The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 8

Google last week announced a feature that changes what happens after you open a link on your phone. Starting late June, Gemini in Chrome on Android will place an AI icon in the browser toolbar. Tap it, and a panel slides up over the page you're already on, ready to summarize, explain, or answer questions about that specific content, without opening a new tab or leaving the page.

Apple is preparing to let iPhone, iPad, and Mac users choose from competing AI providers, including Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini, to handle tasks across Siri, Writing Tools, and Image Playground. The feature, internally called "Extensions," is reportedly slated for iOS 27, iPadOS 27, and macOS 27 in Fall 2026, with a formal announcement expected at WWDC on June 8, 2026, according to Bloomberg reporting summarized by 9to5Mac.

Apple's chief hardware officer Johny Srouji is restructuring the company's hardware organization into a single unified group, The Verge reported today, citing Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. The change folds two previously separate divisions, hardware engineering and hardware technologies, under one roof and splits the combined group into five focused teams. According to Bloomberg's framing, the goal is to help chip teams work more closely with product teams as Apple faces mounting pressure on its AI...

Apple is reportedly preparing to open its AI infrastructure to outside competition. iOS 27 would let users choose from multiple third-party AI models, including Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, to power system features like Siri, Writing Tools, and Image Playground, 9to5Mac reported on May 5, 2026, citing Bloomberg. Visible additions like the reported iOS 27 AI wallpaper generator and natural-language Shortcuts sit on top of something more structural: Apple reportedly loosening its...

In November 1997, Steve Jobs stood before an audience at Cupertino's Flint Center and admitted something most executives would never say publicly: more than a thousand customers had written to tell him how bad it was to buy an Apple product. Not the product itself, but the experience of acquiring it. That candid acknowledgment, 9to5Mac reported, came as Jobs was explaining a new partnership with electronics chain CompUSA. The problem was a distribution failure dressed up as a brand problem, and...

Fortnite is back on iPhone globally, and the legal fight that made it possible isn't over. Apple is currently barred from collecting any commission on purchases routed through external payment links in iOS apps, a condition that remains in effect after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to pause the Epic Games case earlier this month, sending it back to the district court to determine what Apple can lawfully charge on transactions it no longer processes. The outcome will affect every developer...

This guide covers three ways to disable Apple Intelligence notification summaries on your iPhone: a global off switch that stops them across every app, a category-level setting that targets news apps specifically, and how to turn off AI notification summaries on iPhone before you've ever opted in. All three paths run through Settings > Notifications > Summarize Notifications.

If you want to know how to set up always-on display (AOD) on your phone without killing your battery, the short answer is: strip it down. Clock, notification count, dark background. That's most of what you need, and it's the configuration that keeps power draw low enough that the feature earns its place.

With WWDC 2026 opening this week, Apple is under pressure to answer a question its 2025 accessibility release left open: which users can actually access the tools Apple built? Last September, Apple shipped its most extensive accessibility update across iOS 26, iPadOS 26, macOS Tahoe 26, watchOS 26, and visionOS 26, per Apple's release announcement. The features include Personal Voice, Braille Access, Magnifier on Mac, Accessibility Reader, and new developer APIs. What Apple's public...

Microsoft today launched the Surface Laptop for Business with two features new to the Surface lineup: an integrated privacy screen on select 13.8-inch configurations, and an OS-level haptic touchpad tied to Windows 11 interactions. The Surface Laptop for Business privacy screen is the more immediately useful of the two. Neither feature is an AI story, and both carry a price that Windows Central described as "outrageously expensive."

Two settings changes are all it takes. Set the lid-close action to Do Nothing and disable the inactivity sleep timer. Both live in Settings > System > Power & Battery and take about three minutes to configure.

A phone can receive every Android update Google promised and still lose the features that made it worth buying. That's not a hypothetical. The Google Pixel 7-year update promise covers OS versions and security patches. It has never covered AI feature parity. As Gemini Intelligence becomes the defining value of the Pixel experience, those two things are no longer close to the same.

A dormant interface inside Google Password Manager on Android has been activated by researchers, exposing new settings that extend import and export options to cover passkeys alongside passwords. The discovery is the most concrete evidence yet that Google passkey transfer on Android is in active development. Android Authority reported last week that the mechanism has not been switched on for users, and Google has not confirmed the feature in public.

Apple effectively conceded earlier this year that Google's model was the stronger foundation for the next Siri push. After evaluating its options, the company said "Google's technology provides the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models," according to 9to5Mac. For a company that spent years selling on-device intelligence as a point of superiority, that statement lands differently than a typical partnership announcement.

Google I/O 2026 kicks off this morning at 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET, streaming free at io.google and on YouTube with no registration required. A pre-show starts an hour earlier at 9 a.m. PT, with reporters on the ground in Mountain View, per PCMag. Sessions are uploaded afterward to the Google for Developers YouTube channel, with registered attendees getting first access, according to PCMag. The physical event at Shoreline Amphitheatre runs through tomorrow.

Google Keep's lock screen note-taking shortcut was nearly functional in early 2024, showed an in-app "coming soon" message, and resurfaced in hidden settings in May 2026 without a public rollout. More than two years after the first public evidence appeared in late 2023, Google has not announced a public rollout or timeline, and the feature remains inaccessible to ordinary users without Developer Options. For tablet and stylus owners who were waiting, the gap is harder to explain given...

Samsung's chip division went from KRW 0.4 trillion in operating profit to KRW 53.7 trillion in three quarters. That earnings swing, and what it says about Samsung's position in the AI memory market, is the reason the Samsung $1 trillion market cap conversation exists. Whether the earnings quality behind that valuation can hold is a separate question, and the answer is already taking shape.

Google has begun rolling out its Google Workspace app icon redesign on the web, with updated icons now appearing in the app launcher and Chrome's New Tab page. The changes cover Gmail, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Calendar, Chat, Meet, Keep, Vids, Forms, Voice, and Tasks, 9to5Google reported this week. Android and iOS apps remain on the old design, with no timeline announced for mobile.

Apple is once again rumored to be testing a solid-state haptic button system for its 20th-anniversary iPhone, which is presumed to arrive in fall 2027, and this time the feature appears to have cleared a more specific round of reliability testing. Chinese leaker Instant Digital renewed the claim in a May 5, 2026 report, saying the button system has already cleared tests covering gloves, wet hands, extreme temperatures, and phone cases, according to MacRumors.

Most credible reporting on the Apple Watch Series 12 points in the same direction: a new chip, improved power efficiency, and a watch that looks almost identical to the one on your wrist right now. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says a major design shift is unlikely, and a semi-reliable leaker told Gizmodo this month that Apple has explicitly chosen to prioritize battery life over new hardware features this cycle.

Apple is planning to overhaul Genmoji in iOS 27 with automatic suggestions drawn from users' photo libraries and most-typed phrases, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reported this week. The change would shift Genmoji toward proactive suggestions rather than fully manual prompts. A new toggle in Keyboard settings will read: "Suggested Genmoji are created from your photos and your commonly typed phrases."

Samsung has relisted the Galaxy Z Flip7 FE on its US storefront, with the 128GB model available again for $899.99 and the 256GB model listed at $999.99. SamMobile reported the restock in early May 2026, , after previously noting that the phone had largely vanished from Samsung's US store for months without any clear indication of whether it would come back. Samsung has not issued a public announcement about the return, and the current product page carries the same standing trade-in offer and...

Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference runs June 8–12, with the keynote kicking off at 10 a.m. PDT on June 8. The WWDC 2026 announcement describes the week as spotlighting "AI advancements and exciting new software and developer tools" — language so close to what Apple used when it first announced the dates two months ago that the two press releases are nearly interchangeable. For developers waiting to understand how Apple Intelligence fits into their build decisions, that repetition tells a...

AT&T launched its tourist eSIM product today, and it immediately costs more than T-Mobile's competing offering, which entered the same market just days earlier. Whether that premium is justified hinges on one feature without publicly available independent performance testing.

Samsung's mobile division is reportedly exploring BOE as a possible OLED supplier for the standard Galaxy S27, after ZDNet Korea reported on May 11, 2026, that Samsung had sent BOE a request for information related to the model's display. If it happens, it would be a first for Samsung's Galaxy S line: ZDNet Korea reports that BOE has received Galaxy S-series OLED RFIs before, but has not yet secured final supply. The base S27 may also stick with an older OLED material stack rather than...

Backend code discovered by developer Nicolás Alvarez and confirmed by MacRumors shows Apple is continuing to develop a feature that may let users generate custom Shortcuts actions using Apple Intelligence models. The code confirms active development, not a finished product. Apple has not confirmed the feature for release.

Spotify confirmed last Wednesday that its app, Web Player, and support site were degraded around 8 p.m., with users reporting access problems on Downdetector. The company's response was brief: the service was "slow or not working properly," and the matter was under investigation. No mention of an external attack, a DDoS event, or any outside actor appeared in Spotify's public statement.

Walmart today launched six new Onn tablets, all running Android 16 out of the box, priced from $97 to $288 and available in stores and online now, according to 9to5Google. Six models at once, spanning children's devices to a stylus-equipped 13-inch flagship, is a broader push than anything the Onn line has attempted before.

The Google I/O 2026 keynote starts tomorrow, May 19, at 10:00 a.m. PT / 1:00 p.m. ET and streams free at io.google. No special software, no paid subscription. The developer keynote follows at 1:30 p.m. PT, and the full event runs through May 20 with on-demand content dropping May 21.

Apple's foldable iPhone is failing its own durability tests. The hinge, not the display, is the problem and with mass production targeted for July, the engineering calendar is getting tight.

Samsung has filed a patent for a laptop concept built around a touch-sensitive palmrest that could reduce reliance on modifier keys like Ctrl, Shift, and Alt. The Samsung laptop palmrest patent describes sensors embedded in the palmrest surface that detect whether the user's hand is resting there or lifted away, then route keypresses through a different function layer depending on that state. No product has been announced, and the concept may never reach hardware, as Digital Trends and Daily...

Samsung is offering a free Withings Body Smart scale with select full-price Galaxy Watch purchases in the U.S., but the fine print matters. The promotion applies to Galaxy Watch Ultra, Galaxy Watch8 Classic, Galaxy Watch8, and Galaxy Watch7 purchases made through Samsung.com or the Shop Samsung App from May 4 through July 19, 2026, while supplies last. Samsung lists the scale at $129.95 MSRP, but the offer excludes trade-ins and cannot be combined with other Samsung, carrier, retailer, coupon,...

Google Messages' app manifest now contains a receiver component explicitly tied to custom backgrounds, and that single implementation detail separates today's findings from the text strings that surfaced last month. Current reporting indicates the feature remains unavailable to users, but the engineering work has moved to a qualitatively different stage. This is credible beta evidence of a feature under active development, not a launch announcement.

If you're wondering whether the Motorola Razr is waterproof, the short answer is no. That applies to every model in the lineup. The more useful question is whether your specific Razr is meaningfully water-resistant, and that depends entirely on which generation you own.

Replit shipped its first iPhone update in four months as of mid-May, and the delay had nothing to do with the product. The Replit iPhone app update is live after an App Store review issue blocked releases since March, holding back Agent 4, parallel agent support, team collaboration via merge flows, and cross-workspace project viewing from every iPhone user. Agent 4 was unveiled in March; the features are only reaching iOS now.

Before touching a single setting, open Settings > Battery > Battery usage and review the breakdown by both apps and system processes. A misbehaving app can consume more power than all the Google Pixel battery drain settings you're about to change, and no system tweak will fix that (Android Police reported this in early 2026). Check it after a full day of normal use, not right after charging.

The most revealing detail about Trump Mobile's flag problem isn't that the logo is wrong. It's that it was right first.

Netflix began rolling out a redesigned mobile app on April 30, 2026 in nine countries, including the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, built around a new vertical video swipe feed called Clips. Netflix says the redesign is meant to capture more daytime viewing and help members discover titles faster, Variety reported. The company plans to roll out the update to the rest of the world "in the months to come."

Google is rolling out a change to the search bar that anchors its mobile apps: the prompt that read "Search" now reads "Ask Google," the "G" logo has been replaced by a plus menu, and that menu opens into AI Mode, image search, and AI image generation, 9to5Google reported late last month. The Android Google search bar update covers the Pixel Launcher, both search bars inside the Google app, and the Google for iOS app. It is rolling out now, not complete.

The Delhi High Court told Apple on Saturday to hand over financial data to India's competition regulator while barring the regulator from issuing any final ruling before July 15. The order in the Apple antitrust case in India resolves nothing about whether Apple will ultimately face a penalty. It settles only the immediate procedural standoff, giving Apple's parallel constitutional challenge time to develop before the Competition Commission of India can act.