The brand new Pixel and Pixel XL, Google's first direct attempts at taking on the iPhone, haven't rolled out exactly how Google would have liked. The devices have already had more than their fair share of issues, starting with the camera, and now extending to the built-in speaker. The camera issues were marked as "solved" by Google, but the lens flare is still very much there, just not as prominent.
Google's Pixel and Pixel XL flagship phones are a rousing success, with consumers praising the fluid user experience and overall performance as two of the devices' biggest strengths. But even though Google may have knocked it out of the park with a set of Apple-like smartphones that "just work," there's still room for improvement in a few areas.
Chrome's text selection interface is pretty nice, but it could definitely use some improvements. For instance, when you're in Incognito Mode, you can't perform a web search for words you've highlighted. And when you're typing out a forum post or using any text input field, for that matter, there's no option to search or share any of the text you've written.
When you're sitting at your desk trying to get some work done, your Android device can be a big distraction. If a text comes in, you have to pick up your phone, unlock it, then respond with the clumsy touch screen keyboard—and by then, you've probably forgotten what you were doing on your computer.
It took nearly six months, but Google has finally made its wildly popular iOS keyboard available to Android users. Technically, it's just an update to the existing Google Keyboard app for Android, but it renames the app to "Gboard" and includes all of the features from iOS, so Android users can stop feeling like Google's neglected stepchildren.
A custom recovery is a very powerful tool. You can flash ZIPs that modify your Android device in ways that not even root can accomplish, and of course you can use it to install custom ROMs. But when you're applying all of these cool mods, there's always a chance that something could go wrong, and you might even end up bricking your device.
Most websites prevent you from saving embedded videos, but if you have the Xposed Framework installed on your Android device, a cool module from developer Ashish Bansal will now let you download almost any video. The way it works is simple—just start playing a video in your favorite web browser, then you'll see a notification that lets you download the source file in one tap.
There's one thing that I've always liked about iPhones, and that's their centered digital clock in the status bar at the top of the screen. On Android, it's always on the right side by default, and there's no easy setting that lets you just change it to the center position. But if you have a Google Pixel XL, there's a simple modification you can perform to get exactly that—a centered status bar clock.
Selecting text on a touchscreen device has always been a major pain point. Those tiny little arrows that let you adjust the selection area are always too hard to actually adjust, making precision all but impossible. Then there's the issue of some apps not even allowing text selection in the first place, so the entire experience is basically a big mess.
If we learned anything from Mulan, it's that "the flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of them all." Well, these have been a trying couple of weeks in the US, hence the need for a blooming marshmallow flower.
Want to go to Seattle and meet the Actiongram team?
For some strange reason, Google Now is unavailable in several countries across the globe. Users from Albania, China, Cyprus, Malta, Nepal, Puerto Rico, Tunisia, and many more big countries have reported for years that the service doesn't work in their area, mostly likely because Location Reporting is not available in their region. This is really a shame, because Google Now has some great features.
A new hack has reopened an 8-year-old iPhone security loophole that Apple thought it had fixed back with iPhone OS 2.2. This is not one of those times when a theoretical attack gets identified and blocked quickly by Apple. On the contrary, it's a hack that actually exists right now, and it can have some serious real-world repercussions, so this is something all iPhone users need to be aware of.
Google Assistant just got a lot more powerful thanks to IFTTT. The automation platform, whose name stands for If This, Then That, connects your favorite online services and smart devices to one another, allowing for a seamless experience with many different gadgets—and Google Assistant is officially supported.
In the past, some of Google's Nexus devices have had root methods even before the phones hit shelves. The Google Pixel and Pixel XL are basically Nexus devices from a software standpoint, so why have we gone more than a week since release without a working root method or custom recovery?
Starting with Marshmallow, Android added a built-in theme engine called "Runtime Resource Overlay," or RRO. This theme engine was intended to be used only by smartphone manufacturers, not end-users, so unlike Cyanogen's CM Theme Engine, owners can't use it to change the look and feel of their phones.
By combining years of web search advancements, natural language processing, and even DeepMind's artificial intelligence, Google Assistant hopes to change the way you interact with your devices. If you're familiar with Google's previous services, Google Assistant is like Google Now, Voice Search, and Now on Tap rolled into one service, with an extra layer of personality added on top. The end result is one central location for all of your Google needs, be it web search, screen search, playing m...
One of Android's biggest strengths relative to iOS is the fact that you can use any app to open compatible links, not just the stock ones that come preloaded on your device. When you tap a link that two or more of your apps are capable of opening, you'll see a message asking which app to launch it with—and from there, the choices are "Just Once" or "Always."
Forget headphone jacks and "Courage." Look past the shiny Jet Black finish and beyond the minimized antenna lines. Sure, quad-LED flash and dual cameras are nice—but dual-SIM would've been much better.
Android Nougat has a new API that lets apps create their own custom Quick Settings tiles. A similar feature was buried in Android Marshmallow, but that required a hacky workaround, and most manufacturers disabled it in their custom versions of Android 6.0. But since this is an official API now, all phones that run Android 7.0 and higher should be able to use custom Quick Settings tiles going forward.
Sure, sites like SeatGuru can show you which seats are the best—but in a 2D graphical form that doesn't really show you what the plane actually looks like inside and out. Aircraft Explorer contains 3D models you can peer inside of to check out what the next plane you catch will actually look like.
Over the years, we've covered many different methods for enabling background playback for YouTube videos on Android, but none have ever been as easy as this: Simply watch the videos with Firefox for Android, and they'll continue playing when you leave the app.
Data visualization has many applications in virtual and mixed reality, since a third dimension literally adds important depth to the represented information. A new app called HoloFlight is a good example of this, combining flight-tracking data and the Microsoft HoloLens to surround you with a look at every plane in the sky.
Verizon Wireless executives recently cooked up a plan so devious that it could have only come from one of the four major US carriers. Apparently, they aren't satisfied with simply loading every Android device they sell with their own bloatware, so now they're reaching out to big brands to see who would be the highest bidder for a spot on your home screen.
Emojis, for better or for worse, have essentially taken over online forms of communication. And now, thanks to a recently discovered feature in iOS, they are going to change the way you search for nearby places.
Seaweed isn't just for rolling sushi anymore. The food science world is introducing chefs and home cooks to dulse (rhymes with pulse), kale's wacky seaweed cousin that tastes surprisingly like bacon and may even be the next big superfood.
Google's Material Design guidelines have finally brought some consistency to the look and feel of Android apps, bringing most of the user experience on par with what you would see on iOS. However, some developers are still using non-compliant home screen icons, even though Material Design calls for specific padding, size, and layouts.
Opioids, or narcotic painkillers, serve as our primary method for alleviating physical distress. They also happen to be a leading cause of death due to their addictive nature. AppliedVR hopes to introduce a safer alternative: virtual reality gaming. They utilize the existing Samsung Gear VR for the hardware, but provides specialized software that offers up a distracting experience that fosters greater pain ignorance.
You've likely seen light-up musical keyboards that teach you how to play a song with visual cues, but few of those devices exist and have a limited number of songs you can actually learn. But Karl Baumann and his HoloLens Hackathon team figured out that in mixed reality, you can learn music with visual cues with any piano.
One of the biggest causes of smartphone battery drain is the mobile data connection—particularly if you live in an area with poor reception. But, chances are, you don't actually need this connection most of the time, because you're probably connected to Wi-Fi for a good chunk of the day, which uses far less battery life.
Most newer Android devices manufactured in 2014 or later have a built-in pedometer for tracking your fitness activity. This step counter is a great way to keep yourself in shape and motivated, but developer Leonardo Cavaletti has come up with an even better way to put it to use.
One of the first things you'll do with the HoloLens is place little holograms around your room, and it'll look like you have a large figurine collection. Ralph Barbagallo, Edward Dawson-Taylor, and their HoloHacks team decided to take that a bit further and created an app that allows the user to produce and tour virtual art exhibits.
It just got a whole lot easier to decide whether or not saving $50 on Amazon's new ad- and bloatware-subsidized smartphones is worth the headache of having to see an advertisement on the lock screen every time you wake the device.
When it comes to sharing files between a smartphone and a computer, there are several solutions available for a Windows and Android pairing. But for those of us with Apple devices, the selection of apps in this category isn't quite as great. You can use AirDrop to quickly share files, but searching for files is not so easy.
Complex games in mixed reality require a pretty detailed scan of the room, and getting this process right can be both time-consuming and annoying. Computer science students at the University of Washington decided to fix that by turning it into a game.
One of the best new features in iOS 10 is the ability to delete all of those stock bloatware apps that you never use. Instead of hiding them in a folder somewhere to get them out of your way, you can finally remove them—or at least, that's what we wanted to believe.
After a successful Kickstarter campaign, a new smartphone manufacturer named Nextbit emerged, then released its first flagship device—the Nextbit Robin. The headlining feature of this colorful gadget is its cloud-based app storage, but the phone itself comes with a very polished and sophisticated suite of software.
Cool, refreshing fruit, ice-cold margaritas (or beergaritas), and popsicles... this combination of food and drink just screams summer. Turn up the chill jams on the stereo, fire up the grill, and throw on your shades—you're just one pool away from the best summer party ever.
Google kicked off I/O 2016 by debuting Assistant, a next-level version of Google Now. While you could search the web by voice before, now you'll be able to have a conversational interaction with Google. In short, it's a smart chat bot.
When you make or receive a call on your iPhone, you're forced to use the built-in ear receiver at the top of the phone to hear anything—unless you're already connected to a Bluetooth device. If you don't have Bluetooth in your car, or prefer to just use the speaker instead, having to manually switch to speaker mode can get annoying real fast.
