The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

Bluetooth speaker problems rarely have one cause. Microsoft's own support documentation splits them into distinct categories: pairing failures, connection failures, and audio-output failures, each requiring a different fix (Microsoft Support, 3 months ago; Microsoft Support, 3 months ago). Treat all three as the same problem and you'll end up applying the wrong fix for hours.

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...

Can MS Paint run Doom? Yes, technically, though the honest answer takes some unpacking. Doom is fully playable inside Microsoft Paint right now, complete with sound, music, and a frame rate that hits 35 fps at the game's native resolution (The Verge, today). The project is called DoomPaint, built by Mark Russinovich, Microsoft Azure's CTO and a Technical Fellow (Windows Central, today). It loads the genuine shareware DOOM1.WAD file and sustains Doom's classic 35 tics-per-second cadence at...

WhatsApp is rolling out a new settings panel that lets a subset of Mac beta testers set their own WhatsApp beta for Mac update schedule, picking between two release channels instead of taking whatever build the company pushes automatically, according to WABetaInfo and Hardware Upgrade this week.

Xbox is reportedly preparing to launch its disc-to-digital program this month, converting physical game discs into account-bound digital licenses, according to Kotaku, which cited a leaked roadmap and publisher materials reviewed by The Verge, published yesterday. Microsoft has not confirmed the plan directly, and the reporting is built on leaked documents rather than an official statement.

Phones with 8,000mAh to 10,000mAh batteries used to be a trade-show curiosity. Not anymore. The vivo T5 Pro shipped with a 9,020mAh cell, and the Redmi Note 17 Pro Max has already been confirmed at 10,000mAh, Gadgets Now reports. Batteries that size used to demand a phone thick enough to double as a doorstop, but the same chemistry now lets manufacturers fit 7,000mAh or more into bodies under 8.5mm, per Gadgets Now.

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.

Reports of a Disney Plus free tier trace back to internal talks inside Disney, not a public announcement. Two people familiar with the matter told Business Insider that the company is discussing making some Disney+ content available without a subscription.

Google has spent the past several months steadily expanding what the Gemini overlay can do, and the latest round of Gemini overlay new features makes the strategic intent hard to miss. The overlay the assistant panel you pull up from any Android screen is gaining video generation, music creation, Canvas, and Guided Learning directly on its surface. Taken together with a persistent floating bubble still in testing and a Gemini Live redesign that eliminates its own dedicated screen, the changes...

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.

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.

Firefox 153 shipped last week with a security advisory that warrants immediate attention. MFSA 2026-68 rates the release's overall security impact as high, citing memory-corruption bugs in Firefox 152 that Mozilla says could, with sufficient effort, have been exploited to run arbitrary code. The update also delivers native HDR video playback on Windows 10 and 11 for qualifying hardware, QR code tab sharing, expanded PDF editing, and tighter extension permissions.

Apple didn't quietly bolt on a new financing tier this week. It shut down the iPhone Upgrade Program and iPhone Payments in the United States and replaced both with the Apple Upgrade program, a Klarna-backed lease that now spans iPhone, Apple Watch, iPad, and Mac (Apple Newsroom, this week). Leases start at $17.99 a month for iPhone and run 12 to 36 months depending on device category, sold through Apple's own retail and online channels in partnership with buy-now-pay-later provider Klarna...

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.

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).

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.

A console with a game disc inserted should, by most players' intuitions, be able to run that game. During Sunday night's Xbox outage, that assumption failed. The Xbox outage blocked disc games alongside digital titles for roughly 15 to 16 hours, not because the discs were unreadable, but because a backend licensing service that Xbox depends on stopped working.

Galaxy devices running One UI 9 will wipe themselves after 13 failed lock screen attempts, a hard limit confirmed by a Samsung support document and reported by Android Authority today. Not a temporary lockout. Every photo, app, and setting on the device gets erased, accounts are signed out, and the phone returns to factory condition.

Apple CarPlay not working is rarely about a bad cable or spotty Wi-Fi, not at first anyway. The real diagnostic starting point is simpler: figure out whether the connection is wired or wireless, because the checks that follow are different for each (MacObserver, last year).

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.

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...

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.

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.

Search for how to install macOS on an iPad, and Sidecar dominates the results, Apple's feature for mirroring an actual Mac's screen onto the tablet. A project called Virtual Mac on iPad claims something different: it boots real macOS, the actual kernel and userspace, directly on the iPad's own silicon. The project's repository puts its ambition plainly. People have wanted to run macOS on an iPad for more than a decade, the maintainers write, and "today, that dream comes true."

Netflix nudging ahead as UK viewers' starting point is a narrow finding with a broad implication: the broadcast default is gone.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

New Apple TV and HomePod mini hardware is reportedly "nearly ready to launch," with September or October the likely window for both devices, according to MacRumors citing Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. That report puts a firmer shape on the HomePod mini 2 release date and features that have been circulating for months, but the hardware itself isn't really the story here.

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....

Galaxy Watch owners are flooding Reddit with the same complaint for the third time this year: their watches are hemorrhaging battery life for no obvious reason. The latest wave of Galaxy Watch battery drain reports surfaced today, according to Android Authority, hitting Galaxy Watch 6, 7, and 8 owners just as Samsung launched the Galaxy Watch 9 and Galaxy Watch Ultra 2. Samsung has not publicly acknowledged the problem at any point during this cycle.

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.

Samsung's latest foldable lineup has broken a Galaxy preorder record in South Korea that had stood since 2019. The Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold8, and Galaxy Z Flip8 drew more than 1.44 million preorders during a seven-day reservation period, surpassing the roughly 1.38 million recorded by the Galaxy Note10 series seven years earlier.

This guide covers how to disable AI Mode in Chrome on desktop: the shortcuts that show up in the address bar, the New Tab Page search box, and the right-click context menu on Windows, Mac, and Linux. It doesn't touch Google Search's own AI Mode tab, which lives outside the browser entirely and gets a short, separate note near the end.

A full set of press renders for the Lenovo Googlebook 15 surfaced this week, giving the clearest look yet at Google's new Android-based laptop category before either company has said a word about it. The images, first shared by Digital Citizen, show a 15-inch laptop built for Google's Gemini-first computing push, complete with a new Google 'G' key that leak reports identify as a Gemini shortcut.

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?