The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 5

Pay TV has been losing subscribers for years, but analysts at MoffettNathanson now see a possible floor. The firm projects the US pay-TV market could stabilize at more than 50 million subscribers by 2030, down from roughly 62 million today.

Downloading a map to an iPhone before a hike doesn't guarantee it will still work once the signal drops. Gaia GPS's own support documentation warns that its app caches recently viewed tiles, so a trail can look available offline even though it was never actually downloaded. That's a quirk specific to how Gaia checks download status, not proof that offline map apps generally fail.

Samsung is boosting compensation as engineers weigh offers from rival SK hynix, but the gap between its memory and foundry businesses remains wide.

Motorola has become the first phone maker to announce a device built around Qualcomm's new flagship chip, the Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6. The company unveiled the Motorola Signature 27 at Qualcomm's Snapdragon Summit in Hawaii, with Qualcomm and Motorola both confirming the new platform inside the phone.

Apple's iOS 27 parental controls started arriving on devices on September 14, 2026, as part of a broader software rollout that also touched iPadOS 27, macOS 27, watchOS 27, visionOS 27, and tvOS 27. The features getting the most attention, child accounts, Ask to Browse, and a redesigned Screen Time, aren't spread evenly across that whole list. Apple says they require installing the Screen Time update specifically on iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27.

Apple released watchOS 27.0.1 for Apple Watch Series 12 and Apple Watch Ultra 4 on Sept. 23, with release notes describing bug fixes "including an issue that could cause the Apple Watch to restart unexpectedly," according to MacRumors.

Audible announced three new AI-powered listening features on October 1, but only one of them, Character Guide, was confirmed live when the beta opened. The other two features announced that day, Interactive Stories and Visual Explorer, are still marked "coming soon" or "rolling out this fall," not live.

Samsung's own documentation confirms that specific Galaxy S24 Ultra zoom shots and Motion Photo frame extractions can save as 12MP files, not the 50MP or 200MP number printed on the spec sheet. What the company's public materials don't confirm is what happens to an ordinary photo shot at 1x, when Samsung's "24MP fusion" processing is doing its work in the background. Those are two different claims, and mixing them up is where the confusion starts.

Microsoft announced Project Zenith this week, a preconfigured Windows 11 setup built for developers who want to run 30B+ parameter AI models locally, according to Microsoft's announcement. Microsoft Project Zenith Windows 11 targets developers trying to cut recurring cloud-token bills, not casual users hoping for a free feature drop.

For years, every iMessage conversation looked the same: the standard plain Messages backdrop, no matter who you were talking to. That changed when Apple shipped iOS 26, which lets you swap that plain canvas for a photo, a solid color, an animated preset, or an AI-generated image. Learning how to change the background on iPhone Messages takes about thirty seconds once you know where to look, but the feature works differently than most people expect. It isn't a personal theme sitting quietly on...

Some Pixel owners are still waiting for the Google Wallet fix that should have landed automatically. If your phone is showing a "Device doesn't meet security requirements" warning every time you open Google Wallet, it hasn't been compromised and your cards are fine. A stalled update rollout left a specific group of beta opt-outs stranded on a software build that Wallet's security checks no longer recognize as certified.

No verified Google Pixel 11 Pro deal at $849 turned up in the sources reviewed for this article. The claimed Google Pixel 11 Pro for $849 remains unverified here, treated as an unconfirmed number rather than an active discount until a retailer page or price-tracking source backs it up. This is a deal-verification report, not a list of the best Google Pixel 11 Pro deals.

Google Messages has changed where several familiar actions live. Swipe left on a conversation now reveals timestamps and RCS encryption status, and swiping right on an individual message opens a direct reply that quotes the original text above your response. Learning these Google Messages gestures now will save you from hunting around for options that used to sit in plain sight.

Continuity isn't one setting tucked into a menu. iOS, iPadOS, and macOS bundle nearly a dozen distinct tools under that name, everything from AirDrop and Handoff to lesser-known features like Continuity Sketch and Instant Hotspot (Apple Support, earlier this year). Knowing how to use Apple Continuity well means matching the right feature to the right task, not switching everything on and hoping it sorts itself out.

TechRadar reported recently that Google is rolling out a batch of Google Home updates addressing errors with Nest cameras and doorbells, Matter device status, Find My Phone, and Automations, based on September 30 release notes from Google. The Gemini voice-assistant changes are labeled Early Access. Google does not apply that label to the separate Google Home app fixes.

Galaxy devices running One UI 9 will wipe themselves after 13 failed lock screen attempts, a hard limit confirmed by a Samsung support document and reported by Android Authority today. Not a temporary lockout. Every photo, app, and setting on the device gets erased, accounts are signed out, and the phone returns to factory condition.

Open Settings on an iPhone running iOS 27, and you'll find a new iOS 27 Impersonation Risk Detection toggle sitting inside Privacy & Security. It's designed to flag when your behavior during a wire transfer, a high-value payment, or a change to a critical security setting looks like someone is coaching you through a scam in real time.

Google Find Hub NFC tracker support is rolling out via Play services version 26.39 and later, changing what happens the moment someone finds a lost tag. Tapping an NFC-compatible phone against an NFC-compatible Find Hub tag can surface its details and settings, or help identify a lost tag, according to 9to5Google. The same release lets owners name a tracker, assign it a category, and turn on Left-Behind Reminders during initial setup instead of circling back into the Find Hub app later, per...

Plug a spare numpad into your Mac and remap one of its keys in Karabiner-Elements, and nothing in a basic rule guarantees that remap only fires from that spare keyboard. The same key code reaches macOS whether it came from your main keyboard or the spare one sitting next to it, unless the rule is scoped to one specific device. That's the core obstacle anyone trying to use a spare keyboard as a macropad on macOS runs into first.

The Google Pixel 10a price increase is already showing up at checkout. The phone's U.S. price jumped from $499 to $599 at the Google Store, and that new figure has spread to Amazon and Best Buy too.