Having an open-source platform like Android is great, allowing manufacturers and developers the ability to make their own skins and apps to truly customize the end-user experience. The only downside is that when an update comes to vanilla Android, many of us are left in the cold, unless you have a Google Play Edition HTC One.
You may not always be connected to the internet, but if you're anything like me, your thirst for web content is insatiable. Whether you're on an airplane or stuck in an area with no reception, having some offline content stored on your Nexus can definitely save the day.
A boring work meeting. A conversation with someone you don't like. A date that's going horribly. A run-in with an aggressive and intimidating stranger. These are all situations where you want to flee—and fast.
When the Nexus 5 was released, a new version of Android came along with it called KitKat. In the 4.4 update were some fancy new UI elements, one of the most noticeable being the translucent decor. By that, I mean the status and navigation bars being semi-transparent.
I never really cared much for the clock widget on my Nexus 7, mainly because it only gave me two styles—analog and digital. There are many different styles of clock widgets available on Google Play, but the majority of them just don't look good enough for me.
I regularly use my Nexus 7 to wake up in the mornings (well, sometimes afternoons), but it's pretty minimal in what it does. I shouldn't have to open multiple apps when I wake up to figure out my schedule for the day or what the weather is going to be like.
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.
Android is all about the fine details. You can make a little tweak here and a little tweak there and completely customize your experience to be exactly how you want it to be. Sure, you don't need to customize LED colors or screen record, but it's nice to know you can.
Apple's iOS 7 is riddled with annoying features, and some of them can't be toggled off in Settings. For example, I really don't like having labels directly underneath my app icons, and there's no way to remove them. Sure, it may be nitpicky, but it's my device, and it should behave the way I want it to.
The Chromecast may be slowly weaving its way into the smartphone ecosystem, but the amount of supported Android apps that are available for the streaming media player are still severely limited.
In a world where more features are king, sometimes it's a good thing to breathe, take a step backwards and keep it simple. With home launchers, this isn't often the case, as developers add a galore of features to their apps in order to be at the top of the game.
There are a lot of great music apps available on Google Play for your Android device, each usually specializing in one feature or another, and we’ve shown a bunch of them. There's everything from floating controls to equalizers to deeply integrated streaming, but what if you want all of those features jam-packed into a single app?
Just like the HTC One Google Play Edition, the recently released Samsung Galaxy S4 Google Play Edition ditches the manufacturer's UI in favor of a pure Google experience, i.e. AOSP, but is also optimized specifically for the device's hardware.
Thanks to its dedicated ImageChip, the HTC One has one of the best cameras out of all the smartphones currently on the market. Their branded UltraPixel Camera can take full resolution photos while shooting video, has superior auto-focusing, and provides great overall quality for everything from low-light to action shots.
The newer HTC One is arguably the best smartphone yet in terms of hardware, but its software moves considerably farther away from the stock Android experience. Even more so from HTC's own Sense.
Frankly, I never cared about the care labels on my clothing. They supposedly held some secret key to keeping clothes clean and bright, but who wants to look at little icons and a bunch of fine print for every single garment they wash?
Want to spice up your origami cranes? MIT's High-Low Tech Group made two electronic origami cranes that flap their wings when you squeeze their tails.
In this video Jay Golden talks about what the numbers on a golf ball mean. The different numbers do not mean that the ball is a different weight or size or dimple pattern. The major purpose for different numbered balls is so that you know your ball when you are playing golf. If two players have the same numbered ball normally a dot is put on one of the balls with a magic marker so that you can know which ball belongs to each player. If you hit the wrong ball it's a two stroke penalty. If you ...
Are you having trouble with your animal drawings? Doodlekat1 shows us how to draw a cute cartoon tiger easily! You will need: blank piece of paper marker or pencil. For the head: Draw a big semi-circle and a small circle in the middle. Connect them using little curves then add the ears. For the nose: Draw a triangle on the top of the small circle then add the mouth, three dots and some whiskers. Draw two big shaded eyes. Draw stripes of varying sizes at the top and the sides of the head. Add ...
Director, and self proclaimed loner, M dot Strange, explains the benefits of being alone and how you can increase your productivity in isolation.
The video is a demonstration of how to get your nose pierced by yourself at home. The things you are going to need for this are a sterile needle, rubbing alcohol, cotton swab, rubber gloves, a nose ring, ice cubes, eraser and of course pain tolerance. The lady also tips you to first numb your nose with ice cubes if you wish and it helps a lot. Then she asks you to put on the gloves, take the cotton swab and put some rubbing alcohol on it and then clean the inside and outside area where you ar...
In this art video the instructor shows how to draw a dog. He starts by drawing some basic figures of circle and square for the head and face of the dog. Next he draws a cylinder for the body of it. He goes on and shows how to add the legs and tail to it. Now he finally shows how to do the rest of the editing like shading and dots to give it a look of a real dog. This is a very good introductory video which shows the step by step process of how to draw a cute little dog using basic figures and...
Android Messages, formally named simply "Messages" now, has built-in spam protection. This doesn't get every spam SMS message, however — in fact, you can still get unwanted texts multiple times daily even with the feature enabled. Thankfully, you can manually block numbers, too.
Your iPhone's home screen just got a whole lot more exciting thanks to iOS 14, which is finally giving Android a run for its money in terms of home screen customization. What's new? Widgets in three different sizes, a new searchable App Library, and most importantly, the ability to hide entire home screen pages.
Enter a password into a password field, and it's a sure bet that black dots or asterisks will obscure the characters. Nearly every website you visit in Safari on your iPhone will do it, but sometimes it helps to see what you're typing or what was auto-filled with iCloud Keychain, LastPass, or a different password manager.
Google Maps Live View is already one of the more useful examples of augmented reality on smartphones that is available to the average consumer today.
If you have an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or Apple TV, then you already have a quick way to subscribe to Apple TV+, Apple's entry into the streaming wars. Some of you might even have a free year of the service. But if you don't have any of those products or you're just looking for a smart TV or streaming device that supports Apple TV+ natively, check out these Black Friday deals.
Sometimes you might find that a certain app keeps sending you notifications. What are you to do? There are plenty of useful apps that might send one too many push notifications, but that doesn't mean you should dump them. Luckily, Android gives you complete control over how each installed app handles notifications.
Directory traversal, or path traversal, is an HTTP attack which allows attackers to access restricted directories by using the ../ characters to backtrack into files or directories outside the root folder. If a web app is vulnerable to this, an attacker can potentially access restricted files that contain info about all registered users on the system, their permissions, and encrypted passwords.
As we enter the second half of 2018, rumors for the second season of flagships have started to emerge. On the Android side, this means the latest iterations of the Google Pixel, Galaxy Note, LG V series, and Huawei Mate. Thanks to FunkyHuawei and XDA, we now have some solid rumors regarding the Huawei Mate 20.
Earlier this month, when Apple announced at WWDC that iOS 12 would include an augmented reality tape measure called Measure, iPhone watchers seemed impressed by the new addition to the company's AR arsenal. Well, just a couple of weeks later, on June 19, it appears that Google remembered it had its own Measure app as well.
When it works, Android's Smart Lock feature is incredible. There's no need to enter your PIN when your phone "knows" it's in your hands — just unlock and go. But Smart Lock, particularly its Trusted Places feature, can be finicky sometimes.
Many of us rely on our smartphones for all our media needs. Now more than ever, we're using Bluetooth connections to play audio over speakers, headphones, car sound systems — the list goes on. If you own a Samsung smartphone like the Galaxy S9, there are a number of Bluetooth tweaks and hidden tricks that can maximize your audio experience.
As with most social media platforms, Instagram can be a double-edged sword. On one hand, it's a great way to share and express yourself — but on the other, it can be just as effective at compromising your privacy. Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself.
Snapchat is an app built on sending quick-to-disappear pictures to your friends and family. Sure, this is the primary function of the app, but sometimes users want longer-lasting Memories while interacting with Snapchat. While My Story allows snaps to stick around for 24 hours, they still disappear in time. This is where Memories come in handy.
Watching YouTube on your phone has never been a better experience than it is today — our smartphones have super-sharp displays that make watching the newest HD, QHD, and even 4K content look fantastic. But there are plenty of circumstances where we want to watch our content on a larger screen.
Think of the coolest, most unique way to create art that you can. Got it? Now think about creating that art out of living things.
Hello friends. This is actually my first how to.
Ever watched Netflix on your phone only to realize an hour later that you forgot to turn Wi-Fi on? That's a whole lot of data used.
The release of the Nexus 5 marked the debut of the Google Now Launcher. Even with an integrated Google Now page on your home screen, the most talked-about feature was actually the always-listening functionality.
