News and Updates from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

Oppo just launched the Reno 16 series alongside its "Bubble," a touch-capable magnetic rear screen phone accessory that snaps to the back of a compatible phone and delivers something close to the secondary display Xiaomi built directly into the 17 Pro.

Samsung Gallery will stop syncing directly with OneDrive on September 30, 2026. Microsoft's support page, updated earlier this month, sets that as the official cutoff, and Galaxy owners who currently rely on the integration need to update their camera roll settings before that date, not just to keep backing up new photos, but also to keep accessing previously backed-up photos through the OneDrive app.

Samsung Galaxy Connect Now Works on Any Windows 11 PC

Motorola Razr 2026 Leak: Prices, Specs, and a 0 Ultra Hike

Samsung Galaxy Glasses Launch: Battery Cert Points to 2026 Release

Google Play has a documented problem with apps that impersonate popular franchises generic names, recycled screenshots, subscription prompts tucked behind a "free" download button. Fake Tomodachi Life apps on Google Play Store fit this template precisely: titles like "Tomodachi Life Simulator" or "Tomodachi Companion," publisher names with no connection to Nintendo, and listings vague enough to survive a quick scroll. Whether these specific apps are the work of organized networks or...

The Trump administration has directed agency chief information officers across the executive branch to install its official app on all government-furnished mobile phones, with the FAA already notifying employees that the installation will happen automatically on all FAA-issued iPhones and iPads, according to internal communications obtained by Government Executive earlier this month. Current and former federal officials called the move highly unusual. Sonny Hashmi, a former senior government IT...

Apple is reportedly building support for Google Cast and other AirPlay alternatives directly into iOS 27, a move tied to EU interoperability rules for third-party devices. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reportedly said in late May 2026 that iOS 27 will support third-party AirPlay alternatives, allowing users to set AirPlay, Google, or another option as the default for sending audio and video from an iPhone to a speaker or TV, as The Verge reported. The change is expected to be among the more visible...

Nearly 700 ad-free titles are now streamable across 135 countries, but eligibility, scope, and what stays Audible-only are worth understanding before you assume full access.

Samsung's One UI 8.5 update has begun reaching Galaxy S23 devices, but the Galaxy S23 One UI 8.5 missing AirDrop support is the detail that's generating the most noise. The update brings Quick Share compatibility with iPhones, iPads, and Macs to the S24, S25, and S26 series. The S23 does not get it, Android Authority reported today.

Microsoft has made two distinct bets on how Office work should start and progress. The first: users should generate documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from a chat interface before they ever open an app. The second: once inside Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, Copilot should edit files directly rather than queue up suggestions for a person to apply. Both are now live, moving Copilot from a sidebar assistant toward both file creation in chat and direct editing inside apps. Access is broad, but...

Rumors about camera-equipped AirPods have circulated for years without a fully convincing explanation. Health sensors? Gesture recognition? The concept kept resurfacing without anyone quite explaining what job the cameras were supposed to do. That ambiguity made the rumor easy to dismiss.

The Trump Mobile T1 is shipping. That is the least interesting thing about it. After eleven months of missed deadlines and three separate redesigns, according to Times of India, what customers are receiving is a $499 gold-colored Android phone that experts say closely resembles a Chinese-manufactured mid-range handset T-Mobile originally sold for $249, per Salon. Eric Trump announced the T1 last June, promising it would "change" mobile calling, Salon reported. That phone, domestically built and...

Code found in Apple's backend suggests the iOS 27 Apple Wallet Create a Pass feature would let users scan physical cards and tickets to generate digital passes, bypassing the usual requirement for businesses to build native Wallet support. 9to5Mac and MacRumors first reported the backend-code findings on April 16, 2026, after developer Nicolás Alvarez discovered the functions; later reporting in early May added the more specific "Create a Pass" framing.

More than 3 billion people in over 180 countries use WhatsApp, according to Meta in September 2025. That scale makes it the default messaging app for much of the world. It also makes it worth understanding not just what WhatsApp is and how to use it, but what "encrypted" actually means for your privacy and where that protection stops.

The HONOR Power2 went on sale in China on January 9, 2026, making it HONOR's latest major entry in the 10,000mAh phone category after the HONOR WIN series, as reported by Gadgets 360. It starts at 2,699 yuan, or about $386, and no global release has been announced.

A camera app built by Los Angeles wildlife creator Derrick Downey Jr. hit No. 1 on Apple's top paid apps chart within 12 hours of release, The Verge reported. The DualShot Recorder iPhone app records portrait and landscape video simultaneously in a single take, producing two synced files that save directly to the Photos library. No export step. No account.

Motorola's 2026 Razr lineup goes on sale today, and US carriers are competing on who can make the sticker prices disappear fastest. Motorola Razr carrier deals hitting stores this week follow a familiar structure: headline "free phone" offers built on 36-month financing agreements that require a premium plan to deliver the credit. Before accepting any of them, the plan math is worth running.

If you searched "Motorola Razr Fold charging speed" and got contradictory answers, the naming is why. "Razr Fold" isn't an official product name it's shorthand for Motorola's clamshell foldable lineup, which currently spans three distinct devices with three very different charging systems. The Motorola Razr Fold wired charging wattage ranges from 30W on the base model to 68W on the Ultra, and that spread has real consequences: in lab-tested conditions, it's the difference between a 43-minute...

The 2026 Motorola Razr lineup is in pre-order now, and carriers are once again marketing clamshell foldables as free. Every free Motorola Razr 2026 offer works the same way: bill credits spread over 24 to 36 months that only pay out in full if you stay on the required plan for the entire term. The 2026 device pricing is confirmed, but carrier-specific promotions for the new lineup have not yet been publicly documented at the same level of detail as the 2025 launch terms. The analysis here draws...

If you're seeing unusual Audible background data usage on Android, the first thing to do is confirm the app is actually the source before changing any settings. This guide walks through how to check whether the Audible mobile data bug is affecting your device, how to limit the damage with the least disruption to features you actually use, and what to send support if you need to escalate.

Three days ago, an attacker used a poisoned third-party VS Code extension to compromise a GitHub employee device and pull internal repositories. This GitHub security breach Microsoft's most prominent developer platform suddenly exposed would have been significant in any context. It happened at precisely the wrong moment. GitHub is no longer just a code host. Microsoft is in the middle of remaking it into the control layer for AI-driven software development, and this GitHub Microsoft survival...

Google shipped three things at I/O 2026 this week that belong in the same sentence: Gemini 3.5 Flash, Google Antigravity 2.0, and Managed Agents in the Gemini API. Taken together, they represent Google's clearest public statement yet about how it plans to make Gemini the default layer underneath products it didn't build itself. The home is where that bet eventually lands.

Natalia Sidorska's car left the road on Horseshoe Pass in north Wales last June and fell more than 330 feet down the mountainside. She didn't call for help. Her iPhone 16 Crash Detection fired automatically, alerted emergency services, notified her contacts, and transmitted her location without any input from her, the BBC reported this week. Emergency services arrived roughly 20 minutes later.

The strongest evidence available points to Apple developing a Samsung-supplied micro-curved OLED panel for its 20th-anniversary iPhone, targeting a bezel that effectively disappears from the user's line of sight rather than simply measuring smaller. Multiple leaker and supply-chain reports describe a 2027 iPhone quad-curved OLED display concept built around optical engineering, with the panel curving subtly on all four sides, MacRumors reported last month, citing leaker and supply-chain claims....

Physical dummy units of the iPhone 18 Pro have surfaced, and they tell a clear story: this fall's Pro model looks almost identical to the iPhone 17 Pro. Leaker Sonny Dickson's images, covered by MacRumors last month, show the same rear camera platform, display sizes expected to remain unchanged, and chassis proportions close enough to the 17 Pro that the dummy units serve their intended purpose for accessory manufacturers. The one visible change is a smaller hole at the front where the Dynamic...

The Motorola Razr 2026 costs $800. That's $100 more than last year's model, a jump that CNET called "hard to stomach" this week. The friction is real. Based on what reviewers have found, though, the Razr 2026 still makes the strongest case among sub-$1,000 flip phones for buyers who prioritize cover-screen flexibility and battery life over raw processing muscle. It concedes clear ground on chip performance and software longevity. Buyers who understand that trade-off going in will be satisfied;...

Indie singer-songwriter Brye posted a TikTok this week saying her song "Lemons" was produced in GarageBand on a school-issued iPad using what she called a "horrible little plug-in mic," 9to5Mac reported today. She claims the song racked up 100 million streams after going viral during quarantine in 2020.

Google is marketing Gemini as "a next step toward a true generalist agent" a tool that orchestrates complex tasks across Gmail, Calendar, and connected apps on your behalf. Six months after that pitch, the Gemini multiple Google accounts problem remains unsolved. Gemini works within a single active account. That's it. Your work life and personal life stay invisible to each other, and Gemini acts as though the other half of your day simply doesn't exist.

Samsung's 32-inch Odyssey G8 (G80HS) went on sale this week as what Samsung calls the industry's first 6K gaming monitor, carrying 6,144 x 3,456 pixels at a native 165Hz on a panel built specifically for gaming, per the Samsung Global Newsroom. The milestone is real. So is the catch.

Adam Lisagor of Sandwich has released the Hovercraft Mac app, a virtual camera utility that keeps presenters visible on screen while they share content during video calls. The app composites the presenter's webcam feed and a floating, movable window into a single outgoing video stream, so the audience never sees a screen takeover. 9to5Mac reported today that Hovercraft is available now, free to try, and priced from $19 for a single Mac.

A claim has been circulating that WhatsApp now makes messages vanish the moment someone reads them. It doesn't. WhatsApp's disappearing messages run on timers 24 hours, 7 days, or 90 days triggered by a clock, not a read receipt. No official WhatsApp announcement in the sources reviewed here introduces read-triggered deletion.

Apple Music introduced a mandatory AI disclosure system in early March, requiring labels and distributors to tag content whenever artificial intelligence played a "material portion" of its creation. The Apple Music AI-generated music policy covers four categories: sound recordings, artwork, lyrics and compositions, and music videos. Here is the tension at the center of it: Apple says the tags are required, but its own technical specification describes them as optional, defaults to assuming none...

The European Commission is moving to compel Google to hand over the ranking signals, query logs, and click data powering its search results, making that information available to rival platforms and, according to proposed measures summarized by ITIF, potentially to AI chatbot services as well. The proceeding opened in January and has since grown into a dispute about whether the data regulators want to open up still describes the thing worth competing for.

A code teardown of Android 17's QPR1 Beta 3 reveals something more interesting than a status dashboard: a four-step verification process that routes trust through an independent second device and a browser, ending with a side-by-side comparison the user resolves themselves. The Android 17 OS verification system is not yet functional end-to-end, but the UI strings extracted from the current beta are detailed enough to map the workflow, and the checks Android already has in place give the design...

Reports of first-gen Chromecast devices disappearing as a cast target in major apps have accelerated this week, and the pattern is unusual enough that observers are calling it something more than normal hardware aging. The first-gen Chromecast not working reports have clustered in a Reddit thread where multiple owners described the same breakage occurring at roughly the same time. Google has not publicly commented. According to 9to5Google, any response from the company would likely point back...

Airbnb released its 2026 summer update for iOS and Android today, adding three app-level features that shift what the platform can actually do: AI tools that surface what matters about a listing before you book, a collaborative itinerary builder designed to replace the group text thread, and a globally expanded support assistant that loads your trip details before the conversation starts. Airbnb is positioning the app as a broader trip-planning and support hub, not just a booking tool.

Samsung has begun pushing the stable One UI 8.5 update to its flagship tablets, starting in South Korea. The Galaxy Tab S11 and Galaxy Tab S11 Ultra are the first Samsung tablets to receive a confirmed stable build in this One UI 8.5 tablet rollout, according to SamMobile. Firmware X736NKOU5BZE3 is now live for the base Tab S11; the Ultra is getting X936NKOU5BZE3. Both builds close out the month-old beta program, per SamMobile.

Google's biggest Android Auto overhaul in years landed without much ceremony. Gemini is now widely available across more than 250 million compatible vehicles, bringing genuine back-and-forth conversation to replace the old rigid command syntax for eligible users, according to Google. The Android Auto Gemini update 2026 covers messages, navigation stops, email, music, and calendar tasks, all in natural language, hands-free. For most drivers, this is the practical story.

Google is sending enforcement emails to holders of G Suite legacy free edition accounts, telling them their accounts have been flagged for commercial use and that Gmail, Drive, Calendar, and Meet will be suspended within 45 days unless they upgrade to a paid Workspace plan or win an appeal. Users claim personal family domains are being swept up alongside actual commercial accounts, according to The Register, which broke the story this week. Google says it does not use private customer data to...