Most newer Android devices manufactured in 2014 or later have a built-in pedometer for tracking your fitness activity. This step counter is a great way to keep yourself in shape and motivated, but developer Leonardo Cavaletti has come up with an even better way to put it to use.
Last year's inaugural Amazon Prime Day may have been a bit of a bust, but the online retail giant seems to be making up for it this year with some killer deals.
Several major web services—most notably Facebook—have horrendous Android apps that occupy way too much space and drain battery life at an alarming rate. Such issues have led to a new trend where third-party developers create minimalist "lite" apps that are essentially the mobile website bundled into a native Android wrapper, freeing up storage space and saving battery life without sacrificing many features at all.
The internet, as I understand it, is a wonderful, magical place where people congregate to share memes and viral videos. Well, okay... there's a lot more to it than that, but let's just focus in on the good stuff.
The internet has officially been taken over by GIFs—they're everybody's favorite method of communication these days, and nary a meme would exist without them. But even with the abundance of GIF-sharing websites, and even GIF keyboards, we're still a bit lacking in regard to creating GIFs on a mobile device.
Google's Chrome browser comes pre-loaded on the vast majority of today's Android devices, and it's one of the fastest, most stable, and useful browsers out there. But it does have one major annoyance—while a page is loading, you'll see a link, then reach to tap it, but an element further up the page will load, and the link will jump out from underneath your fingertip.
It looks as though Samsung will continue to tone down the look of TouchWiz, according to a leaked look at the newest "Grace" user interface for the upcoming Galaxy Note 7. HDblog, who acquired the leaked UI, shows off the beta version of the new skin in their video below.
We recently covered a set of ported apps from the new cloud-based smartphone, the Nextbit Robin. These ported APKs brought two of the Robin's slick new stock apps—Camera and Gallery—to any other device, but the launcher was conspicuously absent.
The beauty of Nexus devices is they receive firmware updates faster than any other Android phone, and keep getting updates for years longer than most of the competition. This means that you can always use the great new features that come along with an Android update, and even more importantly, your phone gets monthly security patches to keep hackers and malware at bay.
While Magic Leap and ILMxLABs blew the internet's collective mind with a mixed reality Star Wars game demo last week, it'll likely be awhile before we see either the game or the hardware that'll run it. In the meantime, you can get one of the most famous Star Wars holographic messages on the HoloLens: Princess Leia's message to Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Many apps and services that are available for Android can only work if they have access to your Google account. While you're setting up one of these apps, you'll see a popup that says something like "This app would like to access your Google account," and the options are "Accept" or "Cancel." Of course we tap "Accept" here to ensure that the app will work properly, but what are the long-term repercussions of doing that?
Several Samsung phones have a feature that turns the screen black and white when the battery is getting low. This takes advantage of the AMOLED display in these devices, because unlike red, green, and blue pixels, no battery power is used to display black pixels on this type of screen.
iPhone and iPad users are getting a huge update with iOS 10, and one of the biggest (and most sought after) redesigns is to the Music app, as shown at Apple's WWDC '16. The redesign essentially makes the user interface easier to navigate, which was something that was fairly clunky starting in iOS 8.4 when Apple Music was first released.
Apple unveiled huge improvements for Messages in iOS 10 at WWDC '16, and my favorite new feature is that searching for emojis will be much, much easier. But there's a lot more to this update besides emojis.
I was skeptical when I first heard about GifWidget, an Android widget that lets you place GIFs on your home screen. As much as I love GIFs, did I really need to see this, this, this, or this, or even this, forever repeating on my phone?
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.
Lenovo unveiled the latest Motorola smartphones, Moto Z and Moto Z Force, today at Tech World '16. As expected, both models include strong magnets on the back that allow users to snap on various Moto Mods attachments such as a battery pack, projector, or JBL speakers.
Apple's Live Photos is a cool feature that lets you turn ordinary pictures into a GIF-like animated photos. However, these images have some pretty big drawbacks: they live only in the iOS universe and can be shaky without a tripod.
Smartphones tend to struggle when it comes to recording video in low light situations. Danish phone manufacturer Lumigon included a good camera capable of shooting 4K video on its latest phone, The T3, but the real interest lies in the second camera, which is a dedicated night vision shooter.
When Hey Siri was first introduced in iOS 8, it was a pretty lackluster feature since you had to be plugged into a power source in order to even use it. Since then, newer devices (iPhone 6s, 6s Plus, SE, 9.7-inch iPad Pro) don't need to plug in to have always-on Siri, which makes the feature actually worthwhile—when it works.
We recently covered an app called Touch Controls for YouTube that allows you to swipe up or down on any YouTube video to quickly adjust volume levels or brightness. As awesome as that app is, commenters here and on our YouTube channel thought it was lacking one big feature—the ability to seek forward or backward in the video by swiping the screen.
The Unicode Consortium just unveiled 72 new emojis that will be included in the upcoming Unicode 9.0 release, but we're not here to talk about the winners. Instead, let's take a look at the five poor emojis that will have to wait until at least next year to join the Unicode roster.
The upcoming version of Android has already been made available to certain devices for beta testing, but we won't see the official release of Android Nougat until sometime later this year, maybe even sooner than expected. The trouble here is that Google has made it really hard to wait patiently, because they've basically just teased us with a massive visual overhaul to the world's biggest mobile operating system.
More proof is emerging that the iPhone 7 won't include a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and damn—it is not pretty. These third-party Lightning-to-3.5 mm dongles were spotted on Chinese site Tama, and they give us a glimpse into a horrifying future in which we have to attach one of these clunky monstrosities to an iPhone just to connect a set of standard headphones.
The iPhone's pinch-to-zoom feature lets you easily enlarge photos to focus in on one particular area a little better, but after you've zoomed in to a certain degree, the image quickly snaps back and prevents you from zooming in any further. This is mostly meant to keep you from zooming in too far and getting lost, but a lot of times, the max zoom level just isn't close enough.
The Moto X and Moto Z have a set of features that let you launch common shortcuts by shaking your phone in one direction or another. For instance, there's a chop gesture that turns on the LED flashlight, and a wrist-twist gesture that instantly opens the camera app.
If you're tired of Google tracking you, but love how Chrome works, CyanogenMod has you covered. Their browser is called Gello, which is based off Chromium, Chrome's open-source counterpart. It's basically a souped-up version of Chrome—without all of the intrusive Google stuff. So if you're uncomfortable with Google displaying personalized ads based on your browsing history, or using your location to bring the "Physical Web" to your phone, you won't have to worry about any of that with Gello.
There was a somewhat recent outbreak of malware on Android, and it came from an unlikely source—the Google Play Store. Several established apps have received updates a few months ago that contained an unwanted add-on called either DU Quick Charge, DU Battery Boost, DU Boost Charge, DU Speed Charge, DU Speed Booster, or another name starting with DU.
Google Play Music has teamed up with TripAdvisor to make planning your next vacation a little more fun, and they're throwing in a nice deal for good measure.
CyanogenMod, the popular custom ROM available for many Android devices, has a nice little feature that displays a music visualizer beneath your on-screen navigation keys while you're listening to your favorite songs. It's a subtle touch, but it makes for a more immersive experience when you're jamming out while using your phone or tablet.
HTC's newest flagship smartphone, the HTC 10, has been met with nearly universal acclaim despite a weak amount of sales over the last few months. Most reviewers point to the device's gorgeous hardware as its main attraction, but at the same time, it certainly has some nice software to match, as this year's Sense 8 may be one of the best manufacturer skins ever.
You find and update all of your apps using the iOS App Store, and if you have updates scheduled automatically, it could be working hard on a daily basis. With all of that work, it can lose its footing from time to time and cause things not to work as they should.
Android 6.0 introduced a new feature called Direct Share that allows apps to pin a more specific set of targets to Android's share menu. You've probably seen it already—messaging apps will allow you to share a file directly to a specific contact instead of just to the main app, and there are several other implementations like this.
Augmented reality (AR) generally exists through the lens of our smartphones as information layered on top of what the camera sees, but it doesn't have to. Developer Jon Cheng worked with an indoor climbing facility in Somerville, Massachussetts, called Brooklyn Boulders, to turn rock climbing into a real-world video game where participants compete in a time trial to hit virtual markers on the wall.
A lot more people are about to be able to use Android Auto. Google announced at I/O 2016 that you'll soon be able to use the app with only your phone, so you won't need a compatible car or third-party display unit. And if (or more likely, when) Google brings the app to iOS, Apple may lose the precious "infotainment" system battle very early in the game. The update isn't coming until later this year, but once it arrives, you'll be able to mount your phone and use Android Auto the same way that...
The VLC Player app for Android has a really nice feature that allows you to adjust brightness and volume by sliding your finger up or down on the left or right side of your screen, respectively. It helps keep you immersed in the video while you're in full screen mode, since you don't have to mess around with any popups or overlays to perform these basic functions.
There are so many apps out there that it can be hard to decide which ones you should keep on your phone, especially if you're working with limited storage capacity. Sure, you can install and uninstall apps depending on when you need them, but that can be a little tedious.
Google first introduced Google Home, its latest smart product in the works, at the company's I/O conference in May 2016. It will directly compete against Amazon's Echo, which has so far been a success with over 3 million devices sold, and it was even featured as FBI Agent Dom's only real friend in the second season of Mr. Robot. Google may have their work cut out for them, but we're betting Home will knock Echo out of the water. Google Home is a personal assistant with a built-in speaker and ...
Google kicked off I/O 2016 by debuting Assistant, a next-level version of Google Now. While you could search the web by voice before, now you'll be able to have a conversational interaction with Google. In short, it's a smart chat bot.
Lens Launcher was one of the winners of 2106's Android Experiments I/O Challenge a few months ago, and with good reason—it gives us a new way to browse for apps on our Android phones. It's slightly reminiscent of how the Apple Watch does it, but even better.
