News and Updates from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

The Pixel 11 Tensor G6 TPU upgrade matters most in the moments when a feature can run locally instead of waiting on Google's servers. Google says the chip delivers 50% more compute power and runs up to 3.5x faster in certain workloads, a figure that's easy to overlook next to the phone's 120x zoom lens and its Gemini-powered camera tricks (Android Authority, published today). The TPU is one of the factors behind both of those flashier features, working alongside a new image processor and...

New code buried in a macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate is fueling fresh camera-equipped AirPods rumors, showing in granular detail how Apple's prototype earbuds actually capture and process images, according to MacRumors. The details point to a device built for Visual Intelligence, Apple's visual AI feature, rather than conventional photography.

Preliminary settings text and pre-launch reporting describe a narrow trigger for HiLight, the rumored back-of-phone light feature headed to Google's Pixel 11 Pro: calls from favorite contacts, not notifications in general. That distinction separates a revival of the old blinking-LED notification light from something built directly on top of how Google Contacts already organizes your people, specifically its Favorites designation (9to5Google, 5 days ago).

Disney sues FCC over ABC broadcast licenses in a fight that boils down to one contested question: is an early license review ordinary oversight, or retaliation wearing a bureaucrat's hat?

iOS 27's Shared Albums update fixes a problem baked into the feature for years: shared photos and videos will no longer get compressed the moment they leave a personal library. The tradeoff is that new Shared Albums now count against the owner's iCloud storage, according to MacRumors and Trusted Reviews, reversing a setup that let people share thousands of images without touching their plan. The change is rolling out now, with iOS 27 in public beta ahead of a full release expected alongside new...

YouTube is testing a visual tweak to its double-tap skip gesture on Android that shows, in red, exactly how much time a viewer just jumped, according to Android Authority, which spotted the change recently. The gesture itself, double-tapping either edge of the video to skip forward or back, isn't new. What's changed is that it now surfaces the scrub bar and marks the skipped span on the timeline, instead of leaving viewers to guess where they landed.

Scroll through enough short-form video, and it starts to look like a documented cultural pivot: teenagers ditching smartphones for flip phones, treating a five-minute conversation without checking a screen like a personal achievement, filming themselves making prolonged eye contact as if it were a rediscovered skill.

The Pixel 11 Pro is a genuinely excellent phone. Google just isn't selling it on the reasons why.

The latest Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra leak suggests the notch is staying. Renders published earlier this month show the same shallow, V-shaped cutout on the upper display edge that shipped on last year's Ultra, contradicting earlier rumors that Samsung would switch to a punch-hole camera, according to SammyGuru and Android Headlines.

Samsung's One UI 9 gives Motion Photos a new place to shine, letting supported Galaxy devices turn them into animated wallpapers for the home screen, lock screen, or both. Android Authority, citing SamMobile, reports that the feature is available on Samsung's latest foldables but has not yet appeared in the One UI 9 beta on the Galaxy S26 series.

Google raised the price of its standard Pixel by $100 this year, and Engadget still recommends it without hesitation. In its Google Pixel 11 review, Engadget called the phone "a lot of phone for a little more money" and handed it a 9.2 out of 10, noting it "didn't change a ton, but is still one of the best smartphones on the market."

Most of the coverage around Google's new flagship is fixated on the Tensor G6 chip. That's fair; it's a real chip with real upgrades.

Mozilla added three new features to Firefox Smart Window on Tuesday, its AI-powered browsing mode, aimed at cutting down the friction of juggling tabs, searches and browsing history. The update brings live web answers with cited sources through a new partnership with Exa, smarter tab organization that groups related tabs and kills duplicates, and visual previews of browsing history, according to Mozilla's launch post.

Waze points are mainly a visible score: something to check on a profile and compare against other Wazers, not something to spend. Open a Waze profile and progress information shows up in two different places: a point total below the username, and a level plus a set of badges filed under a separate tab called Achievements. It's tempting to assume a formula ties all of it together, so many points per report, a badge every few hundred miles, but the Help pages reviewed for this article don't...

Two reviews of the same phone landed within a day of each other this week, and they read like they're describing different products. MakeUseOf calls the Pixel 11 Pro Fold "the Google foldable I've always wanted", while The Verge says it "feels like the end of an era." Both verdicts hold up. They're just answering different questions, and untangling why is the point of this Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review.

A One UI 9 Watch test build for the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic has reportedly appeared on Samsung's servers, according to Android Central.

Every Android owner who opens the Google One app this year runs into the same fork in the road: keep paying a few dollars for extra storage, or step up to one of Google's One AI subscription plans that fold in Gemini, smart-home perks, and a health app for $20 a month or more. That jump isn't accidental. It's the result of eight years of Google quietly turning a storage-rental service into the billing system for its entire AI push.

A Samsung Galaxy S26 FE hands-on video making the rounds this week appears to show Horizontal Lock, the video stabilization mode Samsung built for its S26 flagships, running inside the camera app of the company's cheaper Fan Edition phone. Two separate clips, posted to TikTok and apparently filmed at what looks like a Samsung retail display in Malaysia, offer the first real-world look at the unannounced device ahead of a launch expected in early September (Android Authority; Tech Advisor,...

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.

Press a thumb against the back of a Galaxy Watch 8 for five seconds, and the watch hands back a number between 0 and 100. Samsung calls it the Antioxidant Index, and knowing how Galaxy Watch 8 measures antioxidant levels changes how you should read that score (Engadget reported this week).

Code strings buried inside Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app reference a device called the Galaxy H1, pointing to Samsung's first over-ear headphones in more than a decade (The Verge, this week).

Google hasn't even released the Pixel 11 yet, and already four codenames and a chip nickname for the phone after it have leaked online. That's where Google Pixel 12 rumors stand right now: reports about reports, built on a single leaker's Telegram posts rather than anything resembling a product announcement (Android Authority, 3 months ago).

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Google has expanded its Gemini Pixel football club partnerships to five of Europe's biggest teams at once, naming Gemini and Pixel the "Official Consumer AI" and "Official Smartphone" partner of Arsenal FC, FC Barcelona, FC Bayern München, Liverpool FC and Paris Saint-Germain, according to Google's announcement today. Google describes the arrangements as long-term partnerships built around "personal intelligence" and smartphone technology, aimed at putting fans "right at the heart of the...

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.

Apple expanded support for its Apple Account Card in Wallet last week, adding Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Malta to the list of countries where the feature works (MacRumors). It's a small update to a feature that's been rolling out gradually since 2022 (MacRumors), but it's a good excuse to answer a question a lot of iPhone owners have been quietly Googling: what is an Apple Account Card, and is it something you need?

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.

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Google-backed researchers at the University of California, San Diego are building a 2,000-device computing cluster from retired Pixel smartphones, with the full system due to launch this fall. The target workload is narrow and specific: giving university students affordable access to compute resources for coursework in parallel programming and systems classes. A 20-device pilot has already produced benchmark results, and the architecture is set. This has moved past the whiteboard.

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.

Google is expected to unveil its first Bluetooth item tracker, the Google Pixel Tag tracker, at today's Made by Google event in New York, according to TechSpot. Google has not confirmed the device as of this writing, so everything below reflects reporting published ahead of the keynote. If the tracker arrives as leaked, it closes a gap that's looked increasingly strange: Google has run a crowdsourced device-finding network since 2024 without ever selling a tag of its own (9to5Google).

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).

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...

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.

WhatsApp's in-chat search feature for iPhone would let users jump straight into a chat's search mode with a single tap, skipping the detour through chat info the app currently requires. The feature was discovered in WhatsApp beta for iOS 26.31.10.70 on TestFlight, but WhatsApp has not enabled it for beta testers and has not announced a release date.

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 developer known as busung has released an open-source tool called the Root My Galaxy app, which claims to grant temporary root access to select Snapdragon-powered Galaxy flagships without unlocking the bootloader or tripping Samsung's Knox e-fuse, according to an Android Authority report published today. The developer describes the process as one-click and says it leaves user data untouched, per the same report. The conventional route to persistent Samsung root involves bootloader changes,...

Uninstall a Microsoft Store app, wait for the progress bar to finish, then check your storage. The number barely moves. If you're wondering why Windows 11 storage does not change after uninstalling apps, the answer depends on where the app came from: MSIX-packaged apps and traditionally installed desktop software can fail to free up space for two entirely different reasons. For a Store app, that result can be normal even when removal from your account went through without a hitch.

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.