The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

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.

Samsung has officially unveiled the Galaxy S26 FE, turning an August 27 launch rumor into a confirmed product with a release date, price, and final specifications.

Outlook throwing "Your message can't be displayed right now" sends most people straight to a search bar looking for a one-click fix. There isn't one published yet. The Microsoft material reviewed for this guide does not document a fix for this exact wording. What follows is a troubleshooting heuristic for narrowing down whether the problem is a local app glitch, a single damaged message, an account-level issue, or something happening on Microsoft's end. It's not a Microsoft-confirmed diagnostic...

Apple's WWDC26 preview of iOS 27 showed off video playback in the car and a much smarter Siri, but installing the update on an iPhone doesn't unlock either feature by itself. Working out iOS 27 CarPlay features compatibility means checking three separate things at once: the iPhone's model, the car parked in the driveway, and whether the apps already installed have caught up to Apple's new tools.

A writer at Eurogamer traded in a PS2 and more than 100 games the day after a single session with Halo 3 at a colleague's apartment. Not gradually. Overnight. That is what a system-seller looks like: not a game that rewards console ownership, but one that creates it from nothing.

Samsung's Memory Manufacturing Technology Center stood up a task force this month to build a commodity DRAM end-fab at its Hwaseong Campus Complex 1. An industry official says the move will lift Samsung DRAM production capacity roughly 15% by December relative to the start of 2026, according to Seoul Economic Daily. The cause is a market running critically short: commodity DRAM prices climbed more than 80% in the first half of this year, a move that makes a capacity investment easy to justify...

Google's September 2026 Pixel Feature Drop redesigns the Pixel VIP widget so people can call or text favorite contacts straight from the home screen, skipping the bottom sheet that used to stand between a tap and an actual phone call (Google; 9to5Google). Google announced the update yesterday, but hands-on testing published today by Android Authority found the new Pixel VIP widget isn't switched on for most users yet. Google still needs to flip a server-side switch before the buttons actually...

Galaxy Z Fold 8 sales in South Korea rose roughly 10% week over week in the seven days after Apple unveiled the iPhone Duo, according to telecommunications industry sources cited by Yonhap News Agency.

Google's Pixel 11 series is set to be unveiled on August 12, continuing a design that looks a lot like last year's Pixel 10, according to a 9to5Google leak from three months ago. What's changing, if that leak holds up, is what's inside: a Tensor G6 chip built around a modem swap aimed at Pixel's most persistent weak spot. Pixel 11 battery life is the question hanging over this launch, and the leaked battery figures suggest Google isn't trying to answer it by simply making the cell bigger.

Apple TV won 28 television Emmys this year, more than any other outlet, with parent company Apple's total reaching 29 once a separate commercial-category award is folded in. It's the first time Apple TV has finished at the top of the Emmy tally since the service launched in 2019, according to The Hollywood Reporter today.

To find a lost Android phone with Google Find Hub, open the Find Hub app on another device or go to android.com/find, then sign in with the Google Account used on the missing phone. That's the fast version. Google's Find My Device service is now called Find Hub. The rebrand expanded the service beyond device finding, with features for locating people and a growing range of compatible accessories.

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...

Warner Bros. Discovery yesterday began testing HBO Max Shorts with a limited group of U.S. iPhone users: a vertically scrollable feed of scenes, trailers, and bonus clips drawn entirely from the existing HBO Max library. The feature is not original programming. It is existing content reformatted for vertical mobile playback, designed to pull subscribers from a 30-second clip into a full episode or series. Broader availability across devices and markets is planned, with no timeline attached.

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...

Google is rolling out a Gemini feature that saves where people stash things they rarely use, so they can ask for the spot back months later. The company's own example: tell Gemini where you put your passport, and Gemini will save the location.

Apple Music subscribers don't have to wait until December to see their year in music laid out. The 2026 Replay playlist has been quietly taking shape since late winter, breaking down top songs and artists as the year goes rather than dropping all at once (9to5Mac). This guide covers how to get your 2026 Apple Music Replay playlist in the Music app, how to pull up the same stats on the web, and what to check if Replay still isn't showing on your account seven months in.

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.

Roku plans to let US users try Roku Labs experimental features before anyone else gets them, Android Authority reported. The company describes the program as loosely modeled on Google Labs: opt in, test features the Roku team is still building, and send feedback that Roku says "may" shape what ships next. Roku Labs isn't live yet, but Android Authority says it will be accessible directly from the Roku Home Screen; Roku has not given a specific launch date beyond 'available soon.'

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.

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.

Several Pixel owners say Recorder has captured audio normally but then failed to show the saved recording afterward, and Google still hasn't explained why.

Google is rolling out a redesigned icon for Pixel Recorder, the first change to the app's icon in the seven years since it launched on the Pixel 4 in 2019, according to 9to5Google. The Pixel Recorder new icon update swaps the familiar white waveform on a red square for a red waveform on a white background.

MapQuest, a mapping service some people had assumed was defunct, according to PCMag, is now the No. 1 free app on Apple's US App Store and the top free navigation app on Google Play in the US, per BGR and PCMag. The surge traces back to a dispute over a lake's name: after President Trump signed an August 27 executive order directing federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario "Lake America" amid a breakdown in trade talks with Canada, MapQuest publicly refused to make the change, according to BGR.

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.

Type "Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra lowest price" into a search bar right now and the answer hasn't moved: $2,099.99, exactly what Samsung charged when the phone launched. Reviews published last month still list that figure, and none of them point to a retailer markdown, a price-tracker record, or any confirmed Samsung Z Fold 8 Ultra discount (PCMag UK). Anyone hoping for a Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra deal this week will need to keep watching, or decide whether the launch price is worth paying now.

Spotify Lossless has been part of Premium since last year, but there's a good chance it's never touched your ears. The feature launched in September 2025 as a free addition to Individual, Duo, and Family plans, no separate HiFi tier required, and Spotify expanded it to more than 50 markets by October 2025 (Spotify Newsroom). The catch is that it ships off by default, so most Premium subscribers who technically qualify have never actually flipped the switch (Audio Endgame).

Warner Bros. Discovery this week launched two new mobile features for HBO Max subscribers in the U.S.: a swipeable vertical Shorts feed and a conversational AI search tool called Ask HBO Max. Both are built around the same problem too many choices, not enough watching and neither is available to all subscribers yet.

Should you restart your phone regularly? The honest answer is: probably less often than you think, and for different reasons than you've been told. Your phone is not a 2003 Windows PC. It doesn't need a Sunday-night reboot to stay functional. Modern smartphones are built to run for weeks at a time without issue, and the idea that routine restarts keep a phone healthy is, at best, weakly supported by the evidence.

Trading in an old phone with Google Store can turn a drawer relic into real money toward a new Pixel. At the Pixel 11 launch, Google's trade-in program offered $150 for a Pixel 4a and $200 for a 2019 iPhone 11, numbers that catch owners off guard who figured those phones weren't worth listing anywhere. The U.S. trade-in ceiling also climbed from about $800 at the Pixel 10 launch to $1,000 this year, with top-tier phones like a Galaxy Z Fold 7 or iPhone 17 Pro Max eligible for $900 to $1,000.

Wallpaper Engine isn't available on macOS. Its developers currently support Windows and Android and say they have no immediate plans for a Mac version.

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 hasn't shipped the Pixel 11 yet, and a leaker has already surfaced the internal codename for the chip that comes after it. The Google Pixel 12 Tensor G7 leak traces back to a single Telegram post: the chip is reportedly called "LaJolla" (Android Authority, earlier this year). That's it. That's the leak.

Flagship launches often foregrounded the processor: bigger cores, faster benchmarks, a new chip name printed across the marketing slide. In 2026, the component actually straining a flagship's budget isn't the chip doing the thinking. It's the chip doing the remembering.

Samsung has started rolling out the Galaxy S26 One UI 9 Beta 6 update, and it's a maintenance release through and through. The changelog reported so far is almost entirely bug fixes, with no headline features attached to this build.

Apple Watch owners testing the watchOS 27 beta have found two features missing outright: a Digital Crown double-click shortcut and the Walkie-Talkie app. A third change reshuffles rather than removes, merging three separate Find My apps into one. These are the watchOS 27 changes reported so far in beta testing, and each one comes with a different level of certainty depending on which build was checked and when.

Google has locked in the Pixel 11 launch event for Wednesday, August 12, in New York City, with an unusually late keynote start at 6 p.m. ET / 3 p.m. PT. That's six days from now. The details come from invitations sent to The Verge and 9to5Google about a month ago.

Samsung Galaxy S26 FE leaked images posted this week give the public a new unofficial look at the company's next Fan Edition phone. A Telegram account called "The Cipher Project" shared three photos showing the device in black, light green, and dark purple, according to 9to5Google.

Most people assume a TV without Bluetooth means a trip to the electronics store. It doesn't. Bluetooth has become mainstream in most televisions now, but that's only half the picture: plenty of older or specialty sets, like a favorite pair of wired headphones or a plasma TV still hanging on in the den, never got the feature and won't get it through a software update either, according to Wirecutter/NYT reporting from last month. Figuring out how to add Bluetooth to a TV without Bluetooth usually...

Oppo is reportedly testing two 200MP rear cameras for the Find X10 Pro, including a 200MP main camera and a 200MP telephoto. A June 2026 leak attributed to Chinese tipster Digital Chat Station identifies the main camera as an unannounced Samsung ISOCELL HPC with a 1/1.3-inch optical format, alongside a 3MP multispectral sensor.

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).