The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

Samsung Austria has dropped the free storage upgrade from its Galaxy Z8 preorder promotion, requiring buyers to cover part of the cost of moving to a higher-capacity model.

Samsung launched the Samsung Health Assistant beta Tuesday, opening its first fully integrated AI-powered health tool inside Samsung Health to eligible U.S. users. Rather than presenting biometric data as graphs to decode, the assistant lets users ask questions about their health, check their daily Energy Score, and receive personalized health guidance across five wellness pillars: sleep, activity, nutrition, mindfulness, and vitals. The shift Samsung is positioning here is from a dashboard you...

If you're trying to find out whether the Google Health app is down, the short answer is: not broadly. What's actually happening is narrower and, for affected users, more frustrating. A Fitbit-branded permissions screen is looping on Pixel Watch devices, blocking access to health apps and, in some cases, stopping data from syncing entirely. Google has not issued a public statement, and no user-side fix has been confirmed.

The Galaxy Z Flip 8 last Samsung foldable rumor is unconfirmed. Samsung hasn't said a word about ending the line. What it has done is allocate 2.8 million display panels to its new Wide Fold, 2 million to the Fold 8 Ultra, and 1.5 million to the Flip 8, dead last in its own lineup, according to industry sources cited by TrendForce this week. Reports from Android Police and SamMobile from earlier this month suggest the Flip 8 could be Samsung's final clamshell. Neither has confirmed it.

Amazon has added Luna game streaming directly to the Prime Video app, giving Prime members access to a rotating catalog of streamable games through a new Games tab on Fire TV devices. No console required, no separate download. On geography, the two outlets that confirmed today's rollout don't agree: Engadget says the launch covers the US and UK, while VGC specifies the UK only. Both confirm Fire TV as the starting point, with additional devices and countries to follow in the coming months....

A detailed specs leak ahead of tomorrow's Unpacked event reveals a deliberate first-gen tradeoff: no display, a phone-dependent Gemini assistant, and battery life that varies wildly depending on how you actually use them.

A new Google Pixel 11a leak claims the budget Pixel will run Tensor G6, the same chip debuting in the flagship Pixel 11 on August 12. That's a meaningful claim: the Pixel 10a shipped with a recycled Tensor G4 because the G5 was reportedly too expensive for the A-series price point. Leaker Mystic Leaks now says the Pixel 11a, codenamed "Formosan," would run that same G6 platform from launch.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra vs Motorola Razr Fold matchup is the most competitive the book-style foldable category has seen. For seven years, Samsung refined this segment largely without a serious large-format rival. The Motorola Razr Fold is Motorola's first attempt at that space, and it comes in swinging on hardware: a 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery against the Z Fold line's 4,400mAh, and charging speeds of 80W wired and 50W wireless against Samsung's 25W and 15W (PCMag UK reported in...

Samsung confirmed that the Galaxy Z Fold 8, Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, and Galaxy Z Flip 8 all ship with silicon-carbon batteries, making them the first Galaxy phones to use the chemistry, per Android Authority. The disclosure didn't come from a keynote slide or a press release. It came out in Q&A at a media briefing.

Connecting certain LG UltraGear monitors to a Windows 11 PC can trigger the automatic installation of adware-like software that displays McAfee subscription ads on every boot, according to reporting from heise, Hardware Busters, and TechSpot. The software arrives through Windows's device-metadata system, which matches peripheral hardware IDs against a catalog and fetches associated software automatically. No prompt. No consent dialog. No click required.

Netflix spent a decade competing on 4K resolution and frame-rate clarity. This week, to mark Stranger Things' 10th anniversary, the platform released the Stranger Things VHS Special Edition: all eight episodes of season 1 engineered to look like a tape pulled off a shelf at a video rental store in 1983. The release dropped July 15, the exact date season 1 originally debuted on Netflix, Polygon confirmed this week.

Code strings buried inside the latest Google Maps beta suggest Google is preparing to connect the app directly to Gmail, Google Photos, Calendar, and other Google services so Maps could show reservation or flight details drawn from connected Google apps.

Microsoft has crossed a meaningful threshold in how AI operates inside Excel. The latest update to editing with Copilot in Excel turns Copilot from a suggestion engine into an agent that can act directly inside a live workbook, creating PivotTables, generating forecasts, and executing multi-step tasks from a plain-English prompt, without a user clicking through each step.

Screenshots from an internal One UI 9 build for the Galaxy S25 Plus, shared on X today, show a feature called Samsung My FanCam, a Galaxy AI tool that reportedly lets you tap a subject in footage you've already recorded and generate a reframed clip that keeps them centered throughout, Android Authority reported this morning. Samsung has not confirmed the feature exists. The One UI 9 public beta remains limited to the Galaxy S26 series; Samsung has not officially opened it to S25 devices at all,...

Google is preparing to move "Your info" from a buried settings menu to the top of the main contacts list in Google Contacts, with a share icon permanently alongside it. The Google Contacts Your info rollout doesn't add new functionality; it makes existing functionality findable. Based on code evidence in the same app build, it also appears to be laying groundwork for Tap to Share, Google's in-development proximity sharing feature that still hasn't shipped.

No announcement has come from Google. No product roadmap has leaked. But the question of whether a Gboard sign language feature is technically plausible is answerable, and the answer, at least for a constrained first version, is yes. The mobile AI infrastructure exists. The product architecture has been demonstrated by independent researchers. And Gboard is already the platform Google has chosen to expand Android accessibility.

A forged email header can make Apple's Mail app on Mac send a reply from the email address associated with your Apple Account, even when the message arrived through another account and you have never used Hide My Email.

Google shared new Pixel 11 teaser images this week, giving the first real look at Pixel Glow, and the confirmed Pixel 11 problems have nothing to do with the lighting feature itself. Pixel Glow is real, it's genuinely clever, and it deserves more than a reflexive dismissal. The trouble is that it arrived at exactly the moment Google needs to answer harder questions.

Google is adding a dedicated back button to the Chrome for Android three-dot menu as Chrome 150 rolls out, bringing the Android browser in line with what Chrome on iPhone has offered for some time. The Chrome for Android dedicated back button sits alongside the existing forward arrow in the menu's top row, but it arrives as part of a broader reorganization that touches more controls than the headline feature suggests.

Samsung has filed a patent for a clamshell phone with a double-jointed hinge that can fold both inward and outward, eliminating the cover screen in favor of a single flexible panel that serves both purposes. Android Authority reported the filing today. It's at least the second Samsung foldable phone patent staking out this concept: Tech Advisor covered a related WIPO design patent earlier this year.

The Onn Full HD streaming stick, a $15 Google TV dongle that turns any HDMI-equipped television into a capable smart TV, has become harder to find and more expensive to buy. Its publicly displayed price has climbed to $30 for some shoppers, double its 2023 launch price, with in-store stock running thin at many locations, according to Cord Cutters News and Android Police. For cord-cutters who relied on the Onn Full HD streaming stick as the cheapest entry point into Google TV, the question is...

WhatsApp has started activating usernames for a small number of accounts on Android and iOS, letting the first wave of users share a handle instead of a phone number when contacting someone new. The WhatsApp username feature rollout is live now, though only for a very limited cohort activated users see a banner at the top of their chat list confirming their handle is ready, WABetaInfo reported yesterday.

TV Time's original founder is rebuilding the app from scratch under the name Bingers, days after the show-tracking service was removed from app stores on July 15, ending 15 years of operation. TechCrunch and Engadget both reported on July 15 that Bingers is targeting an App Store and Google Play launch by July 31.

A teardown of Gboard beta version 17.8.3.939743344 reveals code for a feature called Sign-to-Text: point your phone's camera at your hands, sign, and the keyboard translates your gestures into text. Android Authority surfaced the code this week and described it as potentially "Gboard's biggest accessibility feature ever." Google has not announced it, it is not available yet, and APK teardowns regularly surface features that never ship.

Every foldable phone complaint worth reading traces back to the same two design facts: the screen has to bend, and something mechanical has to make that happen. Those two requirements create engineering tensions that no manufacturer has resolved. The common foldable phone problems owners report most consistently screen failure, hinge contamination, steep repair bills, and contested warranty claims aren't random. They're downstream consequences of the same underlying tradeoff.

A Dealabs leak reported this week by both Android Authority and 9to5Google has put what appear to be final retail names on the Pixel 11 color lineup. The standard model gets Light Sterling, Midnight Haze, Fuchsia, and Moss. The Pro and Pro XL share Light Fog, Midnight Haze, Dune, and Pine. The Pro Fold gets just two options: Midnight Haze and Pine. With the Pixel 11 colors leak now surfacing polished retail-ready names rather than placeholder descriptors, the picture is coming into focus and...

A Fitbit update has knocked out SpO2 blood oxygen tracking and skin temperature monitoring on Pixel Watch devices, and Google has confirmed it is working on a fix for the permissions error. What the company has not said is when that fix will arrive, which software version caused the reset, or how many users are affected.

Netflix's decision to license short-form clips from Condé Nast, Hearst, and BuzzFeed Studios is one of the clearest strategic tells the company has offered in years. Not because the content matters three-to-twenty-minute clips from Bon Appétit and Cosmopolitan are table stakes, not programming strategy but because of who Netflix chose not to sign. The deals are with publishers, not creators. In the Netflix vs YouTube short-form video battle shaping up this year, that distinction is the whole...

Microsoft has begun rolling out the Xbox app on select Hisense and V HomeOS-powered smart TVs, letting owners stream Xbox games without buying a console. Xbox CEO Asha Sharma says Xbox streaming has now reached more than 150 million TVs and devices worldwide this summer, part of a broader push to get the service onto hardware people already own.

Gmail's Help me write now accepts custom follow-up instructions for revising an AI-generated email. Instead of choosing only broad controls such as Formalize, Friendly or Shorten, users can tell Gemini to make a specific change, such as adding a deadline or adjusting the tone.

Apple's Game Porting Toolkit 4 beta delivered a 66% frame rate jump in GTA V on the same M4 Pro MacBook Pro hardware, with no changes to the game itself, according to Macworld's testing today. That single benchmark captures something broader: the software layer translating Windows games on Mac has improved enough that Apple silicon can now show what it was always capable of delivering.

This guide walks through how to fix Apple CarPlay problems by matching your specific symptom to its most likely cause. By the end, you'll know which of six failure modes you're dealing with and have a clear fix to try, rather than cycling through generic tips that don't apply to your situation.

Google is adding volume sliders directly inside the ringtone, alarm, and notification sound pickers on Pixel phones, eliminating the current need to bounce between two separate settings screens to audition a sound at the right level. Android Authority recently found the feature in an unreleased build of the Sounds app included in an unreleased Sounds app build found within Pixel 11 firmware.

Screen mirroring an Android phone to a Roku takes only a few taps, but only if both devices support Miracast, the wireless display protocol Roku relies on. Pixel owners should skip mirroring altogether and lean on in-app casting instead, since Google built its phones around Google Cast and DIAL rather than Miracast. That one branching decision, Miracast or not, determines almost everything else in this guide.

Google Search AI Mode connected apps began rolling out in the U.S. this week, letting users link services like Instacart, Canva, and YouTube Music directly inside AI Mode and push tasks into those apps without leaving Search, per Google's announcement. The practical result: a grocery list assembled through conversation can land straight in an Instacart cart; a playlist AI Mode curates can be saved to YouTube Music with a single tap.

A Xiaomi 18 Pro Max camera leak reported by Notebookcheck last week has been widely interpreted online as describing a phone with three 200MP cameras. The source doesn't say that. Tipster Digital Chat Station describes a 200MP main sensor and a 200MP telephoto. The third lens, the ultra-wide, may use a 50MP sensor based on a separate, earlier leak. Two high-resolution cameras, not three.

Wear OS 7 began rolling out on June 16, 2026, starting with Pixel Watch 2, Pixel Watch 3, and Pixel Watch 4, The Verge reported. If you have one of those watches, the update brings practical changes first: Live Updates, better battery efficiency, easier audio-output switching, Wear Widgets support, and expanded safety features.

A certification image has provided an early look at Samsung's unannounced Galaxy Tab S12 Plus. The photo shows a familiar Galaxy Tab design, while separate software findings suggest Samsung is preparing support for MediaTek's flagship Dimensity 9500 processor and several AI-powered image tools.

MOFT now offers three MagSafe-compatible wallets with Apple Find My support: a slim two-card wallet and stand, a two-card model with a taller tripod and camera remote, and a larger Field Wallet that holds up to eight cards.

That small green leaf sitting next to one of your route options is doing something specific. It marks the route Google has calculated to be the most fuel- or energy-efficient option for your trip not a scenic detour, not an environmental badge, and not the result of a setting you accidentally changed. The confusion comes from Google presenting a genuinely complex routing calculation as a single unexplained icon, switched on by default, with nothing in the app explaining what it actually does.