News and Updates from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

The European Parliament has replaced Google with French search engine Qwant as the default on its staff computers, citing digital sovereignty and privacy. The switch is unlikely to register as a competitive event for Google, which holds roughly 90% of European search market share. What makes it notable is the timing: Parliament made the change a day after the European Commission unveiled its first thorough tech sovereignty strategy, a package that could eventually tie billions in public IT...

Google's June Android Canary build, 2606, arrived today, less than three weeks after the May release. The headline addition: a slider that lets users set their system's dominant color directly, paired with four style presets for switching between visual configurations. The build is available now for Pixel 6 and later via Google's Android Flash Tool, per Android Authority.

A One UI 8.5 roadmap reportedly posted on Samsung's Hong Kong site suggests the Galaxy S22, Galaxy Z Fold 4, and Galaxy Z Flip 4 will not receive the update. The three 2022 flagship families are absent from the schedule entirely, and since Samsung's update strategy has historically been consistent across regions, Android Police concluded that the exclusion is likely global. Security patches are still scheduled for approximately one more year, Android Authority reported, but the reporting...

WhatsApp is pushing a redesigned chat lists interface to iPhone users this week, giving iOS users a similar chat-list management system to what Android users received first. Version 26.21.74, released Tuesday on the App Store, lets users choose which lists stay visible in the main row and which get moved into a secondary menu, according to 9to5Mac and WABetaInfo. The rollout is staged, so not every user on the latest version will see it immediately.

Samsung didn't remove lockdown protection from One UI 9. It embedded the feature directly into the power menu, making Samsung One UI 9 lockdown mode automatic the moment you open and dismiss the menu without selecting anything. The phone drops to the lock screen, fingerprint and face unlock are disabled, and a PIN or password is now the only way back in. No dedicated button required, no second tap needed.

Weibo leaker Ice Universe revised the expected iPhone 18 Pro Max thickness today, dropping the figure from 8.8mm to 8.75mm and matching it exactly to the iPhone 17 Pro Max. The change, reported by AppleInsider today, came with no explanation. Separate claims about a battery in the 5,100–5,200 mAh range, from Digital Chat Station, and a weight exceeding 240 grams, from Instant Digital, were not revised and remain open questions, per Trusted Reviews.

Starting today, anyone creating a new Apple Account in Texas must confirm their age before accessing the App Store. SB 2420, signed into law in May 2025, was supposed to take effect January 1 but was blocked by a federal district court in December 2025. The Fifth Circuit stayed that injunction on June 1, allowing enforcement to resume while the constitutional question remains open.

Satya Nadella opened Microsoft's annual Build developer conference this week by leading with Windows. Not Azure. Not Copilot. Not Teams. The Verge noted it couldn't remember the last time Build kicked off that way. The Microsoft Build 2026 Windows AI strategy, as the keynote framed it, rests on a specific claim: Windows is no longer the legacy platform Microsoft tends while building elsewhere. It's the on-device layer of Microsoft's AI stack, the place where local agents run, where developer...

A teardown of the latest Google Drive release shows Google preparing a compact account switcher redesign that strips back most of the visual language it spent the past year rolling out across first-party Android apps including Maps, Translate, Wallet, Tasks, Calendar, Keep, and the Play Store. The greeting is gone, the profile photo is smaller, and the explicit "Switch account" label has disappeared. Every function stays put; the panel just takes up considerably less room.

Google announced last month that Gboard is getting a Gemini-powered feature called Rambler, which the company says will filter out filler words, self-corrections, pauses, and repetition as you speak, so only cleaned-up text lands in the input field. That's a specific claim, and it matters because Gboard already has tools that correct dictated text after it appears. If Rambler genuinely processes speech before transcription is committed, it addresses a real gap in how voice input works today. If...

There's a build on Hackaday that stops people mid-scroll. A fully functional Linux computer fitted inside a vintage Halina 35X film camera body. The rangefinder shell is intact. The original shutter mechanism is gone. In its place: a Raspberry Pi, a small display visible through the viewfinder aperture, a thumb keyboard accessible from below. The builder didn't choose the camera because it was a convenient enclosure. They chose it because it meant something to them, and they wanted to carry...

Google launched two targeted updates to its payments platform yesterday, and the split between them is worth understanding clearly. Google Pay direct checkout brings saved Google Wallet payment credentials directly into a retailer's checkout page, cutting out the separate Google-hosted flow that currently pulls shoppers away from the merchant's site. The second update, a revamped Secure Payment Authentication (SPA) system, replaces SMS one-time passwords and bank redirects with a biometric...

GameSir has shipped what it calls "one of the biggest updates in GameHub's history." Version 6.0.6 adds Steam Friends and Achievements integration, EA game support, gamepad remapping tools, and a claimed 50% reduction in app size. The GameHub 6.0.6 update details come from GameSir's own Discord announcement, relayed by Android Authority on Friday not an independently verified changelog. Every feature claim here traces back to the developer.

SwitchBot's Standing Circulator Fan launched last month with a combination that makes it worth attention this summer: a built-in battery, three height configurations from desk to full standing, and Matter support that puts it in Apple Home. It's available now in the US, UK, and EU starting at $99.99, discounted from a $129.99 MSRP, according to SwitchBot's announcement.

Chrome posted record scores on two industry-standard browser benchmarks this week, and the numbers themselves are almost beside the point. What's more interesting is the engineering work behind them a coordinated overhaul spanning three separate subsystems that reveals how much the browser's job has changed.

A $199 USB adapter now lets owners of select Cadillac, Chevy, and GMC electric vehicles run Android Auto and Apple CarPlay on their factory screens. No tools, no panel removal, no dealer visit. EV Play claims the whole setup takes about two minutes, according to the company. The catch is that EV Play acknowledges in its own FAQ that GM could disable the adapter via an over-the-air software update. That's not a hypothetical. GM has already applied exactly that kind of pressure against a...

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. She claims the song racked up 100 million streams after going viral during quarantine in 2020.

At MWC 2026 in Barcelona, Samsung Display was on the show floor with a phone that slides upward to reveal more screen. Back home, Samsung's product division was shipping a phone that unfolds twice. Both devices exist. Only one is for sale. That gap between what Samsung's display engineers can demonstrate and what its product team will actually commit to defines the current state of the Samsung rollable phone.

Xiaomi 17T Live Images Surface With Dimensity 8500 Benchmark

Android AirDrop-Style Tap to Share Expands, Most Users Still Waiting

iPhone Liquid Glass Display Explained: Bezels Hidden, Not Removed

Aulumu M10 3-in-1 MagSafe Battery: What the Listing Doesn't Tell You

Galaxy Z Fold 8 Wide Leak Explained: Shape, Specs, and Unknowns

Recent leaker and supply-chain reports point to Apple developing a Samsung-developed 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.

Google shipped three things at I/O 2026 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.

OpenAI iPhone Killer Rumors Explained: Why the Speaker Comes First

Why John Ternus's Foldable iPad May Slip Past 2029

iPhone 20 Curved Screen Explained: What Quad-Edge Really Means

Physical dummy units of the iPhone 18 Pro have surfaced, and they point to a familiar-looking Pro design, though the evidence is still limited: this fall's Pro model looks almost identical to the iPhone 17 Pro. Leaker Sonny Dickson's images, reported by MacRumors, 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...

Apple's AirPods hearing health suite reached the Philippines in March 2026, the latest addition to a rollout that now spans more than 100 countries and regions. Apple's broader hearing health suite covers three distinct capabilities: a Hearing Test, a Hearing Aid mode for mild to moderate loss, and active Hearing Protection, though availability varies by feature and region.

On May 18, 2026, an attacker used a poisoned third-party VS Code extension to compromise a GitHub employee device and pull internal repositories. This GitHub security breach suddenly exposed Microsoft's most prominent developer platform. 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 analysis examines whether that...

Apple's satellite feature started as a lifeline for people genuinely stranded, no signal, no road, no one nearby. Three years on, it lives inside the standard Messages app and lets you text a friend from a trailhead. The iPhone 18 Pro, if current rumors hold, could push iPhone 18 Pro satellite messaging further still: toward a connectivity layer that operates in the background rather than a special mode you consciously invoke when things go sideways.

Pixel Watch cyclists are reporting completed bike workouts that vanish before they ever appear in Fitbit. The evidence for a cycling-specific Pixel Watch cycling workout not saving bug is thin, but what is well-documented is a broader Fitbit data reliability failure that has been corrupting health metrics across the Pixel Watch lineup since mid-March 2026. Cycling may be its newest casualty.

MacStories creator Federico Viticci recently launched Shortcuts Playground, a free, open-source plugin for Claude Code and Codex that takes a plain-English description and returns a signed .shortcut file ready to import into Apple's Shortcuts app. No drag-and-drop builder.

Apple recently previewed something more interesting than a standard accessibility update. The Apple Intelligence integrations coming to VoiceOver, Voice Control, Magnifier, and Accessibility Reader, all slated for later in 2026, suggest, in working form, the technical ingredients a company would need to build a genuinely context-aware assistant. Apple hasn't said that's the plan. The overlap may be the point anyway.

Spotify and Universal Music Group recently announced a licensing deal that clears both master recording and publishing rights for AI-generated music, allowing the company to launch a tool letting Premium subscribers create covers and remixes of songs from participating UMG artists. The tool will cost extra on top of a standard Premium subscription. No price and no launch date have been set so far.

Google's ECG app has stopped opening for a reported subset of Pixel Watch owners, returning a loop that tells them to reopen the app and try again with no result, no matter how many times they try. Reports include Pixel Watch 2, 3, and 4 users. Google's support team appears aware of the problem and says a patch is coming, though no timeline has been provided.

Apple just filed a certiorari petition with the Supreme Court, asking the justices to take up two questions arising from the company's contempt finding in its long-running legal fight with Epic Games. The petition, confirmed by 9to5Mac, marks Apple's third attempt to get the Court involved in this dispute. For the developers caught in the middle, the outcome determines whether App Store payment competition is real or cosmetic.

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Apple Ultra products: two devices, two very different tests