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.
Yes, there's a way for you to get translations of foreign language websites on your iPhone using the built-in Safari app. Problem is, it's not super obvious. Actually, you'd never know the option was there if someone didn't tell you. But with a little setup on your part, you can have Safari translate webpages whenever you need it to.
At the Google I/O keynote presentation today, Clay Bavor, Vice President of Virtual Reality for Google, shared a number of new initiatives in virtual and augmented reality. This included new services for the Tango platform called visual positioning service, or VPS.
Fans of Titanfall now have a great alternative to play on their iPhones whenever they're out and about. Titanfall: Assault has arrived as a soft launch for iOS devices. A hybrid between card-based and real-time strategy genres, the game will pit you against other players with some mech-on-mech action to dominate the battlefield. Taking some cues from Clash Royale, each unit that's deployed in Titanfall: Assault will automatically fight its way through opposing forces to accomplish its objecti...
The Google Chrome browser does mostly everything well and integrates nicely with other Google services, but it's not exactly renowned for speed. With a rooted device and the aid of an app called Kernel Adiutor, however, you can make Chrome as nimble as some of the fastest browsers on the market.
The Galaxy S8 and S8+ might not have made it into the hands of the public yet, but we sure have come across a lot of the stock apps from Samsung's latest flagship phones. First, there was the new launcher, then Hello Bixby, and now, the extremely elusive Record Screen feature has been leaked.
Pinterest, a worldwide catalog of ideas shared by over 175 million users every month, is dominated by Android users, who are now the app's fastest growing group. Pinterest has since taken notice, and has started to incorporate handy home screen shortcuts for users with Android 7.1 or higher.
Apple has removed support for older 32-bit applications in the new iOS 11, which was to be expected after the 10.3 update added the ability to detect apps that are still running 32-bit processes on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Apple even excluded restore images for 32-bit devices such as the iPhone 5 and iPad (4th gen) in the iOS 10.3.2 beta 1 update for developers, so this shouldn't be a surprise.
Cinemagraphs are basically artistic photos that have been turned into a GIF to showcase a bit of subtle motion and give them life. Unlike regular GIFs, which can sometimes loop with a jarring cut at the end, cinemagraphs give the illusion of perpetual motion, like water drops off a flower's petal or clouds moving over a scenic sky.
A scary piece of malware just got a lot more terrifying this week. Security firm Comodo reports that "Tordow," a banking Trojan first uncovered in September 2016, received a massive update this December.
Selecting text on a touchscreen device has always been a major pain point. Those tiny little arrows that let you adjust the selection area are always too hard to actually adjust, making precision all but impossible. Then there's the issue of some apps not even allowing text selection in the first place, so the entire experience is basically a big mess.
One of our favorite features on the Pixel Launcher is its App Shortcuts, which work a lot like Apple's 3D Touch for iOS or Huawei's Force Touch. Instead of using pressure sensitivity to call up static and dynamic shortcut menus for apps, Launcher Shortcuts relied on a simple long-press. Now, in the Android 7.1 update for Pixels, there's an update to App Shortcuts that let's you pin shortcut options directly to your home screen for even quicker access.
An average user's smartphone tinkering doesn't go much further than taking their phones out of the box, signing into their account, and installing apps. But some of us want more functionality and customizability than the basic experience provided by Android and iOS.
One of the biggest causes of smartphone battery drain is the mobile data connection—particularly if you live in an area with poor reception. But, chances are, you don't actually need this connection most of the time, because you're probably connected to Wi-Fi for a good chunk of the day, which uses far less battery life.
Prior to this year's WWDC, there were lots of rumors that Apple might finally be making a version of iMessage for Android. While that never came to fruition, a few big updates to a very useful app have now ensured that we can seamlessly send and receive Android texts in Apple Messages on our Macs.
Rooted users have been able to remap their hardware buttons since the earliest days of Android, allowing them to change the functionality behind one of the most centralized methods of interacting with a phone or tablet. Up until now, however, non-rooted users have been left out in the cold, meaning these buttons could only perform the functions assigned to them by the device manufacturer.
When it comes to security, Android generally takes an all-or-nothing approach—once someone has your PIN, they're free to do just about anything, up to and including wiping your device. This is why you have to be extra careful to ensure that neither strangers nor friends are looking over your shoulder while you're entering your PIN.
With the FBI getting access to iPhones, and apps like Waze being used to track people's locations, you've got to wonder just how safe and secure your smartphone is... or isn't. When you consider everything you do on your phone, from taking and sharing pictures to mobile banking, keeping your information safe is a crucial step that may seem out of your hands.
One of Android's biggest strengths is its ability to interact with other operating systems. When you plug your phone into your Windows PC, you instantly see all of the files it holds—and all it takes is a simple syncing app to do the same with Mac. To top that off, apps like Pushbullet and Join bridge the gap even further by allowing you to share links, files, and messages between all of your devices.
Smartphone displays are getting bigger every year, and Samsung devices are at the forefront of that trend. But, from a software standpoint, the icons, buttons, and other on-screen elements seem to stay at the same scale. So while phones are getting bigger, their interfaces are getting bigger as well.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons that you might want to record a phone conversation. Let's say you operate a business and take orders over the phone, and you don't want to miss an item. Or perhaps you need to jot down some notes from a recent conference call, and things were just happening too quickly in real time.
Of all the new features in Android 6.0 Marshmallow, an automatic battery-saving function called "Doze" might just be the most interesting. What it all boils down to is that if you set your phone down on a flat surface, the device uses internal sensors to detect that it's motionless and not in use, then responds by drastically scaling back battery-sucking services until the next time you pick your phone up.
Let's say you're flush with Google Opinion Rewards credits, or you just got a Google Play gift card for your birthday. This is a perfect opportunity to remove ads and unlock new features by upgrading some of your free apps to their paid counterparts, or to finally purchase that app you've been lusting after that doesn't offer a free version.
Initially reluctant to port Firefox over to iOS, Mozilla has finally released the first public preview of their famed web browser. While this is great news for all Firefox users, the bad news is that the browser is currently available for download only in New Zealand.
In response to the success of Apple Pay and an attempt to stave off the appealing Samsung Pay service, Google is completely revamping Android's mobile payments system. Instead of just using Google Wallet as an app to make payments with your phone, a new service called Android Pay, with an extensive underlying framework and API, will soon make its debut—and maybe even sooner than you'd think.
Time takes its toll on your home screen. Before you know it, your clean app pages start filling up with social media, music streaming, video, and dozens of other kinds of apps. And let's face it, a lot of those apps are never touched after the first few times you use them.
I have a personal rule when it comes to an app's interface: If it doesn't follow Android's design guidelines, it was probably written with Apple's iOS in mind first and foremost.
Everyone's favorite Android modding tool is finally available for the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge. Thanks to some hard work by Wanam and a few other developers, we can now install the Xposed Framework on Samsung's latest mid-sized flagship phones.
One of the first orders of business after purchasing a new smartphone is to load up your shiny new toy with phone numbers, email addresses, and general contact information for all the important people in your life.
When the Galaxy S6 hype-train was building momentum ahead of the phone's release, many reports had Samsung cutting back on its much-maligned TouchWiz skin. In the end, these reports were either highly exaggerated or entirely fabricated, because while not as egregious as previous devices, Samsung's signature bloated UI and duplicate apps are definitely present on the Galaxy S6.
Apple just showed off iOS 9 and its new features at WWDC 2015, including multitasking support for iPads (finally!), a new Low Power Mode to save battery, local area search and transit directions in Maps, a highly improved "Proactive" Siri, a better Spotlight search, new apps, and so much more.
Performance boosters generally get a bad rap, but that doesn't mean they should all be dismissed—particularly when they're as well thought out as the latest work from developer Danijel Markov. After recognizing a few inefficiencies in the way Android handles memory management and other system-level functions, he created a flashable ZIP that will apply many fixes in one fell swoop.
The Xposed Framework is a very powerful platform on top of which smaller modules can run to make changes to the Android system and various other apps. Installing modules is just as easy as sideloading any Android app, but afterwards, you'll need to activate the module and reboot your device.
I picked up my Galaxy S6 Edge on release day and have loved it ever since. Did I spend an extra hundred bucks for the mostly-aesthetic Edge display? Yup! Did I have buyer's remorse about my frivolous spending? Not even a little.
Android's lock screen has evolved quite a bit over the years. From the Donut days of two tabs that launched the phone app and unlocked the device, to KitKat's clean and simple approach, shortcuts have come and gone.
HTC's Sense UI is generally regarded as one of the best manufacturer-skinned versions of Android. This is mainly due to the subtle and classy styling of the interface, as well as some unique features that are added in here and there.
We've previously covered an app called YouTube Floating Popup Player which let you watch YouTube videos anywhere on your Android device, but it has since been removed from the Google Play Store due to infringement of certain policies.
Yes, they're called volume keys, but they can do much more than adjust your volume. With minimal effort, you can do some amazing things with these physical buttons, like secretly record videos, toggle on your flashlight, scroll through pages, control your music, and much more. And while using them to wake your screen is useful, let's take it a step further and show you how to use them to completely unlock your device, even if the screen is off.
Some elements of iOS's design, like its minimal color palette, are what make Apple products unique, helping to produce a clean, sleek user experience. But after you jailbreak, that all goes out the window. Once you've tried things like theming your status bar, changing your icons, or applying a new lock screen, you'll never see your iOS device in the same way again.
Google's Chrome Remote Desktop, which allows for remote access to your personal computer from your smartphone, has been out for almost a year now. Sadly, it's only been available for Android devices—until now. So, if you got an iPhone (or other iOS device), you can now access and control your computer directly from your smartphone or tablet just like with Android.
