Trending on Gadget Hacks: Page 4

Samsung is set to reveal the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Fold 8 Ultra, and Flip 8 at Galaxy Unpacked in London on July 22. Reporting from multiple outlets points consistently toward a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 price increase across at least some models, with the clearest jumps in the US Fold Ultra, Korean Flip 8 pricing, and high-capacity European tiers. The more complicated part: even where base MSRP appears flat, the effective launch-day cost could still be worse than last year if Samsung reduces the...

Google released Android 17 QPR2 Beta 1 today, and the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro weren't included. The release notes are direct: "Pixel 6 and 6 Pro users will not be getting this OTA since the device will reach End of Life and Android 17 QPR1 beta series will be the last for these devices," Android Police reported today. Android Authority confirmed the exclusion independently.

The confirmation is official: eligible existing OnePlus phones will be offered an optional upgrade from OxygenOS to ColorOS 17, with Android Authority reporting that the transition is expected after the official release of ColorOS 17, though OnePlus has not announced a rollout date. Whether that lands as a minor footnote or something more significant depends entirely on why you bought a OnePlus phone in the first place.

iOS 27 doesn't reinvent CarPlay. What it does is remove friction, the kind you encounter every single drive. Reaching playback controls from the wrong screen, repeating yourself to Siri, asking for directions without being able to specify "avoid toll roads."

One day before Galaxy Unpacked, the picture is about as clear as pre-announcement pictures get. Leaked marketing materials distributed by Evan Blass show the Galaxy Z Fold 8 images in full: a visibly shorter, squatter device that matches the 4:3 "wide Fold" form factor corroborated independently across multiple outlets this week. These images aren't notable because they're polished renders. They're notable because they confirm the shape, and taken together with supply-chain data, the shape...

Samsung launched the Samsung Galaxy Card on Monday, its first-ever credit card in the United States, issued by Barclays US Consumer Bank on the Visa network. Public applications open July 22. A limited early-access window for select eligible customers began Monday, though Samsung has not specified what criteria determine eligibility.

Most people assume they check their phones often. What they almost never do is measure it. When researchers have tracked actual pickup behavior, the numbers consistently exceed self-reported estimates by a significant margin. A 2016 analysis cited by Stanford's Change Lab put average daily phone interactions at roughly 2,617. The methodology behind that figure is imprecise what counts as an "interaction" varies considerably but it points at something real: for most people, phone use is not...

Google has opened a limited Pixel Care+ enrollment window for U.S. owners of eligible Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 series phones who missed the standard 60-day signup period, Google announced on its blog this week. The window closes August 2. Android Police called it a rare second chance for owners who never enrolled and the word "rare" is doing real work there, since Google has not offered a comparable reopening on any announced schedule.

Code changes found in Apple's Wallet backend suggest that Apple Car Key support for GWM Tank vehicles may be in development, MacRumors reported last week. None of Great Wall Motor's four current Tank models, the 300, 400, 500, or 700, support the feature today, MacObserver reported last week.

Google's revamped Android 17 iOS migration tool for Pixel phones is live, and two Pixel generations that qualify for the OS can't use it. The updated Android Switch utility is limited to Pixel 8 and newer, plus a handful of Samsung foldables, leaving Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 owners with the OS update but none of the upgraded process's additional transfer capabilities. Pixel 8 owners fare only slightly better: they can access the tool exclusively during initial device setup.

Samsung has confirmed the cause of the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra red screen problem that has been troubling owners since the phone launched earlier this year. The display discoloration is a software optimization failure, not a hardware defect, and affected owners can already get a fix at Samsung service centers while a broader over-the-air update is being prepared, Samsung confirmed Thursday, July 16, according to Chosun and subsequent reports.

No research data was available to verify pricing, software commitments, battery results, or cover screen specifications at the time of writing. What follows is a decision framework built around the criteria that actually separate these phones, in the order they matter. Treat it as the architecture for your own research before committing flagship money to either device.

Microsoft today launched a limited test of Xbox free ad-supported cloud gaming, letting Xbox Insiders stream games from their existing libraries at no cost in exchange for watching a short ad block before play begins. Sessions cap at one hour. No subscription required. The owned-games requirement does the heavy lifting here: if you don't already have eligible titles in your library, the offer gives you nothing.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Samsung's 2026 smartwatch lineup makes the buying decision unusually clear. The Galaxy Watch9 is the better fit for most buyers because it shares the Galaxy Watch Ultra2's processor, software, core sensors, and announced health features but starts at $320 less in the US. The Ultra2 primarily justifies its premium through longer battery life, stronger water protection, a brighter display, additional storage, and tools designed for trail sports and recreational diving.

Microsoft released the Windows 11 July preview update this week, pushing builds 26100.8968 and 26200.8968 to Windows Insiders in the Release Preview channel on versions 24H2 and 25H2 respectively. The update spans File Explorer, Search, Voice Access, Windows Hello, touchpads, battery settings, and the Start menu, according to PCWorld.

This guide covers whether turning off Google Play Protect is the right call for your situation, how to do it if it is, and the specific steps to take immediately after. Skipping that last part is where most people get into trouble.

More than nine months after Microsoft ended standard support for Windows 10, millions of PCs continue to run the aging operating system. New asset data suggests those holdouts may be carrying considerably more known security exposure than devices running Windows 11.

In early June 2025, Google Home stopped recognizing one of the most basic thermostat commands its users could issue. Say "turn off the thermostat" and the platform returned an error then suggested trying "turn off the thermostat." Google fixed the Google Home Nest Thermostat hands-free control issue within days, posting a resolution via the GoogleNestCommunity Reddit account on June 10, 2025. No public explanation of what caused it was ever offered.

Roku has raised prices on every streaming device it sells, with increases ranging from 33% to 50% across the full lineup. No hardware was updated, no new features were announced, and the changes took effect immediately, according to The Verge today. The Roku Ultra jumped from $99.99 to $149.99. The entry-level Streaming Stick climbed from $29.99 to $39.99.

Samsung introduced the Galaxy Z Flip8, Galaxy Z Fold8, and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra on July 22, 2026, with larger batteries, thinner designs, and lower weights across parts of the lineup. The company's official Galaxy Z specifications list a 5,000mAh battery for the Fold8 Ultra, 4,800mAh for the Fold8, and 4,300mAh for the Flip8.

Strings pulled from Samsung firmware describe a dedicated settings page called "App screen zoom" that would let Galaxy users assign a different zoom level to individual apps, Android Authority reported today. The key detail in those strings: custom per-app settings would persist independently, so changing the system-wide zoom later wouldn't affect any app a user had already configured.

By the end of this guide, your Mac will be running macOS Tahoe. What you recover beyond the operating system depends on one thing: whether you have a Time Machine backup made before the Golden Gate beta was installed. This guide covers all three realistic scenarios for getting back to stable ground.

Airline apps will tell you when your flight is delayed. They won't tell you whether that delay means you'll miss your connection. The Flighty Connection Assistant is built to close that gap, tracking both legs of a connecting itinerary simultaneously and pushing an alert while travelers still have time to act, according to Flighty's help documentation.

Razer Axon Wallpaper Engine Mobile is scheduled to hit Google Play on July 15, 2026, and Razer has built a two-phase hardware giveaway around the release that runs from July 3 through July 29. Nine prizes total, split across pre-registration and social entry windows, with the first draw already open, PR TIMES reported this week. What the app actually does remains largely undescribed in pre-launch materials but the campaign mechanics are concrete, and that's what most readers need to act on...

This guide is for local administrators and technically capable users on unmanaged or lightly managed Windows 11 Pro systems whose executable, batch, or PowerShell script files have stopped running after installation or a feature update. Corporate devices enrolled in Intune or joined to a domain with Group Policy are a different situation those paths are called out explicitly below.

A federal judge dismissed rapper RBX's Spotify streaming-fraud lawsuit last month, finding that the complaint did not plausibly support its negligence and unfair-competition claims. The case can be refiled within 21 days, so it isn't over. But the dismissal laid bare a structural problem that no ruling can fix: the same enforcement systems Spotify built to fight bot streams are removing legitimate artists from the platform, and those artists have almost no recourse when it happens.

A leak posted today on X claims Samsung will open pre-reservations for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 as soon as July 8. The tip comes from a single source, Abhishek Yadav, and Samsung has not announced it. But a separate report noted that this year's pre-registration window is reportedly compressed to just a few days before the expected July 22 Unpacked event, 9to5Google reported two weeks ago, so the compressed timing fits. What matters before acting on that is understanding which device the reservation...

Starting today, Google is counting all Android backup data toward your Google Account storage limit, but the rollout isn't instant for everyone, and the actual impact for most users is smaller than the policy change might suggest.

Google Wallet appears to be rolling out expanded transaction history for Android that includes payments made on paired Wear OS devices. For watch users, it closes a straightforward problem: the Android app previously showed only the 10 most recent tap-to-pay transactions from that specific phone, with Wear OS payments excluded entirely. Verifying a watch payment meant opening a browser, not the Wallet app.

Samsung Messages shut down on July 6, 2026. If you're a US Galaxy user on Android 12 or newer, the app can no longer send or receive messages except to emergency numbers, per Samsung's discontinuation notice. The text field is greyed out, and that's a permanent state.

Samsung's Home Up module picked up a significant update today, adding configurable multi-finger gestures to Galaxy phones. The Samsung Home Up screenshot gesture is the headline addition: users running One UI 9 can now assign a finger-based capture action to a swipe, giving them an alternative to the palm swipe method Samsung phones have relied on for years, according to Android Authority.

Google Maps cannot place a restaurant order. That distinction matters, because the conversational discovery experience Google has built over the past eight months makes the question feel closer than it did before. A sequence of Gemini-powered feature launches hands-free navigation, AI-synthesized venue tips, multi-step voice queries has moved Maps from a directions app into something that finds restaurants, answers follow-up questions about them, and routes you there by voice. Whether ordering...

In late October 2025, Niagara Launcher published a support note that was, in its quiet way, a small admission of defeat. Google Play services had started blocking the launcher from opening certain Unity-made games a Niagara Launcher Google Play services issue the team could do nothing about. Not because of a Niagara bug. There was nothing to patch, nothing to push. According to the team's help page, it appeared that Google had rolled out new firewall rules in response to a Unity engine...

Leaked renders published two weeks ago show more than a Samsung Health facelift. Buried in the imagery is what appears to be a reworked watchface picker, a component that lives inside the Galaxy Wearable app, not Samsung Health, suggesting the Samsung Wearable app redesign may extend beyond the fitness tracking side of Samsung's software stack. Samsung has not confirmed any changes to the Wearable app.

Microsoft is spinning off four Xbox game studios today and cutting roughly 3,200 jobs across its gaming division. Buried inside that restructuring is something worth separating out: Double Fine and Compulsion Games are leaving with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games, according to the Xbox Wire memo. That deal structure is unusual enough in games industry M&A to warrant a closer look at what it actually means and what the reporting hasn't confirmed yet.

A new leak suggests Samsung is preparing to give the Galaxy S27 Pro near-Ultra camera hardware and an Ultra-exclusive display feature, then power it with a Samsung-made Exynos chip across Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Latin America. The Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro Exynos leak, reported this week by Android Authority and SamMobile, would make "Pro" a materially different product depending on which continent you buy it on. Snapdragon would go to US buyers only, per Android Authority, or to all...

The UK government is drawing up legislation that would require YouTube and other video platforms to make public service broadcaster content prominently discoverable, Deadline reported two weeks ago. Under the proposed Media Bill, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Paramount-owned 5 would be named beneficiaries. In practical terms, that could mean boosting official clips from shows like Question Time in user feeds and search results, though exactly which surfaces would be covered remains publicly...

Android 17 QPR1 Beta 6 adds a customizable keyboard shortcuts system to the Linux Terminal app, giving users per-action toggles and pop-up key remapping for the first time. The update landed last Tuesday for eligible Pixel devices, and it carries a notable milestone: Android 17 QPR1 has reached Platform Stability, meaning Google has locked the API surface for developers, according to Android Authority. Beta 6 is now a stronger signal of QPR1's direction than any previous build in this cycle.

Samsung is expected to report Q2 2026 operating profit of around 86 trillion won (approximately $56 billion), roughly 18 times what it earned in the same quarter a year ago, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 30 analysts weighted by track record, The Star reported yesterday. That would mark a third consecutive record quarter, driven by what analysts describe as a prolonged shortage across the entire memory market, not just premium AI chips.