The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 21

Samsung's February 2026 Unpacked event in San Francisco wasn't primarily a phone launch. It was the clearest statement yet of what Samsung wants Galaxy events to be: a platform announcement built around agentic AI, backed by visible privacy architecture, and extended across devices, software partnerships, and corporate messaging. That template, not any single product, is what the next Samsung Galaxy Unpacked will almost certainly follow.

SwitchBot launched its Weather Station earlier this month, a $109.99 E-Ink display that pulls together climate data, iCloud Calendar events, and household information into a single glanceable screen, available now on Amazon. For anyone considering it as a SwitchBot Weather Station Apple Home accessory, the short answer is this: the device can expose two programmable buttons to Apple Home via Matter, but its climate sensors, calendar data, and weather readings stay inside the SwitchBot ecosystem...

WhatsApp is rolling out channel search on iPhone, arriving roughly a year and a half after the same capability reached Android users. Spotted this week by WABetaInfo and confirmed by 9to5Mac, the update gives iPhone users a way to find a specific post without scrolling backward through an entire channel's history something that previously had no shortcut.

A Google Play System update currently available to Pixel devices can render phones running Android 17 beta 4.1 completely unusable, trapping them in a reboot loop with no clean way out. The Android 17 beta 4.1 Play System update bootloop issue was flagged today by Android Authority, after multiple Pixel owners reported their devices never recovered after the update completed.

Samsung is ending free access to the SmartThings API, with paid subscription tiers targeting availability in October 2026. Samsung is describing it as a developer pricing update, but the users most likely to feel the new Samsung SmartThings API pricing aren't software companies with engineering budgets they're hobbyists and power users who've relied on the API as a bridge between Samsung's ecosystem and more open platforms like Home Assistant. Free access remains confirmed through Q3, so...

Google's new Home Speaker is finally here, and the first reviews point to a clear trade-off: this is a Gemini-first smart home device, not a straightforward Nest Audio replacement.

Microsoft announced a broad Copilot in Excel update on June 25, adding finance-focused skills, federated data connectors, and workbook change-tracking features for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers. The release targets FP&A analysts, corporate finance teams, and investment professionals who use Excel for forecasting, reporting, valuation, and close-related work.

Some Netflix users are seeing prompts asking them to add a unique email address before using a profile, according to Android Authority. Netflix has not publicly detailed whether the prompt is mandatory for all users, how widely it is rolling out, or how Kids profiles will be handled.

Microsoft has extended the free Windows 10 Extended Security Updates program by a full year, pushing the consumer deadline from October 2026 to October 12, 2027. No press release, no blog post just a quietly updated support page. BleepingComputer confirmed the change yesterday, with The Verge following this morning.

Samsung pushed One UI 7 theft-protection features to the Galaxy S23 series last year, a move that signals the company is still treating older flagships as active hardware worth securing. For S23 owners, the more immediate question is whether the most consequential security feature already on their phone, the Samsung Galaxy S23 Auto Blocker update, is actually switched on. It probably is. But "probably" is worth verifying.

Making a polished YouTube Short used to mean leaving the app. Record, export to CapCut, cut to the beat by hand, add text and stickers, import back to YouTube. The native tools weren't built for that kind of precision. YouTube has spent the past year pushing a sequence of changes aimed at eliminating that round trip, and the updates are substantive enough to map carefully.

Budget smartphones involve a series of small surrenders. Most of them fade. The plastic chassis stops registering after a few days. The middling processor becomes invisible when the phone handles what you actually ask it to do. But a weak screen never stops being a weak screen. Every scroll, every video, every glance at a notification is a reminder of the trade-off you made.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE Plus is currently on sale for $434, down $216 from its $649.99 list price. That discount matters because the FE line's value proposition has always depended on price and at $649.99, the case for buying was genuinely mixed.

A poll embedded in an Android Authority column from last month drew 7,036 votes on a single question: are you satisfied with the Galaxy S26 Ultra Privacy Display? Strip out the 35% who hadn't used the phone, and 68% of actual owners said yes. That's the strongest positive signal yet for Samsung's most debated flagship feature, and it tells a more specific story than it first appears.

The Xbox Series X launched at $499 in 2020. It now costs $649.99. Five years into a console generation, that's not a special edition or a new hardware revision it's the same console, $150 more expensive than launch day, per The Verge. Most consumer electronics get cheaper as they age. The Xbox Series price increase has run the opposite direction, and it's happened twice in under six months.

The most revealing number from the 2026 World Cup isn't a match rating. It's a ratio. Through 40 games, Telemundo's average audience stands at 5.5 million viewers per match and 2.3 million of them are watching via a stream, tracked by Adobe Analytics across Peacock and Telemundo's apps, according to NBC Sports press release published this week. That's not a rounding error or a supplemental trickle. That's approaching half the audience, measured and reproducible.

The story that the Chrome ad blocker update would kill your ad blocker was wrong. A peer-reviewed study published earlier this year in Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies by researchers at Goethe University Frankfurt tested MV3 versions of four major blockers against their MV2 predecessors, using default settings to replicate what a typical user actually runs. The result: no statistically significant reduction in blocking effectiveness. The MV3 versions actually blocked marginally...

Windows 10 end of support security became a live problem on October 14, 2025, when Microsoft stopped delivering security patches, quality updates, and technical support to standard Windows 10 users. Machines that haven't migrated since then receive no fixes for newly discovered vulnerabilities, and that exposure compounds with every month that passes.

Samsung didn't announce the Galaxy S27 Pro. It filed for it. Three model numbers spotted this week in GSMA database documents, SM-S956U (Galaxy S27+), SM-S957B/DS (Galaxy S27 Pro), and SM-S958U (Galaxy S27 Ultra), put the Samsung Galaxy S27 Pro confirmed by name in a public regulatory record for the first time, according to SamMobile. The base model, SM-S952U, had already turned up in the same database two weeks ago, as GSMArena reported.

A leaked Android 17 build suggests Google could be adding two significant upgrades to how Pixel phones handle color: a free-form accent color picker that would replace the current preset system, and a set of system-wide intensity presets controlling how aggressively those colors spread across the UI. Android Authority reported the leak last month. Neither feature has appeared in any public Android 17 build, and when Google might ship them remains unconfirmed.

YouTube is testing a new video player layout on Android that removes text labels from every button beneath the video, repositions the like count away from the like button, and moves Save and Download into an overflow menu.

Apple raised prices across much of its product lineup today, with the steepest hikes hitting Macs and smaller increases landing on Apple TV and HomePod hardware, Ars Technica reported. Apple cited rising memory costs as the cause. The timing is awkward: both the next Apple TV 4K and a new HomePod mini have reportedly been sitting finished for months, held back not by manufacturing problems but by Apple waiting on a more capable version of Siri before it ships them.

Smart App Control can now be turned on or off directly from Windows Security settings, without reinstalling Windows. That wasn't true until the April 2026 cumulative update (KB5083769) changed it. Before that update, disabling SAC was permanent: the only way back was a full reset or clean install.

Samsung announced the Galaxy A27 5G today with confirmed specs, a July 3 release date, and no official pricing. What does exist on the pricing front is a leak: figures attributed to Roland Quandt, circulated two weeks ago by Notebookcheck and IntoMobile, put the A27 at €349 and €439 for the two main storage tiers. If those numbers hold, that's a €50 increase over what the Galaxy A26 cost at launch. Samsung has not confirmed them. GSMArena's launch coverage published today notes prices are still...

Some Pixel owners running Android 17 are reporting erratic touchscreen behavior, with users reporting screens that stop responding to touch entirely or scroll in the opposite direction of their swipe. Google has acknowledged reports through an official PixelCommunity Reddit account and suggested troubleshooting steps, but has not identified the root cause or provided a patch timeline, Android Authority reported.

Three Google system components on Samsung Galaxy phones have pending updates that do not appear on the Play Store's "Manage apps & device" screen, the same screen most users check to confirm everything is current. The components are Android System SafetyCore, Android System WebView, and Google Play Services. Each one requires a separate manual check to find and install.

Google Messages may finally be fixing one of its most complained-about limitations. Researchers at Android Authority 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, and send. The feature is not publicly available, is described as a work in progress, and carries no release timeline.

Swift Package Index has become part of Apple, the two parties announced. 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.

The culprit behind soft, degraded Hulu streams is usually not your router. Both the iOS and Android Hulu apps ship with a mode called "Data Saver" enabled by default, which reportedly actively caps stream quality to reduce data consumption. Most users never touch it. Turning it off takes about 20 seconds and is the right first move before running speed tests or resetting hardware.

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

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.

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 recently 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.

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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.

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...

Google released Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 on June 23 for Pixel phones, less than two weeks after the previous beta. The short gap between releases, combined with a ten-item bug-fix changelog and no new features, points to a cleanup build rather than a feature drop, per Droid Life and 9to5Google. Build CP31.260608.007 carries the June 2026 security patch. None of the ten fixes touch Quick Settings.

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.

Forty-eight China-based iOS developers filed an antitrust complaint today with China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR), targeting the regulator now best positioned to press Apple after March's China commission cut. They want the standard 25% commission reduced to 5%, and they're betting that SAMR has more use over Apple than any Chinese court has managed in nearly a decade of failed litigation.