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Google Drive’s free online storage is a popular, convenient way to share files across devices and keep copies in the cloud. As the backend store for Google Docs, Gmail, and Google Photos, it’s a service that many of us use, whether we like it or not—whether we even give it a moment’s consideration.

Last year, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 was the best foldable I'd ever tested, thanks to an extremely sleek form factor that made it by far the most comfortable phone in the category to actually hold in your hands. This year's follow-up has a new name, but it's broadly the same phone, for better and worse.

Meet the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, a re-branded follow-up to the Z Fold 7. Confusingly, there is also a phone called the Z Fold 8, but it's a totally different device. Regardless of that, Samsung's newest and most premium flagship foldable checks most of the boxes you would want it to check: It's still very comfortable in the hands, the displays are bright and vivid, and the battery has gotten a sizable boost over last year.

But, sadly, that's about it. Aside from all of that and a modest camera upgrade, you're paying $2,099 (a $100 price increase year-over-year) for a phone that's very similar to its predecessor. The Z Fold 8 Ultra might be a great get for anyone who doesn't already have a foldable, but Z Fold 7 owners can likely wait until the next big revision to upgrade.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: Design and specs It's a tiny bit thinner. Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Starting with the phone's physical design, Samsung has not reinvented the wheel in 2026.

That might read as disappointing, but last year was such a big sea change for the Fold series that it's fine for this year's phone to carry that torch forward. There really wasn't much that needed changing. Samsung did shave one tenth of a millimeter off the total thickness, bringing it down to 4.1mm instead of 4.2mm on the Z Fold 7, but the two devices otherwise look, feel, and weigh the same.

As for colors, your options this year are fairly boring: Cream, Graphite, Violet Shadow, and Green Shadow. The last one is an online exclusive on Samsung's store.

Here are the rest of the relevant specs for the Z Fold 8 Ultra:

• Inner display: 8-inch AMOLED display with 120Hz refresh rate

• Outer display: 6.5-inches AMOLED display 120Hz refresh rate

• Processor: Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chipset

• Unfolded dimensions: 158.4 x 143.2 x 4.1 mm

• Folded dimensions: 158.4 x 72.8 x 8.9 mm

• RAM: 12GB to 16GB RAM

• Storage: 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB storage

• Battery: 5,000mAh battery

Compared to the Z Fold 7, most of those specs are roughly the same. The displays haven't changed much, but that's fine because they were already great. One important change Samsung did make was to up the max brightness from 2,600 nits to 3,000 nits, making the Z Fold 8 Ultra a little bit more accommodating in bright outdoor conditions. I wouldn't say that was a problem on the Z Fold 7, but it is a little bit improved here.

Samsung also packed a newer Snapdragon chip in the Z Fold 8 Ultra, which has become customary for annual phone releases on this end of the price spectrum. Perhaps the biggest upgrade is the new 5,000mAh battery, up from 4,400mAh on the Z Fold 7. We'll get into specific later, but rest assured, the new battery is much better.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: Performance The outer display is great. Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Speaking of the new chip, performance on the Z Fold 8 Ultra is rock solid. Everything loads and opens smoothly and quickly, and I never noticed an egregious amount of overheating despite the phone's thin frame. I won't say this is a big improvement over the Z Fold 7, as that phone also had great performance, but the good news is that it certainly didn't get worse.

Using the Geekbench 6 benchmarking software, the Z Fold 8 Ultra registered a multi-score score of 11,262. By comparison, the Z Fold 7 was 9,600, so it definitely seems like there's more power under the hood here, even if it's not eminently noticeable during daily use.

These new Snapdragon chips also enable the use of Samsung's proprietary AI features, as well as Gemini, but as far as I can tell, the AI experience here is largely the same as on other Samsung flagships like the Galaxy S26 Ultra.

Existing features like Now Brief (a daily personalizes summary of weather and other info you might like) and Now Nudge (which reads your screen to surface relevant information when you need it) are here, but they're a little hard to test out fully during a brief review period because they need time to learn more about you.

And so is the inner one. Credit: Joe Maldonado/Mashable

Still, I will say I like that you can make custom cards for things like a weather forecast in Now Brief. I was able to create a weather card with only the information I would want, like a seven-day forecast with precipitation and humidity measurements, merely by asking the phone to do that. However, I would note that a good weather app would show you these things already without any intervention by AI.

One intriguing feature I was not able to properly test was My FanCam. This is a feature for shooting videos that will lock the frame around a human subject you've chosen to highlight, you know, like a fancam. This is extraordinarily difficult to test if you don't have kids or are afraid of filming strangers in public, though, so I can't give a real verdict on it just yet. If I have one gripe, it's that it doesn't seem to work with animals at all.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: Battery life

As much as I loved the Z Fold 7, battery life was its biggest downfall, by a wide margin. The 4,400mAh cell inside that thing simply wasn't good enough for a $2,000 phone. Using our normal battery testing methods (which involve playing an HD video on the display until the phone dies), I was only able to get about 20 hours of juice out of the Z Fold 7, which is well below average for a flagship phone.

Good thing Samsung fixed that. The 5,000mAh cell here gets the job done, producing about 24 hours of battery life using the same testing method. That's still not spectacular for a phone of this price, but average is better than below-average.

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: Cameras

One thing I feel the need to establish right away is that you really shouldn't buy a foldable phone if you want the best of the best in terms of mobile camera tech. Anyone who is serious about photography should probably go for something a bit more conventional. That said, the Z Fold 8 Ultra's camera array is totally fine.

The 200MP main shooter from last year remains, as does the 10MP telephoto lens, but Samsung upgraded the ultra-wide lens from 12MP to 50MP this year. I have to be honest: I don't know if this actually makes a huge difference in photo quality, though it does make a difference in photo file size. Still, ultra-wide photos taken at 50MP do look quite nice.

Ultra-wide photos do look pretty good. Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

Macro photography is also still adept at capturing little details on tiny objects.

The amount of outdoor plants in Brooklyn makes my job easy sometimes. Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

You'd think the telephoto lens (which has 3x optical zoom) would produce quality zoomed in shots. If you keep the zoom level at around 10x or lower, things do tend to look OK.

At around 10x zoom, you can still get decent-looking shots. Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

But if you go beyond that, the phone's software starts filling in the blanks and things can get very ugly, very fast. I don't even know why 30x zoom exists on this device when every 30x photo I took looked like this.

Gross! Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

But, aside from that, shots taken with less extreme parameters still usually come out looking colorful and pretty.

Shout out to New York's graffiti artists. Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

And I'll leave you with a portrait shot of the sign outside my favorite bar.

This place has a cat. Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra: The verdict

I think the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra would probably still be my foldable of choice, if money weren't an object. The thin chassis, gorgeous displays, and newly improved battery go a long way towards making it a very good phone. Its cameras are also the best among the new Samsung foldables.

The only problem here is that almost all of that (aside from the battery) was also present a year ago. Sometimes I wonder if we still need to do annual updates for phones, and this is one of those times. Especially with the $100 price hike.

Most Allied fighter planes early in World War I used rotary engines, a design in which the whole engine spun with the propeller rather than being bolted to the airframe. The spinning mass created a powerful gyroscopic effect. The Sopwith Camel, one of the era's most feared fighters, turned so much faster to the right than to the left that novice pilots crashed when attempting sharp right turns. Veteran pilots learned to fly the Sopwith Camel despite the quirk.

If you can tear yourself from the Big Brother live feeds and are all caught up on Lioness's third season premiere, give yourself a break from the reality TV mayhem and the intensity of Zoe Saldana's covert ops with something from Paramount+'s solid library of documentaries and docuseries.

The days of giving your children cash allowances are over — at least, if your family lives in Google's universe. You can now send money to your kids through Google Wallet for use on their Android phone or Wear OS smartwatch.

We need to talk about Ariana Grande.

Quite literally, the recent nonstop internet discourse about Grande suggests an urgent need to name what's happening to the movie and pop star's body.

Concern mounted in recent weeks as Grande posted Instagram photos of her physique while performing on tour. Some worried the singer was disappearing before their eyes.

SEE ALSO: I tried to scrub weight loss content from my FYP. Here's what I learned.

Then Grande released the music video "Petal." The imagery in the seven-minute-long film prompted worried fans and onlookers to claim Grande has an eating disorder, though she's never shared such information. Rather, Grande has previously pleaded with the public not to comment on her body.

The furor led to an announcement from her team Sunday that she'd be "taking a step back from visibility" following the end of her tour next month.

How to respond to imagery of Ariana Grande

Eating disorder experts who spoke to Mashable say the public shouldn't judge or diagnose Grande, including on social media.

"We have no idea what's what's going on in people's lives, and I think it's very dangerous when we make assumptions," said Johanna S. Kandel, founder and CEO of the National Alliance for Eating Disorders.

The temptation to fixate on or post about Grande, even out of genuine concern, is strong. She's one of the world's most famous celebrities, adored by young girls and women who may aspire to look like her. Grande is also a businesswoman with a distinctly curated image, repping brands like Swarovski and her own cosmetics company, r.e.m. beauty. She possesses immense cultural power.

Still, there's another way to respond to the debate over the singer's health: We should name what's happening to us as a result, said Dr. Elizabeth Wassenaar, regional medical director of the Eating Recovery Center.

After all, Grande's appearance and the public reaction to it can feel legitimately confusing and painful.

That's why it's important to identify how imagery of Grande, along with the related online discussion, makes us feel about ourselves and the people we love — including those who may live with an eating disorder, be in recovery from one, or face fat phobia and discrimination because they live in a larger body.

"We don't want to to squelch the conversations [about] the feelings that are being brought up in people as they're viewing these images," Wassenaar told Mashable. She added that the feelings can include concern, disgust, and even jealousy.

Those emotions are an opportunity to take stock, support loved ones particularly affected by the controversy, and learn more about eating disorders.

The relationships that really matter

Wassenaar understands the vocal concern about Grande. Some people have a parasocial relationship with her. Others fear staying silent will normalize the imagery of her.

Wassenaar believes the collective unease demonstrates concern for Grande as a human. Then there's worry for loved ones exposed to content that could potentially trigger an eating disorder relapse or curiosity about food restriction and dieting.

"So what can we do in those relationships with the people that we are actually connected to?" Wassenaar asks.

How to talk to loved ones

A mom concerned that her tween daughter might see Grande's appearance as aspirational, for instance, can spark a nonjudgmental conversation about the topic.

Wassenaar said it's OK to neutrally observe that bodies naturally change over time, gaining and losing weight for different reasons. The parent can even ask how her daughter feels about the imagery of Grande and the related discussion of her body.

Importantly, though, the conversation should shift to reassuring the tween that she doesn't need to lose (or gain) weight to make herself acceptable to others.

For people who know someone in eating disorder treatment or recovery, Wassenaar suggests supportively reaching out. They can acknowledge the general resurgence of weight stigma, partly due to GLP-1 weight loss drugs, and empathize that both the imagery and discussion of Grande might be difficult or triggering.

Kandel also told Mashable the National Alliance for Eating Disorders helpline is receiving an unprecedented number of calls about "body bullying." While these are unrelated to Grande, the growing and resurgent cultural obsession with thinness is contributing to bias against people in larger bodies, Kandel said.

How to handle your own feelings

For some people, regardless of whether they experience disordered eating, photos and videos of Grande may elicit jealousy or envy, Wassenaar said.

She recommends naming those feelings and the "wish" underlying them. That can include associating a certain body size with better grades, professional success, a new relationship, and personal fulfillment.

Wassenaar suggests following that "thread" to its conclusion, because changing one's body often doesn't lead to the life changes people desire.

Recognizing these dynamics "gives us a key to begin to investigate for ourselves...what about my life isn't where I want it to be, and what kind of work can I do with that?" Wassenaar said.

She also noted people should seek support if imagery of Grande triggers urges to diet or restrict food.

Fear of repeating the '90s and '00s

Kandel said there's a prominent fear that we'll repeat history if we don't talk candidly about Grande's appearance.

The mainstreaming of body inclusivity and positivity movements in the 2010s seemed to leave the unforgiving "heroin chic" beauty standards of the 1990s and 2000s behind — until the emergence of GLP-1s and the reported MAHA politicization of thinness.

For some, imagery of Grande has become a worrisome bellwether of this accelerating trend.

Kandel acknowledged the research demonstrating how imagery of thinness can increase body comparison and body checking for some. Vulnerable viewers may compare themselves to that imagery and think that's what an eating disorder looks like — and that they're not sick enough.

At the same time, Kandel said that expressing concern for Grande's size inadvertently reinforces unhelpful or even harmful judgments about people's bodies.

This tension has put many in a rhetorical bind, but both Kandel and Wassenaar offer a way out.

Instead of adjudicating Grande's size and well-being, Kandel suggests using the debate as an opportunity to learn about eating disorders in general.

The emphasis on Grande, for example, obscures the reality that men and people of color experience disordered eating, as well. Anorexia is also one of several eating disorders, including binge eating and avoidant/restrictive food intake disorders.

Wassenaar said people concerned about the broader societal implications of Grande's appearance can focus on their behavior and activism.

"We can change our experiences with our bodies, and we can influence the young people in our lives by modeling that, and that's what we can control," said Wassenaar.

If you are concerned about your eating behavior, visit the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) website for more information. You can also text CONNECT to 741741 for immediate support from a trained volunteer at the Crisis Text Line.

Shopping for a used luxury SUV usually comes with a catch. You might get premium performance, upscale materials, and an impressive badge, but you're also likely inheriting higher maintenance costs, expensive repairs, and reliability concerns that can quickly erase the savings of buying used.

It's been over 20 years since Sony released a cassette player, and cassette sales are so minuscule they barely show up on market reports. So, naturally, I decided now would be a good time to buy a Walkman. I can explain.

So you have an internal SSD in your laptop, and you're running out of space. For some reason, upgrading the SSD inside the laptop isn't an option.

If you're like me, your life of streaming usually happens at home or somewhere with a strong Wi-Fi connection—but not always. Between flights, subways, cottage/camping weekends, waiting rooms, or the random dead zone, I've often found having a handful of comfort shows downloaded on the Netflix app on my devices really handy.

Owning a 3D printer is like having your own little factory. In theory, this can save you money, because instead of ordering some plastic stuff online, you can print it for mere cents on the dollar. Right?

If you need to convert or extract parts of a PDF, you might think you need to pay for Adobe Acrobat or use some shady web app. If you're willing to use the command line, either in Linux, macOS, or Windows Subsystem for Linux, you can manage your PDFs for free.

On Bumble, the app that started with the ethos of "women making the first move," men will now be able to message first, according to the company's latest earnings call.

"Now, for the first time on Bumble, by default, anyone will be able to send only one single opening message, and the conversation does not progress until the recipient responds," Bumble founder and CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd said on yesterday's earnings call for Q2 2026.

SEE ALSO: The 9 best free dating apps that literally cost $0 to sign up and use No more "women make the first move"

Wolfe Herd founded Bumble in 2014 as the feminist response to Tinder, of which she was also a part of the founding team. Originally, in heterosexual matches, only women could message first. But the app has been trending away from that for some time, as two years ago it launched "Opening Moves," a way for men to technically message first by responding to a prompt on a woman's profile. (The app has since sunset Opening Moves in Australia and Mexico, though.)

Additionally, Bumble is also extending the time limit to respond to the first message, from 24 to 72 hours. "We are also addressing another major complaint that existed from our members," Wolfe Herd said.

In tests, Bumble users saw increases in chat initiations and mutual chat rates. The new rules will roll out globally by the end of this month, Wolfe Herd said.

Both real-life and AI on Bumble

Wolfe Herd also announced that Bumble will be leaning more into real-life experiences. "I am a firm believer that the future of meeting people in groups will become more important," she said, and confirmed that Plans, a rumored event-curation feature, is coming as a standalone app.

At the same time, Bumble is planning to integrate AI more. As Mashable reported in May, Bumble is getting rid of the swipe, but Wolfe Herd clarified yesterday that the app's upcoming AI dating assistant, Bee, isn't replacing it.

"Let me be clear: Bee is not replacing the swipe. We are not aiming for an AI-driven experience. Bee is simply the intelligence under the hood," she said.

"What will replace the swipe, I will be keeping under wraps a bit longer for competitive purposes," she said. "But it is designed to generate more immediate interactions, and most importantly, better outcomes, mimicking real life and eliminating the friction and delay that exists in current dating app models." Early feedback has been positive for Gen Z and millennial women and men, she continued.

Bee will apparently have an important role in how the new Bumble experience will be delivered, "but never degrading the human-first approach that we will always adhere to," according to Wolfe Herd.

Even more changes coming to Bumble

When Wolfe Herd first announced Bee in March 2026, she said that the app was developing a new tech stack (the set of technologies that build an app), with a targeted launch of the second quarter of this year. But yesterday, she said that due to a data migration delay, it's been delayed. New features, like profile and onboarding updates and more compelling ways to meet people IRL, are coming in early 2027, she said.

She also said that the app will also make the free experience more compelling, like offering limited access to "Like You," a usually-paid feature where users can see who's already liked them.

The app is re-architecting subscriptions to be simpler, and is planning on releasing a higher subscription tier designed for "mutual serious intent."

This news comes as Bumble's total revenue and paying users continued to decline in Q2 (15.2 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively, compared to Q2 of 2025). In June, Reuters reported that Bumble is considering a sale. Its announcement that it's killing the swipe upset some users, and it remains to be seen how they will react to all of these additional changes.

There’s no shortage of officially supported Android Auto apps available on the Play Store. You can find everything from navigation and music players to podcast apps and even a few games. But the simple truth is that Google still puts heavy restrictions on what apps can do inside Android Auto.

Back in the day, I used to loathe the custom skins and apps that Android phone makers added to their phones. Android's vendor-neutral default apps have since been replaced by Google apps, and the tech giant has used its dominance to fill our Android devices with far more pre-installed software than any other company.

Most people treat USB ports as background infrastructure. You plug things in, they work, and you don't think about them until something stops showing up in File Explorer. I assumed desktop PCs were basically immune to the problems I'd seen on laptops, where I'd already burned out ports by pulling too much power through them. However, the limits are real; they just fail in quieter and stranger ways than I expected.

SAVE UP TO $180: The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/512GB) is on sale for $1,134 at Amazon, down from the normal price of $1,299. The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB) is on sale for $1,419, down from the normal price of $1,599.

Opens in a new window Credit: Apple 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/512GB) $1,134 at Amazon
$1,299 Save $165   Get Deal Opens in a new window Credit: Apple 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB) $1,419 at Amazon
$1,599 Save $180   Get Deal

Tech prices are on the rise, not that we need to say that out loud anymore. In June, Apple raised prices and now we have to figure out how to navigate life with more expensive MacBooks and iPads (sigh). In a rare move, Amazon is offering us some relief today. Check out these sale prices.

As of Aug. 6, the 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/512GB) is on sale for $1,134 at Amazon, down from the normal price of $1,299. The 13-inch M5 MacBook Air (16GB/1TB) is on sale for $1,419, down from the normal price of $1,599. In total, you'll save $180 with the 1TB model or $165 with the 512GB model.

As much as we hate to see price hikes, we've come to rely on the tech so much that we're simply paying the new price. But thanks to these Amazon MacBook deals, we're getting a break. The timing couldn't be better as we're looking straight at back-to-school season.

SEE ALSO: The Apple Watch Series 11 just hit a rare $100 price drop on Amazon

Mashable Tech Editor Timothy Beck Werth's review of the 2026 M5 MacBook Air praises its premium design, speakers, display, and the upgrade to the M5 chip. On top of those highlights, the MacBook Air is incredibly travel-friendly, weighing just 2.7 pounds and measuring 0.44 inches thick.

If you're considering the upgrade but were turned off by the price hike earlier this summer, hop on this deal to save up to $180 on the M5 MacBook Air. Since we haven't seen sales this good since the price increase, it's probably wise to shop sooner rather than put it off.

We love the Raspberry Pi here at How-To Geek. For many of our writers, past and present, the Raspberry Pi was a revolution in small-format, affordable Linux computing. That’s why it pains me to recommend against buying one at the moment.

Stop us if you've heard this one before: This week, Meta confirmed that one of its AI models escaped containment and hacked a third-party.

As first reported by The Information, Meta's Muse Spark apparently breached another company's system in a cybersecurity test. After The Information's report, Meta confirmed the story to multiple outlets. It's the latest in a string of incidents where AI models went hack happy during testing.

In a statement to CNN, Meta pinned the blame on a testing partner, who it said was supposed to be evaluating the model in a secure sandbox environment: "A misconfiguration by Irregular, an independent testing company Meta uses, inadvertently allowed one of our models access to the internet during evaluation,” the Meta spokesperson said."

Our big Guessing Game is back! Learn how to enter for a chance to win an Apple Watch.

Interestingly, when Anthropic reported earlier this week that its models had escaped containment and breached outside organizations on three occasions, it also blamed Irregular for the mix-up.

In a blog post, Anthropic revealed that it "identified three incidents in which a model accessed the internet from within or while interacting with the evaluation environment of Irregular," which it identified as "one of our third-party evaluation partners."

As we've noted before, when AI companies warn about the world-changing risks of their technology, they're fundamentally engaged in marketing. (Don't make me tap my sign.)

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When OpenAI revealed recently that its models had escaped containment and hacked the Hugging Face AI repository, the company generated a ton of headlines about the power of its new models. So, while these disclosures are responsible and necessary, don't forget that they also serve the self-interests of the AI companies themselves.

Coincidentally, as the news spread that Meta Muse Spark had broken out of a sandbox and hacked another organization, Meta also announced the launch of Muse Spark 1.2.

Despite a massive spending spree on AI talent, Meta has so far lagged behind the top AI companies, though it has gained ground with its new Muse Spark family of models.

Want to learn more about getting the best out of your tech? Sign up for Mashable's Top Stories and Deals newsletters today.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, Mashable’s parent company, in April 2025 filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.

Google Wallet users can now manage money for their kids, with a new expansion that lets parents set up balances and monitor purchases for supervised accounts.

SEE ALSO: TikTok withheld a safety feature from 15 million users, report says

The tool allows account managers to transfer funds, set up purchase notifications, and set daily spending limits for minor tap-to-pay Wallet accounts connected to their profiles. Parents can also completely lock down payment options for lost or stolen devices or to enact "spending timeouts," Google explains.

Kid and teen users can tap to pay using Android and Wear OS devices anywhere Google Pay is accepted.

Built with additional safeguards, the new Google Wallet option works alongside parental controls already integrated into Google's Family Link, which includes restrictions intended to reduce kids' screen time. The company recently rolled out these features to all Android devices after first launching them in 2025.

The company has been launching a series of upgrades and expansions to Google Wallet over the last month, as well, including on-screen flight updates for linked boarding passes. Last month, Google added live delivery tracking to Wallet, which pulls order information, tracking numbers, and shipping statuses from devices' Gmail accounts.