GoKawiil
Tech News
Google has cut prices across its Pixel 11 lineup just before Apple's iPhone 18 Pro debuts on September 18th. The Pixel 11 Pro is now around $1,007 at Amazon, the standard Pixel 11 has dropped to about $840, and the budget Pixel 10A has fallen to $424.
Asus has released the ROG Swift PG27UCWM, a 27-inch 4K gaming monitor built on its new Tandem RGB Stripe OLED panel technology. It supports 240Hz refresh at 4K (480Hz at 1080p), HDR10, Dolby Vision, DisplayHDR 400, and Adaptive-Sync, with a claimed 0.03ms response time. Reviewers found it delivers sharp imagery and strong gaming performance, positioning it among the top 27-inch 4K OLED displays currently available.
Developer TheAlexKid777 demonstrated the OpenLara open-source Tomb Raider engine running on Espressif's ESP32-P4, a sub-$25 dev board with a dual-core 400MHz RISC-V chip. The game renders at 320x240 and is hardware-scaled up to 1,024x600 with stereo audio, all while the board draws only about 1 watt at peak.
Screen defects that appear as small persistent dots generally fall into two categories: stuck pixels and dead pixels. Stuck pixels remain lit with a color that doesn't change, often appearing as red, green, or blue dots, while dead pixels stay completely dark because they receive no power at all. The two look similar but differ in cause and, crucially, in whether they can be repaired.
Security researchers found that Android's public NAT-T socket-keepalive API allows ordinary apps to send UDP packets directly to a router, bypassing Always-on VPN and 'Block connections without VPN' protections. Tests on a Pixel 8 Pro, Samsung SM-F966B, and Nothing A059, all running Android 16, confirmed that keepalive packets reached the physical gateway outside the VPN tunnel, with one device sustaining a leak for over 24 hours. The root cause traces to changes in Android's startNattKeepaliveWithFd function, where validation checks tying the socket to the caller's VPN policy were added and later removed.
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro both pack triple rear-camera systems with roughly 48-50MP sensors and telephoto lenses reaching high zoom levels, but their approaches differ sharply. Google leans on AI to automate exposure, night shots, and zoom via features like Instant Night Sight and Pro Zoom, while Apple adds a variable-aperture lens and manual controls for shutter speed and white balance alongside a new anti-fakery Reference Image tool.
Apple published a detailed study comparing the heart rate sensing of its new Health Sensing System in Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 against rivals like Garmin, Google Pixel Watch, Huawei, Samsung, WHOOP, and Oura Ring. The test involved over 1,400 participants across five sites in the US and Malaysia, using a Polar H10 chest strap as the accuracy benchmark during activities like running, cycling, HIIT, and daily tasks.
Apple and Google have each released premium foldable phones—the iPhone Duo and Pixel 11 Pro Fold—that carry IP68 durability ratings, a first for foldables in terms of dust and water protection. The Duo starts at $1,999 with preorders opening Oct. 16 ahead of an Oct. 23 launch, while the $1,899 Pixel 11 Pro Fold is already on sale. The two differ mainly in form factor: the Pixel uses a book-style fold with a standard-size cover screen, while the Duo has a shorter, wider passport-style design.
Apple is adding always-listening music recognition to the Apple Watch, using Shazam to identify songs playing nearby directly from the wrist. The feature mirrors Pixel's ambient music detection, which has surfaced song titles automatically on Android phones for years, but Apple is bringing it to its wearable rather than the iPhone.
The piece revisits CSS tools built for foldable devices, prompted by Google's Pixel Fold launch. It details media queries like horizontal-viewport-segments and vertical-viewport-segments, plus environment variables that report each screen segment's width, height and position so layouts can adapt automatically to different hinge geometries.
Google has removed its entire Tablets section from the Google Store, taking the Pixel Tablet with it after the device was recently listed as out of stock. The move effectively confirms the discontinuation of the $899, Tensor G2-powered tablet launched in 2023, though a few accessories like a speaker stand remain purchasable.
Apple's first folding phone, the iPhone Duo, launches October 23rd priced above Google's Pixel 11 Pro Fold and Samsung's Galaxy Z Fold 8. It uses a passport-style design with matching inner and outer screen ratios, partial-fold app usability, and hardware aimed at minimizing the interior crease.