The iPhone X's "notch" is now possibly as notorious as Apple's decision to cut ties with the headphone jack. With that said, a cautious consensus can be made from first impressions of the X that the notch isn't all that bad. Still, one problem has shown up in reviews again and again — apps are not optimized to fit the notch.
While widely known for its massive collection of free apps and tweaks that let you fully personalize your jailbroken iPhone, Cydia also comes laden with packages that can be purchased to take customization to a whole 'nother level. Similar in function to the iOS App Store, buying an app in Cydia is simple and relatively safe.
AirDrop is an underrated feature that lets you to quickly transfer files like songs and photos via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi from your iPhone to Macs and other iOS devices. It's been a staple in the Control Center ever since iOS 7, prominently displayed for easy access. However, with iOS 11, that quick access to AirDrop has seemingly disappeared.
There's no denying that there are some seriously useful new features in iOS 11 for iPhone. But there's also no denying that Apple got a few things wrong with the latest iOS update, as well as left a few important features out.
Apple's iOS 11 is finally here, and while they showed off several of the new features it brings to your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch back at WWDC 2017, they've only just touched the surface of what iOS 11 has to offer. There are a lot of cool new (and sometimes secret) features to explore, so we've collected them all here for you.
The new iOS 11 update provides an easy software-based solution to shut down your iPhone in case the power button, officially known as the Sleep/Wake button on all iPhone models except the iPhone X, goes bonkers. In addition to this, there's also a hidden setting that lets you instantly restart the device, and it's better than the "Bold Text" trick that's been around since iOS 7.
Niantic pioneered location-based augmented reality gaming with Ingress and popularized it with Pokémon Go, but others have attempted to replicate the model without reaching the level of success that Niantic has garnered.
If you've been looking for an alternative to Google Maps, look no further than Waze. In addition to benefits like crowd-sourced traffic data, police trap locations, and road work avoidance, the app even lets you personalize the voices used for navigation and directions.
We've all been there. Lost in the supermarket for what feels like hours trying to figure out where the hell the macaroni and cheese is and why it isn't with the rest of the pasta items. The labels at the top of the aisles aren't always helpful or accurate, and items often get misplaced or lost in the masses of food on each shelf. Thankfully, the augmented reality gods have answered our prayers as a new demo shows the future of finding the items you need using Apple's ARKit.
Group messages are great when you want to talk to multiple people at the same time. However, things can get disorderly real fast in the Messages app, especially if the same person is in multiple group conversations. That's where custom group names come in, which helps you make sense of all those disorganized threads with multiple names/numbers attached.
The augmented reality feature in Pokémon GO is one of the key components that draw people in to the popular Android and iPhone game. Indeed, there's nothing quite like the sight of a Pokémon standing around in an otherwise uninteresting parking lot.
If you have movies and videos stored on Box, Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, you should definitely be using the VLC app for iPhone. After setting a few things up, VLC will let you stream videos directly from any of these services with a proper video player UI, complete with gesture controls.
Companies are already clamoring to figure out strategies for integrating augmented reality into their advertising platforms. AR is going to become a huge asset to marketers, and Apple's ARKit is only going to help that along. Mixed reality producer Bilawal Singh Sidhu has given us a sneak peek of what the world of advertising could be with the ARKit.
When you're playing videos, the actual content should be the focus, not the media app's interface. But with VLC's default theme on Android, the bright orange-and-white motif shocks your eyes in a dimly-lit setting and draws your attention away from what really matters. Let's change that.
The Chinese government's tight restrictions on gathering data by foreign firms for 3D mapping, the lifeblood of machine-taught driverless systems, could at least slow down access to the market by Waymo, Tesla, General Motors (GM), Ford, and other players hoping to make inroads there.
Getting your green card can be an extraordinarily complicated and difficult task. Often times it seems so daunting that it's hard to know where to begin. Thankfully, Facebook Messenger introduced "Visabot" last year, a chatbot in the app that helps with all things immigration. Now including applying for your green card.
To celebrate the release of Spider-Man: Homecoming and to advertise Dell's newest gaming laptop, Dell and Sony Pictures teamed up to create a live game in Times Square. Simply walk through the tourist hotspot to unlock the game and help Peter Parker save the day.
If you're like me, then your perfect Friday night has your friends over for some group-YouTube streaming. If you're not like me, you're probably cool. But for the rest of us, YouTube is meant to be a shared experience. I think YouTube has caught on to that trend, since it has developed Uptime, an app that lets you watch YouTube with other people wherever you all are.
Savor this moment: we've got a confirmed number of sales for the Google smartphone. We say this because unlike most hardware manufacturers, Google refuses to share official sales numbers for their phone. Instead, during earning reports they simply bundle the product under Alphabet's "Other Revenues", leaving us in the dark about how successful the product is.
We just keep discovering hidden features and settings scattered throughout the Galaxy S8's system like little digital Easter eggs that were largely left unadvertised. One such setting is an option that lets you change the placement of your S8's display brightness slider.
The displays on all of our devices are getting better and better. TVs, smartphones (Infinity Display, anyone?) — any modern device you use, the screen looks great. So we should expect our content to live up to these fantastic displays. Netflix is attempting to do that, by implementing HDR video for LG G6 users.
Like Russian Matryoshka dolls, the features on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ often have hidden components within them that add to their functionality. The phone's flashlight is a great example of this since there's a hidden shortcut within the "Flashlight" Quick Settings tile that lets you adjust its brightness level.
Hackers are good at what they do—some can even use the way you move your phone to guess a 4-digit PIN in five attempts or less. That's why most of us with compatible hones use the fingerprint scanner. It's just much more secure. Or is it?
Earlier last week, there were a number of fake five-star WhatsApp reviews to be found on the Google Play Store. Now, Gmail, Chrome, Messenger, and Firefox are all the latest victims to be saturated in five-star spam that wrongly refers to the word "game" in reference to non-game apps.
Cortana, a strong competitor to Apple's Siri and the Google Assistant, has just been updated for beta testers on Android. The update introduces some sleek redesigns of both the look and features of the app, developing anticipation for the official update.
During the last few months, WhatsApp's Google Play Store ratings have been tanking—all the way down to an average of 3.4 stars from the instant messenger's usual average of 4.1. Within the last week, though, WhatsApp has received thousands of seemingly fake 5-star reviews that have bumped up the company's overall average to a 4.4.
Baidu Inc, the "Chinese Google" search engine and technology company, which has been actively pursuing self-driving cars, reported that a gang of hackers recently attempted to steal its driverless car technology.
Apple lets you save webpages as PDF files in iOS 10, but the only obvious way to do this is by using iBooks. The thing is, most people would probably rather save their PDFs to a service like Google Drive or Dropbox to make sharing a bit easier. Plus, iBooks isn't officially available for Windows or Android, so there are some cross-platform problems there, too.
Google just announced that it will be bringing the Google Assistant—previously an exclusive feature on Pixel phones—to many more devices in the coming days. The only requirement they're giving is that the phone must be running either Android Marshmallow or Android Nougat, so according to the most recent Android distribution numbers, that's roughly 32% of all existing phones and tablets.
When it comes to modifying Android, the single, most powerful tool available is TWRP custom recovery. It's even more capable than simple root access when it comes to changing the look and feel of your software, and you can even use TWRP to root your device in a few simple steps.
It's now common knowledge that the blue light emitted by phone screens makes it harder to get a good night's sleep. Apple's Night Shift in iOS and its steamrolled predecessor, f.lux (still available for desktop computers), are attempts to combat these harmful effects by limiting the amount of blue light from the screen at certain times of day (nighttime, say). For Android users who installed the Developer Preview build of Android 7.0 Nougat, the included "Night Mode" feature was all set to do...
Facebook released a new app in November 2016 that aimed to compete directly with Snapchat, but it was only officially available in Brazil—and still is. The app, called "Flash," is so much like Snapchat that it's not even the slightest bit of a stretch to call it a clone.
Google's new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones have a feature that puts their fingerprint scanners to use after you unlock your phone—just swipe down on the scanner from any screen, then you'll see your notifications. It keeps you from having to do hand gymnastics to reach the status bar at the top of your screen, and it gives you easy access to quick information, so it's a win-win.
If you want to quickly understand EtherWars, imagine a game like StarCraft where you build out your base on your living room floor instead of on a computer screen. Before we had computer games to help us imagine what space wars might feel like, we played with toy ships and used our imaginations. EtherWars combines those two elements by replacing toys with holograms that actually react to your choices.
When we tell folks how often we use apple cider vinegar, they are baffled and bewildered. "I've had a bottle sitting in my pantry for 10 years," is the response we encounter most. And "I never use it!" Some have never even used apple cider vinegar at all in their lifetime, believe it or not.
We've experienced the HoloLens, learned a lot about the Meta 2, but almost nobody knows exactly what to expect out of Magic Leap's mixed reality headset. Thanks to a patent dug up by Quartz (which we saw first on Tech Insider), we now might have a better idea.
A motion-based lock screen app called GestureLock was among the winner's at 2106's Android Experiments I/O Challenge, and it lets you set a specific motion (gesture) that you use to gain access to your locked phone.
Instagram is the world's biggest photo-sharing site, narrowly edging out competitors like Imgur and Flickr. But unlike the competition, Instagram doesn't make it easy for users to download a full-resolution copy of any of the images hosted on their servers, as the site's main intention is to keep folks coming back and using the social media aspect of it all.
Samsung's next Galaxy Note smartphone is expected to contain some nifty new additions that the company hopes will give it the long desired edge it has been seeking over Apple. One of those features that might make the difference? An iris scanner, which could make it the first major smartphone on the market to have that technology included.
It looks like Apple is finally going to do something to address all of the complaints about their unremovable stock apps clogging up people's home screens. While bloatware is a bigger problem on Android where you have to deal with apps from Google and carriers, an iPhone can still get pretty cluttered with all those stock Apple apps. I mean, just look at all this crap... AppAdvice noticed two new keys in the iTunes metadata that strongly suggest that you'll be able to get rid of stock apps on...
