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.
Google Lens is a fantastic addition to Google Photos for Android and iOS that allows your smartphone to identify a number of things in your pictures, like landmarks and contact info. Using this power, you can even find out how to buy almost any product you've taken a photo of — you don't even need the barcode.
Before Google I/O 2018, the Google Assistant for Android and iOS had only two available voice options to choose from — a robotic female and male voice. But there are now six additional voices, and these ones sound way more natural than any other mobile voice assistant (plus, John Legend's voice is coming later this year).
Over the years, mobile gaming has become a phenomenon, rivaling in magnitude with its console and PC-based counterparts. We even have mobile versions of Fortnite and PUBG now, games that require lots of processing power to run. But when you just want a quick game to play in the grocery line or even on the toilet, try these simple, quick games that you can play right on your lock screen.
Google has started blocking certain devices from accessing the Google Play Store and other Google services. This is part of an effort to clamp down on OEMs that skirt its certification requirements, but now millions of phones have been uncertified to download or update Google apps. Fortunately, there are a few workarounds.
Kali Linux is known as being the de facto penetration-testing Linux distribution but can be a pain to use as an everyday OS — even more of a pain if that means carrying around a second laptop or the constant frustration of using the finicky Wi-Fi on virtual machines. But there's another option: installing a Kali subsystem on your Windows computer as a convenient compromise.
Our phones have evolved past a simple pocket computer. They have become more like Swiss Army Knives, opening up possibilities that were previously considered Sci-Fi material. Thanks to the recent push into augmented reality, a new world of tools is becoming available to mobile users.
If you can't afford an unlimited plan, you're limited to a certain amount of data each month on your iPhone. Even some unlimited data plans have carrier-imposed mobile data caps that throttle the user if they exceed them. Keeping track of your exact usage each day will help make sure you don't get billed more or throttled like a chump near the end of the month.
One of the biggest improvements with the Galaxy S9 and S9+ is the redesigned camera, with the latter scoring an impressive 99 overall on DxOMark. But with an abundance of features and enhancements, tweaking the camera's settings for optimal performance can be a little confusing.
Buying an unlocked phone is usually the correct move. By doing so, you bypass a lot of bloat that carriers put on your phone, and you can also use that phone with another carrier should you decide to switch to a new one. However, a lot of carriers won't give unlocked devices access to their visual voicemail apps. For that, there's Google Voice.
We recently ran down several hidden features on the Galaxy S9 — items that are buried deep within the settings menu that can be tricky to find. One thing that many users cannot find is the option for a black navigation bar. Unfortunately, this option does not exist in Samsung's stock settings. But this is Android, so with a bit of developer magic, we can easily regain the black navigation bar in no time.
Since its introduction, the Bixby button has been a big point of contention among Galaxy fans. Many view the dedicated button as a wasted opportunity, which they argue could be put to better use if Samsung would let them use it for other commands. Thanks to an awesome app, you'll be able to remap the Bixby button on your Galaxy S9 to perform almost any function.
Because it sources a majority of its vital data from actual drivers on the road, Waze is easily one of the best navigation apps to use if you prioritize safety. Benefits such as crowd-sourced traffic data, police trap locations, and road work avoidance, when combined, help you anticipate traffic conditions with unprecedented accuracy and make adjustments accordingly.
Preserving battery life has become one of the biggest problems for the average user. Whether you're on Android or iPhone, your battery is probably a massive concern. While there are a ton of battery-saving tips out there, they mainly rely on you manually performing actions yourself. This isn't the case if you use IFTTT to take care of your battery automatically.
When OnePlus announced the 5T, many were disappointed that it wasn't shipping with Android Oreo. To curb some of this disappointment, OnePlus quickly introduced an open beta for both the 5 and 5T and promised that each would receive the official version by Q1 2018. Well today, OnePlus has met this promise and pushed the OTA out for the official stable version of Android Oreo.
Many of us use the Notes app to jot things down in a hurry. Most of the time, that's no big deal. However, the faster the typing, the higher the chance of error. If you happen to make a typo, or if you accidentally delete that chart you worked so hard on, there's an easy way to undo the changes.
For some of us, mornings are difficult. But if you can manage to start your morning right, you can trigger a chain reaction that leads to a more productive day. Fortunately, our phones have the tools to help us get off to a good start.
Android used to have a notification ticker, but those days are long gone. Now, important new messages pop up on the top half of your screen with what's known as a "heads up notification." If you're in the middle of something, these popup notifications can be pretty annoying — luckily, it's pretty easy to turn them off.
OnePlus is on track to deliver Android 8.0 Oreo to its flagship users by Q1 2018. Open Beta 1 was released for the 5T in late December, and we just received Open Beta 2. But this update isn't just tweaks and bug fixes, OnePlus has included a few new features to enhance the Android experience.
Move over Venmo, Apple Pay Cash is here, and it's built right into iMessage. If you're like us, you've been eagerly waiting to give this new feature a try on your iPhone ever since Apple announced it during WWDC 2017 back in June. While it was never released in the main iOS 11 update, it finally showed up in iOS 11.2.
While other devices are moving away from fingerprint scanners (cough, iPhone X), for many, a fingerprint scanner provides the best balance between security and speed. Typically, the rear fingerprint scanner on the LG V30 is quick and accurate, but every so often the phone will not recognize a registered fingerprint.
Google announced a partnership with Movies Anywhere that allows you to connect your iTunes, Amazon, and Vudu movie library with Google Play Movies. In other words, movies you purchase from any of these online retailers will be available for playback in the Google Play Movies app after a little setup.
Tor is an excellent obfuscation network for web traffic, and while instant messaging over the network is very useful, it can be relatively difficult to configure. In this guide, we'll look at two synchronous communications platforms (instant messengers) which can be routed over the Tor network, Ricochet and XMPP.
Apple's iOS 11 release promises many improvements and fresh ideas. One of those new ideas is an image codec called HEIF (similar to HEVC for videos), designed to reduce the space photos take up on your iPhone. But it's so new that it's already causing issues with compatibility.
Adding additional photos to a movie project in iMovie for iPhone is relatively simple, but incorporating more videos to your timeline is a little bit more involved, only because there's more that you can do. Unlike with photos, you can trim the length of new videos, select the audio only, and add overlay effects.
Remember the live fish wallpapers from iOS 9? They may be a fading memory at this point since Apple removed them all from the iPhone in iOS 11, but there is a way to get those fishies animated on your device again. They'll be live photos for your lock screen, which is as good as it will get until Apple lets us use all its live wallpapers, new and old, one day, which will probably never happen.
The world around us keeps getting smarter. Not only do we have advanced AI services like the Google Assistant, but now we've got the Internet of Things connecting physical objects to the digital world. It's amazing when you think about it, but the real sci-fi stuff starts to happen when these two technologies intersect.
Spotty cellular reception is a fact of life that we all have to deal with, especially when you're traveling. For those of us who rely on our smartphones for navigation, driving through areas with bad mobile data service can be a cause for major headaches.
With so much stimuli in today's world, it can be hard to keep track of all the places we've visited and the events we've attended. Thankfully, a great feature in Google Maps lets you view a detailed log of your phone's location history to help you remember where you were at almost any given point in time.
So, Nintendo's never really been good at the whole online thing. Most of the time, we forgive them, because they are masters at creating games meant for solo play or local multiplayer. Sometimes, though, that doesn't fly. Take a game like Splatoon, for instance. Although it redefines the genre, it is still, at its core, a shooter. Shooters are meant to be played online, with your friends, yelling at each other over voice chat.
I have nightmares about trying to reply to hundreds of strangers on social media. To prevent the overwhelming feeling of having to small talk with people I don't know, I'm now aiming for more control over the ways that people can contact me. One way is to stop users from hitting me up on Instagram Stories.
I spent just about my entire weekend trying to break the 800, 900, and 1,000 levels of Instagram — because it's a game, y'all — by playing around with my follower count. I shamelessly manipulated my IG account in such a way that was extremely time consuming and left many of my friends pretty pissed off at me as I spent most of my time glued to my phone. (Sorry, friends. I know I'm obsessed.)
There's lots of new stuff in iOS 11, but just because things have changed doesn't mean they're better. So if you've updated to Apple's latest OS and decided it wasn't for you, you'll be happy to know that you can still go back to iOS 10.3.3.
Many developers, myself included, use Unity for 3D application development as well as making games. There are many that mistakenly believe Unity to be a game engine. And that, of course, is how it started. But we now live in a world where our applications have a new level of depth.
Since its debut 9 years ago, the iOS App Store has always had roughly the same functionality: Featured apps, categories, top charts, a search function, and a place to update your apps. But starting with iOS 11, that's all changing — drastically.
Deleting emails can be a tedious process on the iPhone, especially since the "Trash All" options have been removed ever since iOS 10 first came out. Though likely well-intentioned, this change places an undue burden on all of us iPhone owners who now have to erase emails individually.
Deep down inside, Kindle Fires are actually Android tablets — the only trouble is, Amazon has layered so much of a skin on top of it all that you can't normally use Android's main app store, the Google Play Store. The Amazon Appstore, which comes bundled with Kindle Fire devices, only has about 600,000 apps, so it would be great if you could access Google Play's library, which boasts 2.8 million.
You may have heard that Samsung Push is an incredible service that all Android users absolutely love. For one, Push provides extremely useful notifications for Samsung apps to assist you in all aspects of your life.
Before many games make it to the US-based iOS App Store, they get "soft launched" in a smaller country to get real-world testing for bugs. It's a pilot program, so to speak, as countries like Vietnam or the Philippines have far fewer iPhone users than the US, thus offer a more controlled environment for developers to get feedback and zero-in on issues that may occur in a game's early development phases.
As a fan of the HTC One series, I almost always upgrade my phone soon after the new model becomes available. I purchased the M7 when it first came out, upgraded to the M8 shortly after its launch, and then jumped on the M9. However, I stopped right there.
