Even under normal circumstances, it's almost impossible to speak to a representative for a government agency or company in just one try. Many systems will put you on hold for long periods or ask to call you back when someone is available, but there are still some out there that just give you the busy signal over and over again. In those cases, there's a jailbreak tweak that can help.
With stay-at-home orders for most of us in the US because of the new coronavirus, many of you are likely struggling to be productive and efficient when working from home. Unless you've worked from home before, it can be challenging to separate work from personal life throughout the "workday." But your iPhone can help make the transition easier and more successful.
Even for those of us who enjoy spending time alone at home, at a certain point, it just gets boring. We all need social interaction, but with stay-at-home orders, that can be hard to come by. If you're feeling the itch to hang out with friends and have a good time, you should know there are plenty of free multiplayer games for iPhone and Android that will let you do just that — remotely.
Every home is a little different, and for a smart home app to work, it has to be able to be customized to work with each person's unique setup. With the iPhone's Home app, everyone can set up a smart home just how they want, including the number and names of rooms, and where those rooms are in the house.
The iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max introduced a new rear camera system to the iOS ecosystem. Each model has a new ultra-wide lens in addition to the wide one, and the Pros have a telephoto lens. Both have improved selfie cams too. With so many lenses, it can be challenging to choose which to film with, but why pick when you could shoot with two at once?
As fun as Twitter is, it can also quickly turn scary. Anonymous, aggressive, and troll accounts can attack you for your tweets and stalk your every move. While you could make your profile private and block users, there are lesser-known privacy and security features that you can switch to improve your safety online.
There's a new trend on Instagram Stories: People are making viral AR filters where images of popular characters from TV shows, movies, and other mediums shuffle above your head until one sticks. The filters range from Disney and Pokémon characters to Harry Potter and Friends, but you're not limited to just that because you can create your own "which are you?" filter.
Back when I worked in the music industry, I never imagined there would be a day that I'd be able to sit in a room surrounded by virtual album covers while listening to beats, but that day is really here.
Along with rebranding Magic Leap 1 for enterprise customers, Magic Leap has gifted its developer community with some new toys with a tease of more to come in 2020.
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.
I already know what you're thinking: this guide is blasphemy. I am showing you how to turn a Galaxy Note 10 or 10+ into an iPhone 11 Pro Max. And while I'd usually agree with you, hear me out. How can you know you don't like something until you try it? So here is your way of trying out an iPhone using your Galaxy Note 10.
For years, Apple's Notes app has been a reliable way to jot down important ideas, tasks, plans, and more. While there are apps on the market that advertise themselves as being more feature-filled than the stock iOS option, Apple is now giving them a run for their money. Here are 14 new features and changes you'll see with Notes in iOS 13.
Apple's iOS 13 for iPhone includes new features in Safari that make browsing the web a little bit better when compared to iOS 12. Some changes are small while others add functionality that just wasn't there before. Plus, there are more security enhancements.
Many popular apps automatically share your personal data. While I have accepted a certain amount of data collection from Google, to know companies such as Facebook perform this without my consent bothers me. After some researching, I've found a great solution, and it doesn't require root.
Staying alert to directions and changing the music you're listening to on your smartphone at the same time can be cumbersome, but Google Maps wants to fix that. One of the mapping service's features allows you to control music playing on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music from inside of Google Maps — while you're navigating in the car, on public transport, or even on your bike.
The days of bad smartphone videos are long gone. Your iPhone or Android phone is a capable video recorder, even offering different frame rate options in the native camera settings. Filmic Pro makes things a little simpler, however, and adds additional controls you wouldn't find on your device alone.
The year in augmented reality 2019 started with the kind of doom and gloom that usually signals the end of something. Driven in large part by the story we broke in January about the fall of Meta, along with similar flameouts by ODG and Blippar, the virtual shrapnel of AR ventures that took a wrong turn has already marred the landscape of 2019.
Editing photos can be tedious, especially if you are using a similar theme for all of your photos. It takes time to select every tool, play with the bars, and find an adjustment that you're happy with. Luckily, there's a faster way. Adobe Lightroom for Android and iPhone allows you to save your favorite editing presets so you don't have to change every photo every time.
MoviePass was once the best subscription service on the market for getting cheap movie tickets. For the price and the number of films you could see and save money on, it was unbeatable, but recent changes to the service have made it less enticing. While it still works well for some users, others may have to rely on other options. Personally, I'm leaning toward the latter.
The Pixel 3 runs stock Android, so you might think that since you've used an Android device before, you should know your way around the new phone by default. But Google has actually added several great Pixel-exclusive software features to its flagships, and not all of them are easily discoverable.
All of the new iPhones from 2018 were released with dual-SIM support, but none of them were capable of actually using the eSIM in iOS 12, only the physical nano-SIM. But on iOS 12.1 and later, you can finally take advantage of eSIM so you can have, say, a business and personal plan on your iPhone XS, XS Max, or XR at the same time.
The "controversial" Pixel. No phone in the history of Google's Pixel lineup deserves this title more than the Pixel 3 XL. For some (including myself), the design is a welcome change that embodies the modern design of 2018 flagship phones. For others, it has an ugly huge display notch that destroys symmetry.
Sorry Samsung. I know you really wanted Bixby to be the next Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa — but it just isn't. Burying the option to disable the app won't change that. Sure, Bixby has some redeeming qualities, but there are many of us who don't want it shoved down our throats. We'll show you how to disable the app to prevent it from launching every time you try to access just about anything.
If you've been getting that "Please update from the iOS 12 beta" alert continuously in iOS 12 public beta 9, Apple just issued a fix for it Friday, Aug. 31, with iOS 12 public beta 10 — just in time for Labor Day weekend. This marks the second update this week as dev beta 11 and public beta 9 were released on Monday. It's also just one day after Apple announced its Sept. 12 event.
In a surprise twist, Apple released iOS 12 public beta 8 to software testers on Thursday, Aug. 23, right alongside iOS 12 dev beta 10. The release comes as a bit of a shock, as the company released iOS 12 public beta 7 just three days earlier. The official build of iOS 12 now feels closer every day.
We're nearly there — Apple released the seventh iOS 12 beta to developers Monday, August 13. While not totally unexpected, beta testers understand the struggle of predicting the next update, as Apple has switched haphazardly between two-week, one-week, and irregular release schedules for both the developer and public betas.
Right on the heels of the iOS 11.4.1 beta 3 release, Apple pushed out iOS 12 beta 2 to registered developers on Tuesday, June 19. Public beta testers received the same version, labeled as iOS 12 public beta 1, six days later on Monday, June 25. Last year, the iOS 11 public beta opened up just five days after the release of iOS 11 developer beta 2, so iOS 12 is pretty much right on track in that regard.
Many operators use elevators to control access to particular floors, whether it be the penthouse at a hotel or a server room in an office building. However, the law requires them all to have a fire service mode, which gives emergency access to restricted floors, and a hacker can use that to bypass security altogether.
Thanks to its advanced cameras, the Galaxy S9 can capture videos at an astonishing 960 frames per second (fps). To put it in perspective, you now have you the ability to record the world around you in ways that previously required expensive professional camera equipment. And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
Over the years, we've seen security breach after security breach, as well as high-profile data scandals where collected personal information was misused by companies. Apple makes customer privacy a priority, so there have been few issues to worry about when it comes to its services on your iPhone. However, there are still plenty of privacy settings to explore and change, especially within Safari.
Unless you own an Exynos model, there won't be much development on the custom ROM front for the Galaxy S9. But that doesn't mean you have to put up with all of the UI quirks from Samsung Experience (née TouchWiz). With a little work, you can give your S9 a stock Android makeover, even without root.
When your iPhone is being sluggish, one thing you can do to get performance back up to snuff is clear the device's random access memory. It's not a publicized feature from Apple, but it's there nonetheless. And while it's easy enough to utilize on iPhones with Home buttons, the iPhone X is a little trickier.
Nova Launcher is more than just a home screen replacement. It is a tool which can reshape how users interact with their Android devices. Thanks to a regularly growing feature list, Nova has evolved into more than just a launcher. Now, Nova is an effective way to increase your productivity.
Your home has walls for privacy, but Wi-Fi signals passing through them and can be detected up to a mile away with a directional Wi-Fi antenna and a direct line of sight. An amazing amount of information can be learned from this data, including when residents come and go, the manufacturer of all nearby wireless devices, and what on the network is in use at any given time.
Back in June 2017, Apple promised us AirPlay 2, a simple way to connect and control multiple speakers together via an iPhone or other Apple device. While the feature was included in early iOS betas, by iOS 11's official release, AirPlay 2 was nowhere to be found. After all the numerous subsequent iOS 11 updates, it's finally here in iOS 11.4.
Just days before the release of the first image of the Magic Leap device, the company's CEO, Rony Abovitz, knew that the biggest moment of his life was about to unfold the following week. But instead of hunkering down in the Florida-based confines of the company's skunkworks, he instead decided to deliver a speech to the public about, what else, the future.
Just in time for the holiday season, Lenovo has released its Mirage AR head-mounted display with the Star Wars: Jedi Challenges game and accessories. Unfortunately, while its price point is a fraction of most other AR headsets, at the moment, it does have a few issues with the setup process.
The last quarter of 2017 brought us some downright excellent smartphones. Between the iPhone X, Pixel 2, and Note 8, consumers have more fantastic options than ever when choosing a new device. It's now the perfect opportunity for Samsung to set the tone for 2018 smartphones with their exceptional S9 and S9+.
After numerous scandals like the Equifax data breach and the 2016 US election, cybersecurity has become a significant issue for Americans. Unfortunately, anytime we use our devices, we're open to a cyber attack — especially when we browse the web. However, there are ways that we can make it harder for hackers and data miners.
So you saw the new iPhones with their bezel-less designs and fell in love. You imagined watching videos and enjoying HD content on its gorgeous OLED or Liquid Retina screen. At first, you worried about the lack of Touch ID, but Apple assured you that Face ID is an adequate alternative. But wait, what about the other features of the Home button? How will you even access the app switcher?
