The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

TV Time goes dark in six days. On July 15, the app is pulled from both stores, tvtime.com goes offline, and all personal account data is permanently deleted, with no archive to request and no restore option once the servers switch off, Moviebase reported last week. Users who want to keep their watch history have one path: export it through TV Time's GDPR self-service tool before the cutoff, import it into Trakt, then connect a destination app such as JustWatch from there.

Something called "Memories Games" has surfaced in connection with Google Photos. The only information available in the supplied research is an unverified feature name. The research available here does not include a source attributing the teardown find to a specific outlet or app version, so treat the premise accordingly: this is a rumor.

The scariest version of Windows Recall is not the one that shipped.

Samsung and Qualcomm announced this week that both the Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra will run the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy, the same custom-binned chip already shipping in the Galaxy S26 Ultra worldwide, GSMArena reported. The two companies posted the confirmation to Instagram earlier this week, getting ahead of what is expected to be a Galaxy Unpacked event in London on July 22, though Samsung has not officially confirmed that date.

Some market watchers expect a sharp decline in sub-$400 shipments this year, according to Omdia data reported by Android Authority. The cause is a memory supply crunch driven by AI infrastructure demand, and the segment taking the worst of it is precisely the one with the least room to absorb it.

Microsoft's July 2026 Xbox reset has revived a question the company has not publicly answered: if Xbox no longer works as a traditional console business, could Microsoft sell it?

Spotify is raising the pin limit in Your Library from four items to 20, with a global rollout underway for Free and Premium users.

Starting this month, a Teams meeting with the right license could include a Microsoft Teams AI teammate that nobody explicitly prompted to respond. Facilitator, a new Microsoft 365 Copilot (Premium) feature, monitors conversations in real time, detects when a factual question goes unanswered, runs a web search, and posts a response in meeting chat on its own initiative, according to M365 Admin.

Duolingo overhauled its Korean course this week, adding new content, restructuring existing lessons, and extending the course's proficiency ceiling from roughly A2 to B2 on the CEFR scale, according to the company's blog. The Duolingo Korean course update affects one of the platform's largest learner communities. For new students, it's a more ambitious course than before. For the 1.9 million active learners already mid-path, it's the same destination with a rearranged route.

DuckDuckGo's browser now blocks most YouTube video ads on iPhone and Mac, with the feature switched on automatically for users running the latest version. No extensions, no configuration required. The catch: DuckDuckGo YouTube ad blocking on iPhone and Mac only applies when YouTube is open inside DuckDuckGo's browser, not through the standalone YouTube app, as Engadget noted this week.

Google appears to be rolling out a Play Store redesign that changes the look and navigation of the Apps and Games tabs. The update adds pill-shaped sub-tabs, moves Top charts and Categories into separate pages, and makes personalized recommendations the default view when you open either section, Android Authority reported July 8.

A growing number of Google Home Speaker owners are hitting a wall before the device ever plays a single note. The Google Home Speaker setup issue surfaced in reports Thursday, with buyers across multiple countries finding that the speaker fails to complete first-time onboarding and then loops through the same error when they try to fix it. Google has confirmed its engineering team is investigating but has no root cause, no working fix, and no timeline for resolution, Android Authority reported...

How Windows 11 Wi-Fi problems are easier to fix when you start with the symptom. A missing Wi-Fi toggle, a "No Internet, Secured" warning, random drops, and post-update connection failures all point to different causes. Use the section that matches what you see, then try the targeted fix.

Samsung published its July 2026 security maintenance release on July 7, listing 57 vulnerability fixes for Galaxy phones and tablets, including five critical Android flaws.

Every Mac includes Preview, Apple's app for opening PDFs and images. Double-click a supported file, and it will usually open without another download, subscription, or setup process.

The Google Store is now selling a Samsung smartwatch. Yesterday, a "Devices from the Google Store" carousel surfaced in the US Play Store app, offering the Galaxy Watch 8 through the standard Google Store checkout flow, financing included, according to 9to5Google. The device sits alongside Google's own Pixel Watch 4 and Fitbit Air all three processed through the same checkout infrastructure Google uses for its Pixel lineup.

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.

Samsung's Bixby assistant has reportedly been speaking in voices users never selected since a recent update, and the company's response so far stops well short of confirming a bug or offering a fix. The reports, first surfacing in the Samsung Members community forum four months ago, drew wider attention this week when Android Authority covered Samsung's reply to affected users.

A stable-channel update to Outlook for Mac broke font selection during email composition, and as of The Register's July 9 report, no fix had reached affected users. The Outlook for Mac font bug is straightforward to describe: pick any non-default font in the formatting toolbar, and the app ignores the choice entirely, continuing in the default typeface as though nothing happened. A forum moderator acknowledged the problem two days before The Register's coverage without a patch following.

Bigme's Hibreak Dual 2 dual-screen phone launched on Kickstarter today with pledges starting around $560, pairing a 6.13-inch color E-Ink front panel with a 5-inch 720×1280 LCD on the rear, Notebookcheck reported. Both screens are rectangular and sized for genuine use a direct response to the watch-face-sized rear panel on Bigme's previous attempt, which never shipped.

Chrome for Android is getting a dedicated back button in its three-dot overflow menu, closing a gap that Chrome on iPhone has filled for years. The catch surfaced immediately in device testing: a phone running Chrome 149 showed the redesigned menu, while a separate phone on the newer Chrome 150 still displayed the old layout. Updating to Chrome 150 is not a guarantee of anything.

Google has carved out a slot in the Android status bar for AI agents, and right now there is no confirmed way to hide it. Android Halo, announced at Google I/O in May and explained in more detail this week, gives Gemini and other supported agents a fixed, dedicated location at the top of the screen, visible across apps while an agent is active. The Android Halo status bar indicator is designed to stay put. Whether users will have any say over that is the question Google hasn't answered.

WordPress released a native Apple TV app today that brings its long-running community video archive to the living room. The WordPress TV Apple TV app is free, requires no account, and opens immediately to thousands of talks, tutorials, and WordCamp session recordings from events held around the world. Reporting so far points to the app listing rather than a separate WordPress announcement, with 9to5Mac covering the launch today.

Google's Tensor chip program has spent four years running a node behind its rivals. The Pixel 11 TSMC 2nm chip rumor, sourced to an analyst and reported by 9to5Google last month, suggests that could change and not because Google has suddenly become a chip powerhouse, but because of who is now building its chips and where Apple is directing its own 2nm supply.

The pitch for Matter was simple enough to print on a box: buy any device with the logo, scan the QR code, and it works in your smart home. No compatibility research, no ecosystem anxiety, no app drawer colonized by proprietary software. Three years in, Apple Home's Matter problems run deeper than the marketing ever suggested. The logo is not a promise. It's a prompt to start asking questions.

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.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Six Pixel 11-series model numbers have appeared in FCC certification records recently, a sign Google is nearing launch ahead of its August 12 event in New York City, 9to5Google reported. The filings arrived after what 9to5Google describes as "a pretty big retail leak," with regulatory certification now adding to a cluster of pre-launch signals. Buried in the band tables is the filing's most durable detail: Google has swapped its modem supplier, replacing Samsung's Exynos parts with a MediaTek...

Huawei launched the Pura 90s Pro and Pura 90s Pro Max in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, opening global sales in Malaysia first, with expansion to additional markets expected in the coming months, according to FoneArena. The Pura 90s Pro starts at approximately $907; the Pro Max comes in at $1,202. Both are now available to order in Malaysia.

Samsung's next Galaxy foldable may depart from the tall shape that has defined its book-style phones.

A code teardown of Google Photos v7.83.0 has surfaced a "Save as photo" button that appears directly when a user pauses a video, bypassing the multi-step editing sequence the app currently requires to pull a still from a clip. Android Authority activated and tested the feature last week, describing it as "a much better experience than what the app offers right now."

The Nvidia Shield TV base model has been unavailable across NVIDIA's major U.S. retail partners for months. NVIDIA broke its silence on the matter, and the answer left the central question unresolved. The company said the base model is "largely out of stock due to demand" and that it has "no updates to share regarding future availability at this time." If you're wondering why Nvidia Shield TV is out of stock, that's the official explanation. It doesn't tell you when, or whether, the device is...

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...

Samsung's Galaxy S26 series arrives loaded with third-party apps from Meta, Microsoft, and Spotify, and buyers get no setup screen to opt out of any of them. On a factory-fresh 512GB Galaxy S26 Ultra, system files and pre-installed apps consumed over 40GB of storage before the owner adds a single photo or file, according to Android Authority's hands-on testing earlier this year. That's close to 8% of the drive, gone before the box is fully unpacked.

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.

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 began testing a less cluttered Windows 11 Search experience on July 13, 2026. The redesigned home panel puts recent searches at the center while removing distractions such as trending searches, quizzes, game recommendations, and Microsoft's image of the day.

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.

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.

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.