Samsung's Galaxy S9 is a powerhouse, driven by the Snapdragon 845. Still, this SoC lags behind the A11 Bionic chip that's inside the iPhone X — meaning you'll need a few tricks in order to squeeze out some extra performance from your phone. Fortunately, there's an app made by Samsung that will help you do just that.
As advanced as the Galaxy S9 is, it can still be susceptible to the occasional hiccup. Several factors can cause your smartphone to behave erratically or become unresponsive, such as buggy apps or updates that didn't properly install. Luckily, most of these issues can be easily resolved with a press of a button — or two, to be exact.
Using Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH) to buy alt-coins like TRON (TRX), Stellar (XLM), or Ripple (XRP) can seem intimidating if you're new to cryptocurrency. Though you'll still need to do your research to avoid potential disasters, Binance takes the hassle out of trading digital currencies on your smartphone.
With the release of the iOS 11.3, iPhone users have new features to both sift through and look forward to, such as increased battery health information and control, new Animoji on iPhone X, and Health Records in the Health app. A smaller change with the update, however, is also a useful one — a new way to sort App Store reviews.
Given the volatility of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and Ripple (XRP), it's good to keep track of your transaction history and get a better idea where you stand financially. Though tracking down past trades on Binance may seem convoluted at first, it gets surprisingly intuitive once you get the hang of it.
With Apple Pay Cash, you can easily and securely pay your contacts directly in your iPhone's Messages app. While you can always use the normal method of paying someone with Apple Pay Cash, there's actually a faster way, as long as your contact asks you for money in an iMessage.
Most of the free apps you'll find on the Play Store have ads. These ads are personalized — in other words, they're for products and services Google believes you might be interested in. The way Google knows about your interests is by collecting data from your smartphone, including your location and app usage. While personalized ads have their advantages, the collection of data is unsettling.
When it comes to streaming your favorite movies and TV shows, there aren't many media players that are better than Kodi. With its fast performance and easy-to-use interface, it is definitely one of the best options. But what really sets it apart is its ability to add functionality.
When you're flashing a custom ROM with TWRP recovery, it's almost never just one ZIP. Instead, you have to flash the ROM file, the Gapps, a custom kernel, and maybe even Xposed or Magisk, which results in a lot of back-and-forth. Thankfully, it doesn't have to be this way.
The fourth and final beta version of Android O just made its debut, and the biggest change is what appears to be a new code name. When you access Android 8.0's version number Easter egg, you'll be greeted by ... a cartoon octopus.
One of the best features in Super Mario Run is the ability to unlock other notable characters from the classic series on iPhone or Android. Each playable character in Super Mario Run has a slightly different skill set — be it speed or jumping — which can come in handy in certain maps or races.
Hulu used to be simple — just a site with all the latest clips and episodes from your favorite shows. Watch some ads, watch some free TV. Easy, right? Not so much anymore. Hulu is no longer free, and on top of that, offers different pricing plans and add-ons.
In the SoundCloud app, when you find an awesome song, you can build off of it by creating one killer music station that will give you like-minded songs you might not have ever discovered otherwise. And finding cool new songs and artists isn't the only reason to create a SoundCloud station — it's a great opportunity to set the tone of your workday or your party without ever worrying about the music ending.
Today, Facebook Messenger is rolling out Discover, a feature that helps you chat with companies and locate nearby businesses of interest to you. First discussed in April at Facebook's developer conference F8, Discover is finally available for public use.
The Galaxy S8 and S8+ come equipped with all of the hardware needed to access live FM radio, but this feature was never really advertised or even spoken about. Thankfully, though, all you need is an app to enable it.
A new dating app has arrived, and it'll finally land you a date with your celebrity crush ... kind of. The app — Dating AI — uses face search technology to help you search for potential love interests that resemble a celebrity you're attracted to.
The company that brought us a BB-8 droid controlled with the Force — okay, just a high-tech wristband — is releasing its take on Spider-Man. Toymaker Sphero collaborated with Marvel to release an app-enabled Spider-Man toy equipped with numerous features, as well as games for your smartphone.
Netmarble's Lineage 2 Revolution has finally soft launched in the Philippines, giving mobile gamers hope that a worldwide release isn't too far off. What many don't realize, however, is that this game can be had for free right now — with a little digital elbow grease, that is.
Prepare yourself for a trip back to the days when a Sega Genesis was your gateway to premium gaming. The mid-nineties classic, Comix Zone, has been soft-launched in the Philippines, and while it's not officially available for gamers in the states, you can install it right now with a little hackery.
Google loves to play games. That's just what they did when they went ahead and teased us with a few Android O hints after Reddit user Zitroney unlocked an Easter egg in a Google Creative Lab developer's app ShortStories.
Google's working on a new mobile operating system called Fuchsia, and while we don't know much about how they intend to use it, we're now getting a glimpse at what the main interface will look like.
The OnePlus 3 and 3T are a pair of phones which allow you to do practically anything you want, because OnePlus is such a developer-friendly company. They almost always release kernel sources, and their phones sport an unlockable bootloader that doesn't void the warranty. But while their software is certainly solid (miles ahead of Samsung's TouchWiz), it still has room for improvement.
Bugs are usually bad news for phone owners, ranging from mild annoyances to downright dangerous. Sometimes, the patch released to fix the problem messes things up even more. An iOS bug discovered Monday might not fit into any of these categories, as it is difficult to activate. Nevertheless, it will still freeze your iPhone.
Anybody who was around in the '80s and '90s associates Sony with music still to this day, thanks to their wildly successful Walkman brand. And that's not even mentioning their major label record company. Indeed, the Tokyo-based electronics maker/media conglomerate has music embedded in its DNA, and that's certainly noticeable in the stock Music app included with their Xperia phones.
When it comes to ad blocking on Android, there's no better app than AdAway. The popular root mod filters out ads at the hosts file level, so no extra processing power is used, and your phone is literally incapable of loading most ads.
If you have stuck volume buttons, it can be a real pain to adjust sound levels since your only other option is to use the volume menu in Settings. But even if your volume rocker is working fine, it's still a little weird to have to click a mechanical button to control one of the most central aspects of an operating system that is otherwise entirely touch-based.
Emoji, emojis, smilies, or smileys—whatever you want to call them, those little yellow icons have firmly implanted themselves in the human lexicon. However, just like with localized languages and dialects, emoji can be very different from one another depending on the device or operating system you're using.
Ever since QuickPic was sold to a known adware company, there's been a glaring need for lightweight and fast third-party gallery apps on Android. For the folks that don't want to use Google Photos and other cloud-based solutions, a gallery app that loads your locally-stored pictures quickly without taking up much storage space is the best possible fit.
Different times call for different ringtone volumes. When you're at work or school, you need your phone to be quiet so it doesn't make a disturbance—but when you're at home or out and about, the volume should be turned back up so you don't miss any important notifications.
Creative thoughts are fleeting, so when an idea strikes, you have to jot it down as quickly as possible or risk forgetting it altogether. Let's say you randomly think of a perfect tweet while you're using your phone. You exit whatever app you were using, head to the home screen, dig through your app drawer, open Twitter—and by the time you make it to the "What's happening?" screen, you totally forgot what you were going to say.
Blue light (like that from our smartphone) tricks the human brain into thinking it's still daytime, even if it's coming from something as small as a screen. So while you're playing around with your new Pixel or Pixel XL after dark, subconscious signals to be awake are preventing you from getting to sleep as early as you should.
A lot of folks complain about the extra features Samsung adds to Android, but while there are some benefits to the slimmer stock Android, the TouchWiz firmware on Galaxy devices definitely has its own advantages.
We recently covered a set of ported apps from the new cloud-based smartphone, the Nextbit Robin. These ported APKs brought two of the Robin's slick new stock apps—Camera and Gallery—to any other device, but the launcher was conspicuously absent.
The Moto X and Moto Z have a set of features that let you launch common shortcuts by shaking your phone in one direction or another. For instance, there's a chop gesture that turns on the LED flashlight, and a wrist-twist gesture that instantly opens the camera app.
Lens Launcher was one of the winners of 2106's Android Experiments I/O Challenge a few months ago, and with good reason—it gives us a new way to browse for apps on our Android phones. It's slightly reminiscent of how the Apple Watch does it, but even better.
The desktop browser market has some stiff competition going on, but Opera has always been able to maintain its market share by offering innovative features such as a data saver option. With over 350 million users, it's safe to say folks are appreciative of the efforts being made by the web browser's development team.
I don't know about you, but when I shoot a slow-mo video on my iPhone, I'd also like to have a regular speed copy of it, just in case slow motion doesn't fit the video right.
All across the web, you'll find guides on setting up various apps and mods for your Android device—but while these are certainly useful, they all seem to be working under the assumption that the reader has a certain level of knowledge about Android. For someone that's just getting started with the world's most popular mobile operating system, the basics of Android simply aren't covered as well as they should be.
If you've just ditched your Android phone for a new iPhone, you're in luck, because Apple has a way to make your transition as simple as possible with their Move to iOS app for Android. To help make things even easier on you, we've outlined the process of using Move to iOS to transfer images, messages, contacts, mail accounts, calendars, and more over to your iPad or iPhone running iOS 10.
Keeping your computer screen or smartphone display clean is impossible. And those stupid little cloth cleaners that come with your device are about as useful as the new Apple Maps (yes, I am still upset about it).
