News and Updates from Gadget Hacks

Beta code inside tvOS 27 and Bloomberg reporting suggest Apple is preparing Siri AI for the Apple TV ecosystem, but neither source confirms which existing models will support it. Whether the second- and third-generation Apple TV 4K will run the redesigned assistant, or whether it's reserved for hardware Apple hasn't announced yet, remains an open question.

Google Messages beta code contains a hidden "Select chats to pin" screen that caps selections at six conversations, displaying a "Limit reached" message if a user tries to add another after six have been selected, according to Nerds Chalk's APK teardown, reported August 3.

Google released Android 17 QPR2 Beta 1 on July 20, and the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro weren't included. The release notes were direct: "Pixel 6 and 6Pro users will not be getting this OTA since the device will reach End of Life and Android 17 QPR1 beta series will be the last for these devices," Android Police reported at the time.

The Google Pixel 11 price increase lands the phone at $899 to start, essentially the same as Samsung's $899.99 Galaxy S26 and $100 above the iPhone 17's $799 starting price, according to Android Authority. For a phone line that built its reputation on undercutting Apple and Samsung, that's not a minor pricing update. It's the end of an era.

Samsung and Corning are reportedly developing a new self-healing surface coating for the next generation of Gorilla Armor, and industry watchers have connected it to the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

Apple released iOS 27 Public Beta 4 on Aug. 17, one week after Public Beta 3 and just hours after iOS 27 developer beta 6. Anyone with a compatible iPhone can get the update by enrolling in the Apple Beta Software Program.

Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S26 FE, turning an August 27 launch rumor into a confirmed product with a release date, price, and final specifications.

Installing iOS 27 next month may not hand you Siri AI on the spot. Beta evidence points to a four-step sequence: update, enable Apple Intelligence, join the iOS 27 Siri AI waitlist, then wait for a notification, according to 9to5Mac on August 25 and MacRumors on August 24.

Apple Maps ads are now live in the US and Canada. Ad delivery began on August 21, and Apple confirmed a few days later that the rollout would keep expanding over the coming weeks, according to 9to5Mac and PPC Land.

Code buried inside a macOS Tahoe 26.7 update shows how Apple's rumored Home Hub might figure out who's standing in front of it. The strings describe ambient sensing, built-in cameras, and possibly voice cues working together to verify a person's identity and then switch to that person's own profile. MacRumors reported the find, and AppleInsider spotted matching code in the same build, which it describes as a 26.7 release candidate.

Google has spent several generations narrowing the gap between its base and Pro Pixels, and this year the two phones sit closer together than ever. The Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro share the same Tensor G6 processor, and the Pro's starting RAM dropped from 16GB to 12GB, landing at the same figure as the base model, according to Android Authority.

Should you buy the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold? Early reviews from PCMag and iGeeksBlog put it head-to-head against Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8, and the verdict lands in a specific place: buy the Pixel for Google's software and camera approach, not because it's the stronger all-round foldable.

Samsung's Galaxy S26 Ultra was the best-selling Android phone of Q2 2026, finishing fourth among all smartphones sold worldwide, according to Counterpoint Research. It marks the first time an ultra-premium Android device has led Android sales in a June quarter.

Notability's calendar meeting recording feature launched on August 25, letting Mac and Windows users start a recording by tapping directly on a calendar event. Tap the event, and Notability opens a note ready for input while recording begins, according to 9to5Mac.

Apple's long-rumored Home Hub display is shaping up to be less a single shared screen and more a device that can serve personal content depending on who's using it.

Google Pixel Now Playing notifications could be coming back. A teardown of the latest Android System Intelligence build has turned up code suggesting the silent song-ID alerts may return, months after Google removed them and broke some third-party music tools in the process, according to Android Authority.

Apple shipped iOS 27 public beta 5 on August 24, alongside iPadOS 27 public beta 5, tvOS 27 public beta 5, and macOS Golden Gate public beta 5, making the latest builds available to anyone enrolled with a compatible device, according to MacRumors. Of the four, iOS 27 carries the bigger story: a rebuilt Siri that remains limited by hardware, language, region, and Apple's access waitlist.

The most interesting evidence for Apple's rumored home hub isn't a spec sheet. It's a home-screen system borrowed straight from the Apple Watch, and it does more to justify buying several units than any display resolution or chip upgrade could. That's the real story buried in this month's Apple HomePad rumors: not a bigger screen, but a smarter one.

The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 both start at roughly $1,900, putting them in unusually direct competition. At that price, the more useful question isn't which is cheaper, but what each gives you for flagship-foldable money.

On the ten biggest album releases measured by Spotify streams, US traffic fatalities averaged 139.1. On the surrounding comparison days, the average dropped to 120.9. That 18.2-death gap sits at the center of a music streaming traffic fatalities study built on an event-study comparison of release days against nearby control dates in an NBER working paper.

Samsung's next Ultra phone could tackle one of the most annoying parts of going without a screen protector: the tiny scratches that build up through everyday use. A new rumor claims Samsung and Corning are developing a self-healing surface coating that may appear on the Galaxy S27 Ultra.

A leaked build of Samsung's One UI 9.5 software reveals a feature called App Mirroring that could let Galaxy phone owners wirelessly access their phone's apps and notifications from a laptop screen.

Apple is drawing a hardware line in tvOS 27 for the first time in four years, cutting two older Apple TV models out of the update entirely (TechRadar, 2 months ago). But knowing whether your box makes the cut is only half the story. The more useful question, especially if you own one of the tvOS 27 compatible Apple TV models, is whether upgrading right now would actually get you anything.

Google Messages RCS issues have repeatedly shown up in two well-documented shapes: a "Setting up" screen that never finishes verifying a phone number, or a "carrier not supported" label that replaces RCS chat features outright.

Some Android Auto users trying to open Spotify on their car's display are hitting a wall instead of playback controls. The app throws up a message reading "Spotify isn't responding," with only two options: exit or keep waiting, according to a report Android Authority published Monday.

Preliminary settings text and pre-launch reporting describe a narrow trigger for HiLight, the rumored back-of-phone light feature headed to Google's Pixel 11 Pro: calls from favorite contacts, not notifications in general. That distinction separates a revival of the old blinking-LED notification light from something built directly on top of how Google Contacts already organizes your people, specifically its Favorites designation (9to5Google, 5 days ago).

Oppo is reportedly testing two 200MP rear cameras for the Find X10 Pro, including a 200MP main camera and a 200MP telephoto. A June 2026 leak attributed to Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station identifies the main camera as an unannounced Samsung ISOCELL HPC with a 1/1.3-inch optical format, alongside a 3MP multispectral sensor.

The Pixel 11 Tensor G6 TPU upgrade matters most in the moments when a feature can run locally instead of waiting on Google's servers. Google says the chip delivers 50% more compute power and runs up to 3.5x faster in certain workloads, a figure that's easy to overlook next to the phone's 120x zoom lens and its Gemini-powered camera tricks (Android Authority, published today). The TPU is one of the factors behind both of those flashier features, working alongside a new image processor and...

Coverage of the Google Pixel 11 launch event will follow the usual script: chip codenames, camera megapixels, a livestream countdown. The more revealing story about how Google actually treats Pixel owners already happened two months ago, when a routine software update quietly did more to define the brand than any keynote slide will.

Disney sues FCC over ABC broadcast licenses in a fight that boils down to one contested question: is an early license review ordinary oversight, or retaliation wearing a bureaucrat's hat?

Six months into the Galaxy S26's life, price has done something spec sheets never could: it has flipped the whole comparison on its head. SlashGear checked retail listings today and found the Galaxy S26 selling for $774.99 at Amazon and Best Buy, and for just $712.50 at Walmart, undercutting the $799 the Galaxy S25 charged at its own launch (SlashGear). Retail pricing shifts by the week, so treat those numbers as a snapshot rather than a promise, and check current listings before you buy. But...

Samsung has reportedly started development on two wide-format foldables targeting the Galaxy Z9 generation, reportedly planned for 2027, a Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 successor story that's already getting oversimplified in the retelling. The claim traces to South Korean outlet ETNews, relayed by Android Central and Android Authority. "Fold8" is Samsung's own shorthand for the phone most reviewers call the Galaxy Z Fold 8. Of the two devices described, only one carries a specific defining trait: an...

Scroll through enough short-form video, and it starts to look like a documented cultural pivot: teenagers ditching smartphones for flip phones, treating a five-minute conversation without checking a screen like a personal achievement, filming themselves making prolonged eye contact as if it were a rediscovered skill.

One UI 9.5 leaks have been surfacing this month in the form of screenshots, internal builds, and test-server activity, even as Samsung is still mid-rollout on One UI 9.

Android desktop mode on Android 16 can give a Pixel 9 Pro a PC-like external-display setup, at least for the parts that matter most: a big screen, a keyboard, and a mouse. Plug a Pixel 9 Pro running GrapheneOS into a dock, connect a monitor, and the cursor moves freely between the phone's own screen and the external display, extending it the way a laptop extends to a second monitor. That setup worked in a firsthand test on GrapheneOS build 2026032001, documented four months ago on Corions...

Most of the coverage around Google's new flagship is fixated on the Tensor G6 chip. That's fair; it's a real chip with real upgrades.

Type "use phone as a tape measure" into a search bar and dozens of apps promise to do exactly that. Android Authority decided to test the appetite behind that search: it asked readers which of four sensor-based toolbox jobs they'd actually hand to their phone.

iOS 27's Shared Albums update fixes a problem baked into the feature for years: shared photos and videos will no longer get compressed the moment they leave a personal library. The tradeoff is that new Shared Albums now count against the owner's iCloud storage, according to MacRumors and Trusted Reviews, reversing a setup that let people share thousands of images without touching their plan. The change is rolling out now, with iOS 27 in public beta ahead of a full release expected alongside new...

Waze points are mainly a visible score: something to check on a profile and compare against other Wazers, not something to spend. Open a Waze profile and progress information shows up in two different places: a point total below the username, and a level plus a set of badges filed under a separate tab called Achievements. It's tempting to assume a formula ties all of it together, so many points per report, a badge every few hundred miles, but the Help pages reviewed for this article don't...

Two reviews of the same phone landed within a day of each other this week, and they read like they're describing different products. MakeUseOf calls the Pixel 11 Pro Fold "the Google foldable I've always wanted", while The Verge says it "feels like the end of an era." Both verdicts hold up. They're just answering different questions, and untangling why is the point of this Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review.