It's fair to say that Google's messaging services are in a bit of a heap at the moment, and to make matters worse, Hangouts is removing its SMS capacities. Hangouts version 18 is now being rolled out, but doesn't appear to incorporate any functional changes.
The first sneak peak of Android O is finally here. The developer preview promises more features, stabilization, and better performance, according to the Android Developers Blog. Furthermore, there's speculation that the latest operating system will be code-named "Android Oreo," so it definitely sounds like we're in for a treat.
If you're one who likes to tinker with Android, TWRP is the first thing you should install. It replaces your phone's stock recovery mode interface and adds over a dozen advanced features to your device—most notably, the ability to flash ZIPs that can modify practically every aspect of your operating system. It's certainly one of the most powerful tools available for Android, and there's simply nothing capable of replacing it.
Google has done it again—they've pushed another broken OTA update for the Nexus 6. Except this time, it almost completely softbricks your Nexus 6 instead of just screwing up Android Pay and SafetyNet. Apps are force-stopping left and right, making the phone practically unusable.
Long before Apple and Android became household names, Nokia dominated the mobile industry. The Finnish company was one of the first to develop smartphones, and their classic N95 with 2G "high-speed" internet connectivity was declared the "best smartphone ever" by some in 2007. Outside of the US, before the iPhone became all the rage, owning a Nokia phone was a status symbol akin to wearing a Rolex or Omega watch.
It's that time of year again. The world's largest electronics companies are sending representatives to the annual Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona, and for gadget lovers like us, that means we'll get our first look at some of this year's biggest upcoming flagship smartphones.
If anyone has every told you that they see music they listen to, they have synesthesia. It's a fascinating neurological phenomenon where people experience crossed responses to stimuli, and no one knows exactly how common this is. A rough estimate claims that one in every 5,000 to 100,000 people is a synesthete, but it could be far more common or rare. Nobody really knows.
Sleep lets our body processes rest and restores us for the next day, so a bad night's sleep can ruin the following twenty-four hours and even make us feel sick. Now, new research published in the journal Sleep cements the idea that loss of sleep actually leaves us vulnerable to sickness.
A few months ago, it was discovered that Verizon was installing an extremely shady app called "DT Ignite" on some of its smartphones—most notably, the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge. The app, created by Digital Turbine, monitors your smartphone usage, then uses the data it collects to silently install "recommended" apps without notifying you.
If you were a particularly good little girl or boy this year, Santa might have finally brought you that cool new smartphone you've been wanting. Or perhaps you just took advantage of a great sale and treated yourself to a new gadget this holiday season—totally justifiable, and surely a well-deserved gift.
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.
Many new parents will tell you how hard it is to name a baby. Some have stories of how they knew what the name of their child would be from before conception, only to change their mind when they were born. Sometimes new babies can go weeks without a name since there is an endless selection to choose from.
For those familiar with my old YouTube series, New in the Store, you will be excited to know that I am starting something very similar here on NextReality that's a bit more broad in scope. Have You Seen This? will take a look at HoloLens applications that are new in the Windows Store, as well as some that may not have gotten the attention they deserve.
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.
The rumor train for Samsung's upcoming flagship phone is now running on full steam, and some of its cargo (or lack thereof) might not be warmly welcomed by many when it finally pulls into the station.
There are two things you're not supposed to talk about in a social setting: religion and politics. When it comes to the latter, though, a certain orange-hued reality TV star has made it all but impossible to stay mum about the goings-on in DC.
The big night is less than a week away, so how do you not have a costume yet?! In my world, Halloween is the night of all nights. It's the only day of the year when it's socially acceptable to dress and walk around like an insane person, eat too much sugar, and scare the hell out of total strangers. What's not to love?
Google's Tilt Brush has proven to be one of the most compelling VR experiences for the HTC Vive, letting you paint with crazy materials like electricity and duct tape. It is clearly an experiment in bringing the joy of imagination to life—or creating some form of virtual LSD—and the app's latest update brings a variety of features that only continue to support that theme. There are few to no rules in virtual reality app development, and that can both be freeing or absolutely paralyzing when t...
YouTube has gotten so big over the years that it is now viewed by more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the United States. But even though online video platforms continue to gain ground on traditional TV stations, there's one aspect to the viewing experience that live TV still does better—it lets you tune into a channel, then just sit back and watch indefinitely.
When we talk about augmenting our reality, we often first think about vision instead of our other senses—but there's more to an immersive experience than what you see. One inventor figured out how to utilize sound and touch to create a simple, upgraded version of laser tag that you can play with your smartphone.
For photographers, the "plus" in the iPhone Plus models used to mean optical image stabilization, but now that the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus both have OIS on board, that "plus" has moved onto something else—the dual-lens camera. Actually, the new dual-lens setup on the iPhone 7 Plus is a much bigger deal than OIS ever was. While OIS stabilizes the image before it's converted to digital information from the sensor, creating a much cleaner photo, two lenses working together in unison unleashes...
Virtual reality, along with its siblings, has the opportunity to profoundly change the way we interact with all things digital. As a visual medium, we often don't think about the impact on audio, but it plays a significant role nevertheless. When it comes to music—and music videos—the possibilities are enormous.
Whether you use Google Calendar, Exchange, iCloud, or any other service, you need a good Android calendar app to keep you organized on the go. For many folks, the obvious answer was always Sunrise Calendar, but Microsoft purchased the company behind this awesome app in a classic acqui-hire move, and now, Sunrise has officially been shut down.
We've seen these bean-filled blondies trending on social media for a while and, with some inspiration from The Kitchn, we finally decided to grab some chickpeas and give them a go.
Thanks to Snapchat, we're all familiar with face swapping and augmentation thanks to some clever, fun technology. But that's just the beginning, because this kind of augmented reality can do so much more.
New Android versions have always been released on a fairly regular schedule—in late Fall, Google debuts a new Nexus device, while simultaneously publishing the next iteration of the world's leading mobile operating system. But things are different this year, as we now have numerous indications that Android Nougat could be released as early as August or September.
Pokémon GO, the biggest augmented reality sensation ever, broke app store records this opening weekend. But it also did something even more important: it gamified physical activity.
Depending on your device, Android's power (aka restart) menu can range from utilitarian and boring to almost completely useless. Some devices don't even allow you to reboot, let alone reboot to recovery mode or Fastboot, and for such a centralized menu, the glaring lack of Material Design seems like a serious oversight.
I often read ebooks on my iPhone while I walk, but being glued to my screen is a good way to get run over or cursed at. To save my physical and social hide, I use this trick to get my iPhone to read ebooks and articles out loud, turning my whole text library into de facto audiobooks.
Samsung's latest flagship devices—the Galaxy S7 and S7 edge—both sport an interesting new feature called Always On Display, or simply AOD. When enabled, this feature keeps the clock, date, and other bits of information visible at all times—even when the screen is off.
Welcome back everyone! It's been awhile hasn't it? Sorry for being so quiet, but my CCNA courses have really picked up recently. In the last article we covered how to import modules and how we can use them. In this article, we'll actually be covering a module that is essential to the hacking aspect of Python, sockets.
This tutorial follows the same idea as my original tutorial for windows, but I've redone it to work with Mac OS X. Here's how to get a meterpreter session from your victim opening a malicious word document:
A sphere of clear gelatinous goo may not sound all that appetizing. But to food fad fans on social media, the raindrop cake—a soft and lightly flavored edible blob—has gone insanely viral.
We're so used to seeing things in particular ways that anything different just doesn't make sense to our brains. Culturally, we like to read things from left to right, and from top to bottom. Change that and our brains struggle to adjust.
The Android Nougat preview build for Nexus devices comes packed to the brim with new functionality: multi-window mode, a dark theme, and a data-saver toggle, just to name a few. However, unless you have a Nexus device, it will be a while before you get these exciting new features by default.
Over the course of the past century or so, media consumption has gone from a few readers enjoying their local print publication to billions of users viewing countless hours of video across the globe each day. This was a gradual evolution at first, but recent advancements in mobile connectivity have sent us into a climb the likes of which we have never seen before.
Here I will show you how to properly dig information on the web that has already been published, you just dont know it.
If you've ever prematurely dismissed all of your push notifications before you got a chance to read each one, you know how annoying it can be to dig through all of your apps to try and find the one with the missed notification.
Many users across the web have reported issues with receiving notifications from the Gmail and Hangouts apps on Android. The problem is most prevalent with users running Marshmallow, and the gist is that notifications from these apps are extremely delayed or don't come through at all.
In my last tutorial, I talked about creating a virus inside of a Word Document in the scenario of a mass-mailer attack. In this post, however, I'm going to be covering creating a fake image or screenshot with a meterpreter backdoor hidden inside to be used in a similar scenario. Step 1: Creating the Virus
