Smartphones are more like computers than actual telephones. Unfortunately, thieves, hackers, and other bad actors know this and are always looking to make money off your personal data. Thankfully, your Galaxy S20, S20+, or S20 Ultra has tools to combat these threats — as long as you know where to look.
XDA recently reported on a leaked version of the upcoming Pixel 4's camera app. By testing the app, they were able to find upcoming Pixel 4 features like a new Night Sight mode that can photograph stars. Well that leaked version has leaked itself, so now you can install it on your own Pixel phone.
Google's strategy for updating its apps with dark mode options is apparently "one at a time" and "as slow as possible." Even after the company added a dark theme to many of its apps for Android and iOS, such as Calendar, Chrome, Keep, and Photos, Gmail seemed to remain "light" for the longest time. However, the app now supports dark mode on both mobile OSs. Here's how to enable it.
While Modiface, YouCam, and others have been playing in the virtual make-up marketing pool for a while, here comes Google ready to splash down with a cannonball.
When it comes to augmented reality (AR) on Android, you might be wondering how you can get those cool new games and apps on your unsupported phone. Google has an officially supported device list for its ARCore platform, which usually consists of the more modern devices. You won't find very many older devices on the list for a reason, but that doesn't mean your "old" phone can't use ARCore still.
The marketing team for Marvel Studios is doing "whatever it takes" to make sure you see Avengers: Endgame when it hits theaters in a couple of weeks, including offering an updated set of augmented reality Playmoji for the Playground app on Google Pixel.
Whether we like it or not, our personal information and smartphones are tied together at the hip. The former needs the latter to deliver a personalized experience that matches our individual needs. This personal data, however, makes your phone a prime target for thieves of all sorts to turn your privacy into illicit profit.
Among a crowded field of AR cloud companies aiming to power the future of augmented reality by creating a world of persistent holographic content that lives in a cloud, accessible across devices and accounts, Ubiquity6 is hoping it has found a way to differentiate its platform.
After joining Google and Huawei in underwriting the UW Reality Lab at the University of Washington in January, it appears Facebook is already seeing a return on its donation.
The Pixel 3 XL versus Galaxy Note 9. Stock Android versus Samsung Experience. When I began this comparison, I thought the Pixel 3 XL would be unfairly outmatched. But after looking at the specs side-by-side, you'll see a different picture. This year, Google delivered a worthy alternative to Samsung's best offering.
One of the neatest tricks available in Google Lens, an app that can identify and interpret real world information, is the ability to copy text from the app's camera view and paste it into a digital document.
These days, it seems new phones get announced every other week. We've grown accustomed to glossing over the specs, looking at some press renders, then moving on to check out the next phone. If you had done this in September 2008, you might have overlooked what would become one of the most important phones of all time.
While you were busy browsing Instagram, composing tweets, or chasing Snapchat updates, an eight-year-old ARKit developer was hard at work on her first step toward taking over the tech world via augmented reality.
Smartphones are like high tech buckets that collect our personal information through constant use. This has some obvious benefits, like getting a more personalized experience with our devices. On the other hand, this data is a tempting target for bad actors looking to make a buck at the expense of your privacy.
Space might be the final frontier, but NASA is making a detour into augmented reality first. The Spacecraft AR app, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with Google, debuted exclusively for Android this week (an iOS version is also in the works).
The Galaxy S9 is a great phone powered by the Android ecosystem. This includes Google's family of apps — many of which overlap with Samsung's in functionality. This can lead to redundant apps that siphon resources from your phone, but fortunately, there's a way to dull some of the noise and disable built-in apps.
To take a screenshot on most phones, you'd use the power + volume down button combo. For a brief moment, you could even use Google Now on Tap to take screenshots without those hardware buttons, but Google Assistant eventually removed the functionality. Now, easier screenshots are back with Android 9.0 Pie.
As smartphones become more accessible, billions of people have come to depend on their features for daily life. One of the most important aspects these days is the camera. OEMs have been working for years to improve camera quality, and they seem to have finally figured it out — the best way to achieve DSLR-quality photos wasn't just with better sensors, but with better intelligence.
It recently came to light that a number of Android phones are unable to stream HD video through services like Netflix, Google Play Movies, and Amazon Prime Video. If you're worried that your phone may be affected, there's a simple tool you can use to find out for sure if you can actually stream video in 720p or higher.
One of the best parts of being an Android user is the countless awesome features. Many of these features are well-known and user-facing, like custom icon packs and launchers, but some get lost in the shuffle. Back at Google I/O 2016, Android Instant Apps were introduced to developers and enthusiasts. Since then, the feature has seen a wider rollout, but few users are aware of it.
Google caught a lot of flak for the Pixel 2 XL's POLED display issues, regardless of whether the problems were real or perceived. It's too late to contract another screen manufacturer at this point, but Google is doing the next-best thing: Fixing as many user complaints as possible with software updates.
There was a time when building a website required coding knowledge. Eventually, software came along that made the process easier, and then services like Squarespace made it dead simple for even a technical novice to design a website.
The Pixel 2 has a number of new unique features. One of the most interesting is the Now Playing option to identify songs you hear on a daily basis. Now Playing displays the artist and title of songs playing in the background of your day and shows this information on the lock screen. While this functionality is incredibly useful, the song history is not saved anywhere on your phone.
If you need to scan a large number of domains for a specific web app vulnerability, Dorkbot may be the tool for you. Dorkbot uses search engines to locate dorks and then scan potentially vulnerable apps with a scanner module.
The Pixel 2 is a solid upgrade when compared to the 2016 model, but we've reached a point where the latest generation of a smartphone is never leaps and bounds better than the last. It's hard to justify dropping nearly a grand on a phone when it doesn't improve your situation much — especially when a few software tweaks will give you most of the upgrade for free.
Not to be outdone by Apple and it's new line of flagship phones, Google has followed suit and finally announced the followup to their highly regarded Pixel line of handsets — the aptly named Pixel 2. Thankfully, the tech giant has also joined in on the trend towards more durable devices, and has engineered both the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL to have a rating of IP67 under the IEC standard 60529.
Apple has billed ARKit as a means to turn millions of iPhones and iPads into augmented reality devices. The refrain is similar for Kaon Interactive, a developer of product catalog apps for businesses.
A top executive from Baidu's telematics division believes the company will become the word leader in driverless by 2020, according to a report in today's South China Morning Post.
When it comes to watching movies and TV shows in Amazon's Prime Video service on an iPhone, it's as simple as installing the Amazon Prime Video app, signing into it, then playing content. However, on an Android phone, it's a lot more complicated.
The ride-sharing firm Lyft and Faraday Future, a troubled electric carmaker and potential Tesla competitor, have quietly appointed new top executives, but like the rest of the industry, they struggle to find talent for their driverless programs.
If you've ever wondered how to import your photos in Snapseed, then you've come to the right place. Snapseed is a wonderful photo-editing app and will provide you with many tools to take your photos to the next level. But you can't get to that next level if you don't know how to get your images into Snapseed in the first place.
Mobile 3D scanning company Scandy has released a new app for devices on Google's Tango mobile AR platform that gives users the advanced 3D scanning capabilities.
Winter is coming for Amazon. It looks like the company is having another go at the smartphone world with its release of new smartphones branded as "Ice".
Google Play Services has been near the top of every Android user's list of battery-sucking apps for years now. It's a core system app, so you'd expect some battery drain, but for many folks, it runs rampant.
While the world is only recently becoming aware of its existence, augmented reality has been around in some form or another since the '90s. In the last decade, with the advancement and miniaturization of computer technology — specifically smartphones and tablets — AR has become far more viable as a usable tool and even more so as a form of entertainment. And these are the people behind mobile AR to keep an eye on.
No one is safe anymore, it seems. Google's Project Zero has just uncovered how easy it is for attackers to target your phone's Wi-Fi chip, which is essentially a mini processor for Wi-Fi that detects and processes networks.
Facebook Messenger has now incorporated a live location sharing feature, one week after Google Maps revealed its own real-time location tool. On Monday, the social media giant announced the new feature, which will allow users to share their live whereabouts with friends at the press of a button.
Legacy Games, developer of mobile games for children, has just updated Crayola Color Blaster, an augmented reality Android adventure for Google Tango devices, with new content.
Samsung began offering Android 7.0 Nougat to users in its beta program on November 10, 2016. The beta came to a close last month after the fifth and final version was pushed out to users under the build number ending in 1ZPLN. This update was released a couple of days after Christmas and fixed a couple of bugs, including a fairly annoying one that caused your device to randomly reboot.
Android 7.0 Nougat brought a lot of multitasking improvements along with it, but the most notable addition is a unified multi-window mode (which shines bright in Google's Pixel phones). This means that every Android device can now use the same split-screen interface, and the days of software fragmentation caused by differing multi-window implementations by LG and Samsung are now over.
