecting to see some robots and other gadgets too — plus plenty of AI news, of course. In addition to the announcements, MWC is our chance to get hands-on time with some of the most interesting new devices, like the Xiaomi 17 Ultra.

Engadget’s Mat Smith is on the ground in Barcelona, and we'll be updating this story as the week goes on to keep you in the loop on everything that caught our attention. Keep checking back here for the latest MWC news. 

Xiaomi x Leica

Mat Smith for Engadget

Xiaomi kicked off MWC this year by announcing the global launch of its 17 Ultra smartphone, which debuted first in China back in December. It's unclear if the phone will ever come to the US, but it's now rolling out in Europe. Xiaomi teamed up again with Leica to make a photography-focused smartphone, and the 17 Ultra sports a 1-inch 50-megapixel camera sensor with a f/1.67 lens, a telephoto setup with a 200MP 1/1.4-inch sensor, and a 50MP ultrawide camera. There's also a manual zoom ring around the camera. 

Check out our hands on for our first impressions of what it's like shooting with the Xiaomi 17 Ultra. And there's more to it than just the camera. The 17 Ultra has a 6.9-inch OLED 120 Hz display that peaks at 3,500 nits of brightness, and a 6000mAh silicon-carbon battery. The Xiaomi 17 Ultra starts at £1,299 (roughly $1,750).

Leica also announced a new phone made in partnership with Xiaomi at MWC. It looks a whole lot like Xiaomi's 17 Ultra, but isn't the 17 Ultra, exactly.

Image by Mat Smith for Engadget

Like the 17 Ultra, Leica's Leitzphone by Xiaomi has a 1-inch camera sensor and physical controls for zoom and other settings, using a mechanical ring around the camera unit. It features a Leica-designed intuitive camera interface with the option to show just the essentials when you're shooting, hiding all the modes and labels. There's a monochrome shooting mode and Leica filters. 

The Leica branding is splashed all over it in design and wallpapers, but it's otherwise pretty similar to the 17 Ultra, with the same specs. Like the 17 Ultra, it has a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and a 6.9-inch 120Hz display. This one's priced at €1,999 (roughly $2,362).

Xiaomi

In addition to the 17 Ultra, Xiaomi announced two new tablets at MWC this year: the Xiaomi Pad 8 and Xiaomi Pad 8 Pro. There's nothing revolutionary here, but they're lightweight and thin, with both being 5.75mm thick and weighing 485g, and have a 9200mAh battery. The Pro model is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, while the regular Pad 8 uses the Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chipset. 

Xiaomi also unveiled a new 5000mAh powerbank, the UltraThin Magnetic Power Bank 5000 15W. The 6mm thick power bank comes in three colors with an aluminum alloy shell: orange, silver and charcoal gray. Along with that, the company introduced the Xiaomi Tag, its own take on the Bluetooth item tracker. The Xiaomi Tag has a built-in hanging loop so it can be attached directly to a keyring, and the company says it will work with both Apple Find My and Google's Find Hub for Android.

Honor MagicPad 4 

Honor

Ahead of MWC, Honor announced what it claims is the thinnest Android tablet in the world: the 4.8mm thick MagicPad 4. We're expecting to hear more about this at Honor's press conference on Sunday, but so far we know it features a 12.3-inch 165Hz OLED display and weighs just 450g. It comes with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage, and is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset. The thinness doesn't count the camera bump, Honor notes. The MagicPad 4 has 13MP rear and 9MP front cameras. It also boasts spatial audio, with eight speakers.

Just as the display is slightly smaller than the previous MagicPad, the MagicPad 4 has a smaller battery at 10100 mAh. It comes with a 66W fast charger. The MagicPad 4 will run Honor's MagicOS 10. We don't yet know how much it will cost, but we'll update this after Honor's press conference (where we're also expecting to see the company's robot) with any new details.  

Tecno

Tecno

We can always expect to see some wild phone concepts at MWC, and this year we're starting with one from Tecno. The company unveiled a modular concept smartphone design that can be as thin as 4.9mm in its base configuration. There’d be 10 modules to choose from based on the announcement, including various camera lenses, a gaming attachment and a power bank, relying on magnets to keep it all together — or Modular Magnetic Interconnection Technology, as Tecno is calling it. 

Mobile World Congress is right around the corner, but Samsung got out ahead of many rivals that will be showing off new handsets at that event by running the latest edition of Unpacked on Wednesday. At its event in San Francisco’s Palace of Fine Arts, the company revealed the Galaxy S26 lineup, which includes the base S26, the S26+ and the S26 Ultra. We've got some hands-on time with all three handsets as well, and you can read about our in-person experience with the Galaxy S26 Ultra, as well as our S26 and S26+ impressions in those articles.

In addition to those, Samsung announced the Galaxy Buds 4 along with (you guessed it) some AI updates. All the devices unveiled today are already available for pre-order, should you already be dying to get your hands on them. Here's a look at everything Samsung announced at the latest Unpacked:

Galaxy S26 and S26+ 

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

New-ish year, new Samsung phones. Let's deal with the out-and-out bad news first. The S26 and S26+ are each $100 more expensive than their predecessors (the RAM shortage isn't exactly helping to keep prices down). They start at $900 and $1,100, respectively, for variants with 256GB of storage.

Samsung has tweaked the design a bit this time by rounding the corners to align them more with the S26 Ultra's look. The base model has a slightly larger display than the S25 at 6.3 inches, though the S26+ still  has a 6.7-inch screen (albeit with a higher resolution than the S26 can handle). The S26 has a larger battery capacity than the S25 too at 4,300mAh.

In North America, China and Japan, Samsung is sticking with Qualcomm chips rather than using its own Exynos 2600. If you pick up an S26 or S26+ in those markets, it will run on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset.

The camera modules are the same as last year, but Samsung is aiming to supercharge them with upgrades elsewhere, such as ProScaler image upscaling and an MDNIe chip that's said to greatly improve color precision. There's also a video stabilization feature that tries to keep the horizon level while you're following a moving person or pet, which sounds useful for action shots. The new Object Aware Engine is said to better render skin tones and hair textures to make your selfies look better. Samsung has reworked some AI features too, such as making Now Brief and Auto Eraser compatible with more apps.

Pre-orders for the S26 and S26+ are open today, and they'll be available on March 11. The phones will be available in purple, blue, black, white, silver and rose gold, though the latter two are online exclusives.

Galaxy S26 Ultra

The Galaxy S26 Ultra will be available in the same colorways and on the same date as its smaller siblings. It starts at $1,300, so there’s no price increase from the S25 Ultra. Preorders open today.

The S26 Ultra has a 6.9-inch AMOLED display with a QHD+ resolution of 3120 x 1440 and a 120Hz refresh rate. That's all well and good, but the display is hiding (that being the key word) what's perhaps the Galaxy S26 Ultra's most interesting feature.

The device has a Privacy Display that’s said to be the first of its kind on a smartphone. The idea here is to prevent people around from seeing what’s on the screen from acute angles. There's a small decrease in brightness when Privacy Display is active, and there are lots of customization options.

You can set up Privacy Display to activate when you're asked for a password or PIN, or when you get a notification or open certain apps. So if (for instance) you tend to look at your banking apps when you’re on public transit and don’t want other passengers to see how much moolah you have, Privacy Display seems like a very handy feature.

Elsewhere, the S26 Ultra runs on the same chipset as its smaller siblings. It comes with 12 or 16GB of RAM and 256GB, 512GB or 1TB of storage. The battery is larger than the ones in the other S26 models, as the Ultra has a 5,000 mAh capacity. There's support for Super Fast Charging 3.0 as well. Alas, Samsung still hasn't seen fit to offer built-in Qi2 charging magnets in the S26 lineup, which seems like a wild oversight in the year 2026.

The selfie camera is the same as on the S26 and S26+. The S26 Ultra has 50MP ultrawide and 200MP wide lenses, along with dual 10MP 3x and 50MP 5x telephoto sensors. The resolutions of those cameras are the same as on the S25 Ultra, but the main 200M and 5x telephoto sensors now have wider apertures to let in more light. The S26 Ultra of course has the camera software features (and other AI features) found in the S26 and S26+.

We'll have a review of the devices soon. In the meantime, head on through to our hands-on story for our initial impressions of the S26 Ultra.

Galaxy Buds 4 and Buds 4 Pro

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

While the S26 phones are more iterative updates this year, Samsung has given its Galaxy Buds a proper refresh. It revamped the design and shape of the Galaxy Buds 4 and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro to do away with the angular look of the stems and remove the lights from them.

The earbuds have a "more refined, computationally designed fit" too, according to Samsung. The company claims the latest earbuds have smaller earbud heads that allow for a better, more secure fit and a more "comfortable experience during all-day wear." The Galaxy Buds 4 remain in an open-fit format while the Buds Pro 4 have a canal-fit design.

The latest earbuds are said to offer improved audio quality and active noise cancellation (ANC), with an ambient sound mode, adaptive EQ and adaptive ANC. On Buds 4 Pro, there's a siren detection feature that enables ambient sound to let you hear things like alarms or emergency vehicle warnings.

The Buds 4 Pro have a wide woofer that increases the effective speaker area by nearly 20 percent compared with the previous gen earbuds, Samsung said. They support 24-bit/96kHz audio.

If you're using Galaxy Buds 4 or Buds 4 Pro with a Galaxy device, you'll be able to use Bixby, Google Gemini and Perplexity with hands-free voice controls (though the "hey, Plex" command for the latter might be a tad confusing for folks who use a certain media server app). The Buds 4 Pro support head gesture controls for managing calls and Bixby interactions as well.

As with the S26 phones, pre-orders for the earbuds open today and they'll hit shelves on March 11. The Galaxy Buds 4 cost $180 and Galaxy Buds 4 Pro will run you $250. Both models are available in white and black with a matte finish. There's an online-exclusive pink option for Buds 4 Pro as well.

Android AI features

Ahead of Unpacked, Samsung confirmed that it would offer Perplexity as an AI agent option in Galaxy AI on the S26 lineup. As part of that update, it shared that the S26 series would respond to the “Hey Plex” wake phrase, and that Perplexity’s features would also be embedded in the Samsung Browser app. The company also recently updated Bixby to make its own virtual assistant more conversational.

On top of that news, Google had announcements of its own to make at Unpacked regarding new Android AI features, which will of course be available on S26 devices. On those handsets and the Pixel 10 lineup, the Gemini app will soon have a feature (in beta) that enables you to offload multi-step tasks, such as booking a ride or putting a grocery order together, to AI. It sure sounds like an attempt to build out agentic AI features on mobile devices.

Starting this week on Pixel 10 devices (and soon on S26 phones), Circle to Search will offer the ability to find details about multiple objects at once, such as entire outfits instead of single pieces. Moreover, Gemini-powered, on-device Scam Detection for phone calls will be available for S26 devices in English in the US.

Update, February 25 2026, 4:35PM ET: This story has been updated to include more details on the Perplexity AI integration, as well as include mentions in the intro of our hands-on and pre-order articles.