The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 8

A recurring question in parent forums points to a real mismatch: families troubleshooting a Google Family Link outgoing calls bug often discover the problem has nothing to do with Family Link. Google's published documentation is unambiguous on two points that together explain most of these cases. The question is knowing which layer to look at first.

A report claims Apple is planning "aggressive pricing" for the iPhone 18 Pro. The evidence points not to a broad sticker-price surge across the lineup, but to something more targeted: Apple widening the distance between its Pro tier and everything below it, pushing the premium ceiling higher where hardware investment gives it cover, while keeping entry pricing accessible enough to protect volume on a product it sells roughly 200–230 million units annually.

Dreame Technology unveiled a line of premium smartphones at AWE 2026 in Shanghai in March, marking the most visible signal yet that the robot vacuum brand is pushing toward something bigger than home appliances. To be precise: unveiled, not launched. No pricing has been announced, no launch markets confirmed, no independent reviews exist. These phones were shown at a trade event, and whether they ship at a meaningful commercial scale in 2026 is still an open question.

Reports of Pixel Buds ANC and transparency toggles missing from the Pixel Buds Pro 2 interface have been circulating since last fall. The most straightforward explanation isn't a bug. Google added a fourth noise-control option in last September's Feature Drop, restructuring a control bar most users had never seen change. Separately, the rollout confirmed that not every feature tied to a firmware update arrives on the device at the same time. Neither of those facts proves that missing toggles...

App Store Connect New Languages for App Metadata: What to Localize First

Samsung Galaxy A37 vs Google Pixel 10a: Which to Buy?

Chrome Native Video and Audio Lazy Loading: What It Does

A leak published today claims Samsung is developing Samsung Android Galaxy Book laptops running One UI 9, the same software already on its phones, tablets, watches, and TVs. There's no confirmed timeline, no hardware detail beyond a vague design note, and the claim traces back to a single original source. Still, it fits a documented pattern of platform expansion between Samsung and Google closely enough to be worth examining.

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition arrives natively on Mac through Steam on May 28, handled by specialist porting studio Feral Interactive, with an App Store release planned for later in 2026, Engadget reported today. Until now, the official support page listed the game as Windows-only and pointed Mac users toward Parallels as a workaround, per Age of Empires support documentation. That guidance is now obsolete.

Motorola's first book-style foldable goes on sale May 21 at $1,900 with 512GB of base storage. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 has been on shelves since last July at $1,999.99 for 256GB at the entry tier, per CNET and the Samsung Newsroom. That $100 price gap and doubled base storage is the opening move in a clear attempt to undercut Samsung's most documented weaknesses in this category: battery capacity, charging speed, and out-of-box value.

The Fire TV Stick 4K Plus and 4K Max are the last Amazon streaming sticks that let you install apps from outside the official store. Starting with the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, all future Fire TV Sticks run Amazon Fire TV Vega OS, a Linux-based system built entirely in-house, and the shift comes with a smaller app library, no practical sideloading, and a platform engineered around Amazon's priorities rather than yours. AFTVnews confirmed two weeks ago that Amazon still describes Vega as the...

YouTube is rolling out picture-in-picture to free mobile users around the world, ending a long-standing gap that kept the floating video player locked behind a Premium subscription for users outside the United States. The catch: music content stays off-limits on the free tier, and that restriction applies even to paid subscribers on the cheaper Premium Lite plan.

Apple and TBWA\Media Arts Lab Shanghai this week launched a China-specific Apple Watch campaign built around accounts from three users whose watches triggered emergency responses during a car crash, a fall, and a cardiac event. The campaign, titled "Thankfully, I Was Wearing It" and live across digital and social channels since April 22, arrives two months after Apple said AFib History became available on Apple Watch in mainland China, adding a clinical monitoring tool to the emergency-response...

The Android Auto alarm dismiss issue still has no native in-car fix. When an alarm fires mid-drive, the head unit offers no dedicated dismiss button drivers are left choosing between a voice command and reaching for their phone. For a platform built around minimizing driver distraction, that gap is hard to overlook.

YouTube's most effective move against ad blockers isn't the warning banner millions of users have learned to dismiss. It's a mechanism embedded in the platform's own video delivery stack, one that makes ad-blocked playback feel sluggish and unreliable, without displaying any message explaining why. For casual users, it reads as a bad connection. The ambiguity is the point.

Artemis II Crew iPhone Videos: Why NASA's Camera Policy Matters

MacBook Pro Charger Accessory Compatibility Guide: A3607 Slot Changes

Xbox hardware revenue fell 25% in Microsoft's fiscal year 2025 on lower console sales volume, the second consecutive annual decline after a 13% drop the prior year, according to the Microsoft Annual Report 2025. Those figures, published last October, cover Microsoft's fiscal year ending June 2025. The back-to-back declines point to something more persistent than a single rough year, though whether that reflects a hardware cycle trough or a structural shift is a question the filings leave open....

Apple shipped Adaptive Temperature, its most ambitious Apple Home new features addition in years, back in September 2025. For months, it worked on exactly zero thermostats. The first compatible device only launched earlier this month. That gap between software ambition and hardware reality defines where Apple Home stands right now: genuinely improving, but only accessible if you own the right gear, most of which comes from a single manufacturer.

YouTube is rolling out free picture-in-picture to non-paying users on Android and iOS worldwide, ending a policy that had kept the feature either U.S.-only or locked behind a Premium subscription in every other market. The rollout is live now, with full global availability expected over the coming months, 9to5Google reported today.