News and Updates from Gadget Hacks: Page 10

Samsung Electronics crossed the $1 trillion market cap threshold today, becoming only the second East Asian company ever to reach that level alongside TSMC. Its stock surged 12% in a single session. But the Samsung $1 trillion valuation rests on something more specific than AI leadership and more precarious.

Apple's emergency bid to pause the Ninth Circuit's mandate in its dispute with Epic Games has failed. The Supreme Court denied the Apple Epic Games Supreme Court stay request without explanation, the mandate issued Tuesday, and the case now returns to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in the Northern District of California, per Apple's May 4 filing under docket 25A1213.

Chrome has been quietly downloading a file called weights.bin onto eligible computers, with no prompt, no notification, and no indication the transfer is happening, The Verge and Android Authority both reported today. The file ranges from 3GB to 4GB. Users are discovering it only after noticing unexplained drops in available disk space.

Google hasn't officially announced the Fitbit Air yet. The subscription built around it is already live across three storefronts.

Google updated AI Overviews in late January 2026, adding a follow-up prompt that routes users directly into a full back-and-forth exchange in AI Mode, with the original query context preserved. The change converts what was a one-shot summary into a handoff point for longer research sessions. AI Overviews are used by more than a billion people and have required no sign-in since March 2025, putting this new conversational entry point in front of a mass-market audience with no login barrier, per...

Energizer has released a CR2032 coin cell battery that combines child-safety features with verified AirTag compatibility, closing a gap that has existed since Apple first pushed for safer batteries in 2022 but couldn't fully resolve at the product level. The battery matters not because it's a new SKU, but because it's the first widely available option that makes Apple's child-safety intent actually workable in households where AirTags and small children share the same space.

Alleged CAD files surfaced this week showing the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max with a top cutout described as "much smaller" than the pill-shaped opening Apple has used since the iPhone 14 Pro, GSMArena reported. A tipster on X claims to have received the files, which, if genuine, most likely passed through a case manufacturer that received them from Apple, per GSMArena. The leak doesn't confirm anything on its own.

Apple's iOS 26.5 beta, seeded to developers and public beta testers earlier this month, enables end-to-end encryption for one-on-one RCS conversations between iPhones and Android devices. The encryption appears on by default. No settings change required. But the protection only applies when the Android side is running a messaging client that supports the GSMA's cross-platform encryption standard, and the Messages app will show whether any given conversation qualifies.

The most frustrating thing a smart camera can do isn't miss a motion event. It's sending you an alert, then showing you a dead screen when you tap it.

Chinese outlets ZOL and Sina Tech reported in mid-April that Xiaomi had begun offering a Xiaomi battery upgrade service through Xiaomi Mall for select devices in China. This isn't a standard Xiaomi battery replacement service that restores a worn cell to its original capacity. It installs a higher-capacity unit than the phone ever shipped with. For Xiaomi 13 Ultra owners, that means swapping the stock 5,000mAh cell for a 5,500mAh replacement through official channels.

Scott Forstall Returns to Apple Park After 13-Year Absence

AI Porn Startup Sues Apple Over App Store Rules Enforcement Gap

Bose is reportedly developing a new line of AirPlay-enabled speakers under a revived Lifestyle brand targeting buyers who want premium home audio with iPhone compatibility but without a full smart-home commitment. No official announcement, product page, or spec sheet has been released. If the reports prove accurate, the move would put Bose in direct competition with Apple's $299 HomePod, in the same segment Apple recommitted to in early 2023 after a two-year absence from the full-size market.

Seven years of software support is the number both Samsung and Google lead with now. It's on the spec sheets, in the press releases, woven into the sales pitch for devices like the Galaxy S24 Ultra and the latest Pixel phones. The implication is straightforward enough: buy this phone, and we'll keep it running well for most of a decade.

Google this week added approximate location sharing to Chrome on Android, giving users a third option when websites request their location: a general area instead of precise coordinates. For use cases that need only regional context, that removes a friction point that has pushed users toward over-sharing for years.

Google Keep is showing internal signs of lock screen note-taking support for the second time in two years. Android Authority uncovered hidden settings in Keep version 5.26.181.01.90 this week that reference the feature directly but enabling them produces only a "Coming soon." screen. Nothing works yet. An official release timeline remains unknown.

Xbox CEO Asha Sharma announced Tuesday that Microsoft is ending Xbox Copilot AI on mobile and halting all console development of the assistant, confirmed the same day by an Xbox spokesperson to PC Gamer. The mobile version is being wound down; console development has stopped entirely. No replacement product has been announced.

Firmware tied to model number SM-L345U, which earlier reporting linked to the Galaxy Watch 9, appeared on a Samsung-hosted US test server in late March. Tipster Mohammed Khatri first flagged the listing, and Android Authority, Android Police, and SamMobile each reported it the same day. Samsung has not publicly announced the Galaxy Watch 9, making this Samsung Galaxy Watch 9 test server leak the strongest public sign yet that the device is in active testing.

Apple is adding Pride Luminance to watchOS 26.5, a new analog watch face that, for the first time in the annual Pride series, lets users pull background colors directly from specific Pride flags. Release candidates shipped yesterday, with the public update expected in the second week of May, per MacRumors.

Bloomberg's reporting this week on Apple Intel Samsung chip talks confirms what supply chain watchers have suspected for months: Apple is in early-stage discussions with both Intel and Samsung about producing some of its M-series chips, marking the first concrete move toward ending its decade-long exclusivity with TSMC. No orders have been placed. No products are affected. But Apple's posture has shifted, and that shift matters.

Apple's April compliance deadline with Brazil's antitrust authority CADE has arrived, and iOS 26.5 RC is the software release that fits the window. Brazilian iPhone users are set to gain access to alternative app marketplaces and external payment options. What they are not getting is the ability to download apps directly from a developer's website and that distinction matters more than most coverage of iOS 26.5 RC app sideloading in Brazil has acknowledged.

T-Mobile has extended its Starlink-powered satellite service beyond US borders for the first time, enabling T-Satellite dead-zone coverage in Canada and New Zealand. The expansion, confirmed last week by PCMag and reflected in an updated T-Mobile coverage page, works through Rogers in Canada and One NZ in New Zealand, both existing SpaceX partners. T-Mobile didn't need to build new infrastructure; it layered roaming agreements on top of satellite coverage those carriers already had.

For years, buying a NXTPAPER phone meant accepting a deal: a display that was softer, less glary, and lower in blue-light output than a standard OLED screen, in exchange for the contrast, color richness, and brightness that make OLED worth having. That trade-off kept NXTPAPER as a niche product with a loyal but limited audience. This piece breaks down the TCL NXTPAPER vs OLED question directly: what the old LCD-based version couldn't solve, what the new AMOLED version changes, and where the...

Spotify launched lossless streaming in September 2025, four years after first promising it. For subscribers who stream at home over Wi-Fi, the upgrade was seamless. For anyone who depends on downloaded tracks, the rollout left a quiet problem in place: enabling lossless does nothing to audio files already stored on a device. Older downloads stay at whatever compressed quality they were originally saved, and Spotify has not announced a fix. Streaming sounds one way; the phone plays another.

A new leak on the Google Tensor G6 chip arrived last week with a pattern Pixel watchers will recognize immediately. The Tensor G6, expected inside the Pixel 11 series this summer, reportedly gets Arm's newest CPU cores and a new Titan M3 security chip, while carrying a GPU whose closest publicly documented ancestor dates to 2021. Google has confirmed none of it.

The iPad 12 release date is still unconfirmed, but the product itself reportedly is. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has described an entry-level iPad with an A18 chip as "ready to go" and still on track for a first-half 2026 launch. As of May 1, it still hasn't shipped. The best available reporting points to a spring 2026 software release window, though the exact version is unconfirmed.

The Trump Mobile T1 Phone now has its clearest sign of life yet: federal records show a smartphone filed under the trade name "T1" was tested in late 2025 and granted FCC authorization in January 2026, the first official confirmation via a regulatory filing that a T1-branded device was physically tested, according to The Verge in March.

Apple's iPhone 18 Pro is shaping up to arrive with a meaningfully different front panel. Face ID components are expected to begin moving beneath the display, shrinking the Dynamic Island and replacing today's pill-shaped cutout with a rumored single small hole-punch camera. That's a genuine shift. It is not, despite some headlines, an all-screen iPhone, and the quad-curved display circulating in some rumors has no sourcing to support it for this model.

Google's I/O 2026 countdown isn't a static timer. It's a suite of five browser-based games built with Gemini, with all the source code published in Google AI Studio for anyone to inspect, modify, and fork. The games are live now, and the conference opens May 19 at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View.

Reports are circulating that Apple has removed the 256GB storage option from the Mac mini lineup, pushing the entry-level price from $599 to $799. That specific change is not confirmed by the research underlying this piece. What is confirmed: the M4 Mac mini launched in late October 2024 at $599 with 256GB as the base storage tier. Recent reporting indicates Apple has removed the 256GB configuration, with the new base model at $799 and 512GB storage, though Apple has not formally announced the...

Perplexity has shifted its Personal Computer from dedicated spare hardware to software running directly on a user's own Mac. The Mac-native version reads local files, works across active applications, and executes multi-step workflows in the background. No spare device required. The rollout began in mid-April, restricted to Perplexity Max subscribers at $200 per month, with wider access going first to waitlist members

The same YouTube symptoms can come from three different bugs. A frozen spinner, a black screen, a "Content no longer available" error, any of these could point to a timing race in WebKit's codec pipeline, a blocked-request loop in Brave, or a rendering failure in Zen Browser. The surface looks identical. The causes are not, and neither are the fixes.

Wear OS 6.1 Time Zone Feature: What It Does and Who Gets It

State of Decay 3 Development Update: Progress Confirmed, Release Date Still Unknown

Samsung Galaxy Buds Able Spotted in App Code With Unusual Model Number

Google Home Workspace Support Update Adds Home Sharing and Nest Migration

Apple Refurbished M4 iPad Pro Explained: Is the Discount Worth It?

Apple's fiscal second quarter results, reported two years ago this week, produced a string of genuine records: an all-time Services revenue high, the largest share buyback in company history, a new earnings-per-share record for the March quarter. Morningstar's verdict on the Apple Q2 earnings analysis was blunt: "a weak fiscal 2024, but optimism for 2025." That framing tells you everything about how analysts actually read the quarter. The results beat consensus on revenue, EPS, Services, Mac,...

Two independent sources from early 2025 flag Straight Talk's customer service in the same hedged but pointed terms: the carrier "already had mixed customer service, but it may be getting even worse." The J.D. Power 2025 U.S. Wireless Customer Care Study and FCC document FCC-24-136A1 don't confirm each other's underlying basis for that characterization, and neither public version includes carrier-level scores or complaint counts. What they do is land the same cautionary language in two separate...

Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition arrives natively on Mac through Steam on May 28, handled by specialist porting studio Feral Interactive, with an App Store release planned for later in 2026, Engadget reported today. Until now, the official support page listed the game as Windows-only and pointed Mac users toward Parallels as a workaround, per Age of Empires support documentation. That guidance is now obsolete.