The notification light on phones and tablets is slowly disappearing. The once staple feature is now only found on a few devices, and a bevy of other notification systems have sought to fill the gap. The most popular of these systems is Ambient Display, which has grown in popularity with OEMs over the last couple of years; even Google's own Nexus line of phones have made the plunge.
Before you sell your old iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to a buddy or a company like Gazelle, it's vital that you wipe the entire device of all its content; including sensitive material like contacts, messages, pictures, and videos. There are two easy ways to wipe your iOS device, so let's show you how to do it using iTunes or directly from the device itself.
If you're lucky enough to have a dishwasher, you probably use that sucker to clean everything (minus your good cooking knives), and maybe even to cook your food, too. However, dishwashers are not without their faults. Dishes can still come out spotty and even with chunks of food on them, which usually leads to some hand-washing afterward.
If you have a specific app you want to lock so that others can't access it, the most secure way of doing so is with biometrics. While there are options to lock apps with either a PIN or pattern, these can easily be figured out with a simple glance over your shoulder. It's much more difficult for someone to crack your fingerprint ID, unless they chop off your finger, of course.
When you swipe from page to page on your home screen, the contents on your screen change, but the wallpaper always remains the same. And while Android does include plenty of ways to customize your device, setting a unique wallpaper for each home screen page isn't one of them.
The art of taking secret photos is one that requires keen awareness and skill. Not only do you need to ensure that your subject remains oblivious, but you also need to make sure that no one near you notices what you're attempting to do. It's great when you buddy is acting a fool, but sucks when they stop their shenanigans when they notice you pulling out your camera phone in an effort to evade your picture.
For some strange reason, not all variants of the Samsung Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge have a menu option for changing the backlight timeout for their capacitive keys. According to user reports, only the AT&T variant of these phones has such an option.
Believe it or not, there was a time when smartphones weren't the primary tool for taking photos. People actually walked around with bulky film-based cameras on their necks, and some even used cheap disposables. While photography wasn't introduced to the world when smartphones came out, it's definitely more accessible—and everyone is a photographer now.
When it comes to theming your Android device, it's the little things that matter most. Whether you're tweaking your navigation buttons or changing the color of system menus, no theme is complete until even the smallest element matches the rest of your color palette.
If you're one of the many that likes to upload collages to Instagram, the Facebook company has a new tool for you. Instagram released a brand new app in March called Layout to help facilitate the process of creating photo layouts to post onto social media or just share with friends.
Whether you live in foggy California or icy Massachusetts, you've more than likely struggled with a cloudy, vision-impairing window that makes even the shortest commute impossible.
When you see a color depicted on your computer, smartphone, or tablet, odds are it was processed as a hex triplet before it was rendered. Most modern websites and operating systems use a hexadecimal coding system to signify certain colors, and these are represented as 6 letters and numbers.
Thanks to a couple of photoshopped images that made rounds across Twitter last year, iPhone users were duped into thinking that iOS 8 included a security feature that would lock individual apps. Of course, none of it ended up being true, but we covered other features and apps that could accomplish roughly the same thing.
Televisions used to be great for just one thing—watching TV. But a more connected world brought with it Smart TVs, devices that can access the web, stream Netflix, and even mirror your smartphone's display. And with this level of connectivity, OEMs like Samsung saw it fit to place targeted and interactive ads on your screen.
Deep down, Android is a fork of Linux, which is a desktop operating system that started out as entirely command prompt-based. For that reason, many system-level tasks can still be executed within a terminal emulator app.
One of the most rewarding things about jailbreaking is theming. Unlike Android, iOS doesn't allow you to make small changes to certain aspects like the icons or the lock screen, so jailbreaking facilitates the ability to make some of these desired changes happen.
I just about always have iTunes running in the background when using my Mac, but switching in and out of the app to change songs and albums can make focusing on my main task difficult. To help keep my mind on track, I have a few extensions enabled to take control of my music playback.
A messaging app that blows your mind doesn't come along very often. Yeah, there's WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which are both good for what they are (web-based messaging platforms), but when it comes to interesting or unique features, they're somewhat lacking.
With Nexus devices already enjoying Android 5.0 Lollipop, most other manufacturers are scrambling to get their flagships updated to Google's latest operating system. While HTC has promised Lollipop by the end of 2015, OEMs such as Motorola and Sony have already issued updates to their latest models. Then there's Samsung.
Practically every kid in the '80s would rush home after school to put in some time on the first-gen Nintendo before their parents got home. Games like Super Mario Bros. and Super Smash Bros. were synonymous with fun times, and to this day, call up a wave of nostalgia amongst Generation-Xers.
Motorola changed the way users interact with their devices when they introduced their "always listening" feature on the Moto X. When I first saw it demoed, I couldn't wait to get the same functionality on one of my handsets, and now that has finally come to fruition.
Rooting is a great way to unleash your device's full potential, but not everyone's comfortable with it. Rooting can void a warranty, cause issues with certain apps, and the process itself can be tricky for older devices. Alas, most of the great apps or mods out there require root access, like the ability to utilize a built-in KitKat feature known as Immersive Mode.
When it comes to wallpapers, I'm no monogamist. I have a lot of wallpapers that I'm committed to, but they don't always get their fair share of time with me—and that's where the problem lies. I'm too lazy to go out of my way to make sure they all feel loved. I'd rather them to come to me when it's their turn, and thanks to Wallpaper Changer, they can do just that.
The HTC One has proven to be the industry standard in mobile audio performance. With BoomSound and Harman/Kardon technology backing its front-facing speakers, there is no doubt that every other flagship out there pales in comparison. Despite this, HTC didn't include a decent equalizer on the One. The M7 had Beats but the M8 doesn't have anything.
Your heart is constantly work for you, yet you think nothing of it—and Samsung wants to change that. They stuck a dedicated heart-rate monitor on the Galaxy S5, they're putting one in the upcoming Note 4, and they're bound to slap one in every Galaxy device thereafter.
Summer is here and flocks of people will make their way to beaches, lakes, and rivers across the country. But before heading out to places like these, it's always a good idea to check the local weather forecast first.
While text messaging has become one of the most frequent ways we communicate with our friends, the missing body language, tone of voice, and eye contact can make it difficult to tell when someone is being dishonest. That said, it's not impossible. There are a number of subtle hints you can train yourself to recognize that will to help you detect written lies hiding in your SMS and iMessages. Here's what you should look out for.
When looking at weather applications and widgets, one major characteristic I look for is efficiency; something that will separate it from the rest of the herd. The stock weather widget looks great on my home screen, but I have to exit whatever app or game I'm in when someone asks me about the weather.
HTC pulled out all the stops when designing the HTC One M8. From it's sleek body, to it's incredible sound quality, this thing just oozes sophistication. While all of these add-ons are great, they can be incredibly taxing on the CPU, in turn causing some serious lag.
Facebook today has unleashed a new way to creep...er...keep in touch with "friends" using the official Facebook apps on Android and iOS.
If you use your Nexus 7 like me, then you're constantly downloading APKs, installing new games from Google Play, taking a million photos, and using multiple apps at the same time.
Whenever I hand my tablet over to someone, my heart always races for a second at the thought that they may stumble across my private pictures, texts, and videos. I trust them, and they may not be the snooping type, but it can be easy enough to come across private stuff by accidentally opening a gallery or messaging app.
Rooting your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 grants you access to system files, giving you the ability to change things on the device that you normally wouldn't be able to. Sounds great, right? There's just one problem. How in the hell do you manually change those system files?
There is nothing more refreshing than an ice cream in a hot summer day. And even though, here in Australia, summer is "just" a couple of months away, I still like to have a scoop or two every now and then. However, I like to make the ice cream on my own. In this way, you can make whatever flavour you want, plus you know what type of products you have used and it usually tastes better than a commercial one.
Like theme music, I always feel that I need more fog in my life. Fog can be useful for many reasons—warding off smaller siblings from your bedroom, keeping curious hands out of your cupboard, and tricking your friends into thinking there's something horribly wrong with their vehicle. So, today we'll be making a very simple fog machine for small scale applications.
Offline maps help you get around an unfamiliar area whenever you anticipate encountering bad cellular reception and no internet connectivity. Google Maps and other map apps have had offline maps for a while now. But Apple Maps only had a little-known caching workaround to produce something even remotely similar to full offline maps — until now.
Mobile gaming has exploded in recent years, with experts predicting 2.4 billion global mobile players by the end of 2019. It already accounts for 47% of the worldwide gaming market, besting console and PC. No wonder we've seen the rise of gaming smartphones, a class of phones that specialize in mobile gaming.
For many, phones are starting to replace televisions as the primary device for watching videos. Thanks to their portability and easy to use apps, it's often simpler to watch Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, or Prime Instant Video on the smaller screen. But not every phone is suited to fit this need, so we did some testing to find the best of the best when it comes to streaming videos.
Even though most phones don't have Oreo yet, Google has released Android 9.0 Pie. It's available on Google's own Pixel devices, and updates should soon be available to partnered devices from Essential, Nokia, Oppo, Sony, Vivo, and Xiaomi. We're already digging into it to highlight all of the features and changes.
Samsung's One UI has slowly become the model for Android skins. The old iOS-like TouchWiz already feels like a relic, thanks in part to the newer user interface's exceptional design and fast but meaningful updates. One UI is so good, other OEM skins have copied elements of it. The latest release is One UI 2.5, which has over 20 new features that make the skin even better.
