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Tech News
Google has resolved a bug that caused pictures viewed in Google Images to darken, sometimes to near-black, when users zoomed in. A Google Help Community representative confirmed on Reddit that the issue, first reported in late October, had been passed to Google's team and fixed.
Google's Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL include a 48-megapixel telephoto camera offering 5x optical zoom, matching or exceeding zoom specs on rivals like the Galaxy S26 Ultra, iPhone 18 Pro Max, and Xiaomi 17 Ultra. Unlike many competitors, the phone's portrait mode applies shallow depth-of-field effects to subjects beyond human faces, combining this with the telephoto zoom for a distinctive shooting mode.
iPhone Duo users have shared two fixes for Safari's cramped layout on the device's outer display. One method involves lowering system text size to 90% and Safari's default page zoom to 85% to enable wider, desktop-like layouts. A separate fix comes from developer Jordi Bruin's 'Wider' Safari extension, now sold for $2.99 after launching as a free download, which removes right-aligned controls to allow full-screen browsing.
Oppo has released the Find X10 Pro Max, a new flagship Android phone featuring Hasselblad-branded cameras, a detachable telephoto zoom lens and MediaTek's Dimensity 9600 Pro chip. It starts at £1,499 (about $2,010) in the UK, matching the price of the Find X9 Ultra released only around six months earlier, and ships with a free accessory choice of either the telephoto lens or an Oppo smartwatch.
Google's upcoming Pixel 11 Pro includes a camera zoom feature reaching 120x magnification, relying on AI processing to sharpen distant shots. Early testing finds the extreme zoom genuinely useful in practice, though the AI-enhanced results carry notable drawbacks.
WhatsApp has officially launched guest calling, letting users invite people without a WhatsApp account to join one-on-one or group calls of up to 32 participants via a shared link. Guests wait in a lobby for host approval, can't see other participants' phone numbers or send messages, and can join from a browser without installing the app. The feature supports screen sharing, hand-raising and reactions, and WhatsApp says it plans Google Calendar and Outlook integrations later this year.
Apple's iPhone Duo foldable has two 48-megapixel rear cameras, a main and an ultrawide, but lacks the dedicated telephoto camera found on the iPhone 18 Pro. Both phones can crop into their 48MP sensors for 2x zoom, but only the 18 Pro offers up to 8x 'optical quality' zoom via its 4x telephoto lens. The Duo also omits variable aperture, another headline feature of the 18 Pro, relying instead on a fixed aperture like earlier iPhones.
Google has announced that its Pixel smartphones' Connected Camera feature will now be compatible with eleven additional applications, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Slack. This expansion allows users to utilize their Pixel devices as mini camera studios within these platforms. The update aims to enhance remote communication by integrating Pixel's camera capabilities directly into widely used work apps.
Several older DSLR and mirrorless cameras, including Canon's EOS 6D and Rebel T6, Nikon's D5300 and D750, and Sony's A5100, A7 II and RX100 IV, remain on manufacturer compatibility lists for webcam use. Setup typically involves installing the maker's webcam utility, connecting via USB, switching to video or remote mode, and selecting the camera within apps like Zoom, Teams or Google Meet.
According to a report, three unnamed EU officials expressed skepticism about a homegrown European alternative meant to replace Microsoft Teams. The report notes that France earlier this year said millions of its civil servants will shift to domestic video-conferencing tools instead of Microsoft Teams and Zoom by 2027, and that Austria's military replaced Microsoft Office with Germany's LibreOffice last year.
Security firm Jamf identified malware dubbed CloudSyncD distributed as a fake Zoom installer for Mac. The disk image mimics a normal installer but includes a background image with step-by-step instructions guiding victims through System Settings to manually override Apple's Gatekeeper protection. Once approved, it installs the real Zoom app alongside an infostealer that sends captured user data to attackers' servers as often as every eight seconds.
Parrot is a free, open-source meeting recorder for Mac that captures audio your computer already plays, rather than joining calls as a bot. It works with Zoom, Meet, Teams or any audio source, offers searchable transcripts via a local command palette, and can integrate with tools like Claude Desktop, Cursor and Codex. Users can run it fully offline using Whisper and Ollama, or opt into cloud AI providers like Groq or Deepgram for transcription, paying those providers directly.