The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 15

Chrome just posted its highest-ever score on the Speedometer 3.1 browser benchmark. Google claimed the result as evidence that Chrome is getting meaningfully faster. Downstream coverage stretched that into something else: the claim that Android now outpaces iPhone for web browsing. Those are two different claims, and only one of them holds up.

CAD-based renders of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 leak dropped Tuesday via leaker OnLeaks through Android Headlines, with coverage from 9to5Google, Android Police, Android Authority, and PhoneArena. The device shown is nearly impossible to distinguish from last year's model: same screens, same flat-sided silhouette, negligible thickness changes. The big upgrades are internal a long-overdue battery jump and a wired charging speed that finally matches the rest of Samsung's lineup.

Google shipped Android Canary 2603 last week, and the most significant change isn't a new Quick Settings toggle or a blur effect. The build, confirmed dropped on March 19 for Pixel 6 and later devices including the Pixel Tablet, delivers a modernized Linux Terminal interface with expanded advanced settings, per Android Authority. Google hasn't published a granular changelog of every Terminal UI tweak, but the new build visibly refreshes the Terminal's layout and surfaces more advanced controls...

Apple released tvOS 26.4 this week with a fix for a specific Apple TV 4K audio problem: sound cutting out when switching between apps or content types. If you've been living with silent dropouts mid-transition, this update is the one to install.

If you use Chrome on Android, or any app that relies on WebView for web rendering, your encrypted traffic already has a layer of Android 17 quantum-safe security active since late 2024, silently, with no setting to enable. That is the most important fact about Google post-quantum security for Android: the most significant change has already shipped, and most users never noticed it.

Google pushed a change to Android Auto's media playback interface this week, reorganizing the now-playing screen in ways that are hard to miss on a morning commute. Skip buttons moved. Album art got bigger. Secondary controls shifted off the primary view. No Play Store update triggered it, and nothing on your end needs to be installed, configured, or fixed.

The Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Kickstarter campaign went live yesterday with the strongest hardware specs the company has ever put behind a physical keyboard and several critical questions still unresolved on the campaign page. Pricing, final RAM configuration, ship date, and US carrier compatibility were all unconfirmed at launch, per Gadget Hacks (yesterday). Whether you should pledge money today depends entirely on which of those gaps get filled by the time you read this.

If you landed here searching for a macOS Tahoe 26.4 slow charger indicator, the short answer is: that feature wasn't part of this release. What Apple shipped yesterday, on March 24, 2026, is something more immediately useful for most MacBook owners a native hard cap on battery charging, built into System Settings, requiring no third-party software, according to iClarified. The macOS 26.4 charge limit feature is the real story here.

Android Auto has been failing for drivers across Pixel, Samsung, and Motorola devices since around March 18. As of March 24, Google had not officially acknowledged the problem or confirmed any fix. No verified rollout exists. If your Android Auto keeps disconnecting or won't connect at all, here's what the reporting actually shows, what workarounds are worth trying, and what to watch for when a fix does arrive.

Android 17 Beta 2 has a non-Pixel problem. Google's official path for anyone without a Pixel is the Android Studio emulator 64-bit system images, a developer environment, not a consumer update, per the Beta 2 release post (late February 2026). Motorola got some form of Android 17 access around the same time Beta 2 launched, but that specific build hadn't reached them yet, Android Authority reported (late February 2026). For Android 17 Beta 2 non-Pixel devices, the confirmed consumer list is...

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 sit in a crowded segment of the wireless earbud market, and on paper they belong there. Active noise cancellation, a compact case, Samsung ecosystem integration the feature list is credible for the price tier. None of that is the issue.

Intel Mac owners running unsupported hardware still have a defined security window but the clock is running. OpenCore Legacy Patcher has no support for macOS Tahoe 26, the development team missed its self-imposed winter 2025 deadline for version 3.0 with no public update, and the architecture of the problem means Tahoe is almost certainly the last macOS release the project can ever target. MacGadget reported in January that development is continuing but the project's status, scope, and timeline...

Apple issued beta firmware build 8B5034f for the AirPods Pro 3, AirPods Pro 2, and AirPods 4 in February, first to developers on February 12, then to public beta testers on February 16, according to 9to5Mac. This AirPods beta firmware update covers Apple's complete current mainstream lineup. No changelog. No companion iOS beta. No explanation from Apple.

Robin Liu, who has led OnePlus India since 2018, is stepping down effective March 31 and has already returned to China, The Economic Times reported today. The exit lands two months after Liu publicly called shutdown reports "misinformation" and it gives the OnePlus India restructuring argument considerably more weight than it had yesterday. That said, this is not confirmation of a shutdown. The distance between those two things matters, and this article will hold it.

Apple's iOS 18.x and macOS Sequoia 15.x point-release series includes a WebKit flaw that Apple confirmed may have been used in a targeted attack against specific individuals, plus kernel correctness failures and a cluster of crash-class browser bugs documented through iOS 18.7.3 and macOS Sequoia 15.7. If your device version starts with 18 or 15, a visible numbered update is the only way to get any of those fixes. Users on iOS 26.x may already be covered for the most recent WebKit patch without...

Fresh spec leaks published this week reinforce what earlier Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 renders have shown since January: the phone will carry the same book-style silhouette as its predecessor while reportedly delivering the most substantive internal changes the Fold line has seen. The most newsworthy development arriving today is confirmation that the crease-reduction display technology Samsung demonstrated at CES in January remains on track, with the summer launch window approaching. For anyone...

Firmware analysis published last week reveals that the Flipper One hacking tool is a pocketable Debian Linux workstation aimed at security professionals and network engineers a fundamentally different product category from the radio gadget that made Flipper famous. That distinction matters because the audience, the use cases, and the commercial risks are all different. So is the likelihood it ever ships.

Volvo Cars now has first access to new Android Automotive releases ahead of any competing automaker, following a deepened Google-Volvo Android Automotive partnership announced at Google I/O last May. That structural shift, confirmed by Reuters, means Volvo buyers will get new software versions long before rivals can offer the same, while the rest of the industry waits on a release cycle that already runs two full Android versions behind mobile phones. This is not a co-marketing arrangement. It...

Flighty has launched Airport Intelligence, a named feature that surfaces operational context about a departure airport as a whole, not just the individual aircraft assigned to a flight. The launch extends capabilities Flighty has been building since version 4.0 in August 2024, now grouping airport-level data into a single, labeled interface. Whether Airport Intelligence introduces genuinely new data sources or primarily consolidates what already existed is not confirmed in available sources....

The Unihertz Titan 2 Elite goes live on Kickstarter today, March 24, with early bird pricing expected and full specs set to be revealed on the campaign page, per Android Headlines. The device is smaller, faster, and better-specced than any prior Unihertz keyboard phone, with a 120Hz AMOLED display, dual 50-megapixel cameras, and capacitive scrolling across every physical key confirmed from working demo units at MWC 2026 in Barcelona. The catch: pricing, final RAM, ship date, and US carrier...

Apple does not offer hosted business email. That single fact sits at the center of a growing narrative confusion, and it matters for any IT administrator or business leader currently evaluating Apple Business Manager against Google Workspace or Microsoft 365.

Samsung's QN70F and QN80F Neo QLED TVs are currently available at discounted prices, with the 65-inch QN70F cut roughly 29% from its original listing and the QN80F down around 21%. For the right buyer, these Samsung Mini LED TV deals represent a genuine opportunity. For the wrong one, they're a good price on a TV that won't fit how you actually watch.

Today marks 25 years since Apple put Mac OS X 10.0 on store shelves. The price was $129, roughly $238 in today's money, and it was not bundled with new Mac purchases. The software couldn't play DVDs, couldn't burn CDs, ran slower than the operating system it was meant to replace, and shipped without native versions of Microsoft Office or Adobe's creative tools. Bertrand Serlet, who oversaw OS X platform technology at Apple during those early releases, later admitted the 1.0 was so slow and...

A hidden GPS tracker on a $1,699 e-bike stolen from a Florida high school led police to the suspect's garage within days of the theft. An AirTag on a stolen e-bike in Canberra guided its owner to a serviced apartment the same day it was taken, where police found 15 bikes, five e-scooters, and an estimated $50,000 in stolen property. Both cases ended in arrests. Both turned on a small device the thief didn't know was there.

The MacBook Air OLED release date is 2028 at the earliest, and possibly 2029, while a redesigned MacBook Pro with an OLED touchscreen is expected as early as late 2026. The gap between them is not a scheduling accident. It reflects a deliberate strategy Apple has used before, and it has direct implications for anyone buying a Mac right now.

Code in the Google Messages v20260306 beta points to renewed Ultra HDR support for RCS photo sharing, spotted by code tracker AssembleDebug and reported by Android Police. This matters for anyone who shares photos over RCS: Google Messages has been capable of preserving Ultra HDR gain maps through transmission since late 2023, per third-party reporting, but a combination of narrow device availability, no user-facing indicators, and an unconfigured viewer meant the capability was almost entirely...

YouTube Premium removes the pre-roll and mid-roll ads that YouTube itself serves. What many subscribers don't realize is that it also includes a feature called Jump Ahead, which can skip past the 30-second to two-minute creator-read sponsorships baked directly into the video. This guide covers how to trigger Jump Ahead on mobile and desktop, why it shows up on some videos and not others, and when to switch to SponsorBlock instead.

The first thing to do with a new Galaxy phone isn't downloading apps or customizing the wallpaper. It's disabling Customization Service Samsung's built-in data-profiling tool that activates the moment a Samsung account is created, with no separate prompt. That's the highest-priority change on this list, and the one most likely to quietly revert after a system update.

Android Auto is failing for a growing number of Pixel and Samsung users as of today, refusing to connect, dropping mid-drive, or cycling through permission prompts. Google has not issued any official acknowledgment, Time.news reported on March 24, 2026.

Three problems kill most old-PC reuse attempts: leftover data on a machine that wasn't properly sanitized, a project that outstrips what the hardware can actually run, and a failure mode nobody mentioned until the build collapsed three weeks in. This guide addresses all three in that order. By the end, you'll know how to wipe the machine responsibly, match it to a realistic project based on specs and duty cycle, and avoid the gotchas that end these builds early.

If you own an iPhone 8 or newer, there's a gesture trigger hiding on the back of your phone that most people never find. Apple filed it under Accessibility settings, which most users have no reason to open. The feature is called Back Tap. Two or three quick taps on the back glass fires whatever action you assign: a screenshot, the flashlight, Control Center, or any automation built in the Shortcuts app.

Two Apple laptops hit stores earlier this month. At least four more products are close behind and the Apple new products launching soon rumors, laid out in sequence, tell a consistent story about where the company is expanding its range and why.

A retail box leak published five days ago has surfaced the most concrete OnePlus Nord 6 specs yet: a Snapdragon 8s Gen 4 chip, a 9,000mAh battery, and a 32MP autofocus selfie camera, according to GSMArena (March 19). Those numbers make more sense once you know the likely context: multiple sources report the Nord 6 is a rebadged OnePlus Turbo 6, a phone already on sale in China, which explains why the leaked spec sheet looks far more aggressive than anything the Nord line has produced before.

Hands-on images of the vivo X300 Ultra surfaced on Weibo last Thursday, confirming the dual-tone green colorway vivo had already teased in its own marketing materials. The vivo X300 Ultra colors leak is more than a color preview: buried in the same images are the battery capacity, chipset details, and storage configurations that together amount to the most complete pre-launch picture yet, according to GSMArena. With a China debut tipped for March 30, the phone is nearly ready.

No confirmed lease. No building permit. No hiring surge. No statement from Apple. There is no public evidence confirming a third Apple Store in Mexico what exists is a strategic pattern worth examining and a documented precedent for knowing exactly what real confirmation looks like.

Govee launched its Outdoor Chromatic String Lights today, and the hardware spec is the most technically ambitious the company has brought to outdoor string lights: each globe packs 55 RGB LEDs alongside 54 dedicated white LEDs, enabling color gradients and animated transitions within a single bulb. At 240 lumens per globe and IP67-rated throughout, including the control box, these are built for permanent patio installation. They're also Matter-compatible, giving Apple Home users native access...

The conversation about digital student IDs at UT Austin has evolved from wishful thinking to concrete reality. After years of student advocacy and careful planning, the university has finally committed to launching mobile credentials through Apple Wallet, marking a significant shift in how students will interact with campus services starting in fall 2027.

The smartphone industry stands at a fascinating crossroads where artificial intelligence meets storage economics. As we head toward 2026, a perfect storm is brewing: AI workloads are getting hungrier for local storage just as NAND flash supply chains face mounting pressure. This convergence could fundamentally reshape how we think about smartphone configurations, pricing tiers, and upgrade cycles.

Looking at OPPO's latest announcement, you can't help but feel like something significant just shifted in the smartphone world. The Find X9 Ultra is officially heading global with an April launch window, and this isn't just another incremental update—it represents OPPO's most ambitious international push yet, marking the first time the company will compete directly with Samsung and Apple on the world stage with their most advanced hardware.

If you've ever tried to use Google Messages on your laptop or tablet, you know the drill—pull out your phone, open the Messages app, scan a QR code, and hope everything connects properly. Then repeat this dance every time the connection drops or you switch devices. Well, Google finally heard our collective sighs of frustration and decided to do something about it.