Gadget Hacks: Page 5

Rumors suggest the iPhone 18 Pro will look almost identical to its predecessor. That's where most of the easy consensus ends. The upgrade case for Apple's fall 2026 Pro lineup isn't about what you'll see on first glance it's about what you'll feel over a full day of use. Three specific rumored improvements, each targeting something you interact with constantly, could make the 18 Pro one of the more consequential Pro upgrades for day-to-day use in several years: longer battery life engineered...

Netflix told advertisers Wednesday that its ad business is entering a new phase and for most subscribers on the ad-supported plan, the changes are not what the headlines imply. More ads on Netflix does not mean longer commercial breaks in the middle of Bridgerton. It means more countries, more live-event inventory, new ad surfaces, and smarter targeting. Whether Netflix ads are increasing next year depends almost entirely on what you watch.

Light has announced a developer program that will let people create tools for the Light Phone III, bringing curated third-party app support to its deliberately stripped-down device. Light and Engadget describe a target timeline: Light says developer access begins in May 2026, Engadget reports the SDK should be ready in June, submitted-tool vetting is expected in August or September, and the user-facing platform is targeted for October. How Light enforces its principles once external submissions...

Britain's Competition and Markets Authority has today opened a formal investigation into Microsoft's business software ecosystem, examining whether Microsoft holds strategic market status in that sector and whether it can use that position to limit customer choice. The probe will also consider whether Microsoft's software licensing practices are reducing competition in cloud services and how AI competitors are able to integrate with Microsoft's business software, according to the CMA's...

When a London man's iPhone 15 Pro was snatched by e-bike thieves, he watched Find My trace it 9,650 kilometres across the world, from London to Kowloon and into Shenzhen, within a single week, Moneycontrol reported last year. The phone stayed locked the entire journey. It was still worth money when it arrived.

Exceeding the Google account 15GB storage limit locks your Gmail, freezes Drive uploads, and stops photo backups all at once. What it does not do, at least not right away, is delete anything. That distinction is worth understanding, because Google's own warning system tends to blur the two.

Leaked battery listings suggest the Galaxy Z Fold 8 could ship with an advertised 5,000mAh dual-cell battery, ending a five-generation capacity freeze that has dogged Samsung's book-style foldable since 2021. The Galaxy Z Fold 8 battery upgrade would mark real progress for the line. It would also leave Samsung roughly 1,660mAh behind where Honor already is.

Two new CarPlay audio apps arrived this week, and they solve entirely different problems. Suno lets you play back music you've already generated with AI on your iPhone. Zeno Radio streams radio from around the world and lets you browse by genre, country, and region. Update either app to the latest version and it appears on your CarPlay dashboard automatically, per 9to5Mac.

Amazon's head of devices and services, Panos Panay, addressed new Amazon Fire Phone 2 rumors this week in a Financial Times interview and stopped well short of a denial. Asked directly whether Amazon was building another smartphone, Panay said a flat "no" would be "accurate" but also "misleading." Reuters-sourced reporting from two months ago adds context: an internal Amazon team is already exploring a mobile device concept, codenamed "Transformer," built around Alexa Plus.

Apple's Liquid Glass design language has received an Art Directors Club award, institutional recognition that puts the most sweeping visual overhaul Apple has shipped since iOS 7 alongside work judged on craft and conceptual ambition. The Apple Liquid Glass design award confirms the redesign is being taken seriously in professional design circles. It does not resolve whether the design actually works on the devices people carry every day.

Apple's MacBook Neo triggered supply strain almost immediately after becoming available March 11, 2026, following its March 4 announcement. Within weeks, demand had significantly exceeded expectations, prompting Apple to raise production orders and shift more manufacturing volume to Foxconn, Digitimes reported in April 2026. Tim Culpan reported in his Culpium newsletter, according to 9to5Mac, that Apple now plans roughly 10 million MacBook Neo units, about twice its initial order, requiring...

Spotify made two video podcast announcements today, and they are not the same announcement. The first is live now: the company has activated its Distribution API for five third-party hosting platforms, giving creators on those platforms direct access to Spotify video distribution and Partner Program revenue without switching hosts. The second is a forward commitment: Spotify for Creators and Megaphone will add Spotify Apple HLS video podcast support later in 2026, built in coordination with...

Google treats AI Overviews the same way it treats knowledge panels: as a core Search feature that cannot be turned off. That same support page acknowledges, without much ceremony, that "AI Overviews can and will make mistakes." So you're getting a feature you didn't ask for, and it isn't guaranteed to be accurate.

Android users can already choose where new passkeys get stored. Moving the ones already inside Google Password Manager to another provider is a different story and that capability does not exist yet.

Strava updated its iPhone app today to enable AirPods Pro 3 support, reading heart rate data from the earbuds directly into recorded workouts. The update requires iOS 18 and AirPods Pro 3, works on iPhone with or without an Apple Watch, and is rolling out now.

Apple is working out how to bring agentic AI apps into the App Store without dismantling the review system that makes the platform defensible, AppleInsider reported. The internal debate, those sources say, is less about whether to open the platform than how to contain what gets in. The most capable AI agents — according to current industry reporting — the kind that write code, spawn programs, and act autonomously across a device, are exactly what App Review was designed to prevent. That tension...

Code embedded in the latest Google Translate Android update suggests that Google is building offline support for Live Translate, its real-time spoken conversation feature. Right now, attempting to use Google Translate's live translation feature offline throws an error. But that may be about to change, as per reports.

Samsung Upgraded PDF Scanner Comes to Older Flagships With One UI 8.5

Sony Xperia 1 VIII Leaked Renders Show Camera Overhaul and Bigger Telephoto

How much is AMC+? Plans, prices, and free trials

Samsung Certified Re-Newed Galaxy Z Fold 7 and Flip 7 Cost More Than New Right Now

YouTube TV Customizable Multiview: What's Changing and What's Not

Netflix's ad-supported plan now accounts for 60% of new sign-ups in markets where it's available, and the company expects ad revenue to double to $3 billion this year, according to its Q1 shareholder letter, reported by Adweek last month. That's not a coincidence it's a causal chain. The ad tier is pulling in subscribers; those subscribers generate inventory; that inventory is filling fast.

Google is pulling Groups, Community Feed, direct messages, and badges from the Fitbit app this month, replacing them with a Gemini-based AI coach available at a higher price point. The Fitbit app social features removed in this transition are not returning, according to reporting from 9to5Google and Gadgets & Wearables last week. The app itself automatically updates to Google Health starting May 19, with no new download required, Google announced last week.

Apple has released AirPods Pro 3 firmware update 8B40, and the official changelog covers it in five words: "bug fixes and other improvements." The new build replaces 8B39, which arrived in late March 2026 for AirPods Pro 3, AirPods Pro 2, and AirPods 4.

Spotify launched "Spotify 20: Your Party of the Year(s)" yesterday, giving every user, free or premium, access to lifetime listening data the platform has never surfaced before. The feature went live as part of the company's 20th anniversary campaign and is available now in the mobile app. It's a different product than Wrapped, not an extension of it, and that distinction matters before you go looking for yours.

Thirty-five years ago today, Apple shipped an operating system that reset three assumptions Mac users had lived with since 1984: that the computer ran one application at a time, operated in isolation from other machines, and handled documents as static, standalone objects. The System 7 Mac release on May 13, 1991, dismantled all three. It was the most dramatic change to the classic Mac OS since the original Macintosh launched, according to InfoWorld, and the clearest evidence for that judgment...

Mystic Leaks has shared footage from an early Android build showing Google may be adding a full manual color picker to the Pixel's Wallpaper & style app, Android Authority and 9to5Google reported this week. The Pixel Material You color controls shown in the leak would let users choose any custom accent color directly, replacing a system that has generated palettes automatically from wallpaper since Android 12.

Apple plans to transform Siri from a voice command shortcut into a persistent AI layer running through search, the keyboard, third-party apps, and the Dynamic Island. According to Bloomberg reporting relayed by MacRumors this week, the iOS 27 Siri redesign will give the assistant the ability to answer open-ended questions drawing on web results, read what's on your screen, pull context from messages and photos, and complete multi-step tasks across apps. By all accounts, it's the biggest change...

The smartphone industry's upgrade pitch for the past two years has leaned heavily on artificial intelligence and folding screens. Consumers, when surveyed directly, are largely unmoved by both. A smartphone upgrade survey covering foldables and AI features makes this gap between what gets marketed and what gets bought about as stark as data gets, and understanding it tells you more about the next upgrade cycle than any product launch keynote.

Microsoft has disclosed internal engineering data showing File Explorer launches faster after being migrated to a newer UI framework, part of a structured initiative called Windows K2. The company hopes to push the changes out of development testing "soon," XDA Developers reported yesterday, covering Microsoft's own engineering disclosures. The Windows 11 performance improvements are real and measurable though independent benchmarks have not yet verified how the numbers translate across...

Google I/O 2026 runs May 19 and 20 as a free livestreamed event, with keynotes and sessions open online, per the official Google I/O site. Two questions dominate the pre-conference evidence: whether Gemini actually landed on the smartwatches, cars, and TVs Google committed to a year ago, and how prominently Android XR which received its most substantial platform update six weeks before the conference figures into the keynote.

Two battery complaints. Two different problems. One conversation that almost always mixes them up.

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Tim Cook's Legacy at Apple: What 15 Years of Leadership Built

Control Ultimate Edition iPhone and iPad: Price, Requirements, and What's Unconfirmed

Apple's biggest iPhone redesign in nearly a decade appears to be its weakest seller based on early buyer-share and supply-chain indicators. In the iPhone Air's first full quarter on sale, just 6% of US iPhone buyers chose it, according to a Consumer Intelligence Research Partners survey cited by CNN in January 2026. The standard iPhone 17 took 22% of purchases, the Pro took 25%, and the Pro Max took 27%. The Air captured less than a third of what the cheapest model in the lineup managed, and...

Apple Earnings Preview: Key iPhone 17 Signals Before Q2 Results

How Google Wallet Real-Time Flight Updates Work on Android 16