S Health is one of the biggest selling points for newer Samsung Galaxy devices. It offers a centralized place to view and manage data collected by all of the various sensors like the heart rate monitor.
Korean electronics giant LG maintained a large presence at CES 2015. While their TVs and home appliances were heavily showcased, my interest was primarily on one device—the new LG G Flex 2 Android phone.
The upcoming W3D gaming smartphone by Snail isn't like anything you've ever seen before. It's pretty much a cross between an Android phone, Nintendo 3DS, and PlayStation Vita. It runs on Android, has a 3D screen similar to the 3DS, and gamepad controls like the Vita, making it one hell of a portable gaming device (that's also a phone).
Android has plenty of features that provide multitasking support, which are especially useful on smartphones with larger screens. One such feature that I loved on the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 was the popup browser, which brought up a floating window whenever I opened a link inside of third-party apps like Facebook and Twitter.
Google's original messaging service got a nice version bump today. Hangouts now sports stickers, video chat filters, an updated Material Design interface, and a few new features that should make the service a little more fun and easy to use.
When playing a game or using an app, incoming call alerts can be extremely irritating on my Galaxy S4 because they insist on taking over the entire screen. The alert is a little different on other Android phones, depending on the manufacturer's skin, but all are fairly intrusive in one way or another.
While the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is sure to get an Android 5.0 Lollipop update, there's no official confirmation on when exactly that will happen (rumors state January). In the meantime, there are a number of ways to get some of Lollipop's features on your KitKat device right now, but today I'll be focusing on the looks with a Lollipop-themed launcher.
Amazon is currently offering over $80 in free Android apps in the Amazon Appstore, but only for Friday and Saturday, so make sure to grab them quick before they all go back to normal price. Highlights include the Fleksy Keyboard (normally $3.99), Oxford Dictionary of English with Audio (normally $24.99), and EasyTether (normally $9.99).
Lollipop's imminent release should be cause for excitement with Google bringing out new features, a huge redesign, and under-the-hood changes. Unfortunately, the Nexus line of devices will be the first to receive the Android 5.0 update, leaving the rest of us to wait on manufacturers and carriers to release their skinned, bloatware-packed builds.
Keeping a close eye on your device storage can be a 24/7 job, especially if you're space is filling up and your device doesn't have SD card support. No matter how close of an eye you keep on it, there are always going to be apps updating databases, adding to their cache, and deleting old files.
It seems like every day now that we see a new headline on a cyber security breach. These headlines usually involve millions of records being stolen from some large financial institution or retailer. What doesn't reach the headlines are the many individual breaches that happen millions of times a day, all over the world.
Oddly enough, stock Android does not come with a "do not disturb" function out of the box. Samsung has their own version built into to TouchWiz called "Blocking Mode," and Apple has had their "Do Not Disturb" feature since iOS 6, so why is stock Android so late to the game?
If you've done any root-level hacking or modding on any of your previous Android devices, you're probably well familiar with Rovo89's famous Xposed Framework.
For some reason, when you're typing in landscape mode, Android extends the text input field to cover every bit of the screen that the keyboard's not occupying. This gets pretty annoying sometimes, especially with messaging apps where you might need to reference what the other person just said in order to properly form your response.
In previous guides, we showed you how to easily tweak your Google Keyboard by using various colors and shapes, installing an Android L theme, or adding a convenient number row to its main display. And now, you can add another Google Keyboard theme to your arsenal by making it look like your iOS friend's iPad or iPhone keyboard.
For any multitude of reasons, some apps require you to be connected to Wi-Fi in order to function properly. This could be because they would rather you have a stable connection to enjoy their content, or that they don't want users complaining about the amount of data being guzzled from carrier data plans.
With Google's latest version of their mobile OS, Android L, the most notable aesthetic difference is the newly introduced Material Design concept that will soon be ever-present through the interface. The objective of this bold design is to create "hierarchy, meaning, and focus," as described by Google, and the deliberate choices of color and white space "to create immersion and clarity."
Android L hasn't made its official release yet, but if you installed the early release using the Windows or fastboot method, you may have noticed some minor inconveniences, like the lack of a battery percentage icon and the absence of a Clear All option in your notification tray.
Screen timeouts serve mostly as security measures and energy savers, but they can also interrupt you when you're reading a book or editing a document. There is no built-in way to manage screen timeouts on a per-app basis, but if you've got root access, you can do just that using Never Sleep from Android dev Hamzah Malik.
According to a recent survey conducted by Edison Research and Statista, Pandora still has a firm grasp as the most popular music streaming service in the United States. With iHeartRadio, iTunes Radio, and even Spotify trailing behind by a large margin, it doesn't look like Pandora will lose their footing in the near future.
Twitter found a sweet spot with its 160-character limit, but Snapchat sports a social media low of 31 characters, forcing us to condense our ideas into a few short words when typing in picture captions because of their ephemeral nature. While this severely limited amount of words is Snapchat etiquette, I've got so much more to say than 31 characters!
For the most part, Google Play Music makes it extremely easy to upload and organize your music library, as well as access it quickly using the default settings—but there are a few things it could do better.
HTC introduced their version of gesture controls to the masses when they launched the HTC One M8, and while the feature includes gestures to open the camera, start voice dialing, and unlock the device, it does not include one to lock it.
Fast moving cars, strangers in the background, and even birds flying by can all ruin a great shot. Thankfully, TouchWiz provides the tools to remove unwanted objects, right in the stock camera application.
When I first used the Google Now Launcher, I appreciated the transparency that came with it, and how it made the real look larger than it did before. But now that I'm used to it, that transparent navigation bar is beginning to look a little stale.
Lock screen security provides a means of safety when it comes to keeping others from breaking into our smartphones and snooping around on or stealing private information like documents, emails, photos, and videos.
In an attempt to keep things simple, Snapchat has a limited amount of editing features, made up of "smart" photo filters, drawing pens, and special text captions. If you want more editing capabilities, you'll be pleased to know there's a way, no thanks to Snapchat, but you will need to be rooted.
YouTube makes money hand over fist every year selling ad space to companies, but unless you're reaping those benefits, they can be pretty annoying. Luckily, there is a simple way to get rid them on your rooted HTC One with Xposed and YouTube AdAway.
Just short of a week after its release, the new HTC One has been rooted thanks to Android devs beaups and jcase, the same guys that brought us S-OFF for the original HTC One (M7).
The little black status bar at the top of your screen is great for at-a-glance info, but let's face it—it's pretty ugly. If you want to hide it completely, only showing it when you need it, check out our guide on using Immersive Mode in KitKat. However, if you want to keep the at-a-glance convenience and have it blend in with your apps, try out Tinted Status Bar.
Like most of you, I find myself scrolling through endless lists of Facebook feeds, Instagram lists, and tweets. Most of the time, it's a pain to scroll all the way back up to the top. Unlike iOS devices, Android has never had a solution to quickly scrolling to the top of a list in an app, but now with a simple Xposed mod, that hole has been filled.
Back when 4.1 Jelly Bean came out (boy, how time flies), Android introduced expandable notifications. Depending on the notification, a simple swipe down with your finger could expand it and show extra content, like Delete and Reply buttons for Gmail messages.
There has been a lot of news over the last couple weeks about the popular Flappy Birds mobile game and its creator, Dong Nguyen.
Getting the volume on our phones to be just right can be a pretty annoying task. Some people like to listen to music and videos with max volume while some like it a little lower. With the default volume control on your Samsung Galaxy S3, there are only 15 steps before you reach max volume, making it tough to find that sweet spot.
It seems like most of the really cool and interesting modifications you can make to your Android device always require special root access, so when a fun mod comes along that doesn't require root—I feel it's my duty to alert you.
The holiday season brings together three of my favorite things—presents, time off, and drinking. And in order to enjoy all of these things in peace, you have to make sure to put your work behind you.
There are many impressive features on a Samsung Galaxy Note 2, but just like any other smartphone on the market, the most used one is the camera. How many times did you take a picture today? Or admire all the selfies in your gallery? Or upload a video to Instagram, Vine, or Snapchat?
Saving a Snapchat photo onto your Android device is a simple process, but it always notifies the sender that you took a screenshot of their picture. Some of you may want to remain undetected when taking a screenshot, and where there's a will, there's a way.
I grew up on SNES. Super Mario, Final Fight, and Contra were just a few of my favorites, and most of my collection is still intact—all I have to do is reach under my bed and pull out all my old games. As proof, I present my original Donkey Kong Country cartridge: Now that I'm older, I don't have as much time to play my SNES as I used to. Hell, I barely have time to play my Xbox. Most of the games I play these days are on my Note 2, but no mobile game can compare to those classics collecting d...
There are a lot of apps in Google Play for your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 that let you create, edit, and view Microsoft Office files on the go, but none match up to the power of an app called Polaris Office for Samsung Galaxy devices.
