Ever since Microsoft sunset Windows Phone, they've been working with Android to tap into the growing mobile device market. The tech giant has uploaded over 80 apps to the Play Store for any Android user to download, but some features Samsung has hoarded for themselves.
For all its faults, you can't say that Facebook hasn't been instrumental in connecting friends and family together, no matter where in the world everyone is. That's why one of its upcoming features — watching videos together with Facebook friends directly in Messenger — is so novel. It's just another example of the internet bridging gaps that couldn't be bridged just a short while ago.
When you hear a "ding" on your phone, chances are it's a new notification for Facebook Messenger, and it could be a fairly painful sound depending on how loud your volume's set. Thankfully, you aren't stuck with this singular alert option, so if you're unhappy with both this sound and the call ringtone, you can change it to something else — something less distressing.
On Instagram, it's all about the sharing, but not all sharing is equal. Take stories, for example. Up until recently, stories couldn't be easily shared outside the Instagram bubble. Now, Instagram lets you share a convenient link to a part of your story or your entire story on any other platform — text, email, social app — pretty much anywhere.
Though many were hoping for it, a notification indicator around the Galaxy S10's front camera punch hole never came to fruition. Since then, we've been finding other uses for the camera cutout, from turning it into a circular battery meter to using creative wallpapers. Thankfully, there's now an app that will give you LED-style alerts with a ring around your S10's camera.
As Microsoft continues to bask in the glow of its HoloLens 2 unveiling and begins ramping up the hype to launch, Nreal and Vuzix are carving out their own niches in the AR hardware landscape.
Despite being at the helms of the RCS push, Google Fi has yet to support the new messaging protocol. It would've made too much sense if the Google-created MVNO was one of the first to support the feature Google's been pushing on other OEMs and carriers for years, but alas, they haven't. Well, better late than never — Google has finally announced support for RCS Universal Profile on Fi.
Any app on your iPhone could potentially listen in on your conversations and use that information to target you with tailored ads. Although most companies, including Facebook and Apple, have come out and vehemently denied these claims of spying on consumers, who's to say they're telling the truth? The only way to be sure you're safe is to take matters into your own hands.
There are some nasty iOS bugs out there, many determined to crash the Messages app. For example, in February 2018, we saw a Telugu character render the iPhone messaging app totally useless. While that bug has been fixed, the nightmare continues in a new bug, aptly dubbed the "Black Dot."
When you leave your iPhone on a table or anywhere within somebody else's eyeshot, a private message may pop up on your lock screen that could be read by anyone who sees it. But there's a way to keep others from reading your possibly sensitive text messages and emails without giving up the convenience of lock screen notifications entirely.
So you're thinking about downloading the Galaxy S8 Oreo beta, but you're not sure if it's stable enough to use. It is a beta, of course, so you might want to wait for others to give it a try. Over the past ten days I've used the Galaxy S8+ running Android Oreo as my daily driver, running down the best new features. Let's take a look at the bugs, the performance, and the battery life.
Shortly after we detailed several indicators that the Galaxy S8 Oreo Beta Program would begin rolling out in the month of November, we now have a full changelog for the update.
Sometimes it's impossible to concentrate — let alone direct your personal assistant Siri — when someone is blasting music on their phone or talking to thin air. I mean I'm loud, but not that loud.
Fewer and fewer Android phones are being released with SD card slots, so it's always a struggle to make sure you have enough free storage space for your photos, videos, and music. Things like app data and cache slowly build up as you use your device, which means your available storage number gradually decreases over time.
As Android's de facto virtual assistant, Google Now lets us speak directly to our phones in plain English to answer our questions and perform many basic tasks. With the app open, just say "Okay Google," then wait for the beep, and ask almost any question.
The new Nexus 6 and Nexus 9 models will be shipping with Android 5.0 Lollipop preinstalled, and the Nexus 4, 5, 7, and 10 will be getting the new OS update from Google very soon. But where does that leave the rest of us?
Emojis have transformed the way we laugh and cry, tell stories, give responses, and express excitement to get a drink after work — without any actual text required. Heck, in an incredibly meta move, the Oxford Dictionary even named the "Face with Tears of Joy" emoji as their word of the year at one point. So how could you not want to be an emoji character for Halloween? Emojis are everywhere. The ubiquitous symbols are already on smartphones, tablets, and social networks, so why not help them...
Safari has some cool new features in iOS 8, but the app that seems to have gotten the biggest update so far is Messages. A lot of the new Messages features were discussed during Apple's developers conference, but we found many others and picked out our favorite hidden ones below.
It took many months of cries from all around the internet—and a particularly large groan from an ex-Lifehacker editor-in-chief—but Apple has not only acknowledged the existence of its iMessage problem, it's promising a fix.
In these times of social distancing, video calling is becoming the technological substitute for face-to-face connections. For those who carry an iPhone, the art of video calling defaults to FaceTime, the native app on iOS that is exclusive to Apple devices. But what do you do if you or the other party is on Android?
You see it in the movies all the time. A character on the phone doesn't like what the other person is saying or telling them to do, or they just don't want to talk to them anymore, so they fake bad reception and cut the call off. In real life, it's pretty easy to tell when someone is doing it, and there are better ways to end a call abruptly so that it looks like you didn't hang up on them.
Deep fakes, the art of leveraging artificial intelligence to insert the likeness and/or voice of people into videos they don't otherwise appear in, typically focus on celebrity parodies or political subterfuge.
It is well documented that what you say and do online is tracked. Yes, private organizations do their best to protect your data from hackers, but those protections don't extend to themselves, advertisers, and law enforcement.
To share a song or album to family and friends, it's as easy as copying its link in the app and pasting that into a message. However, not everyone uses the same music streaming service, so a link to an Apple Music song won't do a Spotify, Tidal, Pandora, Deezer, or YouTube Music subscriber any good. If you're on an iPhone, though, there's an easy way to convert links from one service to another.
Every single photo you take carries with it a considerable amount of seemingly "invisible" yet important information known as metadata. Although metadata is usually helpful to sort your photographs by location and date, that same information could potentially be used against you, especially if the pictures are taken during a precarious situation.
In November 2016, the RCS Universal Profile (Rich Communications Services) was introduced. The technology takes text messaging to the 21st century, emulating many of the features found in IM apps like WhatsApp and iMessage, but working through your phone number like regular SMS or MMS. The only thing is, your carrier needs to support RCS-UP to use the feature. Thankfully, the list is growing.
Apple has packed a lot of new features into the iOS 13 update, and practically no core app has gone untouched. The Messages app, in particular, got plenty of love, including new ways to dress and use your Memojis.
For quite some time, popular messaging apps such WhatsApp and Skype have let you set a profile picture along with a display name to make you more instantly identifiable to loved ones and colleagues. Apple has finally caught up with this fad in iOS 13. That means you can set a custom name and profile image within iMessage so others can quickly view who's messaging them at a glance.
When you can't think of a way to respond in Messenger with words, emojis and stickers will do the trick. Since Facebook is all about the "likes," which use a thumbs-up icon, there's a shortcut to the symbol just to the right of the chat field. It's always there to send a quick like in response to something. But it doesn't have to be the standard Facebook thumbs-up sign — it can be any emoji you want.
Canary tokens are customizable tracking links useful for learning about who is clicking on a link and where it's being shared. Thanks to the way many apps fetch a URL preview for links shared in private chats, canary tokens can even phone home when someone checks a private chat without clicking the link. Canary tokens come in several useful types and can be used even through URL shorteners.
When it comes to digital security, one of the best ways to protect yourself is to use two-factor authentication. Most apps these days support it, including Facebook, a site where the more privacy you can muster, the better. However, of the two 2FA options available for Facebook, only one should be used as the other will share your phone number with the world, a huge privacy concern.
Every photo you take is brimming with metadata such as iPhone model, date and time, shooting modes, focal length, shutter speed, flash use, and geolocation information. Share these pictures with friends, family, or acquaintances via texts, emails, or another direct share method, and you unwittingly share your location data. Even sharing via apps and social media sites can compromise your privacy.
When you make an awesome song or beat that you're proud of in GarageBand for iOS, one way to show it off is to turn it into a ringtone or alert tone for your iPhone. That way, anytime you get a phone call or a notification, your musical creation will sound off, and everyone around you will hear it in all its glory. Plus, it's way cheaper to make your tones than to buy them off of iTunes.
Chances are, you just point, shoot, and share photos and videos on your iPhone without a second thought about how your privacy is affected. It's fairly easy to do so since the Camera and Photos apps that Apple provides seem so innocent. But there are a few things you need to know when it comes to shooting media, sharing it, and even deleting it.
There are a ton of new features in iOS 11, but some of the best ones, in my opinion, are in the Camera app. They're not huge features, but they're much appreciated to anyone who's ever taken a Live Photo or portrait, or even to those who've needed to scan a QR code quickly.
Video chatting has become an important factor in the overall smartphone experience. Even just a few years ago, 37% of teens were making video calls on a regular basis, and that number has surely grown. 85% of households with infants have used video chat apps to call relatives in other cities, and it's been shown that toddlers can create bonds and learn from visual cues in video calls.
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.
Facebook just released its new "home on Android" last Friday, appropriately called Facebook Home. Taking a cue from Amazon's Kindle, Home serves as an "operating system" that runs over Android.
On Monday, the social media giant Facebook suffered a massive outage that, as of this writing, is still in effect.
With the arrival of Facebook Ray-Ban Stories smartglasses commanding the recent spotlight, the tech world acted like it forgot about Facebook's first foray in consumer hardware — the Portal line of video calling devices.
