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YouTube is testing a visual tweak to its double-tap skip gesture on Android that shows, in red, exactly how much time a viewer just jumped, according to Android Authority, which spotted the change recently. The gesture itself, double-tapping either edge of the video to skip forward or back, isn't new. What's changed is that it now surfaces the scrub bar and marks the skipped span on the timeline, instead of leaving viewers to guess where they landed.

iOS 27's Shared Albums update fixes a problem baked into the feature for years: shared photos and videos will no longer get compressed the moment they leave a personal library. The tradeoff is that new Shared Albums now count against the owner's iCloud storage, according to MacRumors and Trusted Reviews, reversing a setup that let people share thousands of images without touching their plan. The change is rolling out now, with iOS 27 in public beta ahead of a full release expected alongside new...

Type "use phone as a tape measure" into a search bar and dozens of apps promise to do exactly that. Android Authority decided to test the appetite behind that search: it asked readers which of four sensor-based toolbox jobs they'd actually hand to their phone.

Google raised the price of its standard Pixel by $100 this year, and Engadget still recommends it without hesitation. In its Google Pixel 11 review, Engadget called the phone "a lot of phone for a little more money" and handed it a 9.2 out of 10, noting it "didn't change a ton, but is still one of the best smartphones on the market."

Netflix's July shareholder letter contained a number that cuts against a decade of streaming-industry assumptions: revenue grew 13% year over year to $12.6 billion, while member viewing hours for the first half of 2026 grew just 2% (Netflix Q2 2026 Shareholder Letter). The two figures don't cover identical periods, but the gap is wide enough to raise a real question at the heart of any credible Netflix monetization strategy: if people aren't watching dramatically more, what's actually driving...

Two reviews of the same phone landed within a day of each other this week, and they read like they're describing different products. MakeUseOf calls the Pixel 11 Pro Fold "the Google foldable I've always wanted", while The Verge says it "feels like the end of an era." Both verdicts hold up. They're just answering different questions, and untangling why is the point of this Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold review.

The latest Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra leak suggests the notch is staying. Renders published earlier this month show the same shallow, V-shaped cutout on the upper display edge that shipped on last year's Ultra, contradicting earlier rumors that Samsung would switch to a punch-hole camera, according to SammyGuru and Android Headlines.

A One UI 9 Watch test build for the Galaxy Watch 8 Classic has reportedly appeared on Samsung's servers, according to Android Central.

Google has told suppliers it plans to produce every Pixel smartphone, watch, and wireless earbud outside China starting in 2027, according to Nikkei Asia's report two days ago, which ties the move to ongoing tension between Washington and Beijing. Business Standard also reported that Google had informed suppliers of the plan, yesterday.

The Google Pixel 11 price increase lands the phone at $899 to start, the same as Samsung's Galaxy S26 and $100 above the iPhone 17's reported $799 starting price, according to Android Authority. For a phone line that built its reputation on undercutting Apple and Samsung, that's not a minor pricing update. It's the end of an era.

Galaxy S26 owners testing One UI 9 finally have a new build to install after nearly a month without a major beta release. Reports of One UI 9 Beta 5 began appearing on August 12, with the update reaching Galaxy S26-series testers in India.

Mozilla added three new features to Firefox Smart Window on Tuesday, its AI-powered browsing mode, aimed at cutting down the friction of juggling tabs, searches and browsing history. The update brings live web answers with cited sources through a new partnership with Exa, smarter tab organization that groups related tabs and kills duplicates, and visual previews of browsing history, according to Mozilla's launch post.

A newer iPhone can text emergency services from a trailhead with zero bars, but that capability isn't something you switch on in advance. It becomes available when you're off-grid and a normal call or text to emergency services can't connect, as long as you're outdoors with a clear view of the sky and using an iPhone 14 or later.

Archival note: this article reflects reporting available through August 10, 2026, two days before Google's Made by Google keynote. It does not cover what was announced at that event. Readers looking for the outcome should consult post-event coverage.

Apple has put a Siri icon in the Mac Dock for the first time, the centerpiece of the macOS 27 Golden Gate Siri app now running in developer and public beta. Apple says the wider, free release arrives as a software update this fall. It marks the moment Siri stops being a feature tucked inside the menu bar and becomes a standalone application in its own right, according to 9to5Mac.

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.

Samsung's One UI 9 gives Motion Photos a new place to shine, letting supported Galaxy devices turn them into animated wallpapers for the home screen, lock screen, or both. Android Authority, citing SamMobile, reports that the feature is available on Samsung's latest foldables but has not yet appeared in the One UI 9 beta on the Galaxy S26 series.

Google Messages beta code contains a hidden "Select chats to pin" screen that caps selections at six conversations, throwing up a "Limit reached" message once a sixth chat is selected, according to Nerds Chalk's APK teardown, reported earlier this month. Android Authority describes the same discovery as a new chat pinning UI for Google Messages, one built around letting users pin up to six conversations instead of scrolling through a long list.

Google calls Call Screen "a fan favorite" and says people have "loved" using Call Notes to keep track of what happened on a call (Google, 10 months ago). Ask which are the best Google Pixel features, though, and no independent survey or retention data actually answers that question; the sources reviewed here contain no ranking of what people stick with. What exists instead is a paper trail: a string of releases showing which features Google has kept expanding, and which ones it introduced once...

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Beta code inside tvOS 27 and Bloomberg reporting suggest Apple is preparing Siri AI for the Apple TV ecosystem, but neither source confirms which existing models will support it. Whether the second- and third-generation Apple TV 4K will run the redesigned assistant, or whether it's reserved for hardware Apple hasn't announced yet, remains an open question (9to5Mac; 9to5Mac).

A Samsung Galaxy S26 FE hands-on video making the rounds this week appears to show Horizontal Lock, the video stabilization mode Samsung built for its S26 flagships, running inside the camera app of the company's cheaper Fan Edition phone. Two separate clips, posted to TikTok and apparently filmed at what looks like a Samsung retail display in Malaysia, offer the first real-world look at the unannounced device ahead of a launch expected in early September (Android Authority; Tech Advisor,...

Google has expanded its Gemini Pixel football club partnerships to five of Europe's biggest teams at once, naming Gemini and Pixel the "Official Consumer AI" and "Official Smartphone" partner of Arsenal FC, FC Barcelona, FC Bayern München, Liverpool FC and Paris Saint-Germain, according to Google's announcement today. Google describes the arrangements as long-term partnerships built around "personal intelligence" and smartphone technology, aimed at putting fans "right at the heart of the...

Reviewed by: Y. Garcia

Code strings buried inside Samsung's Galaxy Wearable app reference a device called the Galaxy H1, pointing to Samsung's first over-ear headphones in more than a decade (The Verge, this week).

Days before Google's Pixel 11 launch event, code teardowns show the company finalizing onboarding screens for a feature called Proactive Assistance, currently gated to Pixel 11 hardware only, according to Android Authority. The discovery gives the clearest look yet at a feature that could become one of the more visible AI additions on Google's next flagship, and at how far the company is willing to let Gemini reach into a user's inbox, calendar, and text messages before being asked.

Samsung's latest 200MP image sensor offers an early look at where its smartphone camera technology is headed, but it is not yet the Galaxy S27 Ultra's confirmed camera sensor.

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.

Google spent this week's Pixel 11 launch talking up zoom range and sensor size, but the most interesting camera news wasn't a spec at all. It was Google Pixel Camera Looks, a system that lets photographers choose "the exact aesthetic" they want before pressing the shutter, rather than accepting whatever the phone's processing pipeline decides afterward (Google).

TechCrunch's hands-on verdict on the rebuilt Siri AI is blunt: the assistant finally works the way Apple promised, though the review reads more like relief than excitement, closer to a bug fix than a breakthrough (TechCrunch's hands-on review). Scientific American frames the wait differently, noting that Apple has promised, and repeatedly delayed, this more proactive Siri for two years (Scientific American). Whichever framing feels right comes down to something more basic than opinion: can you...

A Google Play Store listing for an app called Desktop Camera now describes a finished interface built for tablets, laptops, and desktop-style screens, naming touch, mouse, and keyboard input directly, Squaredtech reported this week. That update is the latest development in the Googlebook Desktop Camera app leak, and it marks a real shift from the placeholder version of the app that surfaced earlier this year. It's evidence that Google is preparing a camera app for larger, desktop-style screens,...

Every Android owner who opens the Google One app this year runs into the same fork in the road: keep paying a few dollars for extra storage, or step up to one of Google's One AI subscription plans that fold in Gemini, smart-home perks, and a health app for $20 a month or more. That jump isn't accidental. It's the result of eight years of Google quietly turning a storage-rental service into the billing system for its entire AI push.

Tucked inside CarPlay's Accessibility menu are three tools: Voice Control, Sound Recognition, and a set of display adjustments covering text size, boldness, and color. These count among the hidden Apple CarPlay features that go unused simply because accessibility submenus rarely get opened without a specific reason to check them. None of them is a universal upgrade. Each solves a specific kind of friction for a specific kind of driver, and figuring out which one applies to you is the actual...

WhatsApp's in-chat search feature for iPhone would let users jump straight into a chat's search mode with a single tap, skipping the detour through chat info the app currently requires. The feature was discovered in WhatsApp beta for iOS 26.31.10.70 on TestFlight, but WhatsApp has not enabled it for beta testers and has not announced a release date.

Google-backed researchers at the University of California, San Diego are building a 2,000-device computing cluster from retired Pixel smartphones, with the full system due to launch this fall. The target workload is narrow and specific: giving university students affordable access to compute resources for coursework in parallel programming and systems classes. A 20-device pilot has already produced benchmark results, and the architecture is set. This has moved past the whiteboard.

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).

One Windows 11 user says the "Turn on virus protection" notification arrives with strange precision: 4 minutes and 13 seconds after every sign-in, never once after waking the PC from sleep, even though, in the poster's own words, Defender "keeps working all the time and never turns off" (Microsoft Community Hub, last week). That kind of specificity is exactly what makes the alert hard to dismiss and hard to trust. Anyone seeing the Windows 11 "Turn on virus protection" notification pop up after...

Google's Pixel 11 lineup is now available for preorder, and some buyers have an extra way to cut the launch price: a promotional code tied to their Google account.

Google confirmed today what happens when a Pixel 11 owner maxes out the Gboard Rambler usage limit, and it's less dramatic than it sounds. The AI dictation tool doesn't shut off. It downgrades (Android Authority).

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.