If you've ever used a custom ROM on one of your devices, chances are it had a built-in feature that allowed you to kill any app by long-pressing the back button. This function comes in handy quite often, especially in situations where an app is acting up, since it stops all associated processes and clears the app from memory.
With the advent of text messaging, our communication habits have changed drastically. Social niceties are still there, but we budget our words a little more since they have to be typed out rather than spoken. After all, SMS stands for "Short Message Service," so this is the nature of the beast.
When I first received my HTC One M8, I was in love with the 5-inch screen size, but the icons and font just seemed too big, wasting valuable screen real estate. Phablets, like the Samsung Galaxy Note 4, have only slightly larger screens, but don't seem to have this problem since manufacturers lowered the device's DPI, or dots per inch.
After I traded in my Samsung Galaxy S5 for an iPhone 5S, the one feature I truly missed was the Smart Remote app. My television remote was broken and the S5 saved me from, you know, actually having to get up and change the channel.
With Android 5.0, Google introduced a new "Heads Up" notification system for incoming calls and messages. While the new incoming call interface seems to be a rousing success, the rest of the Heads Up system has been met with much less enthusiasm from users.
It's been over a year now since Google introduced a visual way to track down which tabs are playing audio in Chrome, something that was previously only available using third-party extensions. However, they still didn't give an easy option for shutting those tabs up without having to stop what you're doing.
Mac keyboards are great when listening to music or watching a movie, since you can control what's playing without going back into iTunes or QuickTime Player. However, when you're using an app like Photoshop that uses the F7, F8, and F9 as shortcuts, it gets pretty annoying to have to hold down the Fn key. Why can't you just hit the back, play/pause, and skip buttons alone?
Google debuted YouTube Music Key in November, and for $10 a month, this essentially turned YouTube into a music streaming service. With ad-free music videos and background audio playback, YouTube serves as a viable alternative to Spotify or Pandora for Music Key subscribers.
You didn't have to attend this year's CES to have gadget envy. There are so many great smartphones, computers, laptops, and other gadgets available in the market that the real challenge becomes choosing the right one to fit your needs and your budget.
Many manufacturers add a custom skin on top of their Android builds, but none are more widely praised than HTC's Sense UI. The general consensus among Android users says that HTC's visual tweaks are done in good taste, and the features they add are both functional and warranted.
In today's world, we're constantly switching back and forth between all of our internet-connected devices. A PC may be great while you're at your desk, but the living room couch is tablet territory, and nothing beats the portability of a pocket-sized smartphone while you're on the go.
When you search for a specific location or business with the Google app, a Knowledge Graph card is usually the top result. This card displays a handy mini-map and offers a quick link for directions to the location of your query, but it has one irksome flaw—these links can only be opened by the Google Maps app.
In the wake of the NSA scandal and celebrity-photo hacks, lots of people scrambled to find more-secure ways to send text messages, share emails, and surf the internet. Known for their incredibly secure data networks, Germany's email services saw a remarkable increase in new users from across the world. Last year, we covered Sicher, a German app that lets you send and receive encrypted self-destructing messages on your smartphone.
Early last year, Google purchased Quest Visual, acquiring the immensely popular augmented reality translator app Word Lens in the process. While Google did put the feature on the Google Glass, they spoke more about implementing Word Lens into their Translate app sometime in the future.
Battery life is extremely unpredictable on an Android. Finding the right ROM and kernel combo can make or break having the kind of battery that will last you all day long. Even if you do find the perfect pair, you then have to worry about apps, widgets, and other processes constantly waking your phone and draining your juice. While your media scanner isn't the biggest battery hog out there, it can definitely take a chunk out of it.
For some strange reason, when the Nexus 5 got its Lollipop update, the new stock system sounds were left out. These include updated versions of all of the ringtones and notifications, which Google revamped with a more mature sound that matches Android 5.0's elegant Material Design.
To contemporize a popular quote, "A cluttered desk(top) is a sign of a cluttered mind." Of course, it's difficult to maintain a tidy desktop... as you read this, mine is cluttered with screenshots, folders, Word documents, videos, pictures, and apps.
One of the more talked-about features of Android Lollipop is a new Priority Mode that allows you to mute all notifications except for those coming from starred contacts. As simple as that sounds, this can still be a bit confusing—or at least lead to some unwanted interruptions.
By now, everybody knows that overcharging a battery will reduce its overall life span. This is why many smartphone manufacturers recommend that you charge your device to 100%, then unplug it immediately. Some even go so far as to automatically stop charging when the device is fully juiced, although not all devices have this functionality.
Android 5.0 has a cool new feature called Priority Mode that allows you to silence your phone's ringer except for when certain people call you. It's something you'd enable right before bedtime, for instance, if you don't want to be disturbed unless it's someone important trying to reach you.
Picture this scenario—you're using your phone in a dimly-lit room, then you move to an area with a lot more ambient light, and Auto Brightness kicks in within a few seconds to ramp up the backlight. That's the way it should be, right? But then you move back to the darker area, and your phone takes 30 seconds before it decides to dim back out. Pretty annoying, isn't it?
For those of you who have been taking full advantage of the jailbreak for iOS 8 that's available, you can understand and appreciate what this really offers iPhone users—sovereignty.
The attention to detail and build quality that Motorola put into the new Nexus 6 is amazing. Its curved backplate fits the hand like a glove, and fingers slide effortlessly across the rounded edge of its glass front, making the swipe gesture for side navigation menus feel more natural than ever—even for its huge, nearly six inch display.
We recently showed you YouTube's new music streaming service, YouTube Music Key, with it's promise of ad-free music complete with background listening and offline play. Well, if you check your YouTube app, there's a good chance that Google flipped on the service for you. Activate the Service
It's been a long time coming, but Google's Calendar app for Android has finally received a visual makeover. In the spirit of Android Lollipop, Google's new Material Design permeates throughout the update.
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.
Since the days of Friendster and MySpace, social media platforms have taken leaps forward, revolutionizing how we live our lives by changing the way we communicate with others. Not only has social media become a catalyst for major uprisings around the world, but on a personal level, it connects people together in ways that were unimaginable even 10 year ago—no one was taking pictures of their brunch to share with the world in 2004.
Getting things done isn't easy when you're bombarded with alert sounds and notifications all day long on your Mac. Here's how you can quickly remove those distractions with just a single click.
The problem with striving to be on the bleeding edge of what's new for your smartphone, or really anything else in life, is having to constantly check websites and forums for new content. And with lots of that browsing happening on our phones, the aimless page loading and refreshing is not just annoying when there isn't new content, but can lead to wasted data usage, not to mention time.
Automator takes the work out of common repetitive tasks in Mac OS X. One of my least favorites is resizing images for the web, so I created a drag and drop action to quickly do it for me.
With all of the top-notch specs that the Galaxy S5 sports, the only minor quibble users have had with its hardware is the speaker situation. A front-facing earpiece is used for phone calls, but all other media is restricted to a single rear-firing speaker.
The Galaxy S5's camera is amongst the most capable smartphone shooters on the market. With a 16-megapixel sensor that is capable of recording 1080p video at 120 frames per second, the stat sheet was officially stuffed when Samsung brought this device to market.
Welcome back, my budding hackers!
I love my MacBook Air, but the fact that it runs on only 128 GB of flash storage causes me to move most of my files to the cloud. I don't mind having to be connected to the internet in order to access my files, but it's definitely a hassle trying to figure out which files I should move in order to save the most space. Usually, I don't even bother even trying until I see the dreaded "Your startup disk if almost full" warning. Currently, the only real way to find your biggest files in Mac OS X ...
Third-party keyboards have become a game changer for iPhone owners since their integration in iOS 8. And while the major players from the Android realm—Fleksy, SwiftKey, Swype—already have their keyboards on the iOS App Store, their products are relatively standard fare.
When your iPhone can't be found, Find My iPhone is a true lifesaver. When you use the feature, you can ping your iPhone and even see its current location on a real-time map. But what happens when your iPhone runs out of battery? Find My iPhone can't locate a dead iPhone, can it? You might be surprised to know it can, to a certain degree.
If you hold your phone upright while taking a video, you've surely seen the horrific end results. When you try to play the video back on any other display, roughly 70 percent of the screen is occupied by black bars.
Now that you've updated your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch to iOS 8, there's a lot of cool new things to explore. If you felt a little overwhelmed from all of the detailed information available in our Coolest Hidden Features of iOS 8 post, then I've got a simple breakdown of all of the new features available with quick links to their walkthroughs and pictures, if available. Watch the short video roundup, or skip below for the list.
The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have bigger displays, and that means more overall screen real estate, something that the new Safari app has taken into account by letting you access desktop versions of mobile websites. Even if you're sporting an older device, you'll still be able to request the desktop version of a site online in the browser.
