Gadget Hacks: Page 9

YouTube is rolling out free picture-in-picture to non-paying users on Android and iOS worldwide, ending a policy that had kept the feature either U.S.-only or locked behind a Premium subscription in every other market. The rollout is live now, with full global availability expected over the coming months, 9to5Google reported today.

Motorola has entered the book-style foldable market with the Motorola Razr Fold, its first device in the book-style format competing alongside the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold line and Google Pixel Fold. The device makes a specific, testable argument: that foldables don't have to sacrifice battery life or thinness to deliver flagship specs.

Apple's supply chain has begun manufacturing components for a variable-aperture main camera expected in the iPhone 18 Pro, with three named suppliers now in active production, Cult of Mac reported two weeks ago, citing ETNews. The development adds hard supply-chain evidence to a rumor that analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and Weibo leaker Digital Chat Station had already flagged separately. Apple has never implemented a variable aperture on an iPhone, MacRumors noted last week, making the iPhone 18 Pro...

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman now says the long-rumored Apple foldable iPad may "end up being a wacky experiment that doesn't see the light of day," per The Verge this past Sunday. The rumored launch window has slipped from 2024 to 2026 to 2028 to 2029, and now carries no date at all. Whether the Apple foldable iPad is cancelled outright or stuck in indefinite limbo, the distinction is mostly semantic at this point.

Motorola today unveiled the Motorola Razr Plus 2026 at $1,099, a $100 increase over last year, with one meaningful hardware change and the same Snapdragon 8s Gen 3 chip that shipped in 2024. The battery grew from 4,000mAh to 4,500mAh. Everything else stayed put. Preorders open May 14 and units go on sale May 21, CNET and The Verge both confirm.

Google rolled out a pronunciation practice feature for Android users this week, giving people in the U.S. and India a structured way to speak translated phrases aloud and receive AI-powered feedback on specific sounds, stress patterns, and enunciation. The timing tracks with a pattern Google has documented internally: about a third of live conversation sessions in Translate already run longer than five minutes, according to CNET, which suggests a meaningful share of the app's one billion...

The iPhone 18 Pro vs iPhone Ultra decision is harder than any previous iPhone upgrade cycle. Not because both options are equally good, but because they're not really competing for the same buyer. For anyone currently on an iPhone 15 Pro or older and planning to spend $1,100 or more on a flagship this fall, that distinction matters more than any spec sheet comparison.

Google is bringing YouTube Shorts to the Google TV home screen this summer with a dedicated "Short videos for you" row that plays videos without opening the YouTube app, 9to5Google and The Verge reported today. The rollout is limited to US devices, with no exact date beyond "by the end of the summer."

Samsung is shutting down its Samsung Notes OneNote sync feature after July 2026, the company confirmed through an in-app notice this week. Starting in August, notes written on Galaxy phones and tablets will no longer flow automatically into Microsoft OneNote. Galaxy users who relied on that connection to view their mobile notes on a Windows PC have about two months to decide what to do next.

Google has updated Quick Share for Windows with a visual overhaul that brings the desktop app's interface in line with the Android version. The redesign is cosmetic. The underlying transfer functionality is unchanged.

Samsung this week launched Trips, a new feature in Samsung Wallet that pulls flights, hotel reservations, car rentals, bus and train tickets, event passes, and excursion bookings into a single chronological timeline. The rollout covers Korea, the United States, and the United Kingdom, Samsung confirmed this week. The feature is live now on compatible Galaxy devices, with no new hardware required.

LibrePods for Android no longer ships two separate APKs. Version 0.2.3, released five days ago, folds the old "no-di-hook" variant into a single in-app toggle. The change is real but modest: for most Android users, root is still the default path, and the devices where LibrePods runs without root remain a short list by any measure.

The YouTube watch history workaround covered here is straightforward but requires a real tradeoff: turn off watch history, accept that the homepage algorithm stops working, and replace it with four manual discovery methods. Search, subscriptions, direct channel browsing, and the Explore tab. None of those require YouTube to know what you've watched.

Leaked renders of Samsung's first smart glasses surfaced this week, and the most notable feature is an absence: no display, no visual overlays, no augmented reality in any consumer-meaningful sense. Android Headlines broke the Samsung Galaxy smart glasses leak with the first images; The Verge and Android Police followed independently the same day.

Brazil's Anatel regulatory database published the first live photographs of the Xiaomi 17T yesterday, showing the rear panel alongside a 67W charger. A day earlier, a Geekbench submission pointed to MediaTek's Dimensity 8500 as the processor, per GSMArena. The Xiaomi 17T live images and benchmark listing together offer the most concrete hardware evidence yet for a device that has been working through certification databases across three continents since early this year.

Apple is introducing a new App Store billing option that lets users pay for annual subscriptions in 12 monthly installments rather than a single upfront charge. The Apple monthly subscription 12-month commitment launches in May alongside iOS 26.5, available worldwide except in the United States and Singapore, with no official explanation for either exclusion and no timeline for when those markets will be included, according to MacRumors and Digital Trends.

YouTube TV has stripped the biggest restriction from its multiview feature. Subscribers can now build a YouTube TV customizable multiview layout from any live channel in their plan, up to four streams at once, rather than picking from a short list of combinations YouTube pre-selected for them. The launch was officially declared today, Variety reported.

Android phones can now send files directly to iPhones, iPads, and Macs using Quick Share, no third-party app required, no cloud relay, no workaround. The catch: the feature is still confined to a short list of current flagships, and for most Android users, there is no confirmed path to get it.

Google this week pushed a significant Gemini for Google Home update that does two things at once: it keeps the microphone open longer after each response, and it claims the assistant has gotten meaningfully better at knowing when to stay quiet. Those two changes pull in opposite directions, and how well Google has actually solved the second one determines whether the first is a convenience feature or a liability.

A Pixel 9a owner sent their phone to Google for a warranty repair covering an eSIM bug. Google sent it back without touching it, along with a $287.44 quote for damage to the screen, frame, and cameras that the owner says never existed and a note saying the case had been closed because the owner failed to respond to a change-order email. The eSIM bug remains unresolved. Android Authority reported the case today.

Google is testing a Gemini Live app redesign on Android that replaces the fullscreen takeover with a layout anchored to the Gemini app's homepage, 9to5Google reported last week. The redesign surfaces mute, camera sharing, and transcript controls that were previously hidden behind gestures, making them visible and tappable in a pill-shaped container at the bottom of the screen. Google app beta version 17.14 users are widely seeing the update. Google has not announced the same visual update for...

YouTube TV subscribers across the country are having trouble hearing NBC. Audio from NBC affiliate feeds is reportedly running at roughly half the level of other channels on the service, according to Cord Cutters News and Android Authority, both reporting today. Turning up the TV helps only in the obvious sense: the NBC feed remains much quieter than the others.

Samsung may have inadvertently disclosed more about the Samsung Galaxy Glasses than it intended. An update to the Nearby Device Scanning app in One UI included changelog language explicitly listing support for "Glasses," the most concrete in-product signal yet that Samsung smart glasses are a real, near-term product rather than a placeholder on a roadmap, SamMobile reported today.

The Apple Ultra rumors have been building for months, but the coverage keeps missing the more interesting story. Whether the foldable iPhone launches as "iPhone Ultra" or "iPhone Fold" is a secondary question. The more consequential argument, supported by the rumor trail across the past several weeks, is that Apple may be constructing a permanent structural tier above Pro one designed to house first-generation hardware that is too manufacturing-constrained, too expensive, and too...

The most persuasive Apple rumors are rarely the ones promising the impossible. They're the ones that describe something just close enough to impossible that you can see how Apple gets there.

Leaked screenshots suggest Samsung may bring a One UI 9 Now Brief weekly weather forecast that keeps a full seven-day outlook inside the briefing itself, eliminating the current behavior of pushing users to weather.com for anything beyond today's conditions. Screenshots from internal test builds, first surfaced by SammyGuru and reported by Android Authority earlier this month, show a forecast card with daily highs, lows, and condition icons embedded directly in Now Brief. Samsung has not...

The latest Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide leak cycle has produced something unusual: three independent signals converging on the same device within a month. Dummy unit photos published yesterday, a dimensions report from last week, and firmware evidence from earlier this month all describe a Samsung foldable that is shorter and considerably wider than anything the company has shipped before. The shape is credible. Much else remains unconfirmed.

Google is overhauling its Fitbit Community and Google Home forums sometime in May, and the transition will wipe out existing user profiles and post histories. Anyone who wants to participate in the replacement forum will need to create a fresh account from scratch, according to Android Police, which covered the announcement last week. What Google has not addressed is whether the actual text of old threads will remain readable after the switch.

Apple's iOS 26.5 developer beta, released late last month, contains release notes describing a subscription format that doesn't exist anywhere in current App Store documentation: Apple App Store monthly subscriptions with 12-month commitment. Under a "New Features" heading, the notes explicitly reference "subscriptions that have a monthly with 12-month commitment billing plan configuration" and provide developers API tools to read pricing and set the billing plan type for that format, 9to5Mac...

Apple's ambitious OLED roadmap just hit a significant speed bump. While the tech giant has successfully brought OLED technology to its iPad Pro lineup, the transition to MacBooks is proving more complex than initially anticipated. The MacBook Air's journey to OLED displays is reportedly targeted for around 2028, with some analyst estimates suggesting a later window, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, with some analysts suggesting it could slip even further to 2029. This delay stems from the...

The alternative app store landscape just got a lot more interesting. AltStore PAL, one of the first platforms to challenge Apple's iOS monopoly in Europe, is making two major moves that could reshape how we discover and interact with mobile apps. The company recently secured $6 million in Series A funding led by Pace Capital, according to Mobile Marketing Reads, and is preparing to integrate with the fediverse—the decentralized social network that powers platforms like Mastodon and Threads,...

The tech world loves a good "what if" story, and the MacBook Neo concept has sparked one of the most compelling conversations about Apple's future in years. This isn't just another designer's fever dream or wishful thinking—it's a glimpse into what could happen when we stop thinking about our devices as separate entities and start imagining them as different expressions of the same core technology.

The Google Pixel charging limit saga reveals a deeper truth about smartphone technology: what seems broken might actually be working exactly as intended—just not in the way users expect. Google's 80% charging limit, introduced with Android 15 QPR1, appeared to be the perfect solution for extending battery life. Enable it once, forget about it, and watch your battery stay healthier while never exceeding 80%. But here's what's actually happening behind the scenes that's driving users crazy.

The relationship between tech giants and publishers has always been complex, but Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature has pushed this tension to a breaking point. What started as a privacy-focused initiative has now become the center of a heated regulatory battle, with German publishers taking their grievances directly to antitrust authorities.

The global smartphone manufacturing landscape is undergoing a seismic shift, and Apple's latest production milestone in India represents far more than just another factory coming online. When a single country begins producing one in four of the world's most coveted smartphones, it signals a fundamental reimagining of how tech giants approach supply chain resilience, geopolitical risk, and manufacturing strategy in an increasingly uncertain world.

The smartphone camera arms race just took a wild turn. A March 2026 leak reported by Android Authority have highlighted the potential for Android flagships to incorporate multiple high-resolution sensors, possibly including triple 200-megapixel configurations. While these developments remain speculative, they raise fascinating questions about where mobile photography is headed and whether more megapixels always mean better photos.

Google's stepping up its mobile security game in a big way with Android 16's Advanced Protection Mode, and the latest development has some serious implications for how we browse the web on our phones. The tech giant is now testing a feature that could disable Chrome's WebGPU API when users activate this enhanced security mode, according to Android Authority. While WebGPU enables impressive high-performance graphics and computations directly in your browser, it also opens up potential attack...

Editor's note: No independent research data was available for this report. All claims are drawn exclusively from Aulumu's public product listing. No external market figures, technical benchmarks, or third-party specifications have been verified for this piece. Figures marked TBC were not confirmed on the product page at time of writing. This is a product-listing assessment, not a review.

Weeks before any official announcement, the Motorola Razr 70 series is almost entirely mapped. Press renders, CAD leaks, and spec sheets from multiple credible sources point to the same conclusion: an Ultra flagship that carries over most of what made the Razr 60 Ultra, and a standard model that diverges more clearly on paper. The processor is the one variable nobody has resolved, and it's the one that matters most.

John Ternus takes over as Apple's CEO on September 1, and one of his earliest consequential decisions may concern a project he personally championed: a nearly 20-inch foldable iPad that Bloomberg described last month as either "the future of laptops and tablets" or "a wacky experiment that never sees the light of day." The device was already pushed from a 2028 target to 2029 or later before the leadership announcement. Now it has to compete for resources against a foldable iPhone arriving this...