The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 3

A teardown of the second Android 17 QPR2 beta has surfaced a hidden feature called Voicecast, according to Android Authority. The Google Pixel Voicecast feature would let Pixel phones broadcast a user's live voice over Bluetooth, a capability their phones currently lack: existing Pixel audio-sharing tools handle music and video, but not a microphone feed.

Samsung set August 7, 2026, as the general availability date for the Galaxy Z Fold8 and Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, but some customers have seen estimated arrival dates extend well beyond launch day.

Most CarPlay customization doesn't happen on the car's screen at all. The app layout can be rearranged from an iPhone before the driver even starts the engine, as long as that iPhone has connected to the car's CarPlay system before, according to a 9to5Mac walkthrough from about six months ago.

Huawei launched the Mate XT2 tri-fold phone in China yesterday, calling it the first foldable with a built-in privacy display. In its home market, Huawei is marketing the device under the fuller name Mate XT2 Ultimate Design.

On one Android phone, apps, texts, call history, and settings combined added up to less than 132MB, while photos and videos on the same device totaled 76GB (Android Police, 15 months ago). That's a striking example, not a universal rule, but it points toward the real question behind how to reduce Android backup storage in Google Drive: check what's actually filling the account before touching a single setting.

Xiaomi is taking a different approach to the book-style foldable with the Xiaomi 18 Fold, a shorter, wider flagship that starts at ¥10,999, or roughly $1,640, in mainland China. Xiaomi unveiled the phone and opened preorders on Sept. 7, with general sales scheduled to begin Sept. 10 at 10 a.m. local time.

A December 2025 Chromium commit adds support for chrome.tabGroups.get(), an extension method that lets developers query tab-group data, on a surface the commit itself calls "desktop Android." That term doesn't appear defined anywhere else in the supplied commit, so every claim in this piece about where it applies stays tied to that exact phrase (Chromium commit). It's a narrow addition to the list of Chrome for Android features extension developers might want, and it's worth being precise about...

Samsung Galaxy S26 FE leaked images posted this week give the public a new unofficial look at the company's next Fan Edition phone. A Telegram account called "The Cipher Project" shared three photos showing the device in black, light green, and dark purple, according to 9to5Google.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 crease is far less visible than on earlier Fold models, according to hands-on reviews published last week, and that alone has helped tip a head-to-head reader poll decisively in the phone's favor. In a survey of more than 1,000 readers, Android Authority found the standard Fold 8 took 59% of the vote to the pricier Fold 8 Ultra's roughly 26% (Android Authority, last week). But a redesigned hinge and a flatter screen don't automatically answer the question that has...

Apple quietly previewed a way to switch one phone number between two iPhones at WWDC 2026, but it left the mechanics largely unexplained. What sounded at first like a small continuity feature now looks more substantial: one iPhone can serve as the main device, a second can act as its companion, and the same phone number can move between them without repeatedly transferring the primary eSIM.

The most useful iOS 27 HomeKit changes have nothing to do with new hardware. Apple is adding several HomeKit Secure Video features powered by Apple Intelligence: plain-language descriptions of what your cameras recorded, natural-language search across that footage, and a single notification that merges scattered door and motion alerts instead of firing them off one by one (MacRumors; 9to5Mac).

Can MS Paint run Doom? Yes, technically, though the honest answer takes some unpacking. Doom is fully playable inside Microsoft Paint right now, complete with sound, music, and a frame rate that hits 35 fps at the game's native resolution (The Verge, today). The project is called DoomPaint, built by Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Azure's CTO and a Technical Fellow (Windows Central, today). It loads the genuine shareware DOOM1.WAD file and sustains Doom's classic 35 tics-per-second cadence at...

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.

Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S26 FE, turning an August 27 launch rumor into a confirmed product with a release date, price, and final specifications.

A reader shuts their laptop down every night, yet Task Manager still shows three days of uptime the next morning. Another keeps hitting a graphics glitch that survives shutdown after shutdown, no matter how many times the machine gets powered off. Neither is broken. Both come down to a single Windows setting that quietly changes what "off" actually means.

Most people assume a TV without Bluetooth means a trip to the electronics store. It doesn't. Bluetooth has become mainstream in most televisions now, but that's only half the picture: plenty of older or specialty sets, like a favorite pair of wired headphones or a plasma TV still hanging on in the den, never got the feature and won't get it through a software update either, according to Wirecutter/NYT reporting from last month. Figuring out how to add Bluetooth to a TV without Bluetooth usually...

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.

This guide walks through how to update GPU drivers in Windows 11: when to let Windows Update handle it, when to install a manufacturer's package instead, and when Device Manager is actually the right tool for the job rather than the default one.

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...

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...

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.

An iPhone that keeps losing charge during CarPlay usually gets blamed on the car first: a bad port, a cheap cable, a head unit that can't keep up. Before touching any of that, plug the iPhone into a wall charger with a known-good, compatible cable and see if it charges normally on its own. That single test won't rule out every car-specific variable, but it's the fastest way to tell whether the problem starts with the phone before spending an evening swapping cables in the driver's seat.

Is Spotify shuffle actually random? That question is worth asking again because Spotify no longer runs one shuffle algorithm. Ten months ago, Spotify made Fewer Repeats the default shuffle experience for Premium subscribers, moving away from pure randomness because more randomness itself was producing more frequent repeats, Spotify's announcement explains.

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.

A Seoul Economic Daily reported on Aug. 23 that Samsung's unreleased Exynos 2700 outperformed Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 in internal tests covering CPU, GPU, AI performance, and power efficiency. The results reportedly came from Samsung's own Mobile eXperience division, making them an early indicator rather than independent proof that Exynos has overtaken Snapdragon.

Apple Watch GPS vs GPS + Cellular comes down to one question: can the watch stay connected without your iPhone anywhere nearby? For the same model and case configuration, the GPS and GPS + Cellular versions share the same exterior design, size, screen, and core health and fitness features (iPhoneLife, 2023; Engadget). The GPS + Cellular version adds one extra capability: connecting to a mobile network on its own, so it can make calls, send texts, stream music, and receive notifications with no...

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.

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...

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.

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...

iOS 27 gives Find My something it has never had: a way to pause your location for one specific person without sending them any alert. That closes the long-standing gap between sharing everything and stopping sharing and hoping nobody notices.

Some Android Auto users trying to open Spotify on their car's display are hitting a wall instead of playback controls. The app throws up a message reading "Spotify isn't responding," with only two options: exit or keep waiting, according to a report Android Authority published Monday.

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.

A Samsung Galaxy S26 FE hands-on video making the rounds this week appears to show Horizontal Lock, the video stabilization mode Samsung built for its S26 flagships, running inside the camera app of the company's cheaper Fan Edition phone. Two separate clips, posted to TikTok and apparently filmed at what looks like a Samsung retail display in Malaysia, offer the first real-world look at the unannounced device ahead of a launch expected in early September (Android Authority; Tech Advisor,...

The latest Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra leak suggests the notch is staying. Renders published earlier this month show the same shallow, V-shaped cutout on the upper display edge that shipped on last year's Ultra, contradicting earlier rumors that Samsung would switch to a punch-hole camera, according to SammyGuru and Android Headlines.

Google's new Search profile looks like the kind of feature every creator should rush to claim: a dedicated, shareable page that puts your work front and center inside Google Search itself. Before spending time hunting for one, it helps to understand Google Search profile eligibility rules, since they set a high follower bar and apply only in the United States for now. This guide walks through who qualifies, how to run a Google Search profile eligibility check on your own name, and what claiming...

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...

An unfamiliar app called Android Developer Verifier has been quietly appearing on Android phones worldwide. The package com.google.android.verifier is a legitimate Google system service, not malware, and for most users it still has no effect on normal app installs.

New code buried in a macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate is fueling fresh camera-equipped AirPods rumors, showing in granular detail how Apple's prototype earbuds actually capture and process images, according to MacRumors. The details point to a device built for Visual Intelligence, Apple's visual AI feature, rather than conventional photography.

When researchers swabbed 178 healthcare workers' phones in a Peruvian hospital in 2023, 90.5% turned up some kind of microbial contamination. That number is a clinical-setting data point, not a diagnosis of the phone in your pocket: a hospital ward is a different exposure environment than a coffee shop counter or a train seat. Still, the question of how to clean your phone safely deserves a real answer, and two hospital studies tested the same disinfectant.