Trending on Gadget Hacks: Page 2

Apple has finally unveiled its first foldable phone, and the shape looks strangely familiar. The book-style design, 7.6-inch inner display, and 3,000-nit peak brightness Apple announced this week land close to where Samsung already sits with the Galaxy Z Fold 8, a phone The Verge put through a week of testing. That overlap is the starting point for any iPhone Duo vs Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 comparison: Apple has arrived at a form factor Samsung has already priced and had independently reviewed.

As of this week, a Samsung Messages alternative app called Messages by OzarksMade is undergoing closed testing through Google Play, with a public launch set for 14 days after its testing Google Group hits 12 members and a post-launch price of $0.99. Treat that as a snapshot, not a finished product. Betas shift, thresholds get hit or missed, and pricing plans change before launch.

Apple Watch Series 12 doesn't wait for "Hey Siri" before it starts paying attention. Sound Recognition listens continuously for sirens, alarms, doorbells, and crying babies, flagging them with on-device intelligence even when the wearer's iPhone isn't nearby. Live Rewind goes further: a double press of the Digital Crown surfaces the previous 15 seconds of nearby conversation as a text snippet, without anyone having to ask for it in the moment.

Netflix nudging ahead as UK viewers' starting point is a narrow finding with a broad implication: the broadcast default is gone.

Some YouTube users say they no longer have to tap play at all. Opening the app is apparently enough to start a Short playing, according to a report from Android Authority published today. One user described a Short auto-launching through connected earphones and waking a sleeping partner, with no interaction involved beyond opening the app.

Google Photos has added a floating camera button inside its AI editing tools, letting people snap a fresh photo without leaving the app and feed it straight into an edit. The new Google Photos AI camera button shows up inside Photo Remix and Photo to Video, part of a wider push to add camera access to tools in the app's Create tab.

Google has spent the past several months steadily expanding what the Gemini overlay can do, and the latest round of Gemini overlay new features makes the strategic intent hard to miss. The overlay the assistant panel you pull up from any Android screen is gaining video generation, music creation, Canvas, and Guided Learning directly on its surface. Taken together with a persistent floating bubble still in testing and a Gemini Live redesign that eliminates its own dedicated screen, the changes...

New code inside the Android Canary 2608 build suggests Google is considering a narrower set of Android lock screen Quick Settings restrictions than what its earlier work pointed toward. Rather than locking down nearly every tile, the strings now single out four: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Mobile Data, and Airplane Mode, according to an Android Authority code teardown. Flashlight and auto-rotate would stay usable without unlocking the phone, based on the same code.

Galaxy devices running One UI 9 will wipe themselves after 13 failed lock screen attempts, a hard limit confirmed by a Samsung support document and reported by Android Authority today. Not a temporary lockout. Every photo, app, and setting on the device gets erased, accounts are signed out, and the phone returns to factory condition.

Apple CarPlay not working is rarely about a bad cable or spotty Wi-Fi, not at first anyway. The real diagnostic starting point is simpler: figure out whether the connection is wired or wireless, because the checks that follow are different for each (MacObserver, last year).

"My webcam mic has background noise" sounds like one problem. It rarely is. Treat it instead as a troubleshooting question with several possible answers: is Windows processing the signal too aggressively, is the app running on top of that doing its own processing, is the device itself missing or misconfigured, or, in rarer cases, has something gone wrong with the whole system's audio and the webcam just happens to be where it showed up first? Working through how to fix webcam microphone...

Hands-on coverage of the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL from Android Authority has now shown off details of at least one launch color. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold hasn't gotten that treatment. Everything anyone knows about which Pixel 11 Pro Fold color to buy still traces back to retail listings that leaked last month, not anything Google has shown directly.

This guide covers how to disable AI Mode in Chrome on desktop: the shortcuts that show up in the address bar, the New Tab Page search box, and the right-click context menu on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It doesn't touch Google Search's own AI Mode tab, which lives outside the browser entirely and gets a short, separate note near the end.

A poll of 6,310 Pixel readers published earlier this year found that 62.7% say Google Tensor's performance gap doesn't affect their purchase decision. That sounds like a comfortable majority. It isn't a mandate and more importantly, it's the wrong number to focus on.

Spotify closed the second quarter of 2026 with 300 million Premium subscribers, a first for any audio-streaming service, according to the company's Q2 2026 earnings release, published Tuesday. The same report showed gross margin climbing to an all-time high of 33.4%, up 193 basis points from 31.5% a year earlier (TechTimes). Spotify added 7 million net Premium subscribers during the quarter, a million ahead of its own guidance, pushing the total up 9% year over year, while operating income...

Starting tomorrow, Thursday, August 6, T-Mobile customers will be able to spread the cost of a new phone, including taxes and activation fees, across 36 months instead of the previously available 24-month term, with well-qualified buyers paying nothing at checkout, according to WebProNews. The T-Mobile 36-month phone financing plan actually comes in two distinct versions, and the gap between them decides whether a customer walks out paying $0 or simply pays less than before.

The instinctive fix everyone reaches for is "just use the Roku app." That works, but only for one specific situation, and if you're trying to connect Roku to Wi-Fi without a remote right now, it's probably not the one you're in. Roku's own support documentation is blunt about this: the mobile app cannot detect a Roku that's offline after a reset or during first-time setup.

Google Drive now supports timestamped comments on videos, letting reviewers pin feedback to the exact frame it applies to instead of writing a note and hoping the recipient finds the right spot in the timeline, according to Digital Trends and The Verge. The feature is live now for Google Workspace accounts, Workspace Individual subscriptions, and personal Google accounts, and it arrives switched on by default, according to ThreeVector.

Pocket Casts does not currently support Apple TV. That is the last documented position from the company, stated on its support page two and a half years ago, with a note that support may come in the future. Nothing in the app's current App Store listing changes that picture. What has changed is the platform Pocket Casts would be entering: Apple announced last month that it is rebuilding Apple Podcasts on tvOS from scratch, adding video playback, optional 4K creator support, and in-show episode...

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).