The internet's an amazing place. The entirety of human knowledge is now accessible in an instant, and all sorts of media can be streamed directly to the palm of your hand. But, of course, that also includes the darker side of humanity, so there's plenty of NSFW content floating around out there that's certainly not suitable for children.
If you have the Xposed Framework installed, there's a module that lets you enable background playback in Android's YouTube app without buying a YouTube Red subscription. But Xposed is not available on many devices—particularly those running Android Nougat—so this isn't an option for everyone.
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.
If you're ever in a major accident or have a bout with acute onset health problems, first responders will need to know as much information about you in order to provide proper care. For this reason, paramedics and firemen have been trained to search a subject's cell phone to find ICE (in case of emergency) contacts that know your allergies, blood type, and other vital details.
Lenovo, the company that now owns Motorola, just announced two new entries in their wildly successful midrange Moto G series. The Moto G5, and its bigger brother, the Moto G5 Plus, were both shown off in detail at Mobile World Congress 2017 in Barcelona, Spain.
The Pixel and Pixel XL both use AMOLED screens, which are noted for their deeper blacks and sharper contrast ratios when compared to traditional LCD panels. However, AMOLED displays still have one fairly major downside, and that's the fact that they're vulnerable to screen burn-in.
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 widget system on iOS leaves a lot to be desired when compared to Android's offering, but that's not really Apple's fault. The system is there, we just need some good widgets to really get the most out of it, so it's up to developers to create some awesome apps that work with the home screen and lock screen widget panels on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch.
If you have a long commute, it only makes sense to catch a bit of shuteye while you're headed to work on the train or bus. The only problem with this is that, if you're napping a little too hard, you might end up oversleeping and missing your stop when the subway pulls into your station.
Sometimes it's the smallest feature in your smartphone that makes the biggest difference in user experience. Take screen timeout, for instance. You can probably think of plenty of times when your handset's display blacked out while you were in the middle of something. You could have been cooking with a recipe on the screen or looking at chords while you learned a new riff on your guitar.
Nintendo's first ever game for Android has finally touched down (unless you actually count the abomination that is Miitomo). Fire Emblem Heroes, a classic turn-based RPG optimized for mobile gaming, has come out for Android and iOS in Australia, Europe, and Japan, and is due out in North America and other worldwide locales very soon. Due to Nintendo's staggered release, the game isn't available to us in the United States at the time of this writing, but fret not—there's another way to downloa...
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.
For years now, Xiaomi's smartphones, as well as any phone running Xiaomi's MIUI ROM, have had a subtle feature that makes the interface look all the more refined: Rounded display corners. But now, other manufacturers are getting in on the rounded corners craze, as the new LG G6 is using them, as well as the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ models, whose curve is more subtle.
The iPhone has a handy feature called AssistiveTouch that lets you quickly adjust volume, lock your screen, rotate your display, and even navigate through the phone's interface using a virtual home button. In a way, it's a lot like the on-screen navigation bar that you'll find on some Android devices, but with a lot more functionality, and bundled together in a floating bubble interface.
One of the biggest things that differentiates Android from iOS is the app drawer. Instead of the operating system just tossing all of your app icons into a cluttered heap on your home screen, most can be tucked away neatly in the app drawer, which, in essence, is very similar to the Windows Start menu.
Android apps check your system locale settings to determine which language they should display. For the most part, it's a seamless experience—except for those times when an app has not been translated into your language of choice, in which case the app will usually default to English.
Super Mario Run was released for iOS on December 15, 2016. Even though it debuted as a "free" app, almost all of the playable content was hidden behind a ridiculous $10 unlocking package. Despite coming with such a hefty price tag and receiving a two-star rating on the day of its release for iOS, Android users are still very much interested in giving this game a whirl.
Many Android users woke up on January 10 to discover that their phone's performance took a nosedive overnight. Battery life is draining fast, overall performance has been sluggish, and devices seem to be overheating for no apparent reason. Not to worry, this isn't happening because of something you did.
Let's say you gave your Wi-Fi password to your neighbor a while back, under the assumption that they'd only use it while they were at your house sharing stuff via Chromecast. But now, your connection is slower than it normally should be, and you have this sneaking suspicion that the dude in apartment 3C is flat-out piggybacking off of your home network.
For anyone who has spent an entire afternoon attempting to assemble a set of IKEA chairs, these wooden masterpieces probably seem pretty appealing.
Samsung began offering Android 7.0 Nougat to users in its beta program on November 10, 2016. The beta came to a close last month after the fifth and final version was pushed out to users under the build number ending in 1ZPLN. This update was released a couple of days after Christmas and fixed a couple of bugs, including a fairly annoying one that caused your device to randomly reboot.
The Huawei Nexus 6P was released a little over a year ago, but despite doing moderately well in sales, the device has had more than its fair share of issues. When first released, there were numerous reception and memory management difficulties that left users extremely frustrated, though, those problems were solved with updates pushed by Google.
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.
Cyanogen, Inc., the for-profit company that spun off from its CyanogenMod roots several years ago, has announced that they're shutting down all of their services. The company's impending demise shouldn't directly impact many Android users, but the announcement does have one major repercussion: The servers that used to host the popular CyanogenMod custom ROM have now been shut down.
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.
If you need to do some hardcore multitasking on your Windows PC, a second monitor can go a long way towards getting things done. If you opt to "extend" your Windows desktop across a dual monitor setup, it's as if you have two computers side by side, with each display getting its own set of windows and programs that can be open simultaneously.
The Google Nexus 6P, manufactured by Huawei and released a little more than a year ago, has been a well-received smartphone in general. It sports front-facing stereo speakers, an awesome camera, a massive screen, supports all US carriers, and doesn't allow the infamous Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 to hamper its performance in the slightest.
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.
With the exception of New York, D.C., and maybe San Francisco, public transportation in the United States is downright abysmal. Like it or not, you need a car to get around. This is why Uber and Lyft have seen so much success in recent years. Both ride-sharing services get you from point A to point B in an efficient manner, and they do it without costing an arm and a leg. Well, in most cases.
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.
If you're an Android user, Google probably has almost your entire digital life stored on its servers. Family pictures are backed up on Google Photos, your e-book library resides with Google Play Books, videos are on YouTube, chat logs in Gmail and Hangouts, starred places and location history in Google Maps, and so much more.
There's no question about it—Skype is one useful program, but has always been lacking in the mobile department. On your desktop, Skype works just fine and all of its options are available for usage. However, the same cannot be said for Android. On Android, you can't even change your status to "Away" or "Invisible."
No matter which smartphone you buy, it will come with an internet browser preinstalled. Depending on your OEM, the default browser might be called Samsung Internet, HTC Internet, Silk Browser by Amazon, ASUS Browser, or Google Chrome—there's just so many stock browsers available.
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.
Now that Android 7.1.1 has been released, several features that were previously exclusive to Google's new Pixel phones are now available on the Nexus 6P. However, Google seems to be holding back on the Pixel's best features, as things like the "Night Light" red screen filter, "Moves" gestures, Google Assistant, blue accent color, and the new solid navigation buttons are still only officially available on the Pixel.
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.
Being able to take screenshots on Android isn't something we were always able to do. It was added to stock Android in Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 (Gingerbread 2.3, if you were a Samsung TouchWiz user) as a simple full screen screenshot, and that's the way it's remained ever since—until now.
Google has a new smartphone, and if you own a TV or a computer, you've almost certainly heard about it. The ad campaign for the Pixel and Pixel XL is approaching iPhone levels of omnipresence, as Google has reportedly spent over $3.2 million on marketing, with that number expected to skyrocket in the coming months.
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.
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.
