Many manufacturers add a custom skin on top of their Android builds, but none are more widely praised than HTC's Sense UI. The general consensus among Android users says that HTC's visual tweaks are done in good taste, and the features they add are both functional and warranted.
Android Lollipop promises tons of new features and functionality when it comes to a device near you, but as we wait, it's almost painful to see the screenshots and demo videos from Nexus devices and how downright pretty the new operating system looks.
I've been lucky enough to never be a victim of street crime, but I have read and seen too many articles and videos to completely rule it out as a possibility. You can do some things to prevent it, but if your life suddenly turns into a scene from Friday the 13th, you'll want to be prepared with some sort of way to let others know you need help. This is where Shake2Safety comes in, a free Android app from Phontonapps.
Early last year, Google purchased Quest Visual, acquiring the immensely popular augmented reality translator app Word Lens in the process. While Google did put the feature on the Google Glass, they spoke more about implementing Word Lens into their Translate app sometime in the future.
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.
Each morning, we spend a significant portion of our time staring into the mirror. From choosing clothes and accessories to perfecting our hair, we try to make ourselves attractive. Yet catching others' attention doesn't have to rely on preening and primping. There's some truth to the maxim of beauty in confidence—all you need to make yourself more attractive is spray on your favorite scent.
Did you know that your face shows others how much alcohol you drink? Whether you've never had a sip of booze with those around you or you're known as the party animal of the group, the genes that shape your appearance also show others just how much you enjoy liquor. Pinpointing the big drinker in any setting is easy to determine: you just need to make eye contact.
Whether you use a third-party keyboard or the stock offering, your Samsung device keeps a history of the last 20 words you copied on its clipboard. Samsung added this feature to Android to help make multitasking a bit easier, but if you use a password manager like LastPass, this feature quickly becomes a gaping hole in security. While you're copying and pasting your various passwords, the last 20 of them become freely available to anyone that gets their hands on your device.
Line breaks signify not only the ending of one line of thinking, but the beginning of another. We use them to emphasize points, to fragment information, to shift tone, and more. They're important in getting our message across properly, which is why I'm always disappointed when I can't insert a line break into my masterful Instagram caption.
Google's music offerings have been on a roll lately. First they announced a new music video streaming service called YouTube Music Key, offering ad-free playback with background listening. Then they stated that the new offering would be rolled in with their Google Play Music service, with members allowed to exclusively test the Music Key beta, which just went live. And if all that wasn't enough, they're also offering free music to boot!
Spotify lets you use Siri commands to play and control music on your iPhone, but it wasn't always like that. It only applies in iOS 13 and later, so if you're on an older iPhone model with an older iOS version, you can use a really complicated workaround in iOS 12 or try a jailbreak tweak on older firmware.
In previous posts here, I have pointed out that hackers are in high demand around the world and in nearly every industry. Every military and espionage unit of every country is trying to hire high-quality, experienced hackers as fast as they can to hack their adversaries' computer systems in order to gain a strategic advantage and to spy.
While it's not too hard to remember to watch your favorite TV show every week, it's almost impossible to remember to watch all of your favorite shows. Add on to that sports games, live music events, and new film releases and you'll find yourself in a disorganized mess with a lot of missing out.
Whether if it's to play games or watch Netflix or YouTube, children love using our smartphones and tablets. As an uncle of many, I don't mind my nieces and nephews using my gear, but I do mind them opening apps they have no business being in, like my photo gallery or messaging app.
Without much notice, Spotify launched Desktop Open Beta a few weeks ago, a program that allows anyone to download, test out, and provide feedback on the latest beta version of their desktop application for Mac and Windows.
With all of the top-notch specs that the Galaxy S5 sports, the only minor quibble users have had with its hardware is the speaker situation. A front-facing earpiece is used for phone calls, but all other media is restricted to a single rear-firing speaker.
With hundreds of pictures accumulating on my device, it's a daunting task to devote time to sorting through which are worth keeping and which I should discard. Not all of the images on my device are winners, so the losers not only take up space, they make it difficult to find the good ones as I wade through the crap.
As messaging and texting have all but replaced the need to actually call someone, emojis have seemingly replaced our need to type out text. With a simple emoji, you can relay emotions like "I don't feel very well" or "I love you" quickly and easily, knowing that the other party will instantly know what you're feeling.
While I consider myself to be a pretty organized guy, there are often times where I just can't find a file I put on my phone. Most of the time, when I download a file it goes automatically into my Download folder, but when I use a third-party to download other files, like torrents, they could end up in a number of places. Filtering abilities on file explorers often fall short, so it was time to find an app that would automatically sort files in real time.
Fresh herbs can be delicate, and it's not always easy to figure out how to cut, crush, or muddle them to make the most of their flavors. Get too rough, and you have a bunch of bruised and muddy-tasting herbs, which is due to too much chlorophyll being released. Don't do enough prep, and the herbs don't release the essential oils and volatile molecules that are the foundation of their flavor.
The new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus have bigger displays, and that means more overall screen real estate, something that the new Safari app has taken into account by letting you access desktop versions of mobile websites. Even if you're sporting an older device, you'll still be able to request the desktop version of a site online in the browser.
Broadcasting your gameplay for others to view has recently become a phenomenon with the advent of Twitch.tv. While computer-based gaming is well represented these days, streaming of mobile gameplay has been virtually non-existent.
Bluetooth has been a staple on every Android smartphone ever since they began taking over our lives. Despite the fact that every device seems to have the ability to share files with one another, there is a limit to the types of files that can be shared between them.
Say goodbye to your boring stock Apple keyboard, because when iOS 8 is finally released, you'll be able to use Fleksy, SwiftKey, Swype, TouchPal, and other third-party keyboards on your iPad, iPhone, and/or iPod touch.
Yellow buses are beginning to trickle into traffic. Retailers are pushing pens, pencils, and notebooks. Grumbling Facebook statuses run rampant through your feed. Surely you recognize the signs—school is starting. For some, it already has.
An app can request a wakelock to prevent your Android device from entering sleep mode so that it can sync data in the background. This obviously drains your battery, because instead of running in low-power sleep mode, your processor is fully activated while it performs its tasks.
The options for customization are virtually endless when you're rooted and have an unlocked bootloader and custom recovery. However, there is always risk involved when flashing new mods or installing new ROMs. I always make backups in case something happens, but when I'm testing certain mods out, I sometimes get a damaged EFS partition.
There are countless lock screens you can apply to your Android device, but very few offer more than just quick access to apps or advanced security functionality. Since you probably unlock your device a gazillion times every day, why not use this to your advantage and let it teach you something new?
Just when you begin to doubt the future of humanity, advances in ice cream scooping science continue to develop. Yumi showed you some super-cool ice cream hacks just in time for summer, and we've already discussed how to use a knife to slice ice cream when it's too hard to scoop.
Buried deep in the code of many Google apps is a set of debugging options. These options, which are designed for developers to help test the way their apps interact with Google's own, are normally hidden from view.
Arguably Chromecast's biggest feature since its launch, screen mirroring functionality started rolling out to select devices earlier this week, and in a word, it's awesome.
Apple is bringing one of the biggest updates ever to its Messages app, including a feature that will allow users to send audio messages back and forth with the press of a button. Goodbye, voicemail.
At last month's I/O event, Google demonstrated a set of cool new features that were said to be coming to the Chromecast soon. While we may not be able to set custom backgrounds or cast content without being on the same WiFi network just yet, the biggest feature of them all has started rolling out to devices today: Screen mirroring.
Instinctively, we reach for popsicles and cold drinks when the temperatures climb, but doing something counterintuitive, like going for a hot drink or eating something spicy, is actually more effective at keeping you cool.
Google announced Android L to the masses at their I/O event, and with it they introduced their new "Heads Up" notification system. These notifications are part of the new Material Design UI and are sure to change the way we interact with notifications on our devices.
In photography, stereographic projection is a geometric technique that projects a sphere onto a plane, which is mostly used in the mapping of spherical panoramas.
It's been over three months since iOS 7.1 came out, but your wait for jailbreak is now over. If you're still running iOS 7.0 iterations to maintain your jailbreak, you can now finally update to the latest and greatest thanks to a Chinese team of developers, who recently released their untethered jailbreak for Apple devices running iOS 7.1, 7.1.1, and even 7.1.2.
In a era where cyber security is becoming increasingly important, Comcast has decided to use its customers' routers to provide hotspot access to the public. A new program, outlined by Dwight Silverman over on the Houston Chronicle website, seeks to provide Xfinity customers with city-wide Wi-Fi hotspots by using, well...other customers' wireless routers.
Video games have come a long way over the last 30 years. In the late-'80s, Atari, Nintendo, and Sega were taking gaming from arcades to living rooms. Back in 1994, the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis were in bedrooms everywhere, and over the next couple of years, were slowly being replaced by Sega Saturn, Nintendo 64, and the first ever Sony PlayStation.
While Snapchat's latest update brought messaging and video chatting, it also ruined something for us softModders—KeepChat. With KeepChat, we were able to save pictures and videos sent to us without the other person being notified. It was pretty slick, and I was beginning to miss it.
