Last week, I showed you a peek at the not-yet-released Galaxy S5 Active, the more rugged version of Samsung's current flagship. The man behind those leaks, TK Tech News, has now brought another goodie from the device, and it's one we can have on the Galaxy Note 3.
Many of our everyday apps include a menu tab or search bar, like Chrome and Twitter. In fact, a lot of times those are the first things we go for, as search is universal in most apps, and app settings are just about always accessible through the menu.
Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and even older siblings have all likely dealt with handing their smartphones over to young children. No matter if they want to play games or watch cartoons or record funny noises, you're handing over a very personal device to those who can mess up what they don't know.
As an added functionality to the S Pen, the Pen Window enables you to create floating application windows on your Samsung Galaxy Note 3—a tool that's extremely useful when it comes to multitasking.
The new HTC One and Nexus series devices have already replaced their physical navigation keys with soft keys, and it's inevitable that we'll see more and more of this on future mobiles. Samsung continues to buck the trend entirely, but no manufacturer as gone as far as to remove the volume rockers.
There were some pretty amazing things included in the Android 4.4 KitKat update, but unfortunately, most of them were left inactive on our Nexus 7 tablets. Some, like full-screen immersive mode and the hidden battery percentage status bar icon, could be enabled on rooted devices, but not everyone wants to root.
I love my status bar. Not only does it tell what time it is and how much battery juice is left, but it gives me cellular connection info, text alerts, and app update notifications. However, one thing is does not give me is customization. Since you're looking at it all the damn time, why not personalize it?
Android updates are a funny thing—they give us a host of new features and upgrades, but they can also change things that we're used to. And sometimes we prefer to have things the way they were.
You've seen it a million times. You try to do something on your Android device and a box pops up asking you which app you'd like to use. You could try Photos, Gallery, Drive, Picasa Web Albums...the list is fairly extensive sometimes. And what's worse, after that you have to select "Always" or "Just once". Add it all up, and that's three taps to do something you thought would take just one!
Muzei Live Wallpaper is a popular Android app that refreshes your home screen background at set intervals, turning it into blurred pieces of artwork or photography while keeping your icons and widgets in the spotlight.
The more you use your device, the more you'll download and install apps. These apps range from helpful to fun to simple distractions, but after a while, you may notice slow down on your device or a marked reduction in battery life.
In direct competition with Pandora, iTunes Radio, and Spotify, Samsung has just launched Milk Music—a strangely named, yet completely free music streaming service for Android.
Texting something as simple as "What up, bruh?" can be transformed into something way more baller by adding emojis, emoticons, GIFs, and textspeak. Some people would even argue that texting is a form of art, similar to Shakespearean sonnets, but it still has a ways to go if you ask me.
Introducing a unique way to share photos and videos among friends and family, Snapchat was the big hit of 2013 (despite its many flaws). Thanks to its ephemeral nature and lack of third-party sign-in integration, it quickly grew into a multibillion-dollar company in the span of just 12 months.
One good thing about having friends who are constantly on their phones and tablets is it's easy to figure out what to get them for Christmas. Everyone hates getting gifts that just sit around, so it's always nice to get something that improves an item you use on a daily basis.
I can't say that my handwriting skills are the best, and my cursive is even worse. I mean, I still don't know how to write a capital L in cursive, but who really cares when I do all my everyday writing with a keyboard now. I've gotten pretty fast at typing on my computer, but those tiny buttons on the Samsung Galaxy S3's keyboard is a totally different thing.
Phone interruptions are commonplace, as is evident by my historically epic missed phone call list, ranging from annoying sales people to my mom checking in every five minutes to see if I'm still alive.
Apple is no newbie when it comes to color.
Probably the most favorite custom ROM among softModders is CyanogenMod, a theme-friendly take on stock Android that not only makes it easier to customize your device, but also increases performance using a variety of system tweaks and enhancements.
With its awesomely enormous size, the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 can at times be difficult to navigate when you only have one hand free—especially if you have really small hands.
There are a ton of streaming services available at your disposal in the Google Play Store—Spotify, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, Last.fm, and the list goes on and on. These apps help satisfy my day-to-day cravings for good beats, but I tend to do a little too much hopping around from music app to music app (and music widget to music widget) in the process.
The PlayStation 3 is a sweet gaming system, and even though Blu-ray discs didn't really live up to all the hype and there is still no HBO GO app available, I love my PS3. One of the coolest things about it is that you can customize it to look however you want. One of the most common ways to do this is by changing the wallpaper, but most people use their computers to transfer wallpaper images over.
What time is it? It's a question that you'll find yourself asking a million more times throughout your life, but one that hardly goes unanswered. When you're on your phone or at your desktop, there is almost always some type of clock available to immediately give you the time.
Widgets can display essential information from an app right on your iPhone's Lock Screen, but there's an even bigger reason you should be using them: fast access to your most-used apps.
Night Shift, Dark Mode, Reduce White Point, and Zoom's Low Light Filter all help reduce the harmful effects on your body's clock that bright iPhone and iPad screens have at night. But there's another option on iOS and iPadOS that turns your entire display red, and it's useful for so much more than just late-night browsing in bed.
Apple's iOS 16 for iPhone includes even more ways to customize your Memoji characters, and it even removes some barriers that were in place in iOS 15.
Your Pixel's Now Playing song discovery tool received a few updates in Android 12, and the feature is finally comparable to other music recognition services.
Apple unrolled an array of nifty iPhone features in iOS 15. One of the more valuable updates lets you group all your untimely notifications and view them throughout the day at only the times you choose.
I won't mince words: the Notes widget in iOS 14 is bad. But you're not stuck with it if you want sticky notes on your home screen.
If you are reading this article right now on your Galaxy Note 20, you are using one of the most powerful smartphones on the market — but are you taking full advantage of it? The answer is likely no, but you can change this with a few apps.
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.
Over the years, we've seen security breach after security breach, as well as high-profile data scandals where collected personal information was misused by companies. Apple makes customer privacy a priority, so there have been few issues to worry about when it comes to its services on your iPhone. However, there are still plenty of privacy settings to explore and change, especially within Safari.
While iOS 11 is ready to take over your iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, let's take a step back and check out all of the new features that iOS 10 brought to the public when it was released to everyone in Sept. 2016.
Apple has completely redesigned its Calculator app for iPhone, and it's now powerful and practical enough to replace any third-party calculator you've been using.
When they first appeared, smartphones came with a promise to make our lives easier and make us more productive so we could have more free time and energy. But now, the average user spends almost 5 ½ hours daily on their smartphone. If that sounds like you, there are ways to use your iPhone more efficiently — without getting sucked into distractions.
Perhaps the biggest new feature within Apple's iOS 17.2 update for iPhone is Journal, a new journaling app designed to help you take a moment to reflect each day using reflection prompts, recommendations via on-device intelligence, and suggestions for recent activities and events.
With Apple's newest iOS software update, you can turn your iPhone into a smart display that's always on when you're not actively using it. So your iPhone can quickly transform into a bedside clock, digital photo frame, miniature HomePod, Live Activities tracker, widget-monitoring screen, and more.
If you're doing the same tasks on your Android phone repeatedly each day — like playing a specific playlist at the gym, viewing work documents, or watching your favorite music video — you can save some time by automating your routine, turning each task into a one-tap gesture on your home screen.
If you're tired of the default yellow link colors in your Notes app, which I find hard to look at in light mode, there's a way to change them to another color on your iPhone, iPad, and/or Mac running iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and/or macOS Sonoma 14 and earlier.
Apple's Weather app has been around forever, at least for iPhone, and it's gone through many design changes over the years. But we're at a point now where we can actually customize how the Weather app looks and feels in many different ways, some of which you probably haven't even considered.
