The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 3

Netflix reaches 72% of American adults, making it the most widely used streaming platform in the country. Its share of total U.S. television viewing still fell to 7.8% in April, its lowest level since May 2025, per Nielsen data. Nearly everyone has it. Not everyone is watching.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G5 (G50SF) has dropped to roughly $340 in the US, a street price that simply didn't exist for QD-OLED gaming monitors until this year. That matters most for PC gamers running DisplayPort, who get the full spec sheet. Console users and anyone locked to HDMI run into a bandwidth ceiling the panel can't clear over that connection. The deal is real; it's just not for everyone.

Some market watchers expect a sharp decline in sub-$400 shipments this year, according to Omdia data reported by Android Authority. The cause is a memory supply crunch driven by AI infrastructure demand, and the segment taking the worst of it is precisely the one with the least room to absorb it.

Bigme announced the Hibreak Dual 2 in late June 2026, roughly two months after its predecessor failed to reach customers. The original HiBreak Dual was listed for preorder starting at $359, per The Verge, but available reporting shows no retail release followed. Bigme subsequently issued a public "reflection and apology" acknowledging the design's shortcomings, according to Heyup. The Bigme Hibreak Dual 2 is the company's answer to those criticisms and the core hardware change is significant...

A new leak suggests the cheapest Pixel 11 in Europe will cost €100 more than last year's cheapest Pixel 10, and the Google Pixel 11 price increase story may have less to do with a new MSRP than with the quiet removal of the 128GB model.

Disney is internally discussing making some Disney+ content available without a subscription, according to two people familiar with the matter. Adam Smith, Disney's product and tech chief, raised the idea at a company streaming town hall this week, offering no timeline and no defined scope.

Apple TV+ is occupying Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, with a two-hour Apple TV+ Hall H panel on Saturday, July 25 covering five titles, a separate late-night sneak preview of Dark Matter Season 2, and a free multi-sensory Silo installation open to the public, Deadline reported today. The panel runs 2:00–4:00 PM and will be moderated by Josh Horowitz, host of the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast.

The Google Store is now selling a Samsung smartwatch. Yesterday, a "Devices from the Google Store" carousel surfaced in the US Play Store app, offering the Galaxy Watch 8 through the standard Google Store checkout flow, financing included, according to 9to5Google. The device sits alongside Google's own Pixel Watch 4 and Fitbit Air all three processed through the same checkout infrastructure Google uses for its Pixel lineup.

Google pushed a significant Google Photos Android redesign this week: a floating pill-style bottom bar that makes the Create tab a top-level destination, plus a new Gemini-powered Video Remix tool that transforms library clips into stylized, shareable video in seconds. The redesign arrives on Android about five months after iOS users got it. The more interesting context, though, isn't the platform gap. It's what Google was apparently willing to do a year ago when it didn't yet have a native...

Google Photos' floating bottom bar on Android is rolling out broadly this week as a server-side rollout for users on version 7.82, with no separate Play Store update required once the app is current. The docked navigation strip that sat clamped to the screen's lower edge is replaced by a pill-shaped bar hovering above the photo grid. 9to5Google confirmed the wide push this week, noting that availability had been limited until now.

DuckDuckGo's browser now blocks most of pre-roll and mid-roll YouTube ads automatically, with no extension required and no setup needed on most platforms. The feature went live this week as default-on for Windows, Mac, and iOS users running the latest version.

Samsung has raised its Galaxy S26 production target for July from 1 million units to 1.5 million, a 50% mid-cycle increase, Android Authority reported today, citing ET News. The revision covers both domestic and global allocations, suggesting the demand signal is broader than any single market or promotion. Two things appear to be driving the Galaxy S26 sales surge: an aggressive promotional campaign that reportedly tripled sales during its active window, and growing consumer conviction that...

During a pre-briefing the night before Build 2026, a Microsoft developer instructed an AI agent to delete all the files on his desktop. The agent appeared to comply. The desktop looked clean. "That's a lie," the developer said the files were fine because, as he explained, "the container won't allow it," according to VentureBeat's coverage of the briefing. That demonstration captures the promise of Microsoft Execution Containers for AI agents in one clean image. It also raises the question worth...

A growing number of Google Home Speaker owners are hitting a wall before the device ever plays a single note. The Google Home Speaker setup issue surfaced in reports Thursday, with buyers across multiple countries finding that the speaker fails to complete first-time onboarding and then loops through the same error when they try to fix it. Google has confirmed its engineering team is investigating but has no root cause, no working fix, and no timeline for resolution, Android Authority reported...

Amazon has been discounting the Galaxy S26 lineup in the week after Prime Day, keeping promotional pressure alive on Samsung's newest flagship series. Whether any given Amazon Galaxy S26 deal represents genuine savings depends on which Samsung product you're looking at and on a broader pricing pattern that has made discount labels across much of Samsung's catalog harder to trust.

A Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold FCC listing has surfaced, and if the regulatory milestone is accurate, an August announcement sits roughly four to six weeks out. The hardware picture comes from a single leak published two months ago by Lowyat.NET; the FCC filing itself has been reported but not independently verified with model numbers or filing documents. What follows is the clearest available read on this device before an official reveal, not a confirmed spec sheet.

BBC director-general Matt Brittin confirmed this week that the corporation has held early talks with Channel 4 about a possible streaming partnership, with the most concrete idea being Channel 4 content distributed through BBC iPlayer while Channel 4 retains its ad-funded business model. The timing was pointed: Brittin's appearance before the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee came just two days after Sky announced a £1.6 billion acquisition of ITV, according to Hollywood...

How Windows 11 Wi-Fi problems are easier to fix when you start with the symptom. A missing Wi-Fi toggle, a "No Internet, Secured" warning, random drops, and post-update connection failures all point to different causes. Use the section that matches what you see, then try the targeted fix.

Samsung's Bixby assistant has reportedly been speaking in voices users never selected since a recent update, and the company's response so far stops well short of confirming a bug or offering a fix. The reports, first surfacing in the Samsung Members community forum four months ago, drew wider attention this week when Android Authority covered Samsung's reply to affected users.

Code surfaced inside the Google Home iOS app this week suggests the upcoming Home Display may be less a Nest Hub successor than a Google smart display with camera features borrowed directly from Nest Cam. The latest Google Home Display Nest Hub Max camera findings, analyzed by Android Authority, describe recording tiers that mirror existing Nest Cam subscriptions exactly: a free event-history window, with longer event history and continuous recording tied to Google Home Premium tiers.

Google's Pixel Recorder app has a bug that causes audio files to vanish after recording, with no error message and no warning that anything went wrong. The problem: Pixel Recorder is not saving recordings while appearing to function normally. As of July 7's reporting, Google hadn't addressed the issue publicly.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 series arrives loaded with third-party apps from Meta, Microsoft, and Spotify, and buyers get no setup screen to opt out of any of them. On a factory-fresh 512GB Galaxy S26 Ultra, system files and pre-installed apps consumed over 40GB of storage before the owner adds a single photo or file, according to Android Authority's hands-on testing earlier this year. That's close to 8% of the drive, gone before the box is fully unpacked.

A stable-channel update to Outlook for Mac broke font selection during email composition, and as of The Register's July 9 report, no fix had reached affected users. The Outlook for Mac font bug is straightforward to describe: pick any non-default font in the formatting toolbar, and the app ignores the choice entirely, continuing in the default typeface as though nothing happened. A forum moderator acknowledged the problem two days before The Register's coverage without a patch following.

The scariest version of Windows Recall is not the one that shipped.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra Privacy Display update in One UI 9 Beta 4 has fixed one of the feature's most glaring real-world problems. According to Notebookcheck, citing leaker Ice Universe and a Samsung Community notice, the privacy mask now tracks only the floating picture-in-picture window rather than covering the entire screen. For S26 Ultra owners who use PiP regularly, that distinction changes everything.

The pitch for Matter was simple enough to print on a box: buy any device with the logo, scan the QR code, and it works in your smart home. No compatibility research, no ecosystem anxiety, no app drawer colonized by proprietary software. Three years in, Apple Home's Matter problems run deeper than the marketing ever suggested. The logo is not a promise. It's a prompt to start asking questions.

Gemini for Home will no longer stop mid-conversation to ask who you are. This week's Google Home Gemini update, reported by Android Authority and Android Police, removes voice verification prompts during Continued Conversation sessions and makes chained commands more consistent. It lands eight days after Google Home devices were reported taking up to a minute to respond, or timing out entirely, with no confirmed fix deployed as of that report.

DuckDuckGo's browser now blocks most YouTube video ads on iPhone and Mac, with the feature switched on automatically for users running the latest version. No extensions, no configuration required. The catch: DuckDuckGo YouTube ad blocking on iPhone and Mac only applies when YouTube is open inside DuckDuckGo's browser, not through the standalone YouTube app, as Engadget noted this week.

Samsung published its July 2026 security maintenance release on July 7, listing 57 vulnerability fixes for Galaxy phones and tablets, including five critical Android flaws.

Code in iOS 27 beta 3 suggests Apple is preparing to add Apple Wallet car key support for Lucid Motors and Xiaomi, with identifiers "LCID" and "XIA1" surfacing in the build. The findings were reported today by MacRumors and 9to5Mac, both drawing on code analysis by Aaron Perris. The discovery comes days after Apple's backend was updated to add Volkswagen to the same list.

Chrome for Android is getting a dedicated back button in its three-dot overflow menu, closing a gap that Chrome on iPhone has filled for years. The catch surfaced immediately in device testing: a phone running Chrome 149 showed the redesigned menu, while a separate phone on the newer Chrome 150 still displayed the old layout. Updating to Chrome 150 is not a guarantee of anything.

The conventional wisdom used to be that Android users were a restless bunch. More willing to chase a better deal, less attached to any particular brand, generally more open to switching than their iPhone counterparts. A large Android user loyalty survey published earlier this year suggests that picture is increasingly out of date.

Six Pixel 11-series model numbers have appeared in FCC certification records recently, a sign Google is nearing launch ahead of its August 12 event in New York City, 9to5Google reported. The filings arrived after what 9to5Google describes as "a pretty big retail leak," with regulatory certification now adding to a cluster of pre-launch signals. Buried in the band tables is the filing's most durable detail: Google has swapped its modem supplier, replacing Samsung's Exynos parts with a MediaTek...

Google's Tensor chip program has spent four years running a node behind its rivals. The Pixel 11 TSMC 2nm chip rumor, sourced to an analyst and reported by 9to5Google last month, suggests that could change and not because Google has suddenly become a chip powerhouse, but because of who is now building its chips and where Apple is directing its own 2nm supply.

New Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 renders surfaced today showing the phone in Cream, Graphite, and Pink. The silhouette is nearly identical to last year's model, the camera ring unchanged, and early leaks suggest the Flip 8 may actually measure 0.1mm thicker than its predecessor, SamMobile reported today. The renders are the least important thing that's happened to this phone in the past month.

Microsoft's July 2026 Xbox reset has revived a question the company has not publicly answered: if Xbox no longer works as a traditional console business, could Microsoft sell it?

Wear OS 7 began rolling out on June 16, 2026, starting with Pixel Watch 2, Pixel Watch 3, and Pixel Watch 4, The Verge reported. If you have one of those watches, the update brings practical changes first: Live Updates, better battery efficiency, easier audio-output switching, Wear Widgets support, and expanded safety features.

A Xiaomi 18 Pro Max camera leak reported by Notebookcheck last week has been widely interpreted online as describing a phone with three 200MP cameras. The source doesn't say that. Tipster Digital Chat Station describes a 200MP main sensor and a 200MP telephoto. The third lens, the ultra-wide, may use a 50MP sensor based on a separate, earlier leak. Two high-resolution cameras, not three.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

The Google Store currently advertises "up to $1,040 back in total" on the Pixel 10 Pro, with a note that reads: "Offer applied. See final price at checkout." That gap between the headline and the checkout screen is what this piece maps. The actual Pixel 10 Pro discount any given buyer receives depends on which of three mechanisms applies: a direct sticker cut, a trade-in credit, or carrier bill credits distributed over two years. Each works differently, and the numbers don't combine the same...