Google is living up to its word and posting warning labels for battery-killing apps. 9to5Googlespotted Google’s rollout announcement, which the company previously said would arrive on March 1.
The label says, “This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.” If you don’t yet see the warnings, they may not have reached you yet. Google says the banners will “roll out gradually to impacted apps” in the coming weeks.
Play Store battery warning
Google
Warning labels aren’t the only stick in Google’s fight against infringing apps. They may also be excluded from discovery services like Play Store recommendations.
Google’s definition of battery-draining apps centers around Android’s “partial wake lock” mechanism. This service allows an app to keep the phone’s processor running even while the screen is off. There are logical exceptions where apps do need this: audio playback, location access, etc. But the company apparently sees too many abusing that API for other reasons. And Google wouldn’t want people to assume the problem is with the hardware and switch to an iPhone — because then we’re talking about money.
If you’re a developer, Google’s technical documentation offers much more detail. For everyone else, keep an eye out for those Play Store labels and consider steering clear of those apps until their devs clean things up.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/google-begins-calling-out-battery-killing-android-apps-170650936.html?src=rss
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is not happy — perhaps predictably so — with OpenAI chief Sam Altman. In a memo to staff, reported by The Information, Amodei referred to OpenAI’s dealings with the Department of Defense as “safety theater.” “The main reason [OpenAI] accepted [the DoD’s deal] and we did not is that they cared about placating employees, and we actually cared about preventing abuses,” Amodei wrote.
Last week, Anthropic and the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) failed to come to an agreement over the military’s request for unrestricted access to the AI company’s technology. Anthropic, which already had a $200 million contract with the military, insisted the DoD affirm that it would not use the company’s AI to enable domestic mass surveillance or autonomous weaponry. Instead, the DoD — known under the Trump administration as the Department of War — struck a deal with OpenAI. Altman stated that his company’s new defense contract would include protections against the same red lines that Anthropic had asserted.
In a letter to staff, Amodei refers to OpenAI’s messaging as “straight up lies,” stating that Altman is falsely “presenting himself as a peacemaker and dealmaker.” Amodei might not be speaking solely from a position of bitterness, here. Anthropic specifically took issue with the DoD’s insistence on the company’s AI being available for “any lawful use.” […] “I think this attempted spin/gaslighting is not working very well on the general public or the media, where people mostly see OpenAI’s deal with the DoW as sketchy or suspicious, and see us as the heroes (we’re #2 in the App Store now!),” Amodei wrote to his staff. “It is working on some Twitter morons, which doesn’t matter, but my main worry is how to make sure it doesn’t work on OpenAI employees.”
Amid all the hullabaloo, however, Apple quietly issued a small update for its lineup of products—notably, for the iPhone. iOS 26.3.1 is the latest version of Apple’s iPhone OS, and comes just three weeks after the release of iOS 26.3. Keen observers will note that the 0.0.1 updates are usually pretty minor, and 26.3.1 is no exception. There are no new features here like you’d expect from a 26.3 update (in fact, Apple is saving those for iOS 26.4). Instead, this update adds support for Apple’s new Studio Display and Studio Display XDR monitors, which are currently available to preorder, and smooths out the rough edges of iOS, patching bugs and fixing glitches that weren’t fixed with the last update.
What are those bug fixes, you ask? Good question. Apple is being pretty cagey with this latest update, and isn’t saying much outside of acknowledging the existence of bug fixes in general. The company didn’t even issue proper security notes for 26.3.1, but does list these updates on its security release site. That could mean a couple of things: Either there aren’t any major CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) entries to note here, or there aren’t any Apple is comfortable disclosing at this time. If there are security vulnerabilities that Apple wants to patch without cluing in bad actors, they might quietly ship a security update without noting them. Of course, that’s pure speculation since we don’t have the notes here, so there may be no major patches to note here.
iOS 26.3.1 isn’t the only update Apple released, either. According to Apple’s security site, the company also shipped macOS 26.3.1, as well as iOS 18.7.6. Interestingly, Apple released visionOS 26.3.1 on Feb. 26. If there are any security patches in this 26.3.1 series, the company addressed them on Vision Pro ahead of iPhone, iPad, and Mac.
How to install iOS 26.3.1
To update your iPhone, open Settings, then head to General > Software Update. Here, wait for iOS to load, then follow the on-screen instructions to download and install iOS 26.3.1.
Google has pledged “at least” $50 million through 2030 on “projects designed to eliminate superpollutants.” The company will be joined by a handful of other companies including Amazon and Salesforce in the newly formed Superpollutant Action Initiative.
In total, these companies have committed $100 million to the project, hoping to “accelerate the reduction” of superpollutants like methane, black carbon and refrigerant gases. Google says these are responsible for close to half of all planetary warming.
“Superpollutants are a major part of the equation to limit atmospheric warming. Experts agree that eliminating them where we can is one of the most powerful levers we have to deliver near-term impact, playing a vital and complementary role to removing CO2,” said Randy Spock, Google’s carbon credits and removals lead. The gases break down faster than CO2 but can trap heat thousands of times more efficiently, and the coalition claims that aggressive action could prevent more than half a degree Celsius of warming by 2050.
Alphabet, Google’s parent company, reported $132 billion in net income in 2025. Google’s five-year, $50 million pledge works out to about three hours of that. The company is also set to spend billions building massive data centers for AI that it claims are more resource conscious than others. So far, Google’s AI infrastructure buildout drove an 11 percent rise in the company’s total emissions last year.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/google-pledges-roughly-three-hours-of-its-annual-profit-to-fight-climate-change-164808010.html?src=rss
These changes look to primarily involve law enforcement, with commitments to notify police about potentially suspicious use of ChatGPT. We don’t have any confirmation from the company at this time, but Canada’s Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon says he “asked OpenAI to take several actions, which Altman has agreed to do.”
Solomon attended a virtual meeting with Altman to discuss how the company “would include Canadian privacy, mental health and law enforcement experts into the process to identify and review high-risk cases involving Canadian users.” He says OpenAI has pledged to provide a report to outline these new protocols.
He also asked Altman to make these changes retroactively and to review previous suspicious incidents on the platform, providing law enforcement with data when necessary. We don’t know if OpenAI has consented to that part.
Engadget has reached out to OpenAI to ask about these changes and if they’ll be exclusive to Canada. We’ll update this post if we hear back.
This isn’t the first step the company has made to make things right with Canada. Ann O’Leary, OpenAI’s VP of global policy, recently suggested that the company would be tweaking its detection systems to better prevent banned users from returning to the platform. The company banned the alleged shooter’s original account due to “potential warnings of committing real-world violence” but he was able to make another one.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/canadian-government-says-openai-will-take-further-steps-to-strengthen-safety-protocols-164151618.html?src=rss
Smart ring maker Oura has acquired Doublepoint, a company that specializes in gesture recognition for wearables. The Finnish startup uses smartwatches and wristbands as examples of products that benefit from its technology, but Oura will clearly be looking to incorporate it into its rings, in theory allowing you to control your connected devices with hand movements.
Oura said in a press release that the deal sees it inherit an “exceptional team of AI architects and builders from Doublepoint,” including Doublepoint’s four founders. The newly-acquired company will remain in its native Helsinki, where it will work with Oura’s international teams.
It added that Doublepoint’s expertise in helping devices register subtle hand movements will be key, as nobody wearing a smart ring is going to engage with gesture control if they have to thrash their hand around like a conductor.
Oura says it believes that the next generation of wearable AI-powered tech will use a combination of gesture and voice control, and Doublepoint’s background in biometric integration with devices will give it an edge in a competitive market.
Oura’s most recent release is the Oura Ring 4, which Engadget’s Daniel Cooper called “the smart ring to beat” in his long-term review last year. He praised the design, improved data collection and app interface, but was disappointed that even using basic hardware features requires a paid subscription.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/wearables/oura-buys-gesture-navigation-startup-doublepoint-163758659.html?src=rss
Barring any special offers in the future, your current device’s trade-in value will never be worth more than it is right now. The reason this matters is because Samsung has launched its Galaxy S26 series and is offering a free upgrade from 256GB to 512GB of storage when you preorder one, saving your $200 right off the bat. On top of that,
Iranian state media said on Wednesday that it targeted Amazon’s data center in Bahrain due to the company’s support of the U.S. military. The drone strike that occurred on Sunday disrupted core cloud services and caused “prolonged” outages. Two data centers in the UAE were also damaged by drone strikes. CNBC reports: All of the facilities remain offline, according to the Amazon Web Services health dashboard. The attack in Bahrain was launched “to identify the role of these centers in supporting the enemy’s military and intelligence activities,” Iran’s Fars News Agency said on Telegram.
In addition to structural damage, the data centers also experienced power disruptions and some water damage after firefighters worked to put out sparks and fire. Some popular AWS applications experienced “elevated error rates and degraded availability” due to the incident. AWS advised cloud customers to back up their data, consider migrating their workloads to other regions and direct traffic away from Bahrain and the UAE.
As AI continues to proliferate aspects of our daily life, some users are seeking ways to avoid the technology, especially when it comes to artistic endeavors such as music. However, it’s getting more difficult for users to be able to accomplish this as AI has continued to improve. For those who are interested, Apple is introducing a new trick
Gamers chomping at the bit (technically champing, for you grammar purists) for a refresh of the GeForce RTX 50 series with more VRAM are about to get their wish, though perhaps not exactly as they had envisioned, according to a popular leaker on X. No, we’re not talking about the oft-rumored GeForce RTX 50 Super lineup, but an upgrade to the
TikTok is entertaining, addictive, and full of hidden features that can make the experience way more enjoyable—not to mention safer. Because for all its charms, TikTok is something of a privacy nightmare. The app’s ownership recently shifted from Chinese company ByteDance to the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, a new entity backed by Oracle’s Larry Ellison, private equity firm Silver Lake, and UAE-based investment firm MGX, a change that raised plenty of eyebrows when it was announced in January 2026, and may have you thinking twice about how it’s using your data.
When it comes to hacking your TikTok feed, you probably already know the surface-level tricks: adding automatic captions, holding down to play at 2x speed, or tapping “Not interested” to nudge the algorithm. Let’s go deeper, with 10 TikTok hacks you might not know about.
There’s a way to view your TikTok watch history
Finding a TikTok via the search bar is famously painful. If you didn’t like or save the video, you can consider it gone forever…unless you use this little-known trick to actually see your own watch history. Go to the search bar on your For You feed, type a single period (.) and hit search. You’ll see an option to “view your watch history.” From here, you can even filter by date, if you remember roughly when you watched the video you’re looking for. This is huge.
Credit: Meredith Dietz
Long-press the share button to quickly send a TikTok to your top friends
Instead of going through the full share menu, you can simply press and hold the share (arrow) button while watching a video. Your top four contacts will appear instantly, letting you send with one tap. Note: TikTok’s idea of who makes it into your “top four” may surprise you, and it’s not entirely transparent about how it determines who counts as one of your closest connections.
Enable clear mode in TikTok for a cleaner watch experience
To strip away the like buttons, comment icons, and other UI clutter from a video, long-press on the screen while watching and select Clear Display. Alternatively, pinch the screen with two fingers and move slightly outward to toggle the same mode. Press X or swipe to the next video to exit clear mode. This trick is particularly great for screenshots, or when you want to get a better view of the video without the interface in the way.
Drop an emoji react in TikTok without opening comments
Press and hold the comment box to send a quick emoji reaction without pulling up the full comments section. It’s faster, though if you ask me, the comments section is crucial to the full TikTok experience. Some of the best content on the internet lives in the replies.
Reset your TikTok For You feed’s algorithm
Stuck in a content rut? TikTok has a way to wipe your feed and start fresh:
Tap Profile at the bottom right
Tap the three-line menu (top right)
Go to Settings and privacy
Select Content preferences
Tap Refresh your For You feed
Tap Continue to confirm
Your feed will repopulate with a clean slate of broader, less personalized content.
Save a TikTok as a Live Photo for your iPhone Lock Ccreen
Love a video so much you want to see it every time you lock your phone? Or do you want to prank a friend who left their phone in your hands? On iPhone, open any video in TikTok, tap the Share (arrow) icon, and select Live Photo from the bottom row. The video will save to your Photos app. To then use it as a lock screen wallpaper:
Open the Live Photo in the iPhone Photos app
Tap Share → Use as Wallpaper
Or go to Settings → Wallpaper → Choose a New Wallpaper and select it from your library
Force-press your lock screen and your TikTok video will play as a live photo. This is useful if you really, really like someone’s fan edits of your favorite character.
Opt out of TikTok’s data collection
TikTok collects a lot. If you’re going to use the app, there isn’t really a way to get around the privacy nightmare completely. Still, in the settings, you can limit what it does with your data:
Turn off targeted ads outside of TikTok
Disable using off-TikTok activity for ad targeting
Turn off location tracking within the app
Stop contact syncing
You can also go to your phone’s system Settings → TikTok and revoke location permissions at the OS level. This is usually a more reliable route than trusting in-app controls.
Stop TikTok from suggesting your account to others
Two layers here, and you need both: In TikTok settings, you should turn off syncing for contacts and Facebook friends. But the real hack is to also go into your phone’s settings and revoke TikTok’s contacts permission entirely. Otherwise TikTok may still be able to match your account to people who have your number saved, even with in-app syncing off.
Use hidden hashtags to reach the right audience
Ready to post something yourself? Hashtags tell TikTok’s algorithm what your video is about, but a wall of hashtags in your caption looks messy and may actually confuse the algorithm. But you can hack it with two cleaner approaches:
Use SEO-based terms, shrink them small, and flick them off-screen in the caption editor.
Post your video, then immediately add hashtags as your very first comment.
Whichever method you choose, stick to 3–5 hashtags that directly relate to your content, mixing specific, broad, and trending tags. More isn’t better here, since it can dilute your content.
Boost your own engagement
The secret to engaging an audience of your own is to actually be engaging, and to engage back with others. For instance, replying to comments with video responses boosts reach more than typing a reply does. But to make sure you’re posting something that gets a comment in the first place, use the three-hook rule to keep viewers watching past the first second:
Text hook. Put descriptive text on-screen that tells viewers exactly what this video is about.
Verbal hook. In your voiceover or talking-head intro, explain why they should stick around.
Visual hook. Do something visually compelling immediately. Always open with your most exciting footage, even if you circle back chronologically.
Finally, capitalizing on trends does help, but I promise you don’t have to dance to trending sounds—just add a popular song to the background of whatever you’re already filming to ride its algorithm boost.
Major tech companies including Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta pledged at the White House to pay for new power generation and grid upgrades needed to support their rapidly expanding datacenters. The Guardian reports: The agreement is meant to help mitigate concerns that big tech’s datacenters are driving up US electricity costs for homes and small businesses at a time the administration of Donald Trump is seeking to curb inflation. “This means that the tech companies and the datacenters will be able to get the electricity they need, all without driving up electricity costs for consumers,” the president said at the pledge signing event. “This is a historic win for countless American families and we’ll also make our electricity grid stronger and more resilient than ever before.”
The so-called “Ratepayer Protection Pledge” was first announced by Trump in his State of the Union address, and comes as communities and state legislators increase scrutiny of rapidly proliferating datacenters. Datacenters consume vast amounts of electricity to run server racks and cooling systems for the development of technologies such as artificial intelligence. “Some datacenters were rejected by communities for that, and now I think it’s going to be just the opposite,” Trump said, referencing cancelled or postponed projects in recent months across several states after local opposition.
The pledge includes a commitment by technology companies to bring or buy electricity supplies for their datacenters, either from new power plants or existing plants with expanded output capacity. It also includes commitments from big tech to pay for upgrades to power delivery systems and to enter special electricity rate agreements with utilities. The effort is aimed at drawing support from towns and cities that otherwise oppose the projects, said the Trump official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elon Musk has acknowledged that the tweet at the center of a multibillion-dollar lawsuit over his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter “may not have been my wisest” as the world’s richest man defends himself from allegations of market manipulation in court.
He told a San Francisco jury on Wednesday that his post was not intended to manipulate Twitter’s stock price in the midst of the takeover battle.
A group of Twitter investors has alleged they lost money after Musk threatened to walk away from the deal to gain leverage during takeover talks, despite being aware he would be legally forced to complete the $44 billion buyout.
NotebookLM is Google’s more sophisticated, research-focused AI tool, built on the same underlying models as Gemini but with an interface that’s less chatty and friendly. Like Gemini, it regularly gets upgrades and new features, and the latest update adds “cinematic” video summaries.
One of the tasks NotebookLM is perfect for is collecting a bunch of information together in a notebook—PDFs, web links, YouTube videos—and then having it explained and summarized (it’s a great study tool in that respect). You may remember that a couple of years ago it added the ability to generate realistic-sounding podcasts called Audio Overviews from your notebooks.
The new Cinematic option in Video Overviews. Credit: Lifehacker
Last year we got Video Overviews, but these were more like slideshows than mini movies—they basically put the contents of a notebook into something that might have been made in PowerPoint. With this new cinematic upgrade, however, you’ll get video summaries that are much more animated and three-dimensional.
There are some rather hefty caveats: You need to be on the top-tier, $250-per-month Google AI Ultra plan to access this new Video Overviews category; additionally, they’re only available to users aged 18 and above, and only in English. The feature may trickle down to everyone eventually, but for now you need to be a relatively well-off AI enthusiast to be able to access this.
It’s a lot of money to spend on AI each month, but there’s plenty more to Google AI Ultra, including a subscription to YouTube Premium and 30TB of Google Drive space to store all those AI-generated images and videos you’ll be making. In Gemini and NotebookLM, you get higher usage rates on just about everything.
To put the new cinematic overviews to the test, I created a new notebook in NotebookLM based on a single source: A paper published by Apple researchers on the “illusion of thinking” exhibited by Large Reasoning Models (LRMs), such as those that NotebookLM taps into. It’s a dense, 39-page study, exactly the sort of lengthy document you might need summarizing by AI.
The cinematic difference
While there are mobile apps available for NotebookLM, the interface is easier to manage on the web. If you’re new to the tool, you can click Create new notebook to get started, then point NotebookLM towards your sources—whether it’s plain text you want to paste in, or an Apple AI study you want to upload. The app can even search the web for other relevant sources.
Once you’ve actually got some information together, the Video Overview option is in the Studio panel on the right. You can pick between a Brief overview or a more detailed Explainer style, and choose a template for your overview too. There’s also space to give some pointers as to how the video should be structured. If you’re a paid-up Google AI Ultra member, you also get a Cinematic option.
First I requested an Explainer-style Video Overview for the Apple AI paper. It took around 15 minutes to generate, and came in at a little over six minutes long. As you can see above, it does a decent job of explaining the contents of the paper, and giving some of the reasons why LRMs get stuck on complex tasks.
It’s a very static slideshow, but it’s well laid out, and the illustrations generally make sense, with one or two aberrations: That first Claude Sonnet graph has two extra lines that shouldn’t be there. It gives you a decent understanding of the paper, but I wouldn’t want to 100 percent rely on it (AI “can be inaccurate” is the disclaimer that Google puts all across Gemini and NotebookLM).
The Cinematic–style Video Overview took more than 50 minutes to generate and is more than seven minutes long, and you can see it below. On the plus side, it goes into more detail, and I felt I knew more about the topic after watching it. All the charts were copied over from the paper correctly, and some of the animations were genuinely useful.
However, NotebookLM clearly struggled with certain animations: When it was trying to show someone drawing on a page for example, or placing blocks on top of one another in a Tower of Hanoi puzzle. These are notable problems evident in other AI-generated videos, because these models don’t really understand the real world or physics—the vast amounts of video footage they’ve been trained on give them a good idea about where to place pixels, but not really how objects should interact with each other.
I did prefer the Cinematic Video Overview overall, though clearly the results are going to vary depending on the sources that you feed NotebookLM—outside of research papers it might get a bit more creative and interesting. The visual errors are kind of distracting, though, and ultimately the standard Video Overviews that everyone has access to work well enough without any enhancements.
It took a few attempts, but NVIDIA’s latest driver release for GeForce GPU owners is polished and properly optimized for Resident Evil Requiem. The caveat is that you have to install a new hotfix, which is technically beta software, though it purportedly stomps out several bugs that were introduced with the latest Game Ready release.
The most-streamed TV shows in February prove that the monoculture is officially dead. Instead of one-show-fits-all, we have a lineup of series diverse enough to give you genre-whiplash. The high-stress espionage of The Night Manager, the super-hero meta-commentary of Wonder Man, the light fantasy of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, and the gritty realism of The Pitt have little in common beyond all being excellent television shows. Here’s the full list of the top 10 most-streamed shows of February 2026 across all major streaming services, as compiled by JustWatch.
The Pitt
ThePitt continues to dominate the streaming charts. HBO’s gritty, hyper-realistic medical drama has earned acclaim from critics and audiences for its relentless pace, as it follows a single 15-hour shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Starring Noah Wyle as Dr. Michael Robinavitch, The Pitt ditches the “disease of the week” format of many medical shows in favor of a study of the toll the modern medical system places on everyone involved. Season one earned five Emmy awards, and judging from the first few episodes, season two might win more. Stream The Pitt on Max.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms takes fans back to Westeros, 100 years before the events of Game of Thrones. Based on George R.R. Martin’s Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, the series is less about world-spanning politics and more about smaller, character driven moments in the lives of humble, towering knight Ser Duncan the Tall (Peter Claffey) and his diminutive, mysterious squire Egg (Dexter Sol Ansell). It’s shorter, lighter, and funnier than its forebears (but not too light—this is still Westeros, after all). Stream AKnight of the Seven Kingdoms on Max.
If you’re into high-stake international espionage, you have to check out The Night Manager. It’s based on John le Carre’s best-selling novel and stars Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine, an MI-6 agent whose mission is to infiltrate the inner circle of dangerous arms trader Richard “Dickie” Onslow Roper, played by Hugh Laurie. It’s been 10 long years since the show first premiered, but both seasons of this BBC-made series are available in full as of Feb. 1, so binge it up, man.Stream The Night Manager on Prime Video.
Post-apocalyptic action-comedy Fallout is like nothing that’s been on TV before. Staying true to the gritty, gruesome, and irreverent spirit of the video games upon which it is based, it follows naive former vault dweller Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell) as she leaves her protected bunker to track down her father in the irradiated Wasteland. The show’s standout characters include Lucy’s duplicitous pop (Kyle MacLachlan), conflicted mech-warrior Maximus (Aaron Moten), and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins), the noseless, undead remains of a pre-apocalypse Hollywood cowboy. Season one earned a staggering 17 Emmy nominations in 2024, and the just-finished season two earned even greater critical acclaim for its expansion into the iconic ruins of New Vegas. Stream Fallout on Prime Video.
January saw the premiere of the third season of Apple TV+’s Shrinking, a comedy/drama created by Jason Segel, Bill Lawrence, and Brett Goldstein, the team behind Ted Lasso and Scrubs. This comedy/drama series follows Jimmy Laird (Segel), a grief-stricken therapist who breaks all professional and ethical boundaries by telling his patients exactly what he thinks, while Harrison Ford, Laird’s mentor, does damage control. Shrinking has been nominated for nine Primetime Emmies, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series, but has yet to take a statue home. Unfair! Stream Shrinking on Apple TV+.
In the Marvel universe, people with superpowers are legally prohibited from appearing in Hollywood movies, but struggling actor Simon Williams really needs a job, and he doesn’t understand how his powers work anyway, so he takes a job on a superhero movie called Wonder Man. What could possibly go wrong? A lot, it turns out. Yahya Abdul-Mateen II stars as the reluctantly super-heroic main character, and Sir Ben Kingsley plays Simon’s mentor, Trevor Slattery. Stream Wonder Man on Disney+.
There’s something comforting about this old-school legal procedural. Based on the best-selling novels by Michael Connelly, the series follows Mickey Haller (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), an idealistic LA attorney who runs a law practice out of the back seat of his Lincoln Town Car. Slick, fast-paced, and anchored by a charismatic lead actor, The Lincoln Lawyer makes even the most dense legal jargon feel like a thrill ride. Stream The Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix.
Despite having been off the air for more than six years, beloved series Schitt’s Creek is on the top 10 charts, proving that quality pays. Created by the father-son team Eugene and Dan Levy, Schitt’s Creek is a riches-to-rags comedy that follows the Rose family, who lost a massive fortune and must live together in a rundown motel in a town the family once bought as a joke. Stream Schitt’s Creek on Hulu andMax.
The “Paradise” of the show’s title is a high-end, experimental community inside an underground Colorado bunker. The surface may be an irradiated hellscape, but in Paradise, everything seems perfect, until an outsider enters. Sterling K. Brown plays a Xavier Collins, a secret service agent investigating the murder of the U.S. President in Paradise. Stream Paradise on Hulu.
Derry Girls creator Lisa McGee is behind this biting comedic thriller about a trio of lifelong friends who reunite after a tragic death. A somber wake in a Northern Ireland hometown soon spirals into a high-stakes thriller as these three unlikely heroes uncover a global mystery that might prove deadly. How to Get to Heaven From Belfast is an ode to Irish culture, female friendship, and Hitchcock-style suspense. Stream How to Get to Heaven From Belfast on Netflix.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra looks a lot like the last four models. That’s because it does, right down to its general design and rear camera layout. But on Samsung’s latest flagship phone, some stealthy upgrades are hidden beneath its classic blocky silhouette that might go unnoticed by the casual observer. Those help make this year’s release feel like a better deal than its most recent predecessor. It remains rather expensive, starting at the same $1,300 as before, but considering the price of RAM these days, that almost feels like a blessing. So while it won’t hit you over the head with monumental changes year over year, it’s subtly one of the best Ultras we’ve gotten in the past half-decade.
Design: Back to aluminum
After dabbling with titanium frames on the last two Ultras, Samsung returned to aluminum for 2026. The company says this makes it easier to color-match the phone’s chassis to the Corning Gorilla Armor 2 panels on the front and back, though it’s incredibly difficult to see the impact on my black review unit. Elsewhere, the company shaved a few grams off its total weight and a few millimeters off its thickness (7.9mm and 214 grams), but even when directly comparing the new model to last year’s S25 Ultra (8.2mm and 218 grams), that difference is basically imperceptible. I almost think the S26 Ultra’s extra sleekness was just so that people would stop saying the Z Fold 7 is lighter than Samsung’s most premium traditional candybar-style handset.
As always, there’s a built-in storage slot for Samsung’s S-Pen, which is essentially a carbon copy of what we got last year without any functional changes. However, because the phone’s corners are more rounded than ever, one small peculiarity is that now there’s a right and wrong way to insert it. No matter what you do, the stylus will stay put, but if you don’t align the curve on the end of the S-Pen with the shape of the phone’s corner, it just doesn’t look right.
Display: Now with more privacy
The Galaxy S26 Ultra’s display has the same specs as the previous model, except now it comes with a built-in Privacy Display.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The S26 Ultra’s 6.9-inch screen is easily its most undercover upgrade because it sports essentially the same specs as last year. You still get 2,600 nits of peak brightness with a variable 120Hz refresh rate and a max resolution of 3,120 x 1,440. The secret is that with the touch of a button, you can activate Samsung’s Privacy Display, which effectively stops others from spying on your screen when viewed from acute angles (both from the side and up and down).
When you turn the Privacy Display on and look at the phone less than head-on, everything sort of fades to black. Depending on the angle, you may still see an outline of UI elements and some bright spots depending on your content, but the wider you go, the fainter things get. The way it works is that the phone has two sets of subpixels, narrow and wide, the latter of which get turned off when the feature is active. And if you’re really concerned about people snooping on you, there’s an extra level called Maximum Privacy Protection that makes almost everything completely go gray, though there are trade-offs for this.
Even on maximum protection, you can still make out some faint details. But good luck to anyone trying to glean any usable info while the Galaxy S26 Ultra’s Privacy Display is on.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
When using the standard Privacy Display mode, there’s very little impact on image quality and brightness, so it’s not that big of a deal to leave it on all the time. If you look closely, you may notice what appears to be a small drop in resolution, though this requires some serious pixel peeping and good eyesight. But with maximum protection on, there’s a noticeable drop in contrast and luminance that, for me, isn’t worth the increased privacy.
The effect is more pronounced in person, but in this side-by-side comparison, you can still see how Maximum Protection mode has an impact on the S26 Ultra’s contrast and color saturation.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Thankfully, there’s a third option, which is to have the phone selectively activate Privacy Display under certain conditions. You can have it automatically turn on when you get notifications or open selected apps (like for banking or authenticators), which is what I prefer. The phone can also enable the feature when you need to enter a PIN, pattern or password. The caveat is that this only applies to system-level prompts like your lock screen. Theoretically, there’s no reason the S26 Ultra can’t do this anytime you’re presented with a password or PIN prompt, but every app needs to be optimized properly, so that isn’t a thing just yet. Regardless, it’s a powerful tool that can prevent people from gleaning sensitive info while you’re and about and I really hope it becomes standard inclusion on all premium phones going forward.
Performance and software: More speed and AI
Apparently this is what Samsung’s AI thinks a Pikachu sticker should look should look like.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The main engine powering the S26 Ultra is Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip for Galaxy along with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and up to 1TB of storage. Its biggest strength lies in its improved NPU, which is 39 percent more powerful than the previous generation, paving the way for improved AI-based features. That said, the rest of the processor provides some nice but not especially impressive gains in processing speed. Its CPU boasted 19 percent better performance while its GPU is around 24 percent beefier. In Geekbench 6, this translated to a multi-core score of 11,240 for its CPU (up from 9,828 on the S25 Ultra) and a GPU score of 25,403 (up from 19,863). Granted, it’s not like its predecessor ever struggled with performance, but it’s still worth noting that this is essentially as fast as an Android phone can get right now.
Of course, as we progress deeper into the AI era, Samsung has come up with a boatload of new and improved AI-powered tools as well. The most useful of these is Photo Assist, which serves as a one-stop shop for all your editing and content creation needs. In addition to fixing things like reflections or deleting objects in an image, you can use natural language text prompts to generate completely new elements like hats for your pets or pretty much anything else you can think of. And if that’s not enough, there’s also Samsung’s Creative Studio, which is a playground for making all sorts of fun digital art like wallpapers, stickers and greeting cards.
The S26 Ultra’s Now Nudge feature uses AI to find and suggest relevant photos when you use the Samsung Keyboard.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Elsewhere, there’s also an improved document scanner and a call screener that’s better at blocking spam and robocalls. All told, they’re welcome upgrades and they work rather well. Samsung even borrowed an idea from Google’s Magic Cue with its Now Nudge feature, which can surface relevant photos based on context anytime you’re using the Samsung keyboard. Unfortunately, what’s arguably the S26 Ultra’s coolest new feature, Automated App Actions, isn’t available for another week. But the bigger issue is that almost all of these features are things we’ve seen before on rival devices like the Pixel 10 Pro. While they’re nice to have, it’s gotten to the point where these tools are more like table stakes for high-end phones nowadays instead of being reasons you might want to upgrade.
Cameras: The same sensors with some larger apertures
While the S26 Ultra has the same sensors as before, Samsung gave it wider apertures for its main and 5x telephoto cameras.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
While the sensors on the S26 Ultra haven’t changed since the previous model, Samsung didn’t completely forget about photo upgrades. Alongside its 10-megapixel 3x telephoto, 50MP ultra-wide and 12MP selfie cam, its 200MP main cam and 50MP 5x telephoto camera have larger apertures at f/1.4 and f/2.9, respectively (up from f/1.7 and f/3.4). So on top of already being able to take excellent photos during the day, the UItra’s primary shooter is noticeably better at night.
In a shot of some Transformers in a dimmed room, the S26 Ultra basically matched what I shot with a Pixel 10 Pro — aside from some minor differences in white balance. Details were sharp and Samsung’s photo was less noisy, which is due in part to a change in the phone’s image processing. But the most impressive example of the Ultra’s improved picture quality was when I took a very challenging backlit shot of a Grogu doll, in which the S26 did a better job of exposing Baby Yoda’s face compared to the P10 Pro. So even without new sensors, Samsung has managed to make an already great main camera just a bit better.
Battery life
The Galaxy S26 Ultra features a 5,000mAh battery, just like what we got on the previous model. That means it’s largely relying on power efficiency gains from its new chip for improved longevity, which it delivers, but it’s not a major leap. On our local video rundown test, the S26 Ultra lasted 30 hours and three minutes, which is only about half an hour longer than before. That said, considering the only phones that have fared better were the OnePlus 15 and 15R, it’s hard to be upset about its overall runtime.
As for charging, the Ultra has gotten a big leap in speed (assuming you have compatible power adapters) compared to its less expensive siblings. When using a cable, it now supports up to 60 watts versus 45 watts for the S26+ or just 25 watts for the base S26. And it’s a similar story when charging wirelessly, with the Ultra now capable of hitting 25 watts when plopped on a pad compared to 20 watts for the S26+ and 15 watts for the S26.
The S26 Ultra has significantly faster wired and wireless charging than its less expensive siblings. Though sadly, it still doesn’t have a built-in ring for magnetic accessories.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
The major annoyance is that Samsung still hasn’t given any members of the S26 family a built-in magnetic ring for Qi2 charging or other magnetic accessories. The company claims this was done to help keep the phone as thin as possible, but honestly, I thought we had gotten over the desire for needless sleekness long ago. Sure, you can add that functionality back in by choosing the right case, but that’s not a very premium experience and I sincerely hope this is the last time Samsung makes this omission on its flagship phone line.
Wrap-up
There’s a strange feeling I often get when testing phones. After I got everything updated and set up the way I like, I noticed it even more with the S26 Ultra. The issue is that despite using a brand new device with shiny hardware, better performance and a more refined design, I’m still largely doing the same things and using the same apps as I was before (like Google Maps, Gmail and whatever my go-to mobile games are at the moment). This means my daily flow is basically unchanged from device to device.
This better be the last time Samsung skips putting a magnetic ring inside the Galaxy S line.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
However, if you’re paying attention, you’ll notice things like higher framerates while gaming, sharper and more well-exposed photos at night and helpful suggestions like when the phone surfaces relevant photos in the middle of a text conversation. This goes double for the S26 Ultra, whose biggest upgrade — the Privacy Display — is something meant to stop other people from snooping at what you’re doing. When it’s on, you probably won’t even be able to tell, which is kind of the point.
There’s no doubt that the S26 Ultra is an improvement over last year’s phone. It’s faster, it takes better low-light photos and thanks to all of its new AI features, the handset feels smarter too. But it takes a discerning eye to spot and feel all these differences, particularly if you’re upgrading from a device that’s only a year or two old. So while the S26 Ultra remains the top pick as a phone that can do pretty much everything really well, in the grand scheme of things, it’s more of a stealthy, undercover update than an eye-catching new crown jewel.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-s26-ultra-review-the-stealth-upgrade-140000629.html?src=rss
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference in downtown San Francisco Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said his company’s recent investments in OpenAI and Anthropic are likely to be its last in both, saying that once they go public as anticipated later this year, the opportunity to invest closes. It could be that simple. While firms sometimes pile into companies until practically the eve of their public debut in search of more upside, Nvidia is minting money selling the chips that power both companies — it’s not like it needs to goose its returns by pouring even more money into either one.
Nvidia, for its part, isn’t offering much more on the matter. Asked for comment earlier today following Huang’s remarks, a spokesman pointed TechCrunch to a transcript from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, where Huang said all of Nvidia’s investments are “focused very squarely, strategically on expanding and deepening our ecosystem reach,” a goal its earlier stakes in both companies have arguably met. Still, a few other dynamics might also explain the pullback, including the circular nature of these arrangements themselves. […] Meanwhile, Nvidia’s relationship with Anthropic has looked fraught in its own right. Just two months after Nvidia announced a $10 billion investment in November, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei took the stage at Davos and, without naming Nvidia directly, compared the act of U.S. chip companies selling high-performance AI processors to approved Chinese customers to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.” Ouch. […]
Where that leaves Nvidia is holding stakes in two companies that, at this particular moment, are pulling in very different directions, and potentially dragging customers and partners along for the ride. Whether Huang saw any of this coming, given Nvidia’s web of partnerships, is impossible to know. But his stated reason on Wednesday for likely pulling the plug on future investments — that the IPO window closes the door on this kind of deal — is hard to square with how late-stage private investing actually works. What’s looking more probable is that this is an exit from a situation that has gotten really complicated, really fast.
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A basic TV can only do so much with its built-in speakers. Thin cabinets leave little room for proper drivers, so dialogue sounds flat, and action scenes lose their impact. A soundbar is the usual fix, and this Amazon Fire TV Soundbar Plus with subwoofer and surround speaker bundle tries to solve that problem without creeping into the price range of premium home-theater gear. Right now, the open-box bundle is $219.95 on Woot, while the same configuration is listed for $414.99 on Amazon, making the discount significant. The deal also includes free standard shipping for Prime members, while others pay $6. That said, shipping is not available to Alaska, Hawaii, APO addresses, or PO Boxes, which is typical for many Woot listings.
This package is the larger configuration of Amazon’s Fire TV Soundbar Plus line, adding a wireless subwoofer and rear satellite speakers to create a 5.1-channel setup. The soundbar sits under the TV and handles the front channels, while the wireless subwoofer takes over the low end, and the two satellites provide surround effects behind the viewer. The system supports Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, and lossless Dolby TrueHD, which means it can handle most modern streaming audio formats. On the downside, there are no dedicated upward-firing drivers for Atmos, so height effects rely on virtualization instead of physical speakers bouncing sound off the ceiling. Still, it creates a wider, fuller sound than a typical budget bar would.
The trade-offs are mostly about simplicity: The build uses lightweight plastics, and the system does not come with a companion app or advanced tuning tools. There is also no room-correction feature, so the sound will depend on how your room is arranged. Latency stays manageable for movies and streaming shows because most TVs include audio-video sync adjustments, but some setups may show a slight delay when gaming. Integration is much smoother if you already use a Fire TV device, since HDMI control and settings work more cleanly together. For someone looking for a plug-and-play surround setup that covers the basics, this bundle delivers a lot of channels for the price.
As part of Apple’s flurry of Mac announcements earlier this week, the company announced the new M5 Pro and M5 Max processors. And those chips are shaking up the way that Apple designs and talks about its processor cores: What would have been called “performance” CPU cores are now “super” cores. “Efficiency” cores are still called efficiency cores. And there’s a new, third type of CPU core in between that is labeled a “performance” core.
Apple said earlier this week that the “super” name change would retroactively apply to the regular-old Apple M5’s performance cores, too. And the macOS Tahoe 26.3.1 update released yesterday formally made the name change official, changing the labeling in both the System Information app and the Activity Monitor.
The Activity Monitor in macOS 26.3.1 updates your “performance” cores to “super” cores.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
Activity Monitor on the M5 MacBook Pro in macOS 26.3, before the name change was announced.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
The System Information app also now refers to M5’s high-performance cores as “super.”
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
System Information in macOS 26.3, when the big cores were still called “performance” cores.
Credit:
Andrew Cunningham
This “upgrade” should only apply to the M5 MacBook Pro, the sole M5-family Mac released before the name change was announced. It should go without saying that this is just a name change; you shouldn’t actually expect different behavior or performance from your Mac after installing the update. The new MacBook Airs and Pros with M5, M5 Pro, and M5 Max chips will likely already be using the new names out of the box.
