The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 4

DuckDuckGo's browser now blocks most YouTube video ads on iPhone and Mac, with the feature switched on automatically for users running the latest version. No extensions, no configuration required. The catch: DuckDuckGo YouTube ad blocking on iPhone and Mac only applies when YouTube is open inside DuckDuckGo's browser, not through the standalone YouTube app, as Engadget noted this week.

Samsung's Bixby assistant has reportedly been speaking in voices users never selected since a recent update, and the company's response so far stops well short of confirming a bug or offering a fix. The reports, first surfacing in the Samsung Members community forum four months ago, drew wider attention this week when Android Authority covered Samsung's reply to affected users.

The pitch for Matter was simple enough to print on a box: buy any device with the logo, scan the QR code, and it works in your smart home. No compatibility research, no ecosystem anxiety, no app drawer colonized by proprietary software. Three years in, Apple Home's Matter problems run deeper than the marketing ever suggested. The logo is not a promise. It's a prompt to start asking questions.

Code surfaced inside the Google Home iOS app this week suggests the upcoming Home Display may be less a Nest Hub successor than a Google smart display with camera features borrowed directly from Nest Cam. The latest Google Home Display Nest Hub Max camera findings, analyzed by Android Authority, describe recording tiers that mirror existing Nest Cam subscriptions exactly: a free event-history window, with longer event history and continuous recording tied to Google Home Premium tiers.

Google's Pixel Recorder app has a bug that causes audio files to vanish after recording, with no error message and no warning that anything went wrong. The problem: Pixel Recorder is not saving recordings while appearing to function normally. As of July 7's reporting, Google hadn't addressed the issue publicly.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 series arrives loaded with third-party apps from Meta, Microsoft, and Spotify, and buyers get no setup screen to opt out of any of them. On a factory-fresh 512GB Galaxy S26 Ultra, system files and pre-installed apps consumed over 40GB of storage before the owner adds a single photo or file, according to Android Authority's hands-on testing earlier this year. That's close to 8% of the drive, gone before the box is fully unpacked.

Amazon has been discounting the Galaxy S26 lineup in the week after Prime Day, keeping promotional pressure alive on Samsung's newest flagship series. Whether any given Amazon Galaxy S26 deal represents genuine savings depends on which Samsung product you're looking at and on a broader pricing pattern that has made discount labels across much of Samsung's catalog harder to trust.

How Windows 11 Wi-Fi problems are easier to fix when you start with the symptom. A missing Wi-Fi toggle, a "No Internet, Secured" warning, random drops, and post-update connection failures all point to different causes. Use the section that matches what you see, then try the targeted fix.

Something called "Memories Games" has surfaced in connection with Google Photos. The only information available in the supplied research is an unverified feature name. The research available here does not include a source attributing the teardown find to a specific outlet or app version, so treat the premise accordingly: this is a rumor.

Samsung and Qualcomm announced this week that both the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra will run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, the same custom-binned chip already shipping in the Galaxy S26 Ultra worldwide, GSMArena reported. The two companies posted the confirmation to Instagram earlier this week, getting ahead of what is expected to be a Galaxy Unpacked event in London on July 22, though Samsung has not officially confirmed that date.

A growing number of Google Home Speaker owners are hitting a wall before the device ever plays a single note. The Google Home Speaker setup issue surfaced in reports Thursday, with buyers across multiple countries finding that the speaker fails to complete first-time onboarding and then loops through the same error when they try to fix it. Google has confirmed its engineering team is investigating but has no root cause, no working fix, and no timeline for resolution, Android Authority reported...

During a pre-briefing the night before Build 2026, a Microsoft developer instructed an AI agent to delete all the files on his desktop. The agent appeared to comply. The desktop looked clean. "That's a lie," the developer said the files were fine because, as he explained, "the container won't allow it," according to VentureBeat's coverage of the briefing. That demonstration captures the promise of Microsoft Execution Containers for AI agents in one clean image. It also raises the question worth...

Google Fi's promotion for the Pixel 10a offers the full $499 device cost back over 24 months in bill credits, stacked with $10 off Unlimited Premium service each month for the same period a total of $739 in credits, per the Google Fi promo terms. The Google Fi Pixel 10a deal is listed as available to "all new lines." That phrase is doing more work than it appears.

Apple TV+ is occupying Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, with a two-hour Apple TV+ Hall H panel on Saturday, July 25 covering five titles, a separate late-night sneak preview of Dark Matter Season 2, and a free multi-sensory Silo installation open to the public, Deadline reported today. The panel runs 2:00–4:00 PM and will be moderated by Josh Horowitz, host of the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast.

The Google Store is now selling a Samsung smartwatch. Yesterday, a "Devices from the Google Store" carousel surfaced in the US Play Store app, offering the Galaxy Watch 8 through the standard Google Store checkout flow, financing included, according to 9to5Google. The device sits alongside Google's own Pixel Watch 4 and Fitbit Air all three processed through the same checkout infrastructure Google uses for its Pixel lineup.

Id Software issued a statement this week to address the alarm spreading through the gaming community: the studio is still operational, cuts were distributed across teams, and the remaining staff is "about the same size" as when it made Doom (2016). The studio pointed to QuakeCon in August as a continuity signal. The id Software Xbox layoffs statement did not address the harder question: whether the studio can maintain its technical edge after losing, by multiple accounts, roughly half its...

Disney is internally discussing making some Disney+ content available without a subscription, according to two people familiar with the matter. Adam Smith, Disney's product and tech chief, raised the idea at a company streaming town hall this week, offering no timeline and no defined scope.

Samsung has raised its Galaxy S26 production target for July from 1 million units to 1.5 million, a 50% mid-cycle increase, Android Authority reported today, citing ET News. The revision covers both domestic and global allocations, suggesting the demand signal is broader than any single market or promotion. Two things appear to be driving the Galaxy S26 sales surge: an aggressive promotional campaign that reportedly tripled sales during its active window, and growing consumer conviction that...

Bigme announced the Hibreak Dual 2 in late June 2026, roughly two months after its predecessor failed to reach customers. The original HiBreak Dual was listed for preorder starting at $359, per The Verge, but available reporting shows no retail release followed. Bigme subsequently issued a public "reflection and apology" acknowledging the design's shortcomings, according to Heyup. The Bigme Hibreak Dual 2 is the company's answer to those criticisms and the core hardware change is significant...

The July 2026 Pixel update began rolling out Tuesday, marking Google's first monthly patch since Android 17 launched last month. The headline fix addresses a bug that could leave devices stuck in a restart loop, unable to load Android at all. A separate fix covers apps unexpectedly closing or refusing to launch across every supported device.

The Android Auto media player redesign that spent months in limited testing is now rolling out to the platform's most popular apps. At the same time, a separate beta feature lets drivers swipe between active media sessions directly from the dashboard. The two changes are distinct, but Google's latest developer documentation points in the same direction: a media layer where the platform controls more of the experience.

Samsung is pitching the Galaxy S26 Ultra as more than a faster flagship. Its biggest selling point is Galaxy AI: tools that can suggest actions, summarize context, edit images, screen calls, and hand off limited tasks across apps. Some of those features are useful now. Others still need the right apps, accounts, permissions, and real-world reliability to be worth the Ultra price.

Strings pulled from Android Canary build 2607 suggest Google is planning a toggle to turn off the Android Halo status bar icon, buried inside a new "Status bar" section in Android Settings, according to a teardown published by Android Authority this week. Neither the section nor the toggle is live. No working UI exists, and Google has not confirmed any of this.

Some market watchers expect a sharp decline in sub-$400 shipments this year, according to Omdia data reported by Android Authority. The cause is a memory supply crunch driven by AI infrastructure demand, and the segment taking the worst of it is precisely the one with the least room to absorb it.

The Samsung Odyssey OLED G5 (G50SF) has dropped to roughly $340 in the US, a street price that simply didn't exist for QD-OLED gaming monitors until this year. That matters most for PC gamers running DisplayPort, who get the full spec sheet. Console users and anyone locked to HDMI run into a bandwidth ceiling the panel can't clear over that connection. The deal is real; it's just not for everyone.

The Strava Events tab went live yesterday, letting users search for nearby races, group runs, rides, and club meetups inside the app, then move toward a training plan through the app's Runna integration. Strava says the tab connects race discovery with Runna-powered training plans, per the company's press release, timed to what it calls peak running season.

A new leak suggests the cheapest Pixel 11 in Europe will cost €100 more than last year's cheapest Pixel 10, and the Google Pixel 11 price increase story may have less to do with a new MSRP than with the quiet removal of the 128GB model.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

A dataset collected from 147 Deaf signers using smartphone cameras has produced the largest ASL fingerspelling recognition dataset ever assembled, and the results carry real implications for what Gboard sign language recognition could eventually look like. No such feature has been announced. Nothing in the available evidence connects the research to a Google product plan.

No July Android Canary build has been confirmed yet, but the program has shipped on a monthly cadence since Google launched it last summer, Android Authority noted. If that rhythm holds, Android Canary 2607 is imminent. The three builds documented in detail since March already tell a coherent story about where Google is taking Pixel's system UI and that story is worth understanding before the next one lands.

A documented bug in the Google TV Streamer causes the device to pair itself to a different remote than the one it shipped with, leaving the original unresponsive for no obvious reason. Google acknowledged this specific failure and committed to a software fix, per Android Police. That acknowledgment is now more than a year old, and no public confirmation of a shipped fix has appeared.

Apple's free iCloud tier has sat at 5GB for years. As Macworld put it, that limit "felt stingy a decade ago and certainly isn't enough now." For most iPhone owners with any real photo library, hitting that ceiling isn't a surprise. It's a subscription prompt dressed up as a warning.

Spotify is rolling out new listening filters for Release Radar, the weekly discovery playlist that reaches nearly 9 million listeners every Friday. The controls let users steer their recommendations by genre or toward unfamiliar artists, giving them a new way to influence a playlist that has largely been algorithm-controlled.

If you're trying to watch The Open 2026 without missing a shot, here's the short version: USA Network carries live coverage every round, NBC joins on the weekend, and Peacock is the streaming layer that connects all of it. No single cable channel covers the whole event, but the rights structure is more logical than it first appears once you understand which platform owns which window.

Samsung is reportedly considering cutting its free double-storage pre-order benefit by half for the upcoming Galaxy Z Fold8, Z Fold8 Ultra, and Z Flip8, according to industry sources cited by Chosun. Buyers who would previously have received the 512GB model at no extra cost when ordering the 256GB variant will now pay roughly half the normal storage premium. If confirmed, it would mark a broader reduction than Samsung's recent region-specific changes to the promotion.

Samsung has pushed the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6 July 2026 security update to devices across Africa, Asia, and Europe, closing 57 vulnerabilities in a patch that carries no new features and no UI changes. Five of those flaws are rated critical. According to Android Headlines, the rollout is staged, so availability varies by model, region, and carrier.

Samsung's rumored open-ear earbuds won't be sharing a stage with the Galaxy Z Fold and Galaxy Watch 9. ETNews, citing industry sources, reports that the Samsung Galaxy Buds Able launch timeline has shifted to Q4 2026, with October the most probable window, as the company continues to fine-tune the product, per Android Headlines. That rules out Galaxy Unpacked, which had looked like a plausible debut just weeks ago. Samsung has not publicly confirmed any of this.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Google launched Magic Cue as a headline feature of the Pixel 10 last August, describing it as "proactive support, tightly woven across your phone," per the launch announcement. Two months ago, the company introduced Gemini Intelligence as its new label for proactive AI across Android devices, using language that maps closely onto what Magic Cue already does. Google has not announced a rename. But taken together, the product descriptions, the rollout roadmap, and Google's track record with AI...

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia