One thing that makes Signal Private Messenger better on Android over iOS is that you can better secure the app with a password or passphrase. Best of all, you don't need to install an app locker to get this working — you can do it right from inside Signal.
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.
When you're on the go, Plex makes sure your media always stays with you. Just install the server app for Mac or PC and enable remote access, then you can stream movies and TV shows from your computer to your phone over the internet.
Nothing has stopped you from taking a screenshot of a funny moment in a FaceTime video call before, and nothing probably will. But screenshots are old news. Apple has made it even easier to take capture FaceTime moments on your iPhone, and the results are more lively.
YouTube's mobile live streaming feature is great for connecting with your audience in a more personal way than traditional videos provide. Audiences can view and respond to content in real time, and creators can do the same. While unfortunately not available to everyone — you need at least 100 subscribers — live streaming is possible, even with your smartphone.
We continue to field stories underscoring the strong trends of Investment in augmented reality in various sectors. This week, one company strengthens their offerings to the enterprise sector, while two other companies capitalize on the promise presented by augmented reality to consumers – specifically, in gaming.
Over the past week, companies took a variety of approaches to investing in augmented reality. Lampix is backing its own effort to build an ecosystem for augmented reality platforms. Nokia and Xiaomi are teaming up on numerous fronts, potentially including augmented reality.
A new case of the still-mysterious Bourbon virus was confirmed in Missouri, likely originating within the state, local authorities said in a June 30 press release.
There are many great reasons to root your phone, but if you're not experienced with tools like ADB and Fastboot, it can seem like a daunting task. Fret not, because if you want to root your HTC 10, we're here to walk you through the process.
To really personalize your HTC 10, you'll need to be rooted — but that can't happen unless you unlock your bootloader. Thankfully, HTC has made it relatively easy to unlock the bootloader on their 2016 flagship.
The new iOS 11 was just released by Apple, and you can install it right now. Overall, it's got some great features, but how does it fare battery-wise on your iPhone? And how can you increase daily battery life for more juice and less charging every day?
Today it was revealed that Avis Budget Group will now support and maintain Waymo's driverless car fleet in Phoenix, the company's first public trial of self-driving cars. This is an unprecedented partnership in the autonomous vehicle field and conveys the steps driverless companies are taking to make their vehicles more accessible to the public.
Tesla says the new version of Autopilot is now as good as the previous one, after having completed over-the-air updates of the driverless software during the past few days.
Leading tier-one supplier Continental has confirmed it will sell driverless platforms developed from BMW, Mobileye, and Intel's previously announced alliance, giving the company a potential edge over competitors by widening the range of technologies it offers directly to OEMs.
With so many apps being cloud-based, cached data has started to become a problem. This is particularly true if you're low on storage, so developer Dhi decided to do something about it.
There are a ton of new features in iOS 11, but some of the best ones, in my opinion, are in the Camera app. They're not huge features, but they're much appreciated to anyone who's ever taken a Live Photo or portrait, or even to those who've needed to scan a QR code quickly.
With so many companies announcing news or demonstrating technologies at the Augmented World Expo 2017, it can be a challenge to see it all. In fact, we are still unpacking some of our in-depth on-site coverage. So, this edition of Brief Reality is focused on the news we did not cover last week.
The leading platforms enabling augmented reality technology lead our headlines in Market Reality this week.
Sometimes it's impossible to concentrate — let alone direct your personal assistant Siri — when someone is blasting music on their phone or talking to thin air. I mean I'm loud, but not that loud.
The latest iteration of the gaming classic, The Sims, has arrived as a soft launch for both iOS and Android in Brazil. Aptly named The Sims Mobile, this free-to-play game seems to be very faithful to the PC-based version that won it so much acclaim. There are plenty of things to do in The Sims Mobile besides the usual home and character customization, and the game also lets you interact with real life friends to fully experience its virtual world together. Maintaining relationships, whether r...
One of the biggest features to come out with Android O was the addition of a new System UI Tuner submenu that lets you customize the navigation bar at the bottom of your phone's screen. But as it turns out, this same feature can be enabled on devices running Android Nougat, even without root access.
The OnePlus 3 and 3T are two of the most modder-friendly devices to be released in 2016. Not only that, but they're both extremely solid phones which happen to sport a very reasonable price tag. Among the things that make these devices such a joy for tinkerers is the fact that they have an unlockable bootloader, receive timely kernel source releases, and are actually quite easy to root.
The Autobots and Decepticons are back as Transformers: Forged to Fight has soft-launched for both iOS and Android. Help Optimus Prime fight corrupted Transformers one on one to save them from their ruthless overlords, and have them join your cause, regardless of which side they're on. Collect, control, and level up unique robots from the entire Transformers universe, including the classic TV animated series, movies, comics, and toys.
Samsung's new personal assistant, Bixby, is making its debut on the Galaxy S8 and S8+. In addition to taking voice commands and performing visual searches, a new Hello Bixby feature predicts what you might want to do next with an integrated home screen feed. All of these features look nice, but if you're not ready to shell out at least $750 for a new phone, you'll be glad to know that Hello Bixby just leaked.
A new feature in Android Nougat lets you add your own custom tiles to the Quick Settings panel. This menu, which can be accessed by swiping down from the top of any screen, lets you quickly adjust settings and toggle system features on and off. So now that it's been opened up for third-party development, we're starting to see all sorts of cool and useful tiles roll in.
The latest Google Play Services update has somehow broken major functionality in both Titanium Backup and Substratum. Titanium Backup has suddenly become stuck at zero percent while restoring, and Substratum simply fails to apply themes anymore. Both of these apps do require root, but they've slowly become essential to rooted users, especially since apps like these come into play when you're deciding what your next phone should be.
The LG V20 went on sale on September 29, 2016, and is the second flagship phone in the V series to be released by LG. Both the V20 and its predecessor, the V10, have been audio-oriented phones from the start, but the V20 has a much nicer Hi-Fi Quad 32-Bit DAC, which makes the output audio from the 3.5 mm headphone jack sound amazing. It's loud, it's crisp, it's full, and everything from the higher frequencies to the lower ones can be heard.
There's a lot of conflicting information out there when it comes to the best habits for charging a smartphone's battery, so let's clear some of that up right off the bat. Lithium ion batteries (the type used in most modern electronics) start to lose their ability to hold a charge over time, and the two biggest factors that contribute to this are excess heat and overcharging.
Google's own devices have always been the first to get new Android features — but unlike the Nexus series, last year's Pixel phones have a handful of exclusive tweaks that were never intended to trickle down to other devices once the newer Android version rolled out to them. These Pixel exclusives included the Pixel launcher and a unique set of on-screen navigation buttons.
The YouTube app for Android doesn't exactly offer the greatest user experience. For one thing, it opens to an arbitrary "Home" tab instead of your subscriptions, so you see a list of what YouTube thinks you want to watch instead of your favorite channels. In addition to that, videos are loading at a mere 144p playback resolution for many users lately, which is downright terrible quality.
If you have a mobility impairment that affects your hands, arms, or manual dexterity, a smartphone's touch-based interface can almost be a barrier between you and the mobile internet. Eye-tracking software requires too much computing power for today's smartphones to handle, so it might seem as though there's no good way to interact with an Android device.
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.
Dutch filmmaker Anthony Van der Meer published his 2015 thesis short from Willem de Kooning Academy in South Holland online in December 2016. It's a brilliant piece of work that managed to be touching, alarming, and informative at the same time. His documentary, which already has over 6 million views on YouTube, covered the journey made by a stolen smartphone and how the theft and ensuing tracking affected all parties involved.
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.
There's not much you can do to customize the look and feel of your iPhone's home screen, at least when it comes to official options provided by Apple. But thanks to a new bug discovered by YouTuber iDeviceHelp, you can now hide text labels for app icons and folders on your iPhone or iPad, and this hack doesn't even require a jailbroken device.
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.
With the recent news that New York County's District Attorney's office is trying to get into over 400 locked iPhones for use in criminal investigations, you can see why it's important to keep other people away from your personal data. The fact that it can and will be used against you in a court of law is just one reason to protect your phone, because even if you make sure to stay above the fray, identity theft and bank fraud are still very real threats.
Apple released 10.2 to developers yesterday, which contained some new features that you'll probably want right now on your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Lucky for you, the Public Beta is pushing this same update out today.
As we reported first here on Gadget Hacks, the Google Pixel and Pixel XL have unlockable bootloaders, with the exception of models purchased from Verizon. This means that once the TWRP custom recovery is installed, you can flash ZIPs and even root your device in a few taps—as long as you unlock the bootloader beforehand.
A few months ago, LlabTooFeR leaked a full system dump from Google's then-unreleased Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones. That may not seem like a big deal at first glance, but the system dump contained all of the preinstalled apps and services from Google's new flagships—including the much-anticipated Google Assistant.
