The Latest from Gadget Hacks

Microsoft has added cheaper Microsoft Surface devices with 8GB RAM to its lineup: a 12-inch Surface Pro at $849 and a 13-inch Surface Laptop at $949. Both keep the same Snapdragon X Plus chip and 256GB of storage as their pricier 16GB counterparts. The only change is the RAM, and that single change disqualifies them from Microsoft's Copilot+ PC category entirely, The Verge reported today.

Retail packaging for the Samsung Galaxy A27 has surfaced through a Kenyan e-commerce retailer's Instagram post, showing the phone in three color finishes alongside a regional price and a printed 24-month warranty. The images are the most recent entry in a leak sequence that now spans official renders, marketing materials, and an accidental Samsung product page publication and together they describe a phone that's being meaningfully repositioned, not just refreshed.

On current lab evidence, AirPods Pro 3 are accurate enough for average workout heart-rate tracking but not proven for beat-to-beat precision. A peer-reviewed study published two months ago found the earbuds tracked heart rate within about two beats per minute of a validated ECG chest strap during treadmill exercise. That's a number worth pausing on. It's also an incomplete picture, and the gap between "accurate on average" and "reliable beat-to-beat" is where the real analysis lives.

Google has begun rolling out Google Play alternative billing across the U.S., UK, and EU this month, letting Android developers route payments outside its system and avoid a portion of its fees. Australia, South Korea, and Japan follow before the end of 2026. The rest of the world comes later, after September 30, 2027, Bloomberg Law reported in March.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 has hit its lowest no-trade-in price since Black Friday. Samsung.com currently lists the 256GB base model at $1,499.99, though availability may vary by color/configuration, while Amazon and Best Buy are close behind at $1,649.99, all without requiring a trade-in or carrier commitment. That's over $400 off a phone that launched at $1,999.99 last July and remained near its launch price for months before recent higher-storage price changes. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 deal...

Google Messages may finally be fixing one of its most complained-about limitations. Researchers at Android Authority today enabled a bulk forwarding feature inside the latest beta build, walking through the complete flow end to end: select multiple texts and images, tap a new overflow menu, preview the batch, send. The feature is not publicly available, is described as a work in progress, and carries no release timeline.

Swift Package Index has joined Apple, the two parties announced yesterday. The platform developers rely on to discover Swift packages, check cross-platform compatibility, and access hosted documentation is now inside the company whose language it serves. With more than 10,000 packages indexed and over 3.5 million compatibility builds processed last year, this is not a small community tool changing hands.

A regulatory filing has strengthened the case for the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 8 chip choice for American buyers before Samsung has said a word publicly. The US model, SM-F776U, with Notebookcheck identifying the processor as the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy. Read alongside separate industry reporting, that filing points toward something broader: Samsung appears to be applying its Galaxy S dual-chip playbook to the Flip line for the first time, with Europe and South Korea reportedly in line...

Apple SVP Eddy Cue used his appearance at Cannes Lions this week to sketch out where Apple TV+ is heading: more films with franchise potential, new originals every week through 2026, and live sports anchored by Formula 1. Cue's push for more Apple TV content, as he framed it at the Palais, comes down to two words: "better, more." What those words mean in practice is narrower than they sound.

Apple's rumored first foldable iPhone is reportedly still on track for a September reveal alongside the iPhone 18 Pro lineup, but whether that amounts to a real launch or an extended preview depends heavily on resolving reported hinge reliability issues that, according to recent supply-chain and leaker reports, have not cleared Apple's quality standards.

Your work Google Calendar and your personal iCloud Calendar don't talk to each other. Accept a dentist appointment on the personal side, and your work calendar still shows that hour as free. Accept a last-minute team meeting at work, and anything checking your personal availability has no idea.

Code strings found inside the YouTube Music watchOS app suggest Google is building infrastructure for offline downloads on Apple Watch, 9to5Google reported. The strings reference "clear downloads" and watch-level storage use, pointing to local media management being built into the app rather than simply mirroring what lives on a paired iPhone. If that works, YouTube Music offline downloads on Apple Watch would close a gap that currently keeps the app dependent on an iPhone connection.

Major consumer streaming services currently top out at 4K video, and 4K/60Hz is within HDMI 2.0's bandwidth ceiling. The bottleneck in your setup is the service, not the cable.

Google has closed one of the more frustrating gaps in its video platform. iPhone and iPad users without the Meet or Gmail app installed can now join Google Meet calls directly through Safari, with no download required and no Google account needed. If you've ever tried to join Google Meet on iPhone without the app and hit a dead end, that block is now gone.

Google has a genuine record of pushing AI features to older Pixel hardware, and the pattern across its last several feature drops confirms it. What those drops also show, if you read them closely, is that the most capable experiences are concentrating at the flagship end, and the mechanism Google is using to bridge the gap for older devices carries different privacy assumptions than what the company sold when those phones launched. That shift is worth being direct about.

A YouTube TV Help Community Product Expert said a recent change removed Live Guide background playback from YouTube TV on certain devices, cutting a feature that let subscribers keep a live channel running while browsing upcoming programming. The change is intentional, no app setting restores it, and the community explanation doesn't fully account for all the hardware where users are reporting the loss, including Roku devices, based on user reports cited by multiple outlets last week.

Dark Green is the only confirmed color detail from Samsung's entire 2026 foldable lineup. It belongs to the Fold 8 Wide. Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Flip 8 colors remain unconfirmed, with a reported July 22 Unpacked event now less than a month away. In a cycle where hardware changes are modest across the board, the absence of color information is itself a data point worth examining.

Google rolled out a one-click Gemini Google Sheets formula fixer, giving users a way to diagnose and repair broken formulas without leaving the cell or writing a prompt. When an error appears, a single click prompts Gemini to return both a plain-English explanation of the problem and a corrected formula ready to drop in. The catch: the feature is locked to paid tiers, and Google's own benchmark evidence doesn't directly measure what the tool actually does.

The new Fire TV interface is now available worldwide on all current-generation Amazon Fire TV Stick devices and Amazon Ember smart TVs, and Amazon says all current-generation Fire TV Sticks, the Fire TV Cube, and Ember smart TVs purchased globally now ship with the redesigned UI. That's the broadest distribution since the update quietly began on a handful of premium devices four months ago.

Apple's Beta 2 release notes for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 Golden Gate confirm that the AirPort Utility app is going away, 9to5Mac reported. The app has been Apple's official management tool for AirPort Extreme, AirPort Express, and AirPort Time Capsule hardware since Apple discontinued that product line in 2018. Eight years of post-discontinuation software support is ending this fall.

Apple has formally approved Samsung Display to begin manufacturing foldable OLED panels for its first foldable iPhone, a concrete supply-chain milestone that moves the device from persistent rumor into active component production. Samsung has already activated a portion of its Vietnam back-end facility to fill an initial order of roughly 3 million panels, with approximately 50 of the facility's 80 production lines now running, The Elec reported today.

Tamil Nadu health authorities are still investigating water contamination complaints near Tata Electronics' iPhone components factory in Hosur, even after Tata said on June 16 that the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board had dropped further action tied to its show-cause notice. The key distinction is where the samples were taken: Tata's clean results came from inside the plant, while unresolved findings involve farmland and wells outside it.

Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station claims Samsung is testing its Privacy Display technology for the Galaxy S27 Pro, according to SamMobile's report on the leak. The feature currently ships exclusively on the Galaxy S26 Ultra. If the Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro privacy screen rumor holds, it would mark the first time the technology has moved beyond a single SKU in Samsung's lineup.

Poplar Group, the media relations firm that had handled Trump Mobile's T1 Phone press operation since at least June 2025, is no longer working with the company. Poplar founding partner Chris Walker told The Verge on June 19, 2026, that his team is "not assisting Trump Mobile any further" and said he did not know whether a replacement firm had been retained.

Microsoft has shipped Outlook for Mac version 16.110, bringing a full Liquid Glass visual overhaul and native PST file import to the app. Both changes are live now through the Mac App Store. This Microsoft Outlook for Mac update marks two significant shifts at once: the app finally looks like it belongs on macOS, and it can now directly import email archives that previously required workarounds to access on Mac.

Samsung has officially acknowledged the Exynos 2700 for what appears to be the first time, with an executive stating development is on track and the chip is headed for "top-tier" smartphones, Android Authority reported this week. The Galaxy S27 was not named specifically, but Samsung's flagship chips have always debuted on the Galaxy S series, making the connection a reasonable inference rather than a stated commitment.

Microsoft pushed Windows 11 Insider Preview build 28120.2315 to Experimental (26H1) channel testers last Thursday, carrying two documented fixes: a Live Captions style responsiveness improvement and a reliability update to the inbox HD Audio driver. The release lands two weeks after Microsoft restructured its 26H1 pre-release program, and the contrast between what Experimental and Beta testers received this cycle tells you something about how the new structure is working.

Six days after Android 17's stable rollout began on June 16, a growing number of Pixel owners are reporting that the Android 17 Pixel touch screen bug has made their devices genuinely unreliable. Swipes invert direction, taps either fail to register or fire multiple times, and screens go briefly unresponsive before recovering, according to Phandroid and Android Police. Google has confirmed the bug and says a fix is in progress. No root cause has been named, and no timeline has been given.

Motorola Razr Plus 2026: Price, Battery Upgrade, and Alternatives

iPhone 18 Pro Camera Upgrades Move Into Active Production

ETOE opened pre-orders today for the Dolphin 2, a portable Google TV projector that combines a 54Wh built-in battery with certified Google TV, bringing Netflix, YouTube, Prime Video, and Disney+ without any external streaming hardware. Early-bird pricing sits at $927 in the US and €799 in Europe through June 28, with units shipping in early July, according to the ETOE press release.

Nothing will not release a new CMF phone in 2026. Co-founder Akis Evangelidis confirmed today on X that the CMF Phone 3 Pro has been scrapped, citing memory prices that make a meaningful upgrade impossible at the price point CMF exists to deliver. The decision is unusual for its candor: rather than quietly shipping a compromised product, Evangelidis posted a direct explanation and put a specific number on the cost problem.

Apple confirmed two Apple Music iOS 27 design changes at WWDC 2026 refreshed artist pages and refreshed album pages listing both on its official iOS 27 overview slide. As of today, only one exists in the real world. The artist page redesign is live and testable in the current developer beta. Album pages are not, 9to5Mac confirmed today.

Apple has opened iOS to rival app stores and alternative payment processors in Brazil and structured the terms so it collects a fee on every digital transaction, whether or not its store or payment system touches the sale. The changes took effect yesterday with iOS 26.5. All alternative distribution must run through an Apple-authorized marketplace; every app distributed outside the App Store still passes through Apple's Notarization process, a combination of automated scans and human review,...

Spotify this week launched Track Reactions, a feature that lets collaborators respond to individual songs in shared playlists using emoji visible to every playlist member. Announced on the Spotify Community blog, the feature closes a loop that has been open since collaborative playlists existed: until now, adding a song generated no quick in-playlist reaction.

Google is testing a Chrome behavior that would send every address-bar query straight into AI Mode, bypassing standard Search entirely. The Google Search AI Mode Chrome test surfaced in the Canary build earlier this month, and while Google moved quickly to call it an accident, its existence lands at an awkward moment: a federal court has spent the last year dismantling the exact kind of default-setting arrangements that would make such a feature legally sensitive.

Microsoft's release health page for Windows 11 version 26H1 currently lists no active known issues and no recently resolved ones at the time of this writing. Understanding the difference matters if you manage a Windows fleet, evaluate hardware procurement, or are simply trying to figure out which release health pages are worth monitoring right now.

Security research firm Paradigm Shift published a working exploit this week that breaks into Apple devices at the hardware boot level through a BootROM flaw that Apple could not patch in existing silicon, according to the researchers. Named usbliter8, it is the first public unpatchable iPhone exploit targeting A12 and A13 chips since checkm8 exposed earlier hardware in 2019.

Multiple leaks point to higher prices on premium storage tiers, not a blanket increase. The $1,999 entry price may hold. The Flip 8 picture is murkier.

The new VSCO Studio Pro app launched on iOS this week, targeting high-volume photographers — weddings, portraits, events, sports, and school photography — with a macOS version confirmed for later this year. The broader strategic move may be the subscription bundle around it: VSCO One, priced on par with Adobe Creative Cloud Pro at $499.99 per year, packages Studio Pro alongside Galleries, Sites, AI Lab, Workspace, Canvas, Capture, and The Freelance Photographer business mentorship program.