The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 19

Microsoft is gradually updating some of Windows 11's oldest interface elements with replacements built using WinUI 3, its current native user-interface framework. The latest preview-build discovery suggests that the familiar File Properties window may be next, although the redesign remains hidden and cannot be enabled through normal Windows settings.

OnePlus confirmed on July 16, 2026, that it would end new product rollouts in North America and Europe. Existing phones will continue receiving their promised software updates, security patches and after-sales support, but the decision effectively closes the official route to buying future OnePlus flagships in those markets.

Windows maintains a persistent device identifier on many installations that survives OS updates, cuts through VPN obfuscation, and allows Microsoft to reconnect the same machine across different services, sessions, and IP addresses, according to court filings and PCMag's reporting. Most users have never heard of it. The FBI used it to help build a cybercrime case against an alleged Scattered Spider member, and VPN provider Windscribe's attempt to remove it this week showed just how deeply the...

Urban Armor Gear's new wet phone rescue pouch is entering a market where the baseline advice is already clear, well-sourced, and costs nothing. The UAG rescue pouch is built on DRYOUT, a patented moisture-removal material that the company says absorbs up to 3,400 times more than a silica gel packet. Every one of those performance figures comes from DRYOUT's own press materials. No independent testing exists. That gap between what the company claims and what external evidence shows is the...

Samsung posted record companywide results for the second quarter of 2026, but its smartphone business struggled to turn strong Galaxy sales into profit. The company reported KRW 171.5 trillion in consolidated revenue and KRW 89.5 trillion in operating profit, while higher component costs weighed on its mobile division.

A quick reality check before you start: This guide works best for households in urban and suburban areas within range of broadcast transmitters. Rural readers, apartment dwellers with no exterior placement options, and anyone whose primary goal is free live sports coverage will hit real limits, spelled out at each relevant step. Go in with accurate expectations.

The Galaxy Z Fold7 became Samsung's first book-style foldable to outsell its companion Flip model during a South Korean preorder period. Its share rose from roughly 40% in the previous generation to 60%, giving Samsung fresh evidence that buyers would choose the more expensive Fold when its design addressed the format's biggest usability problems.

Satya Nadella told investors on Microsoft's Wednesday earnings call that the company will begin bringing Copilot's chat, coding, task-delegation, and autonomous-agent capabilities together in one Microsoft Copilot super app this quarter. It's the clearest confirmation yet that Microsoft's sprawling Copilot lineup is heading toward a single, unified Copilot app.

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Z Fold8, Fold8 Ultra and Flip8 last week, marking the eighth generation of its foldable lineup. The most prominent display claim in Samsung's announcement is Samsung's pitch for the Fold8's new display proportions: the same unfolded panel reads as 4:3 in one orientation and 3:4 when turned 90 degrees. Samsung positions the 4:3 landscape view as suited to movies and games, and the 3:4 portrait view as suited to e-books and web browsing, according to the same...

A battery unit spotted in India's Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) database was an early piece of evidence pointing toward an unannounced Samsung earbud, according to an April report from Android Authority. Nothing in that listing, or in the app code that surfaced before it, confirms the Samsung ear-hook earbuds theory that has attached itself to the leak.

On July 30, Google marked a months-old bug "Fixed" in its public Issue Tracker. The ticket covers a specific idle-drain bug that Google says it fixed on selected Pixel 9 and Pixel 10 models, and the closure didn't sit well with everyone: more than 50 comments piled up underneath, largely from users saying their phones still drain overnight.

The Pixel Watch 5 has appeared in a Google Play Console listing under the codename "godric," adding to the evidence that Google's next smartwatch is nearing launch. The entry follows June regulatory filings for four probable Pixel Watch 5 models and reveals 3GB of RAM, up from 2GB in recent generations.

By the end of this guide, your Mac will be running macOS Tahoe. What you recover beyond the operating system depends on one thing: whether you have a Time Machine backup made before the Golden Gate beta was installed. This guide covers all three realistic scenarios for getting back to stable ground.

Airline apps will tell you when your flight is delayed. They won't tell you whether that delay means you'll miss your connection. The Flighty Connection Assistant is built to close that gap, tracking both legs of a connecting itinerary simultaneously and pushing an alert while travelers still have time to act, according to Flighty's help documentation.

Razer Axon Wallpaper Engine Mobile is scheduled to hit Google Play on July 15, 2026, and Razer has built a two-phase hardware giveaway around the release that runs from July 3 through July 29. Nine prizes total, split across pre-registration and social entry windows, with the first draw already open, PR TIMES reported this week. What the app actually does remains largely undescribed in pre-launch materials but the campaign mechanics are concrete, and that's what most readers need to act on...

This guide is for local administrators and technically capable users on unmanaged or lightly managed Windows 11 Pro systems whose executable, batch, or PowerShell script files have stopped running after installation or a feature update. Corporate devices enrolled in Intune or joined to a domain with Group Policy are a different situation those paths are called out explicitly below.

A federal judge dismissed rapper RBX's Spotify streaming-fraud lawsuit last month, finding that the complaint did not plausibly support its negligence and unfair-competition claims. The case can be refiled within 21 days, so it isn't over. But the dismissal laid bare a structural problem that no ruling can fix: the same enforcement systems Spotify built to fight bot streams are removing legitimate artists from the platform, and those artists have almost no recourse when it happens.

A leak posted today on X claims Samsung will open pre-reservations for the Galaxy Z Fold 8 as soon as July 8. The tip comes from a single source, Abhishek Yadav, and Samsung has not announced it. But a separate report noted that this year's pre-registration window is reportedly compressed to just a few days before the expected July 22 Unpacked event, 9to5Google reported two weeks ago, so the compressed timing fits. What matters before acting on that is understanding which device the reservation...

Starting today, Google is counting all Android backup data toward your Google Account storage limit, but the rollout isn't instant for everyone, and the actual impact for most users is smaller than the policy change might suggest.

Google Wallet appears to be rolling out expanded transaction history for Android that includes payments made on paired Wear OS devices. For watch users, it closes a straightforward problem: the Android app previously showed only the 10 most recent tap-to-pay transactions from that specific phone, with Wear OS payments excluded entirely. Verifying a watch payment meant opening a browser, not the Wallet app.

Samsung Messages shut down on July 6, 2026. If you're a US Galaxy user on Android 12 or newer, the app can no longer send or receive messages except to emergency numbers, per Samsung's discontinuation notice. The text field is greyed out, and that's a permanent state.

Samsung's Home Up module picked up a significant update today, adding configurable multi-finger gestures to Galaxy phones. The Samsung Home Up screenshot gesture is the headline addition: users running One UI 9 can now assign a finger-based capture action to a swipe, giving them an alternative to the palm swipe method Samsung phones have relied on for years, according to Android Authority.

Google Maps cannot place a restaurant order. That distinction matters, because the conversational discovery experience Google has built over the past eight months makes the question feel closer than it did before. A sequence of Gemini-powered feature launches hands-free navigation, AI-synthesized venue tips, multi-step voice queries has moved Maps from a directions app into something that finds restaurants, answers follow-up questions about them, and routes you there by voice. Whether ordering...

In late October 2025, Niagara Launcher published a support note that was, in its quiet way, a small admission of defeat. Google Play services had started blocking the launcher from opening certain Unity-made games a Niagara Launcher Google Play services issue the team could do nothing about. Not because of a Niagara bug. There was nothing to patch, nothing to push. According to the team's help page, it appeared that Google had rolled out new firewall rules in response to a Unity engine...

Leaked renders published two weeks ago show more than a Samsung Health facelift. Buried in the imagery is what appears to be a reworked watchface picker, a component that lives inside the Galaxy Wearable app, not Samsung Health, suggesting the Samsung Wearable app redesign may extend beyond the fitness tracking side of Samsung's software stack. Samsung has not confirmed any changes to the Wearable app.

Microsoft is spinning off four Xbox game studios today and cutting roughly 3,200 jobs across its gaming division. Buried inside that restructuring is something worth separating out: Double Fine and Compulsion Games are leaving with their IP, catalog, and runway for their next games, according to the Xbox Wire memo. That deal structure is unusual enough in games industry M&A to warrant a closer look at what it actually means and what the reporting hasn't confirmed yet.

A new leak suggests Samsung is preparing to give the Galaxy S27 Pro near-Ultra camera hardware and an Ultra-exclusive display feature, then power it with a Samsung-made Exynos chip across Asia, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Latin America. The Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro Exynos leak, reported this week by Android Authority and SamMobile, would make "Pro" a materially different product depending on which continent you buy it on. Snapdragon would go to US buyers only, per Android Authority, or to all...

The UK government is drawing up legislation that would require YouTube and other video platforms to make public service broadcaster content prominently discoverable, Deadline reported two weeks ago. Under the proposed Media Bill, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Paramount-owned 5 would be named beneficiaries. In practical terms, that could mean boosting official clips from shows like Question Time in user feeds and search results, though exactly which surfaces would be covered remains publicly...

Android 17 QPR1 Beta 6 adds a customizable keyboard shortcuts system to the Linux Terminal app, giving users per-action toggles and pop-up key remapping for the first time. The update landed last Tuesday for eligible Pixel devices, and it carries a notable milestone: Android 17 QPR1 has reached Platform Stability, meaning Google has locked the API surface for developers, according to Android Authority. Beta 6 is now a stronger signal of QPR1's direction than any previous build in this cycle.

Samsung is expected to report Q2 2026 operating profit of around 86 trillion won (approximately $56 billion), roughly 18 times what it earned in the same quarter a year ago, according to an LSEG SmartEstimate drawn from 30 analysts weighted by track record, The Star reported yesterday. That would mark a third consecutive record quarter, driven by what analysts describe as a prolonged shortage across the entire memory market, not just premium AI chips.

U.S. viewers with a digital antenna can watch USA vs Belgium for free tonight on FOX at 8 p.m. ET. No account, no trial, no credit card. No antenna? FOX One's 3-day free trial covers the match with no upfront charge, as long as you cancel before it renews. UK viewers have the cleanest deal: BBC One on TV or BBC iPlayer online, free and in 4K. Australians can watch on SBS at no cost. India is the one exception ZEE5 holds the official rights at approximately ₹799 (around $8 USD), with no free...

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold presents a specific kind of buying dilemma. Closed, it's a 6.3-inch smartphone. Open, it's an 8-inch tablet. The Galaxy S25 is a 6.2-inch phone that fits in a back pocket and does exactly what it promises. The question this comparison actually answers isn't which device is better in the abstract it's whether a bigger screen justifies everything you give up to get it, especially when a discounted foldable starts closing the price gap with a compact conventional...

The Galaxy S27 Ultra battery rumor that dominated Samsung coverage earlier this year was built on shakier ground than most headlines let on. A credible tipster has pushed back on the claim that the S27 Ultra will ship with a cell larger than 5,000mAh, and the original sourcing was already more conditional than downstream coverage acknowledged. The likeliest outcome: the Ultra ships with the same capacity Samsung has used across every Ultra model from the S20 through the S26, a streak now seven...

A Pixel imported into a country where Google doesn't officially sell it runs the same chip, takes the same photos, and largely runs the same software as any other Pixel right up until the local carrier shuts down its 3G network. At that point, the phone may stop making calls entirely because Google doesn't enable Voice over LTE (VoLTE) in unsupported markets, per Android Authority. That's not a SIM-tray curiosity. That's a phone that stops working as a phone.

At first glance, Android Halo looks like a sensible piece of UX design. Google's description is straightforward: a persistent indicator at the top of your phone screen where an AI agent can update you, ask for input, and surface results from background tasks, all without interrupting whatever you're doing. Google's official announcement previewed this in May as "at-a-glance visibility into what your agent is working on at any given time." That is a real problem, and this is a reasonable...

A leak reported by PhoneArena claims Google's next major Linux kernel upgrade will cover the Pixel 7 through Pixel 10 but skip the Pixel 6. The source, Mystic Leaks, carries explicit reliability caveats, and Google hasn't confirmed anything. But the underlying situation is real regardless of whether this specific leak is right: the Pixel 6 Android kernel upgrade story has a clear structural endpoint, and software support for the device ends in October 2026.

Google Maps appears to be preparing a food-ordering feature that would let users request food through Ask Maps while on the go, according to newly discovered app strings and earlier Google statements about agentic commerce. The two signals together point to active development of a Google Maps food ordering capability built on top of the app's existing Gemini integration, and they raise as many questions as they answer.

Android users who enabled the "Start Android Auto while locked" toggle and watched it silently fail finally have an answer. Code spotted by Android Authority inside Android Auto v17.2.662614 suggests

A new report claims OPPO may retire OxygenOS on all future global devices, folding it into ColorOS alongside realme UI, according to the report. That claim comes from a single unnamed source, but it lands against a backdrop of independently confirmed signals: OnePlus' German website now directs customers to OPPO hardware, most of the European team walked out in April, and UK inventory has run dry with no refresh in sight. Taken together, the software consolidation report and the brand retreat...

Google Play is adding three widget discovery tools to Android phones, tablets, and foldables: a dedicated curated page featuring Google Play Store widget Collections, a widget-specific search filter, and widget badges on app detail pages. Google framed the changes as a direct response to developer feedback, with Play Store product manager Yinka Taiwo-Peters acknowledging that widget discoverability has long been a barrier to developer investment.