If you buy an Android phone from any of the big US carriers, it will come with several extra apps in addition to any apps the manufacturer preinstalled. It's all in the name of profit, of course. Some of these apps are from companies that paid the carriers to distribute their software, and some are from the carriers themselves, usually aimed at upselling you or perhaps collecting a little data.
I'm always looking for solutions to problems people are having with their smartphones. This means I spend a lot of time browsing forums and release sites looking for new apps. In doing so, I find a lot of apps that don't quite solve a major problem, but are nonetheless pretty cool. I came across four of those this week.
Progressive Web Apps hope to one day bridge the gap between websites and apps by giving the former more access to your phone's features, but they're not very common yet. In the meantime, you can take matters into your own hands with an app that uses your system WebView to render websites in a full-screen, borderless window with a few extra features — a lot like a native Android app.
The internet is saturated with low-quality pictures, making it difficult to find a high-resolution image for specific albums, TV shows, movies, podcasts, music videos, apps, and books. Apple uses high-quality images, but it seems impossible to download cover art, posters, thumbnails, icons, and other images from within its apps on your iPhone. Now, with the help of a shortcut, it's as simple as can be.
Bloatware is a problem on Android, and it's not just a Samsung thing. Removing apps that have the Uninstall or Disable button grayed out in Settings has always involved sending ADB commands to your phone from a computer, which itself was always such a pain to set up. Thankfully, that has finally changed.
Your iPhone's Control Center is your main hub for quick access to controls like brightness, volume, Wi-Fi, and Do Not Disturb, but if you're using iOS 14, there may be a bunch of screen real estate taken up by blank squares. If that wasted space is bothering you every time you just want to use your flashlight, there's a quick way to get rid of those empty tiles for good.
As if telemarketers weren't bad enough, now we have robocalls and spoofed numbers to deal with. Many of us get a least one spam call per day, if not much more than that. Google's Phone app has always been great at managing these calls, but it's been exclusive to their Pixel phones — until recently, that is.
When approaching a target, having a precise and detailed plan of attack is absolutely necessary. One of the main goals is to increase the attack surface since the more opportunities there are for exploitation, the greater the chances of success. Subdomain enumeration is one method used to increase the attack surface, and we'll be using a tool called Subfinder to discover hidden subdomains.
Android 11 has a new power menu with integrated contactless payment cards and smart home toggles. It's definitely futuristic — so much so that it pushed out a tool many of us use in the present: the screenshot button.
While Google Stadia currently needs to be sideloaded on Chromecast with Google TV, there are a handful of games that are compatible with the streaming device and require a gamepad. But you don't need to buy a specific controller just for your Chromecast, you can use one you already have lying around.
You can't beat Samsung's hardware, but their software still isn't for everyone. That's the thing, though — software can be replaced. So if you're more a fan of Google's vision for Android, but you can't get enough of Samsung's beautiful screens and build quality, you're just 11 steps away from getting the best of both worlds.
If you live in the US, it's pretty simple: The Google Pixel 4a is the best phone for rooting and modding in 2020. Its price keeps the risk-reward ratio nice and low, and its unlockable bootloader makes it easy to modify virtually any aspect of Android.
After the iPhone X eclipsed the $1,000 mark, phone prices skyrocketed. Android OEMs like Samsung started putting out phones in the same price bracket that were crammed with expensive parts. To appease the folks that didn't want to drop over a grand on even the nicest phones, a new segment was created with devices that are still in the flagship tier, but not top-of-the-line.
Discovering great mobile games is difficult. With over 300 thousand games on the Play Store — not including the hundreds more available by sideloading — finding the right one to invest your time and money in can be hard. The Play Store's rating system is helpful, but ratings are often skewed by external factors.
TWRP has been the king of custom recovery on Android for years now, thanks to device compatibility and core features. But there's a new player in town — at least, for OnePlus devices — and it's got a lot of useful features that might finally get you to ditch TWRP.
OnePlus offers a variety of features that you don't get with some other Android phones. Parallel Apps is one of those standout extras you didn't know you might enjoy until you've tried it. It allows you to clone compatible apps installed on your device, which means you can use the same app with two different accounts, for example.
After teasing the feature in Android 10, Google finally added proper native screen recording to Android 11. But when you start a capture, you'll see a small red indicator in your status bar as long as recording is ongoing, which can really distract from your video. Thankfully, it can be removed with a little ingenuity.
If there's an iOS app you want to hide from your iPhone's home screen, there are a few built-in ways to do so in iOS 14, but there is a clever workaround you can use in older iOS versions. Plus, it also works in iOS 14 as a way to disguise app icons instead of just hiding them, so no app is what it seems.
In the iPhone modding scene, the Checkm8 bootrom exploit, by developer axi0mX, led to a powerful jailbreaking tool known as Checkra1n. With it, you can jailbreak a variety of iPhone models without worrying about it getting patched later on. But in the past, it required you to have a macOS computer — but not anymore.
With every new Galaxy flagship release comes the age-old dilemma: do I choose great hardware or great software? For years, Samsung has given users the best components available on any smartphone. The problem is the software is an acquired taste. But there is something you can do about it.
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.
A rather exciting development has recently surfaced in the jailbreaking scene for iPhone. The Checkm8 bootrom exploit was shown off to the public by axi0mX, which made way for the undefeatable Checkra1n jailbreak tool. With it, you can freely jailbreak a variety of older iPhone models without any restrictions. The success rate is quite high, too, when compared to other jailbreak methods.
UPDATE: The OnePlus 8 Pro has been released! Check it out on the official OnePlus website or read through the rumored specs we've left below for posterity.
Apple released iOS 13.0 on Sept. 19 and announced on the same day the release of iOS 13.1 on Sept. 30. But that deadline was pushed up to Sept. 24, and that's why we have 13.1 just five days after 13.0. But that's good news since we don't have to wait any longer for some of the features promised in iOS 13 that didn't make the first cut.
The landscape of the augmented reality space is broad, diverse, and constantly shifting, perhaps more so than any other vertical in technology. At the same time, major players are attempting to standardize various hardware designs and delivery methods, while still others are rushing to claim their piece of virtual property through AR clouds and application stores.
OnePlus, whose phones always challenge for the title of best spec-to-price ratio, releases two main devices every year. There's the primary flagship in late spring, then an iterative update with the "T" suffix in fall. Typically, there's not much difference between the two, but this year, OnePlus is mixing up the formula a bit.
Phones these days are expensive. The iPhone 11 Pro is presumed to start at $999, following the iPhone XS and iPhone X's leads. One way to bring down that cost is to trade in your old iPhone, but there isn't one clear-cut way to do that. You could trade your iPhone into a participating website or put yourself out there and sell the iPhone on your own. It's all about what's best for you.
Some Android phones have had scrolling screenshots for years, but now that Apple added the feature to iOS 13 for iPhones, it should be standard on all phones. Thankfully, if your Android didn't come with the ability to take long, vertical screenshots, you can download an app that brings this feature to the masses.
When it comes to texting, Google's Messages app for Android is absolutely top-notch. The app gives you the ability to block those annoying spam text messages that have been plaguing us for so long, send messages from a computer, and can even provide RCS features if your carrier supports the Universal Profile.
The hugely successful S10 series of flagships may be a tough act to follow, but Samsung has proven that it's up to the task with the Galaxy Note 10. The latest phablet bearing the Note name is the first of its line to come with an even larger variant, and boasts an eye-pleasing design with impressive performance to boot.
The price of hacking Wi-Fi has fallen dramatically, and low-cost microcontrollers are increasingly being turned into cheap yet powerful hacking tools. One of the most popular is the ESP8266, an Arduino-programmable chip on which the Wi-Fi Deauther project is based. On this inexpensive board, a hacker can create fake networks, clone real ones, or disable all Wi-Fi in an area from a slick web interface.
If you want to get started sniffing Wi-Fi networks, you usually need to start with a wireless network adapter. But thanks to a Wi-Fi sniffing library written in Arduino and the ultra-cheap ESP8266 chip, you might not need one. For less than $10 in electronics, you can build a tiny Arduino Wi-Fi sniffer that saves Wireshark-compatible PCAP files and fits anywhere.
Signal is one of the best end-to-end encrypted messengers on the market. It offers robust security, keeps minimal information about its users, and is free to use. Switching to it as your main messenger can be a bit daunting, so to help, we created a guide to walk you through the process.
There's a lot of misinformation about VPN services, and it stems from the fact that not all of them are created equal. Some focus on privacy, others on security, and a few VPNs are seemingly even purpose-built for the polar opposite: data collection. We made this guide to help clear the air on some of these issues while objectively ranking the best of the best.
Since iCloud's introduction in 2011, you get only 5 GB of complimentary cloud storage with your Apple account. With iPhone backups, app data, iCloud Drive files, and even emails (if you have a Mac, Me, or iCloud email address), you'll quickly run out of space to back up photos and videos. Fortunately, Google offers 15 GB of free storage, making it easy to upload your Camera Roll for safekeeping.
The tactic of brute-forcing a login, i.e., trying many passwords very quickly until the correct one is discovered, can be easy for services like SSH or Telnet. For something like a website login page, we must identify different elements of the page first. Thanks to a Python tool for brute-forcing websites called Hatch, this process has been simplified to the point that even a beginner can try it.
It's common for IoT devices like Wi-Fi security cameras to host a website for controlling or configuring the camera that uses HTTP instead of the more secure HTTPS. This means anyone with the network password can see traffic to and from the camera, allowing a hacker to intercept security camera footage if anyone is watching the camera's HTTP viewing page.
Whether you've celebrated multiple cake days or you're just now getting your feet wet with Reddit, it's a rite of passage to choose your preferred smartphone client. Quick spoiler: Your best option most certainly is not the official Reddit app.
It's the icing on top of your cake (or whipped cream on top of your Android Pie) of despair. You may have not had the easiest time rooting your device, but you feel like you overcame all of the obstacles. Only now to discover that those very apps and mods you were rooting for still won't work — and the signs point to a lack of root access. Don't lose hope, because we have some tricks up our sleeve.
Mystery is a tricky thing. Used correctly, it can give onlookers the impression that wondrous and perhaps valuable things are afoot. However, once the veil of suspension of disbelief is removed in any significant way, that same mystery can quickly turn into not just skepticism, but outright anger at what may have seemed like an attempt to dupe trusting onlookers.
