The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

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.

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....

A Samsung device with model number SM-X848U appeared in the FCC database today, with Notebookcheck reporting that the identifier reportedly corresponds to the US 5G variant of the Galaxy Tab S12+, citing 91mobiles. That mapping comes from third-party leak reporting, not from the FCC filing itself. The listing arrived eighteen days after two related variants cleared Safety Korea certification, and together the three filings across two regulatory bodies point toward a fall 2026 release that...

Android apps that ship with home screen widgets do not always make that feature easy to discover. No signal on the Play Store listing page, no prompt after install. For apps that do not promote widgets elsewhere, the launcher's widget picker may be the only obvious confirmation, and that requires you to already own the app and know to check.

A trial-production leak claims the OnePlus 16 packs a dual-cell battery described as having roughly 9,000mAh-equivalent capacity alongside a 200MP camera, but the picture is messier than the headline numbers suggest. Android Authority and My Mobile India both published details on the OnePlus 16 200MP camera and 9000mAh battery leak within a day of each other. The two reports describe the same trial-production claims, so treat them as one leak chain repeated twice, not independent confirmation.

Some Pixel owners are still waiting for the Google Wallet fix that should have landed automatically. If your phone is showing a "Device doesn't meet security requirements" warning every time you open Google Wallet, it hasn't been compromised and your cards are fine. A stalled update rollout left a specific group of beta opt-outs stranded on a software build that Wallet's security checks no longer recognize as certified.

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.

For months, the Galaxy S26 FE existed only in leaks and certification filings. That changed this week, when Samsung put the phone on record for the first time, and an executive's own hedge suggested the reveal isn't far off, sharpening the question at the center of the Samsung Galaxy S26 FE release date into something closer to an answer (Android Authority, today).

Snap two windows side by side in Windows 11, drag the shared border to resize one, and in many cases the other window resizes too, whether you wanted it to or not. Microsoft currently documents a checkbox for controlling that behavior under Settings > System > Multitasking > Snap windows. Some users nevertheless report that the checkbox is missing on their installations, so this guide covers both the documented setting and the available workarounds.

A teardown of the second Android 17 QPR2 beta has surfaced a hidden feature called Voicecast, according to Android Authority. The Google Pixel Voicecast feature would let Pixel phones broadcast a user's live voice over Bluetooth, a capability their phones currently lack: existing Pixel audio-sharing tools handle music and video, but not a microphone feed.

RAM used to be a straightforward performance purchase. More meant smoother multitasking, faster app switching, fewer cold reloads when you returned to a backgrounded app. That calculus has shifted in a specific and practical way: RAM is now a feature-gating purchase. According to Android Authority last month, current flagship AI implementations on both Android and iOS require 12GB as a hard minimum the point below which those tools simply won't run. Meanwhile, the memory inside most mid-range...

"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...

The European Commission issued a €890 million EU Google antitrust fine last Wednesday, but the payment is the least of Google's problems. The twin rulings under the Digital Markets Act demand something far harder to write a check for: a structural redesign of how Google decides which results appear at the top of its search pages, and how Android's app economy distributes money between Google and the developers who build on it.

Leave a phone on the dashboard of a parked car on an 80°F day, and the cabin around it will hit 114°F within 30 minutes. Give it an hour, and that number climbs past 130°F, according to Meqtor. Most phones are rated to operate only up to 95°F (Meqtor). Past that point, a phone isn't just uncomfortable, it's running well outside the range it was built for.

TikTok videos on Disney Plus are becoming real, and Disney+ subscribers will start seeing that content inside the app within the next few months. The rollout stems from a global Disney Plus TikTok partnership the two companies announced yesterday, according to The Walt Disney Company's announcement and USA Today. Opt-in creators will have their short-form videos appear on both TikTok and Verts, the vertical-video feed built into the Disney+ mobile app.

Four months ago, Google Messages for web began warning users that "QR code pairing is going away soon." The prompt urges people to sign in to Google Messages for web with a Google account "to avoid interruption," an early warning of a removal Google has since completed in the United States.

A December 2025 Chromium commit adds support for chrome.tabGroups.get(), an extension method that lets developers query tab-group data, on a surface the commit itself calls "desktop Android." That term doesn't appear defined anywhere else in the supplied commit, so every claim in this piece about where it applies stays tied to that exact phrase (Chromium commit). It's a narrow addition to the list of Chrome for Android features extension developers might want, and it's worth being precise about...

Samsung's new Galaxy Z8 lineup set a preorder record in South Korea, and the standard Fold8, not the pricier Ultra, carried most of it. That's the story behind the Samsung Galaxy Z8 preorder record set this week: Samsung said the lineup drew more than 1.44 million preorders in South Korea during the seven-day window that ended Monday, Aug. 3, the highest preorder total for any Galaxy phone the company has ever released, foldable or not, according to The Korea Times.

The Apple Intelligence subscription cost for Home app camera features now has a specific number attached to it: $9.99 a month, tied to Apple's 2TB iCloud+ plan. That figure comes from beta release notes for macOS 27, the update Apple calls Golden Gate internally, which confirm that AI-powered camera tools require the top iCloud+ tier even though the features themselves run on iPhone and iPad (MacRumors; MacRumors).

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.