Gadget Hacks: Page 9

Apple Watch owners testing the watchOS 27 beta have found two features missing outright: a Digital Crown double-click shortcut and the Walkie-Talkie app. A third change reshuffles rather than removes, merging three separate Find My apps into one. These are the watchOS 27 changes reported so far in beta testing, and each one comes with a different level of certainty depending on which build was checked and when.

Spotify expanded its Playlist Notes feature yesterday so listeners can attach short written context to podcast episodes and audiobooks, not just songs, inside playlists they own or collaborate on (Spotify Newsroom, yesterday). The update also introduces a separate, more exclusive layer: Editor Notes, where Spotify's own curators explain why a track made the cut on flagship playlists (Spotify Newsroom, yesterday).

Samsung has started rolling out the Galaxy S26 One UI 9 Beta 6 update, and it's a maintenance release through and through. The changelog reported so far is almost entirely bug fixes, with no headline features attached to this build.

Oukitel is heading into IFA 2026 with three rugged phones that don't just carry bigger batteries. They build in a night-vision camera, a fire starter, and a gaming cooling rig, treating the phone itself as a chassis for gear you'd normally pack separately. The headline device, the Oukitel WP70 Ultra rugged phone, packs a 16,000mAh silicon-carbon battery that Oukitel calls the slimmest in its class, Gadgets 360 reports.

Samsung Galaxy S26 FE leaked images posted this week give the public a new unofficial look at the company's next Fan Edition phone. A Telegram account called "The Cipher Project" shared three photos showing the device in black, light green, and dark purple, according to 9to5Google.

Apple's iPhone Duo starts at $1,999 for 256GB, and pricing is expected to climb to roughly $3,000 at the top storage tier, according to Gurman's reporting (Apple, this week; MacRumors, this week). Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 sits close behind at a reported $1,900 (9to5Google, 6 weeks ago). At that price, "it's a foldable" stops being an excuse for missing features on either side, which raises the obvious question: which iPhone Duo features Android foldables should copy, and which Apple claims...

Google's Pixel 11 lineup is now available for preorder, and some buyers have an extra way to cut the launch price: a promotional code tied to their Google account.

Apple's iOS 27, currently moving through beta testing ahead of a fall release, brings a broad set of improvements to Messages.

One Windows 11 user says the "Turn on virus protection" notification arrives with strange precision: 4 minutes and 13 seconds after every sign-in, never once after waking the PC from sleep, even though, in the poster's own words, Defender "keeps working all the time and never turns off" (Microsoft Community Hub, last week). That kind of specificity is exactly what makes the alert hard to dismiss and hard to trust. Anyone seeing the Windows 11 "Turn on virus protection" notification pop up after...

Google began rolling out the Pixel Watch 5's first software update on September 1, moving the build from CD5A.260611.008 to CP3A.260905.002 while keeping Wear OS 7 based on Android 17. The changelog for this Pixel Watch 5 first update headlines Gemini features like offline AI, Gemini Personalization, and improved GPS route accuracy, but there's a catch worth knowing before you go hunting for something new on your wrist.

Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is now on sale across 106 markets at $2,099.99. Within Samsung's lineup, the Ultra name is supposed to mean the company's highest performance tier, and Samsung frames this phone as bringing that standard to foldables for the first time. In its review, PCMag called it Samsung's most capable foldable yet, citing faster performance, a longer-lasting battery and sharper cameras than any other Z Fold.

Samsung confirmed Modern Warfare 4 32:9 support yesterday, announcing that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 will officially support the 32:9 super-ultrawide aspect ratio at launch (Samsung Global Newsroom, yesterday). The confirmation arrived as part of a broader partnership naming Samsung the official TV, monitor, soundbar and Wi-Fi speaker partner for the game, which also brings Samsung's HDR10+ Gaming format into the title (Samsung Global Newsroom, yesterday; Digital Trends, yesterday).

Wikipedia's iOS app picked up a new Home Screen widget yesterday that does exactly one thing: open a random Wikipedia article the moment someone taps it. The Wikipedia iOS random articles widget shipped in Monday's iPhone and iPad update, joining the trending, featured, and Picture of the Day widgets the app already offers, 9to5Mac reported.

Can MS Paint run Doom? Yes, technically, though the honest answer takes some unpacking. Doom is fully playable inside Microsoft Paint right now, complete with sound, music, and a frame rate that hits 35 fps at the game's native resolution (The Verge, today). The project is called DoomPaint, built by Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Azure's CTO and a Technical Fellow (Windows Central, today). It loads the genuine shareware DOOM1.WAD file and sustains Doom's classic 35 tics-per-second cadence at...

Apple Maps ads are now live in the US and Canada. Ad delivery began on August 21, and Apple confirmed a few days later that the rollout would keep expanding over the coming weeks, according to 9to5Mac and PPC Land.

Microsoft is moving Teams and Copilot web traffic to new addresses this month, and organizations with locked-down firewalls could lose legitimate access if network teams don't update their allowlists first, Computerworld reported on September 11.

NameDrop lets two iPhones, or an iPhone and Apple Watch, swap contact cards by holding the top edges close together and confirming a prompt that appears on both screens. It works by sharing contact information using AirDrop, and it's available now on any compatible iPhone running iOS 17.1 or later (Apple Support). This guide covers how to use NameDrop on iPhone step by step: which devices qualify, how to control exactly what gets shared, and what to check when the screen refuses to show up.

T-Mobile and Verizon opened preorders for the Pixel 11 lineup on the same day, and both are advertising offers that sound like a free phone. Not all of them actually are. T-Mobile's top Google Pixel 11 carrier deals are device discounts tied to which plan a customer is on and whether they trade in a phone. Verizon's flagship switcher offer bundles a device credit into a specific 48-month plan structure. Read the fine print carelessly and the two "free phone" headlines start to look...

Updating to iOS 27 doesn't automatically give you Apple's new Siri. Siri AI began rolling out in beta on Sept. 14, but hardware, language, region, age, and waitlist requirements mean some iPhone owners still won't see it after installing the update.

Samsung has reportedly ordered motherboards for a Galaxy S27 Ultra Exynos 2700 variant, according to MoneyToday. If that plan survives to launch, it would mark the first time an Exynos chip has powered Samsung's Ultra flagship since the Galaxy S22 Ultra in 2022, a stretch covering four straight years of Snapdragon-only Ultra models (SamMobile).

Ask Pixel owners to name the phone's biggest hardware flaw, and the answer isn't close. In a reader survey published last week, Android Authority found that 81.4% of respondents chose either overheating or stagnant battery capacity as the Pixel problem they most wanted fixed, rather than complaints about thinness, weight, or Pro-only features.

Spotify went down twice yesterday without publicly explaining why either time. Two separate disruptions on Monday, July 27 left users unable to stream music, log in, search the library, or manage their accounts before both were resolved, Engadget reported yesterday. The Spotify outage is over. The explanation hasn't come.

Some App Store apps now let you pay for an annual subscription in monthly installments instead of one upfront charge. Apple calls these monthly subscriptions with a 12-month commitment, and they're easy to mistake for flexible, cancel-anytime monthly plans.

Samsung's One UI 9 rollout is moving beyond its newest Galaxy phones, giving owners of last year's flagships a better idea of where they stand. The stable update began expanding to the Galaxy S26 series on Sept. 16 after debuting on the Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Z Fold8, and Z Flip8.

Microsoft marked Windows 365's five year anniversary two weeks ago with a disclosure that tens of thousands of organizations worldwide now run Cloud PCs in some form, according to Microsoft's anniversary post. The company paired that figure with a batch of Windows 365 new features that push the platform well past its original 2021 pitch of "Windows from any device," adding options for part-time workers, shared kiosks, contingency access, developers, and now autonomous AI agents. Customer...

Ask readers interested in Pixel foldables whether Google's hardware still measures up, and the results are divided. In a poll of 2,825 voters, 39% named hardware as the thing that "doesn't keep up," the single largest response, while 24% still credited software as Google's advantage, 28% said they'd wait for the Pixel 11 Pro Fold before deciding, and a smaller 9% said they're waiting for Apple's foldable instead. That's not a verdict on whether Google Pixel foldable phones are worth buying....

Six months into the Galaxy S26's life, price has done something spec sheets never could: it has flipped the whole comparison on its head. SlashGear checked retail listings today and found the Galaxy S26 selling for $774.99 at Amazon and Best Buy, and for just $712.50 at Walmart, undercutting the $799 the Galaxy S25 charged at its own launch (SlashGear). Retail pricing shifts by the week, so treat those numbers as a snapshot rather than a promise, and check current listings before you buy. But...

Since the October 29, 2025 closing, Disney has controlled a subsidiary that used to be a scrappy sports-streaming challenger: FuboTV. The Fubo Hulu Live TV deal folded Disney's Hulu + Live TV service into Fubo's corporate structure, creating a combined company with nearly 6 million subscribers overnight and, by UBS estimates cited in Disney's own announcement, the sixth-largest pay-TV provider in the country (Disney investor relations). It also handed Disney 70% of the combined entity's...

Safari looks almost the same after installing iOS 27. Open it, and the address bar, tab bar, and reading view sit right where they always have. But WIRED found that Apple tucked several new tools into Safari's menus, changes easy to miss if you're just scrolling through a webpage.

Samsung's latest 200MP image sensor offers an early look at where its smartphone camera technology is headed, but it is not yet the Galaxy S27 Ultra's confirmed camera sensor.

Days before Google's Pixel 11 launch event, code teardowns show the company finalizing onboarding screens for a feature called Proactive Assistance, currently gated to Pixel 11 hardware only, according to Android Authority. The discovery gives the clearest look yet at a feature that could become one of the more visible AI additions on Google's next flagship, and at how far the company is willing to let Gemini reach into a user's inbox, calendar, and text messages before being asked.

Samsung has found a Tim Cook willing to endorse the Galaxy Z Fold 8 — just not the one formerly in charge of Apple. The company's New Zealand campaign stars Tim Cook of Palmerston North, a man who shares the former Apple CEO's name and bears a striking resemblance to him.

A newly reported One UI 9 Call Brief time zone feature shows the other person's local time before an international call even connects, according to Android Authority's hands-on report published yesterday. The outlet tested the feature directly on a Galaxy Z Fold 8, watching the recipient's local time appear while dialing an international number, before the call went through.

iOS 27 shipped September 14, 2026, as build 24A437, and Apple's support documentation lists the new Apple Intelligence capabilities by platform. Counting Siri AI separately and counting Apple's three Intelligent Accessibility subfeatures individually produces 20 entries for the purposes of this article. Updating doesn't hand every iPhone owner all 20 iOS 27 Apple Intelligence features at once, though. Hardware, storage, language, age, and region each gate access on their own, and some entries...

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 9 rumors just picked up a new wrinkle: a report this week claims Samsung's 2027 foldable lineup could grow to five models, including a second wide-format device sitting alongside the expected Fold 9, according to Digital Trends.

Android users spotted something unfamiliar in their Play Store update queues last Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026: an app called "Android Pulse," often showing up as a blank square with no icon at all. So what is the Android Pulse app doing on millions of phones? According to 9to5Google, it's a first-party Google tool built for diagnostics rather than anything malicious, and its Play Store listing shows more than 10 million downloads.

GM confirmed last week that Apple CarPlay and Android Auto will remain in the 2027 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 and GMC Sierra 1500, but with a redesigned infotainment interface arriving later this year on the company's highest-volume vehicles.

Google has reportedly told suppliers it wants to move Pixel production out of China entirely by 2027, covering every phone, watch, and earbud the company sells, according to Nikkei Asia. That's a different ambition than simply adding factories elsewhere while keeping Chinese production running as a backstop.

Apple's next few years in the smart home are starting to take shape, at least according to people briefed on the company's internal plans. The Apple smart home product roadmap now being reported includes refreshed Apple TV and HomePod mini hardware, a first-ever room-by-room display hub, and Apple's first self-made security camera and doorbell (9to5Mac, 2 days ago). Apple has not publicly announced any of it in the reporting cited here.

If you're weighing Waze vs Google Maps on Android Auto, one detailed month-long comparison offers a useful starting point: a reviewer who ran both apps side by side on a Galaxy S25 Ultra and an 8-inch Android Auto head unit found Waze more proactive about rerouting and easier to read on a dashboard display, but still reached for Google Maps on longer or unfamiliar trips. The comparison is really about how these two apps behave once you're actually driving with them, not whether either one works...