News and Updates from Gadget Hacks: Page 25

Android 17 Beta 3, released this week, takes on one of Android's most stubborn camera problems: the gap between what the stock camera app can do and what every other app is stuck with. Google has added support for Android 17 vendor-defined camera extensions, a mechanism that lets phone makers expose custom camera processing pipelines, things like Super Resolution or proprietary AI enhancements, to any third-party app that queries for them, according to Google's official Android 17 release notes...

Australia's internet regulator is now considering one of the most aggressive digital policy moves we've seen yet—potentially forcing Apple to block AI apps that don't implement proper age verification systems. This development represents a significant escalation from the country's groundbreaking social media restrictions, as Australia became the first nation to ban social media use for children under 16. The Australian government is now expanding its youth protection framework to include app...

Vivo X200 Pro: The Telephoto Revolution That's Redefining Mobile Photography

Apple is rebuilding Siri from the ground up. The new version, code-named Campos, is designed to function as a full AI chatbot embedded across iPhone, iPad, and Mac, placing it in direct competition with ChatGPT and Claude. That much is the product story. The platform story is more revealing: as Apple broadens access to third-party chatbots, it's doing so in ways that preserve every structural advantage Siri currently holds. This iOS 27 Siri AI chatbot integration is less about opening Apple's...

When Apple launched Creator Studio in late January 2026, it came with an explicit footnote: Freeform support was coming later. iOS 26.4, released this week, closes that gap. By adding Freeform, Apple has now brought Creator Studio perks to the last major first-party productivity app that was still missing them, transforming the subscription from a professional software bundle into something with broader reach across Apple's entire creative and productivity suite.

The Dynamic Island is surviving the iPhone 18 Pro. After months of conflicting reports about top-left punch-hole cameras, full under-display Face ID, and the outright elimination of Apple's pill-shaped cutout, the strongest available evidence points to a device that looks nearly identical to current models. Two days ago, MacRumors cited Weibo leaker Fixed Focus Digital reporting that Apple's under-display development is hitting snags, with the iPhone 18 Pro's front panel potentially unchanged...

The tech world is buzzing about Apple's latest hardware announcements, and for good reason. While the company has built its reputation on premium pricing, recent developments suggest a potential shift in strategy that could reshape the laptop market entirely. The rumored $599 MacBook Neo, alongside updates to the iPad Air and MacBook lineup, represents more than just new product releases—it signals Apple's recognition that the computing landscape is evolving rapidly.

Vivaldi's iPhone and iPad app now displays a persistent second row of tabs when a stack is active. The tabs inside that stack appear in a dedicated bar beneath the main one, always one tap away, with no modal switcher and no expand-collapse animation. The feature is called Two-Level Tab Stack, and Android users have had it since 2021. iOS gets it in version 7.9, released today, five years later, according to Neowin.

When Bluetooth breaks on a Pixel, the standard advice toggle it off, reboot, forget and re-pair works fine for a confused pairing. It does nothing for a failure where Bluetooth won't turn on at all, or where the radio stack crashes every time it tries to initialize. Those aren't the same problem. They need different responses.

A vulnerability in Samsung's Exynos firmware can crash an affected phone remotely, without authentication, and without the device owner doing anything at all. That part is documented. The claim spreading across social media that anyone can reboot a Galaxy phone simply by sending a link goes further than the available evidence supports. Here's what the research on CVE-2025-62817 actually shows, what remains unconfirmed, and what Exynos Galaxy owners should do right now.

Apple Maps Visited Places in iOS 26: What It Does and How It Works

From UK age prompts to California's 2027 mandate, smartphone operating systems are becoming the new chokepoint for age verification. Apple is shaping what that looks like.

Apple's China smartphone sales jumped 23% in the first nine weeks of 2026. Over roughly the same January-through-early-March window, the broader Chinese smartphone market fell 4% year-on-year. Both numbers come from the same Counterpoint data published six days ago. They are not contradictory. They describe the same phenomenon: Apple taking share in a pool that is actively contracting.

macOS 26.4 ships with a new security popup that fires when a user pastes a command into Terminal. Based on developer reports following the release, the prompt appears to halt execution until the user explicitly confirms, and early testing suggests it's enabled by default in the native Terminal application, per Apple's release notes published this week. No configuration appears to be required, consistent with Apple's pattern of shipping security features in an on-by-default state, per Apple's...

Chrome just posted its highest-ever score on the Speedometer 3.1 browser benchmark. Google claimed the result as evidence that Chrome is getting meaningfully faster. Downstream coverage stretched that into something else: the claim that Android now outpaces iPhone for web browsing. Those are two different claims, and only one of them holds up.

Google shipped Android Canary 2603 last week, and the most significant change isn't a new Quick Settings toggle or a blur effect. The build, confirmed dropped on March 19 for Pixel 6 and later devices including the Pixel Tablet, delivers a modernized Linux Terminal interface with expanded advanced settings, per Android Authority. Google hasn't published a granular changelog of every Terminal UI tweak, but the new build visibly refreshes the Terminal's layout and surfaces more advanced controls...

If you use Chrome on Android, or any app that relies on WebView for web rendering, your encrypted traffic already has a layer of Android 17 quantum-safe security active since late 2024, silently, with no setting to enable. That is the most important fact about Google post-quantum security for Android: the most significant change has already shipped, and most users never noticed it.

The Unihertz Titan 2 Elite Kickstarter campaign went live yesterday with the strongest hardware specs the company has ever put behind a physical keyboard and several critical questions still unresolved on the campaign page. Pricing, final RAM configuration, ship date, and US carrier compatibility were all unconfirmed at launch, per Gadget Hacks (yesterday). Whether you should pledge money today depends entirely on which of those gaps get filled by the time you read this.

Android Auto has been failing for drivers across Pixel, Samsung, and Motorola devices since around March 18. As of March 24, Google had not officially acknowledged the problem or confirmed any fix. No verified rollout exists. If your Android Auto keeps disconnecting or won't connect at all, here's what the reporting actually shows, what workarounds are worth trying, and what to watch for when a fix does arrive.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 sit in a crowded segment of the wireless earbud market, and on paper they belong there. Active noise cancellation, a compact case, Samsung ecosystem integration the feature list is credible for the price tier. None of that is the issue.