The Galaxy S8 and S8+ come with a set of AKG-tuned earbuds that would cost you $99 by themselves. Unfortunately, the earbuds alone don't automatically translate to superior sound, and they've been met with lukewarm reception. But as it turns out, there's a fairly hidden menu on Samsung's flagships that'll give you a tailor-made audio experience and help you get the most out of your S8-AKG pairing.
The Google Chrome browser does mostly everything well and integrates nicely with other Google services, but it's not exactly renowned for speed. With a rooted device and the aid of an app called Kernel Adiutor, however, you can make Chrome as nimble as some of the fastest browsers on the market.
Have you ever gone to a friend's house and not asked for the Wi-Fi password? Probably not, and the same can likely be said of any friends that come over to your place. But the actual act of sharing Wi-Fi passwords is still incredibly clunky, and it's particularly hard if you have a nice and secure password with uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols.
Verizon could be getting in on the autonomous vehicle party, judging by its recent investment in driverless software company Renovo Motors.
As a society, we seem to be moving backwards toward communicating by pictures only. Emojis and GIFs are today's cave paintings, and I, for one, am totally okay with that. To make this transition even more amazing, photo-editing app Facetune created a tool that lets us change our very own faces into moving emojis.
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.
Apple is combining internal and external talent in an effort to give them in edge in the augmented reality market, though we still don't know what form their foray into alternative realities will actually take.
Sony offers a set of free games to its PlayStation Plus subscribers every month, but it's easy to miss out if you're not constantly around your console. Perhaps you're traveling, or maybe you've stayed up one too many nights playing Uncharted, leading to a period of PlayStation detox. No matter what the case is, the good news is that you can use the PlayStation app for Android or iOS to claim these monthly free games without getting up from your seat.
Anybody who was around in the '80s and '90s associates Sony with music still to this day, thanks to their wildly successful Walkman brand. And that's not even mentioning their major label record company. Indeed, the Tokyo-based electronics maker/media conglomerate has music embedded in its DNA, and that's certainly noticeable in the stock Music app included with their Xperia phones.
Emoji, emojis, smilies, or smileys—whatever you want to call them, those little yellow icons have firmly implanted themselves in the human lexicon. However, just like with localized languages and dialects, emoji can be very different from one another depending on the device or operating system you're using.
If your mechanical home button or capacitive navigation keys are on the fritz, doing something as simple as navigating your phone's interface becomes a tedious chore. In this situation, some users have turned to root mods that enable Android's software navigation bar to solve the problem, but not everyone is willing or able to root their device.
YouTube is a great place for all your mainstream audio and video needs. But you can't simply plug in your headphones, choose a playlist, and put your phone back in your pocket without subscribing to YouTube Red, which costs $9.99/month for ad-free and background playback. If you can't afford that for just background playback, there are other ways.
The beauty of Android is that nearly everything can be customized. But sometimes, we get so caught up in tweaking functionality and other minutiae that one of the most important interfaces gets neglected—the home screen wallpaper.
Having control of your basic motor functions is something most people take for granted, but for individuals with Parkinson's disease, that is not the case.
The Pixel XL reportedly uses the same exact display panel as the Galaxy S7 Edge, but according to third-party testing, Samsung's flagship gets at least ten percent brighter than Google's. The same can be said of the regular Pixel, which tops out just shy of its bigger brother's brightness rating.
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.
If you have any group chats going, you're surely familiar with this scenario: One person sends a picture, then, within 30 seconds or so, all other participants chime in with one-word responses like "Cute," or "Awesome." It's a social nicety, so you have to expect this behavior, but that doesn't make it any less annoying when your phone randomly beeps and vibrates ten times in a row because of it.
For most Android phones, the system clock is set using a protocol called NITZ, which relies on a connection with your carrier to ensure that the time stays in sync. The trouble here is that this feature won't work when you're outside of cellular range, and a lot of times, the carriers themselves have technical difficulties that can result in your phone's clock being minutes or even hours out of sync.
Ever since developer bponury created his TouchControl app for the Galaxy Nexus back in 2011, manufacturers and modders alike have been racing to re-implement the "Double-tap-to-wake" functionality it brought to the table. We've seen LG do it with their "Knock On" feature, we've seen Motorola put a twist on it with "Active Display," and we've even seen Google implement the feature in their Nexus 9 tablet.
Unless you have a newer iPhone 6S or 6S Plus, the front-facing "FaceTime" camera on your iPhone has a pretty weak, low-res sensor, which means unflattering selfies. You could use the rear "iSight" camera to take a high-res selfie, but framing your mug properly and hitting the shutter is difficult, takes many failed attempts, and usually results in a lackluster photo.
While it seemed like jailbreaking methods were always one update behind the current build, the team over at Pangu have already released a jailbreak tool for iOS 9, and it works up to iOS 9.0.2. It is not available for iOS 9.1 through 9.2 yet, but we will update this guide when they are ready.
In the U.S., smartphone users spend more time on Facebook and Instagram than on any other app. If this sounds surprising for any reason, it shouldn't. Anyone that's browsed Instagram in a moment of boredom knows that a few minutes can quickly turn into an hour down a rabbit hole filled with Likes, Follows, and straight-up lurking.
Editing a video by trimming or adding audio is fairly simple on Galaxy devices, but if you want to include other clips or transition animations and really get those creative juices flowing, you might find the standard editing tools limited—unless you know how to unlock Samsung's hidden video editor.
SoundHound's new virtual assistant application, Hound, is gaining a lot of buzz in the tech world—especially after a demo video showed just how awesome it works (it has amassed over 1.6 million views in under a week).
Android Lollipop, introduced an array of new features and aesthetics that pleased many loyal users. One of those additions being the new heads-up notifications. Taking subtle inspiration from iOS, these notifications are visually appealing and can be easily dismissed or expanded, but they do require that you take an action before they go away immediately. Of course, you can always wait 10 seconds for them to disappear, but that can be really annoying if you're in the middle of a game or editi...
The EFS partition on modern Android phones houses the unique IMEI for your device, which is essentially an identification number that lets you connect to mobile networks. But sometimes, when you're flashing ROMs or restoring backups in custom recovery, the EFS partition can become corrupted, which will prevent your phone from connecting to any type of mobile network.
For every contact photo you add, Android keeps two copies. The first is stored at a 720p resolution, and this is used for high-definition imagery when you're looking at a full-sized contact card. But the second image is only 96 pixels by 96 pixels, and this is used for all thumbnails throughout the operating system.
Unlike the Moto X with its Active Display or the Nexus 6 and its Ambient Display, some devices (especially those now running Lollipop) do not include a function that permits the display to turn on upon getting new notifications while the device remains locked or the display inactive.
Some third-party keyboards, like SwiftKey for example, include a convenient feature that suggests emojis as your type based on the content of what you're saying. Unfortunately, many keyboards, including most stock ones, don't include this function.
Smartphones generally have limited storage, but counter this issue with an always-on internet connection. This led to the proliferation of cloud storage services, which allow us to store and access our large media libraries remotely.
One of the many additions that appear on Android 5.0 Lollipop is a handy menu that lets users correct for or simulate different types of color blindness. While Google didn't flip the switch on this new feature until Lollipop was released, it turns out they had been working on it for quite some time.
If you're jonesing to play some Super Mario Run on your Android phone, you might not be able to get your fix for some time—at least, until Nintendo figures out the best way to keep piracy down and security high. But if you can't wait for the first official appearance of Mario on Android, we've got the next best thing...
The Nexus 6 has an AMOLED screen that uses virtually no power to display black pixels. To take advantage of this feature, Google included an Ambient Display notification system that shows a black and white version of your lock screen when you get a new message. As a result, the Nexus 6 doesn't use an LED light to notify you of new incoming messages like most phones.
Deep down, Android is a fork of Linux, which is a desktop operating system that started out as entirely command prompt-based. For that reason, many system-level tasks can still be executed within a terminal emulator app.
We recently showed you how to recover your Shazam history from Siri, which is a lot less intuitive than finding the songs you've tagged directly in the Shazam app. But with a subscription to Rdio or Spotify, there's no need to even locate your history. You can Shazam songs and have them automatically added to a newly created playlist titled "My Shazam Tracks."
A new API in Android Lollipop allows apps to color the status bar to match their overall theme. Google billed this as a more immersive user experience that allows app developers to extend their color branding even further. It certainly seems like a win-win on the surface, but unfortunately, not many apps are using this feature yet.
Android Lollipop has an awesome feature called "Battery saver" mode that reduces power consumption through various tweaks in order to squeeze in an extra hour or two of standby time when your battery is running low. It does this by disabling background processes as well as location services and transition animations, so the phone is essentially running at half-throttle.
Android Debug Bridge, or ADB for short, is a very powerful utility that can remotely execute commands on your Android device. This remote terminal interface, however, is not very "remote" at all. You have to be tied down to your computer to use it, since a USB cable is normally required.
TWRP is hands-down the best custom recovery out there. Its interface, on the other hand, is... well, let's just call it utilitarian. The guys over at Team Win made sure that their product was robust, functional, and easy-to-use, but they didn't put a tremendous amount of effort into polishing the looks.
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.
