The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 2

A newly reported One UI 9 Call Brief time zone feature shows the other person's local time before an international call even connects, according to Android Authority's hands-on report published yesterday. The outlet tested the feature directly on a Galaxy Z Fold 8, watching the recipient's local time appear while dialing an international number, before the call went through.

Oukitel is heading into IFA 2026 with three rugged phones that don't just carry bigger batteries. They build in a night-vision camera, a fire starter, and a gaming cooling rig, treating the phone itself as a chassis for gear you'd normally pack separately. The headline device, the Oukitel WP70 Ultra rugged phone, packs a 16,000mAh silicon-carbon battery that Oukitel calls the slimmest in its class, Gadgets 360 reports.

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.

Pixel 11 Pro XL Extreme Charging mode can be activated from the phone's Battery and charging settings, the lock screen when eligible, or Quick Settings after the feature has been activated once.

When Spotify shut off the servers behind its Car Thing accessory, the company's advice to owners was blunt: factory-reset the device and dispose of it as e-waste, according to The Verge. Community projects emerged to repurpose the hardware instead.

Ask three different people what "Microsoft Copilot" does, and there's a good chance you'll get three different answers, and all of them will be partially right. That's the problem. Microsoft Copilot isn't one product. It's a family of surfaces, and each one sees a different slice of your data. Mixing up Copilot Chat with Microsoft 365 Copilot, or a Teams meeting assistant with the standalone Researcher agent, is a common reason people asking how to use Microsoft Copilot for research end up with...

Google has begun rolling out its "Take notes for me" tool for in-person meetings, starting with Android, the company said Thursday. Once fully deployed, Google Meet take notes for in-person meetings will let Gemini turn a room conversation into a transcript, summary, and action items saved to Drive, the same way it already handles scheduled video calls (Google Workspace Updates, Aug. 13, 2026).

Microsoft has turned Copilot in Excel from a chat-based advisor into a tool that edits workbooks directly. For anyone relying on Copilot in Excel collaborative workbooks, that shift, paired with a set of new controls meant to make those edits visible, is what changed, according to Microsoft's Excel blog, published in April 2026.

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.

Android users spotted something unfamiliar in their Play Store update queues last Saturday, Aug. 22, 2026: an app called "Android Pulse," often showing up as a blank square with no icon at all. So what is the Android Pulse app doing on millions of phones? According to 9to5Google, it's a first-party Google tool built for diagnostics rather than anything malicious, and its Play Store listing shows more than 10 million downloads.

Samsung's new Galaxy Z8 lineup set a preorder record in South Korea, and the standard Fold8, not the pricier Ultra, carried most of it. That's the story behind the Samsung Galaxy Z8 preorder record set this week: Samsung said the lineup drew more than 1.44 million preorders in South Korea during the seven-day window that ended Monday, Aug. 3, the highest preorder total for any Galaxy phone the company has ever released, foldable or not, according to The Korea Times.

Microsoft marked Windows 365's five year anniversary two weeks ago with a disclosure that tens of thousands of organizations worldwide now run Cloud PCs in some form, according to Microsoft's anniversary post. The company paired that figure with a batch of Windows 365 new features that push the platform well past its original 2021 pitch of "Windows from any device," adding options for part-time workers, shared kiosks, contingency access, developers, and now autonomous AI agents. Customer...

The Apple Maps Lake America update has started rolling out. As of September 1, Apple Maps began showing "Lake America" to U.S. users for the body of water traditionally known as Lake Ontario, after President Trump signed an executive order renaming it for U.S. federal use and, according to his interior secretary, personally asked Apple to make the switch.

Google says its notification-abuse defenses cut Android notification volume by more than 7 billion messages a day in 2026, according to Google's security team. That number reframes what looks like a minor annoyance, a browser popup asking permission to send updates, into a large-scale security fight Chrome has been waging for years without much fanfare.

This guide walks you through preordering any of the three new Galaxy foldables in a way that minimizes total cost or preserves flexibility, depending on which matters more to you. By the end, you'll know which channel fits your situation, how to run a real cost comparison, and what to verify before submitting your order.

Google closed its Pixel 11 launch event in New York on August 12 the way it opened: with Trevor Noah on stage. Near the end, Rick Osterloh, Google's hardware chief, joined him, apparently to wrap things up, after a lineup expected to include Alex Cooper, Steph Curry, PinkPantheress and Ayami Nakajo, according to Engadget's live coverage of the show. It made for solid television. It made for a thinner night of proof.

Apple released macOS Tahoe 26.6.1 on August 6, 2026, with a security advisory covering one Screen Sharing vulnerability. Apple identifies the flaw as CVE-2026-65400 and says an attacker on the network may be able to authenticate to Screen Sharing without valid credentials. The company addressed the authentication issue with improved state management.

Apple has given Siri a dedicated Mac app for the first time, with its own icon in the Dock.

A leaked hands-on video posted by Instagram account mundoelectronica.aa has given the clearest look yet at Samsung's unannounced Galaxy S26 FE, showing the phone next to its retail packaging in a glossy shade reportedly called "Blueberry." Android Authority described it as showing off every important design element of the phone, retail box included, making it the most complete pre-launch look at the device so far.

A teardown of the second Android 17 QPR2 beta has surfaced a hidden feature called Voicecast, according to Android Authority. The Google Pixel Voicecast feature would let Pixel phones broadcast a user's live voice over Bluetooth, a capability their phones currently lack: existing Pixel audio-sharing tools handle music and video, but not a microphone feed.