Gadget Hacks

Apple's new Made for iPhone Duo badge is appearing on App Store product pages, giving owners of the company's first foldable iPhone a way to spot apps designed for its larger screen. But the label doesn't necessarily mean Apple has tested every foldable-specific feature or verified that an app works flawlessly.

Googlebook OS may soon stop making owners rebuild their workspace from scratch every time the laptop restarts. Code strings discovered by Android Authority in Android 17 QPR3 Beta 2 point to an unreleased "App restore on reboot" setting for Googlebook OS.

Samsung's One UI 9 update is bringing an unwelcome surprise for some Galaxy S24 and S25 owners: battery life that suddenly falls short of what they're used to. Complaints range from faster overnight drain to phones needing several charges throughout the day.

A new leak claims the Samsung Galaxy A58's rear camera setup will carry the same megapixel counts as the Galaxy A57: a 50MP main camera, 12MP ultrawide, 5MP macro, plus a 12MP front camera. The claim comes from Dutch outlet GalaxyClub and has since been relayed by outlets including GSMArena and Tech Advisor.

So, how much are old Samsung phones worth? In the October 23 snapshot, a like-new 256GB Galaxy S23 Ultra could bring $291 from a buyback service, or an average completed sale price of $404 on Swappa, before fees (Engadget, October 23 snapshot). That's a $113 difference for handling the sale yourself instead of taking the instant payout (Engadget, October 23 snapshot).

DIRECTV Genre Packs are eight themed streaming bundles built around specific types of programming instead of one do-everything lineup. Base prices start at $20.99 a month, with no satellite dish, no annual contract, and no Signature TV plan required. Five are base packs (MyEntertainment, MySports, MyKids, MyNews, and MiEspañol), while three are Mini Packs that work as paid add-ons to eligible base plans.

Samsung's unreleased Exynos 2700 reportedly scored around 13,000 in a Geekbench 6.5 multi-core benchmark test against roughly 11,000 for Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6, a lead of nearly 20%, according to industry sources cited by The Korea Herald on Oct. 25.

Apple released watchOS 27.2 on Oct. 26, adding conversation memory to Siri AI on Apple Watch for the first time. Apple's release notes confirm Siri AI can retain useful context from previous interactions, including the ability to recall recommendations made days earlier. For example, users can ask Siri about restaurants it suggested last week without repeating the original conversation.

A notification pings when someone tags you in a group chat, but after you open WhatsApp, finding that message can mean scrolling through dozens of other texts. WhatsApp is testing a fix: a mentions and replies filter spotted in Android beta version 2.26.42.12, according to WABetaInfo's Oct. 24 report.

Samsung Community goes offline on October 30 for about 72 hours, and the platform migration behind the shutdown won't carry over direct messages, drafts, bookmarks, or subscriptions that users haven't backed up, according to Samsung's notice as reported by AndroidPure. The outage runs from 5 a.m. ET October 30 to 5 a.m. ET November 2, and Samsung frames the suspension as a scheduled system upgrade rather than a shutdown of Members as a whole (AndroidPure).

A developer named Ismail Shah announced on LinkedIn three weeks ago that he built the Knit Easy Android app to fix a problem he says plagues knitters and crocheters working from printed or PDF patterns: losing track of the row mid-stitch. The post describes a row highlighter, linked counters, and fully offline operation, and includes a Google Play link. However, the app's current listing details, including its price, permissions, and user ratings, have not been independently verified.

Night mode can turn a dark porch into a glowing Halloween scene, but depending on how dark the scene is, the capture can stretch to several seconds, Apple says. That's exactly what trips people up once trick-or-treaters start moving. Figuring out how to take Halloween photos on iPhone comes down to one read before raising the phone: will whatever's in front of the camera hold still long enough for that exposure to finish?

The Glowbar, the light strip built into the lid of Googlebook laptops, normally shows information such as battery status and Gemini activity. A hidden system app called Glowbar Disco turns that same strip into a customizable, music-reactive light show, and figuring out how to find Glowbar Disco on Googlebook means digging past the regular app launcher into the system settings menu.

Microsoft is reshaping Copilot Notebooks from a source-grounded question-and-answer tool into something that can act on notebook content: delegating tasks, running recurring automations, and editing Office files directly inside a notebook, according to Neowin.

Microsoft has resolved a known issue that caused black screens, desktop loading failures, and Explorer crashes right after sign-in on some Windows 11 systems.

Before installing anything billed as the latest AMD chipset drivers for Windows 11, check two things first: the exact chipset on the board, and the version already installed. The AMD X870 and WRX80 support pages captured for this report list chipset driver revision 8.02.18.557, released March 9, 2026, as the Windows 11 64-bit package for those two platforms (AMD WRX80, two months ago; AMD X870, two months ago). AMD's pages may have changed since that capture, so check the matching page for the...

A one-time passcode arrives on your Android phone as a text, but it never shows up in Phone Link on your PC, and no desktop notification appears either. That's the specific symptom this guide fixes: an MFA code not showing in Phone Link on Windows 11, specifically SMS-based codes that already reached the phone.

Picking between the Pixel 11 Pro XL vs iPhone 18 Pro Max usually comes down to three different kinds of buyers, and a reader poll crowning the Galaxy S26 Ultra the top Android alternative doesn't settle much on its own.

Apple's first foldable iPhone goes on sale this Friday, Oct. 23, after preorders opened Oct. 16. The iPhone Duo starts at $1,999, and Apple says the device has an IP68 dust-and-water rating and a stiffer polymer cover layer to protect the folding display.

Microsoft says Windows 11 is now "up to 20% more responsive," with gains the company describes as noticeable from the moment a PC boots and extending through Start, File Explorer, Search, Snipping Tool, Microsoft 365, and Edge, according to the Windows Experience Blog.