Gadget Hacks

Apple's long-rumored Home Hub display is shaping up to be less a single shared screen and more a device that can serve personal content depending on who's using it.

Google is testing a way to bring Gemini's Daily Brief to the Pixel lock screen, according to a teardown of the latest Android System Intelligence app.

Samsung and Corning are reportedly developing a new self-healing surface coating for the next generation of Gorilla Armor, and industry watchers have connected it to the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

The Pixel 11 Pro has a flashlight problem. The phone starts at $1,099 for the 12GB/256GB configuration, and independent testing and hands-on reviews have converged on the same finding: the Pixel 11 Pro's flashlight throws noticeably less light than the phone it replaced, and less than several rivals besides.

Apple Maps ads are now live in the US and Canada. Ad delivery began on August 21, and Apple confirmed a few days later that the rollout would keep expanding over the coming weeks, according to 9to5Mac and PPC Land.

Code buried inside a macOS Tahoe 26.7 update shows how Apple's rumored Home Hub might figure out who's standing in front of it. The strings describe ambient sensing, built-in cameras, and possibly voice cues working together to verify a person's identity and then switch to that person's own profile. MacRumors reported the find, and AppleInsider spotted matching code in the same build, which it describes as a 26.7 release candidate.

Apple shipped iOS 27 public beta 5 on August 24, alongside iPadOS 27 public beta 5, tvOS 27 public beta 5, and macOS Golden Gate public beta 5, making the latest builds available to anyone enrolled with a compatible device, according to MacRumors. Of the four, iOS 27 carries the bigger story: a rebuilt Siri that remains limited by hardware, language, region, and Apple's access waitlist.

Google began testing a redesigned YouTube player with translucent, rounded controls by July 2025, shortly after Apple introduced Liquid Glass with iOS 26. 9to5Google described that early YouTube interface as giving off "Liquid Glass vibes," but that comparison came from the publication, not Google.

Should you buy the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold? Early reviews from PCMag and iGeeksBlog put it head-to-head against Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the verdict lands in a specific place: buy the Pixel for Google's software and camera approach, not because it's the stronger all-round foldable.

Samsung has started rolling out the Galaxy S26 One UI 9 Beta 6 update, and it's a maintenance release through and through. The changelog reported so far is almost entirely bug fixes, with no headline features attached to this build.

Notability's calendar meeting recording feature launched on August 25, letting Mac and Windows users start a recording by tapping directly on a calendar event. Tap the event, and Notability opens a note ready for input while recording begins, according to 9to5Mac.

Google Photos still has a setting that restores date headers in the grid. On Android, the redesigned Photos view switched those headers off by default and replaced them with a floating date indicator that appears while scrolling.

Reviewers largely agree that the Google Pixel 11 undercuts the Pixel 11 Pro by $200 while matching its RAM, storage, and chip, according to The Verge. Whether that's worth it depends almost entirely on what phone is already in your pocket.

Chrome didn't kill ad blocking. It killed one specific technical approach, and took a popular extension's full functionality down with it. If ads have started slipping through since your last Chrome update, or an old uBlock Origin install stopped filtering the way it used to, the good news is that ad blockers that still work in Chrome are easy to find, once you know which one actually matches your problem.

Pixel 11 Pro XL Extreme Charging mode doesn't show up anywhere in the phone's main Settings app. It isn't listed there at all; the toggle lives inside Quick Settings, tucked under a section called Utilities, and you have to know to look for it (Android Police, 5 days ago).

The Pixel 11 Pro Fold cracked along both antenna lines next to its hinge during a bend test, and its outer display popped clean off the frame, Trusted Reviews and Android Authority reported today. The test comes from Zack Nelson, who runs the YouTube channel JerryRigEverything and put the phone through a series of scratch, flame, dust and bend tests, according to Trusted Reviews.

Samsung's next Ultra phone could tackle one of the most annoying parts of going without a screen protector: the tiny scratches that build up through everyday use. A new rumor claims Samsung and Corning are developing a self-healing surface coating that may appear on the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

The most interesting evidence for Apple's rumored home hub isn't a spec sheet. It's a home-screen system borrowed straight from the Apple Watch, and it does more to justify buying several units than any display resolution or chip upgrade could. That's the real story buried in this month's Apple HomePad rumors: not a bigger screen, but a smarter one.

The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 both start at roughly $1,900, putting them in unusually direct competition. At that price, the more useful question isn't which is cheaper, but what each gives you for flagship-foldable money.

T-Mobile and Verizon opened preorders for the Pixel 11 lineup on the same day, and both are advertising offers that sound like a free phone. Not all of them actually are. T-Mobile's top Google Pixel 11 carrier deals are device discounts tied to which plan a customer is on and whether they trade in a phone. Verizon's flagship switcher offer bundles a device credit into a specific 48-month plan structure. Read the fine print carelessly and the two "free phone" headlines start to look...

Google Android sideloading rules take effect on September 30, 2026, but only for apps distributed through seven participating stores and only for users in Brazil, Indonesia, Singapore, and Thailand.

Open the Health app on your iPhone and there's a feature tucked inside that can hand a paramedic someone's blood type, list their allergies, and name who to call when they can't answer for themselves. It only works, though, if someone filled it in before the emergency happened. This guide walks through how to set up Medical ID and emergency contacts on iPhone: building the medical profile, adding contacts, deciding what to expose on the Lock Screen, configuring Emergency SOS without triggering...

Google Pixel Now Playing notifications could be coming back. A teardown of the latest Android System Intelligence build has turned up code suggesting the silent song-ID alerts may return, months after Google removed them and broke some third-party music tools in the process, according to Android Authority.

A Korean business outlet reported this week that Samsung's unreleased Exynos 2700 beat Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 across CPU, GPU, AI, and power efficiency, citing industry sources familiar with Samsung's own internal testing. If the numbers hold up, the Exynos 2700 vs Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 matchup described in the report would mark a major reversal in Samsung's flagship-chip strategy: an unproven Samsung part outscoring an upcoming Qualcomm chip and its reported higher-end...

The Pixel 11 Tensor G6 TPU upgrade matters most in the moments when a feature can run locally instead of waiting on Google's servers. Google says the chip delivers 50% more compute power and runs up to 3.5x faster in certain workloads, a figure that's easy to overlook next to the phone's 120x zoom lens and its Gemini-powered camera tricks (Android Authority, published today). The TPU is one of the factors behind both of those flashier features, working alongside a new image processor and...

A leaked build of Samsung's One UI 9.5 software reveals a feature called App Mirroring that could let Galaxy phone owners wirelessly access their phone's apps and notifications from a laptop screen.

Oppo is reportedly testing two 200MP rear cameras for the Find X10 Pro, including a 200MP main camera and a 200MP telephoto. A June 2026 leak attributed to Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station identifies the main camera as an unannounced Samsung ISOCELL HPC with a 1/1.3-inch optical format, alongside a 3MP multispectral sensor.

Coverage of the Google Pixel 11 launch event will follow the usual script: chip codenames, camera megapixels, a livestream countdown. The more revealing story about how Google actually treats Pixel owners already happened two months ago, when a routine software update quietly did more to define the brand than any keynote slide will.

Google's two launch posts for the Pixel 11 lineup repeat the same unadorned line: Pixel Search on the Pixel 11 devices is "way more powerful than it used to be." Neither post explains why. The phones carrying that claim went on sale Thursday, so buyers now encounter a Google-documented search claim the company has not explained.

Preliminary settings text and pre-launch reporting describe a narrow trigger for HiLight, the rumored back-of-phone light feature headed to Google's Pixel 11 Pro: calls from favorite contacts, not notifications in general. That distinction separates a revival of the old blinking-LED notification light from something built directly on top of how Google Contacts already organizes your people, specifically its Favorites designation (9to5Google, 5 days ago).

Google TV Freeplay now has 10,000 free movies and shows available to stream on demand, the first time the service has offered on-demand video since it launched. Google made the announcement on its blog yesterday, describing the addition as giving users "instant access to free entertainment." No subscription is required to watch.

Six months into the Galaxy S26's life, price has done something spec sheets never could: it has flipped the whole comparison on its head. SlashGear checked retail listings today and found the Galaxy S26 selling for $774.99 at Amazon and Best Buy, and for just $712.50 at Walmart, undercutting the $799 the Galaxy S25 charged at its own launch (SlashGear). Retail pricing shifts by the week, so treat those numbers as a snapshot rather than a promise, and check current listings before you buy. But...

Scroll through enough short-form video, and it starts to look like a documented cultural pivot: teenagers ditching smartphones for flip phones, treating a five-minute conversation without checking a screen like a personal achievement, filming themselves making prolonged eye contact as if it were a rediscovered skill.

If you own an older Pixel, you may have noticed something Pixel owners have not generally expected to see: a promotional notification sitting in the shade next to your texts and calendar reminders. After the Pixel 11 launch, Android Authority reported this week that many users, including one of its own writers, started receiving ads for the new phone on their older Pixel devices.

Disney sues FCC over ABC broadcast licenses in a fight that boils down to one contested question: is an early license review ordinary oversight, or retaliation wearing a bureaucrat's hat?

Parallels announced Parallels Desktop 27 today, adding a Metal-based graphics driver that brings hardware-accelerated OpenGL 4.3 to Windows virtual machines on Apple silicon Macs. The company describes the capability as unique among Mac virtualization tools, though that comparison comes from Parallels itself rather than independent testing (GlobeNewswire, today; 9to5Mac, today).

Samsung has completed multiyear supply agreements with five major data-center customers, including Amazon and Meta, and is nearing deals with five more, according to the Seoul Economic Daily and the Korea Herald.

YouTube is testing a visual tweak to its double-tap skip gesture on Android that shows, in red, exactly how much time a viewer just jumped, according to Android Authority, which spotted the change recently. The gesture itself, double-tapping either edge of the video to skip forward or back, isn't new. What's changed is that it now surfaces the scrub bar and marks the skipped span on the timeline, instead of leaving viewers to guess where they landed.

One UI 9.5 leaks have been surfacing this month in the form of screenshots, internal builds, and test-server activity, even as Samsung is still mid-rollout on One UI 9.

Peacock's Premium Plus plan, the closest thing NBCUniversal offers to ad-free streaming, jumped from $16.99 to $19.99 a month today for new subscribers (The Verge; Android Authority). Existing subscribers won't feel it until their next billing date on or after Sept. 17. It's Peacock's fourth price increase in four years (Android Authority), and it raises an obvious question: what is the actual cost of ad-free streaming services per month for someone who wants to watch the major platforms...