Arguably the most impressive aspect of the iPhone 7 Plus is its dual-lens camera, or better yet, the Portrait mode that comes with it. This mode creates a dramatically shallow depth of field behind a subject, and was pretty impressive as is. Now, in iOS 11, Apple is making it even better with support for more camera options.
Apple introduced iMessage effects in iOS 10, which offer creative ways to send messages to other iPhone users. These effects can either be applied to the screen, like seeing an explosion of confetti falling down the display, or to the message bubble itself. iOS 11 brings two new screen effects to iMessage, named "Echo" and "Spotlight," and they look like they'll be a fun addition to the current lineup.
The Galaxy S8's Always On Display is a fantastic feature that gives you a brief overview without having to wake up your phone. But AOD now has a virtual home button, which kinda ruins the sleek look and can even cause screen burn-in.
Apple's iOS is a great operating system, but it's not without its faults. Minor quirks have plagued the Apple community for years, such as a general lack of customization, a poor notification system, and some interesting UI choices like the intrusive volume popup. With iOS 11, Apple's tackling many of these pain points, not the least of which is being able to select multiple home screen icons at once.
Apple's highly anticipated iOS 11 is ready for the public, and besides the obvious array of new features and improvements, the mobile OS also comes with stunning new wallpapers which would look amazing on any iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch — even on Android devices.
When I crack open a new book, I always make sure I have a pen and a highlighter nearby so I can mark away! Anything particularly witty, inspiring, or engaging gets highlighted, underlined, or circled. When I use the Amazon Kindle app on my phone, I do the same thing by writing notes and highlighting, but I often find it difficult to keep track of my markings.
In an effort to make its services more accessible to users who live in developing countries, Facebook has released a streamlined version of its messenger app. Messenger Lite, at less than 5 MB, is much smaller than its regular 25 MB counterpart and was developed for use on older and lower-end phones. Finally, the app is now available for download in the US.
Instagram Direct is fast becoming the end-all-be-all messaging app, and it just added some incredibly convenient features that should make it a bit more practical. These new additions have a clear purpose: To help Instagram Direct grow its base and take on more feature-rich messengers like Snapchat or WhatsApp.
Until recently, Firefox had the ability to continue playing YouTube videos in the background after minimizing the browser. It worked great as a YouTube Red alternative, but unfortunately, Mozilla removed this feature after some pushback from Google. Thankfully, there's a way to get it back.
We just keep discovering hidden features and settings scattered throughout the Galaxy S8's system like little digital Easter eggs that were largely left unadvertised. One such setting is an option that lets you change the placement of your S8's display brightness slider.
Android Nougat included a feature that made it significantly easier for users to switch between recent apps, giving them the ability to quickly go to and fro like never before. This relatively unknown feature has carried over to the Galaxy S8, and it's sure to make multitasking on Samsung's flagship a whole lot more convenient.
It's never fun to fidget around with your phone's camera while you're out and about, especially when it comes to transitioning between its front- and rear-facing cameras. Thankfully, Galaxy S8 users can scratch this one off their list of inconveniences, as Samsung has built in some nifty features that let you switch from the main shooter to the selfie cam without having to look at the screen or tap on the camera switch icon.
Online lives could be made easier now that Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger are testing merged app notifications. 'Could' being the operative word!
Everyone loves emojis, but some folks aren't quite happy with the way the little yellow guys look on their particular phone. In order to replace them, however, your device needs to be rooted, and you'll usually need to perform some complicated procedure that ends up making your phone hard to update since it modified a ton of files on your system partition.
Like Russian Matryoshka dolls, the features on the Galaxy S8 and S8+ often have hidden components within them that add to their functionality. The phone's flashlight is a great example of this since there's a hidden shortcut within the "Flashlight" Quick Settings tile that lets you adjust its brightness level.
With all the hype surrounding the recent Galaxy S8 release, it can be easy to forget Samsung makes other smartphones. But let's be real here; $726 isn't cheap. If you're someone who doesn't want to drop that kind of cash on a smartphone — or who doesn't feel your device needs all the bells and whistles that come with Samsung's premium line — the new J3 Prime might be right for you.
Most music streaming services will either use the stock Android equalizer or their own built-in equalizer. A couple of apps, such as Spotify, bring both to the table. Spotify has a built-in equalizer which kicks into play when a system or third-party equalizer isn't detected. However, other apps such as SoundCloud and Pandora don't use the installed equalizer even if it's a system-wide one.
Samsung devices have two pre-boot menus that every Galaxy owner should know about: recovery mode and download mode. The recovery screen allows users to wipe cache files or perform a factory reset, which can help save the phone from a soft brick. Download mode, on the other hand, allows you to flash firmware files using utilities like Odin and Smart Switch, which can truly be a lifesaver.
Have you ever wanted to catch up on Homeland or Shameless, but are out and about and don't want to use up your data? Those problems are for days of old now, as Showtime has announced their mobile app will allow titles to be downloaded and viewed without an internet connection.
Monday has been a big update day for Apple. Alongside the release of iOS 10.3, iWork has been updated across both iOS and macOS. The biggest change is the ability to unlock password-protected files with Touch ID, either on iPhone and iPad, or on the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar.
The newest version of Snapseed features three awesome new tools for you photo-editing enthusiasts. The 2.17 update for the editing app was rolled out on Tuesday, March 21, and its new additions are something to behold.
The Google Play Store is known for some pretty random promotions and offers, most of the time it's a free book or a discounted movie. But this time, an entire season for Game of Thrones is up for grabs. Yes, that's right, all of Season 5 of Game of Thrones is free to download, watch, or just stash in your library for later.
Google just pushed out an update to Chrome for iOS, with the main change being a new feature called "Read Later". Read Later is a nifty little feature that allows you to download and save web pages that you can read even if you're offline. Being a subway rider in NYC, I know very well how annoying the lack of an internet connection can be when traveling, which makes this feature all the more handy.
Apple lets you save webpages as PDF files in iOS 10, but the only obvious way to do this is by using iBooks. The thing is, most people would probably rather save their PDFs to a service like Google Drive or Dropbox to make sharing a bit easier. Plus, iBooks isn't officially available for Windows or Android, so there are some cross-platform problems there, too.
Mobile gaming is a huge industry that raked in more than $91 billion in revenue in 2016, and of course, all of the major players get most of the glory. But smaller, independent game developers make some of the most fun and unique games out there — it's just harder to find their stuff because they don't have the promotional budget of studios like Rovio and Gameloft.
Google just announced that it will be bringing the Google Assistant—previously an exclusive feature on Pixel phones—to many more devices in the coming days. The only requirement they're giving is that the phone must be running either Android Marshmallow or Android Nougat, so according to the most recent Android distribution numbers, that's roughly 32% of all existing phones and tablets.
If you're tired of fumbling with the Control Center every time you need to turn off your iPhone's LED flashlight, you'll be happy to know there's a faster way. Using a simple trick that was discovered by Redditor 49599066, you can actually toggle your flashlight off in less than a second in iOS 10 and higher.
Almost every Android device comes with a Google search bar embedded directly into its stock home screen app. But Google search is available in so many different places on Android that having this bar in your launcher is almost overkill. On top of that, Google recently changed the logo overlay to a more colorful one that may clash with your home screen theme, so there's plenty of reasons to dislike this feature.
Anyone who's ever flashed factory images to manually update an Android phone knows how tedious the process can be. Unlocking the bootloader and flashing Android firmware requires the use of ADB and Fastboot—but, like getting a whole pizza pie when all you wanted was a slice, users in the past had to download the entire Android Studio development package or SDK in order to get the two utilities.
Ever since the update that turned Google Keyboard into Gboard rolled out, a lot of people have been noticing that word suggestions and auto-correct features are downright slow. The issue seems to affect users with multiple languages installed more than anyone, though it can also happen if you have a midrange phone or older device with only one language installed.
WhatsApp recently updated their emojis (or emoji, depending on your preference), but it wasn't exactly a welcome change. Many users have complained that the new smilies are just way too big, others aren't too fond of the shinier appearance, and countless folks have been venting their frustrations on Twitter.
By default, Android limits your call history to the last 500 incoming, outgoing, or missed calls. When you reach this limit, older entries get trimmed off the bottom of the list and deleted forever. This isn't an issue with storage space, because even the biggest call logs only occupy mere kilobytes, so it's really just an artificial limit.
Chrome's text selection interface is pretty nice, but it could definitely use some improvements. For instance, when you're in Incognito Mode, you can't perform a web search for words you've highlighted. And when you're typing out a forum post or using any text input field, for that matter, there's no option to search or share any of the text you've written.
It took nearly six months, but Google has finally made its wildly popular iOS keyboard available to Android users. Technically, it's just an update to the existing Google Keyboard app for Android, but it renames the app to "Gboard" and includes all of the features from iOS, so Android users can stop feeling like Google's neglected stepchildren.
The next generation in mobile communications has officially arrived. A new "Universal Profile" was just published to help carriers and OEMs enable Rich Communication Services (RCS) on any of their smartphones, and the standard hopes to replace SMS with a feature-rich, iMessage-like experience on all phones.
With the death of Google's Nexus line, the market for phones with top-notch specs at midrange prices is now wide open. OnePlus is apparently ready to fill this void, as they've just announced the OnePlus 3T, an iterative update to their OnePlus 3 flagship only five months after initial release.
Everyone's been raving about the Pixel's top-notch camera, and the acclaim is well-deserved. The main difference between Google's new camera software on their Pixel phones and the older software on their Nexus devices is that the Pixel has almost no perceptible lag between tapping the shutter button and the image being captured—even with HDR+ mode enabled.
For some strange reason, Google Now is unavailable in several countries across the globe. Users from Albania, China, Cyprus, Malta, Nepal, Puerto Rico, Tunisia, and many more big countries have reported for years that the service doesn't work in their area, mostly likely because Location Reporting is not available in their region. This is really a shame, because Google Now has some great features.
It's now common knowledge that the blue light emitted by phone screens makes it harder to get a good night's sleep. Apple's Night Shift in iOS and its steamrolled predecessor, f.lux (still available for desktop computers), are attempts to combat these harmful effects by limiting the amount of blue light from the screen at certain times of day (nighttime, say). For Android users who installed the Developer Preview build of Android 7.0 Nougat, the included "Night Mode" feature was all set to do...
Facebook released a new app in November 2016 that aimed to compete directly with Snapchat, but it was only officially available in Brazil—and still is. The app, called "Flash," is so much like Snapchat that it's not even the slightest bit of a stretch to call it a clone.
