News and Updates from Gadget Hacks: Page 9

Motorola Razr 2026 Price Increase: What Buyers Need to See

Apple Pro Display XDR FDA clearance: what clinicians must verify

Apple's camera-equipped AirPods Pro are reportedly close to production, but Apple already delayed them once because Siri wasn't ready. That single fact tells you almost everything about this product. If Apple can make Siri see and respond reliably through a pair of earbuds, it may have found the first AI wearable people would actually use daily. If not, the cameras become a gimmick attached to an intimacy problem, and that's a harder thing to walk back than simply being late.

Apple has acquired MotionVFX, the Warsaw-based plugin developer that spent 15 years building the color grading, 3D workflows, and AI tools that Final Cut Pro lacked natively. The MotionVFX acquisition reportedly brings 70 employees into Apple and is aimed at attracting more subscribers to Creator Studio, the $12.99/month bundle Apple launched in January. Apple declined to comment and has not disclosed deal terms.

Google's Pixel Screenshots app has a desktop build. Researchers activated a version through the Play Store today whose versioning explicitly marks it for desktop use, not a phone app stretched to fit a larger screen.

Discord launched Nitro Rewards today, and the headline feature is free access to the base tier of Xbox Game Pass bundled into the existing $9.99/month Nitro subscription. The Discord Nitro Xbox Game Pass bundle covers more than 50 PC and Xbox games and 10 hours of monthly cloud streaming, TechCrunch reported at launch. For Nitro subscribers who don't already pay for Game Pass, that's a genuine addition. It's also a deliberately constrained one.

Google added Pixel 10 Comfort View to its flagship lineup two months agoa s part of the March 2026 Pixel Drop, a display feature designed specifically for users whose eyes struggle with the vivid, high-saturation rendering that modern OLED panels are built to deliver. The mode uses refined color filtering to pull back the intensity of very bright or oversaturated colors. It's available on the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10 Pro Fold, but not the Pixel 10a. The independent...

Tim Cook is heading to Beijing this week as part of a group of top U.S. executives traveling with President Trump to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. A White House official confirmed Cook's inclusion in the delegation alongside Tesla CEO Elon Musk, BlackRock's Larry Fink, and Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg, according to CNBC. No Apple-specific agenda has been reported for the trip.

iOS 26.5 beta 1 dropped on time in late March, and iOS 26.5 Apple Intelligence is expanding into China for the first time, with Notification Forwarding broadening beyond the EU, AppleInsider reported. What the update doesn't include are the personalized Siri features Apple announced nearly two years ago: personal context awareness, rich in-app actions, and onscreen awareness.

Trump Mobile has not shipped a single confirmed T1 smartphone to any customer, and updated legal terms published last month make clear the company does not guarantee the device will ever be produced or made available for purchase. The Trump Mobile T1 smartphone delay has now stretched nearly a year past the original delivery promise. An estimated 590,000 people have each paid $100 toward the device, a figure derived from reported deposit counts rather than any financial disclosure by Trump...

Samsung's headline number from the S26 launch was a 29% sales increase over the S25 series in the first three weeks. The number that tells the more interesting story is 71%. According to Counterpoint Research data reported by Android Police last month, seven out of every ten U.S. buyers who purchased a Galaxy S26 in that window chose the Ultra, a share that grew by 10 percentage points compared to the S25 Ultra's cut of its own lineup. Galaxy S26 Ultra sales success was visible even before...

Justice Elena Kagan denied Apple's request to pause contempt proceedings in the Supreme Court Apple Epic Games dispute this week, and she did it before Apple had even filed a reply brief, without referring the matter to the full court. SCOTUSblog reported that the speed of the denial suggested the application was not a close call.

Qualcomm this week announced the Snapdragon 6 Gen 5 and 4 Gen 5, two chips designed to push capabilities previously limited to flagship devices into affordable Android phones. The 4 Gen 5 is the larger generational jump: Qualcomm claims a 77% GPU performance gain and says it's the first 4-series chip capable of 90fps gaming, per Notebookcheck. The 6 Gen 5 leads with connectivity: Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0, and AI camera features, though it steps back on ISP hardware relative to its predecessor.

A peer-reviewed clinical study has validated the Galaxy Watch6's ability to predict vasovagal syncope up to five minutes before an episode occurs. That's a real finding, published this week in a credible cardiology journal. It is not, however, evidence that the watch on your wrist can warn you before you faint and Samsung's "world-first breakthrough" announcement does little to draw that distinction.

Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 6 Gen 4 last year, targeting budget Android phones with a set of capabilities that previously required spending significantly more. The chip delivers a 29% GPU performance boost, an 11% CPU improvement, support for 144Hz displays at FHD+ resolution, and a dedicated NPU with on-device AI features, Android Authority previously reported. HONOR, realme, and OPPO are named as the first launch partners, with devices expected in the coming months, per the same report.

Apple is reportedly adding a dedicated Siri mode to the Camera app in iOS 27 and overhauling Photos with generative AI editing tools. The iOS 27 Camera app Siri mode would make Visual Intelligence a named, tappable option in the camera interface for the first time, per MacRumors, while Photos gains three new AI editing tools across iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Both updates are rumored to be announced at WWDC beginning June 8. However, none of this has been confirmed by Apple.

Google and Fitbit have acknowledged a permission reset bug that is causing Pixel Watch SpO2 and skin temperature tracking to stop working for some users, and the fix is not as simple as flipping a toggle. The permissions page on affected devices shows no app requesting access to those sensors, leaving users with no visible way to restore them. Both the PixelCommunity and FitbitHelpCommunity accounts confirmed the issue this week and said work is underway.

Instagram has launched a native iPad app, designed for bigger screens, 15 years after the platform debuted on iPhone. The app is free on the App Store for any iPad running iPadOS 15.1 or later.

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Blizzard is launching a Diablo Immortal StarCraft crossover next week, and it comes packaged with something most limited-time events skip entirely: a permanent change to the game's gear system. The Battle for Beyond event runs May 13 through June 10, bringing faction-themed combat mechanics, a new Legendary Gem, and competitive leaderboards. Shipping in the same update is a permanent expansion of gear-slot access for every player, according to Blizzard's announcement published this week.

Spotify just launched Personal Podcasts, a feature that lets third-party AI agents generate private audio episodes and save them directly to a user's Spotify library for cross-device playback. The episodes appear in Your Library alongside music and public podcasts, but aren't available to other Spotify users.

Google plans to let Fit users move their historical data into the rebranded Fitbit app, Google Health, with the Google Fit to Google Health data migration option expected sometime before the end of this year, Android Authority reported. The tool does not exist yet, Google has not set a specific launch date, and the company has not specified which data types will transfer or how the process will work. Google has indicated Fit will be phased out later in 2026, but has not announced an exact...

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OnePlus launched the Ace 6 Ultra in China last week, adding an 8,000mAh battery and 120W fast charging to a gaming-focused phone that also ships with a 165Hz display, a dedicated touch chip for reduced input latency, and a companion controller. The OnePlus Ace 6 Ultra battery sits between the Nord 6's 9,000mAh cell and the OnePlus 15's 7,300mAh unit, now extended into the gaming segment. No global launch is confirmed.

Google hasn't launched the Pixel 11 yet, but the chip destined for the Pixel 12 already has an internal name. A Pixel 12 Tensor G7 leak published today identified the processor's codename months before its predecessor reaches consumers, and while that single data point reveals nothing about performance, it suggests Google is tracking future Tensor work well ahead of any public launch. That's the useful signal here.

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