Android Features
How To: Brighten Your Google Pixel's Display by Up to 20%
The Pixel XL reportedly uses the same exact display panel as the Galaxy S7 Edge, but according to third-party testing, Samsung's flagship gets at least ten percent brighter than Google's. The same can be said of the regular Pixel, which tops out just shy of its bigger brother's brightness rating.
How To: Get Android M's New App Drawer on Any Device Right Now
Android M, the successor to Lollipop, is almost here. If you have a Nexus, you can install a preview of Android M using either the Fastboot method or Nexus Root Toolkit. For those of you without a Nexus, you can still get a piece of M on your device right now by installing the new app drawer.
How To: Make the Status Bar's Battery Percentage Text Easier to Read on Your Nexus 7
We may all have a Nexus 7 tablet, but we don't all want to have the exact same look and feel, which is why we softMod for a more personalized vibe. There are hundreds of cool mods you can perform on your Nexus 7, whether stock or rooted, but one of my favorites in Android 4.4 KitKat was unlocking the hidden battery percentage icon in the Status bar.
How To: Make a Samsung Galaxy S3, Sony Xperia Z, & Other Android Phones Safer for Driving with Car Launcher
I'm all about safety in my life. I even put on safety goggles when someone opens a bottle of champagne—high life problems. But when it comes to driving, you have to be double safe, because the other drivers on the road may not have your safety in mind.
How To: Unlock the Galaxy S5 Notification Panel & Quick Settings on Your Galaxy S4
Since the release of the Galaxy S5 back in April, the process of converting older models, like the Galaxy S4, to replicate the look and feel of the newest S-family member was inevitable. Galaxy users didn't want to be left out, and for good reason. The revamped interface of the S5 introduced a new color palette that was a definite improvement from the flat boring colors on older models.
How To: Cheat Your Way to More Lives & Faster Crops in Time-Based Games on a Samsung Galaxy S3
Of the hundreds of uses for our devices, the one that I cherish most is the ability to kill time just about whenever and wherever I need to. Whether it's reading news, checking social media, or watching videos, we have a ton of ways to pass the time in that two-hour DMV line or dentist's waiting room.
How To: Get the Sense Camera on Your Google Play Edition HTC One M7
While I do enjoy the vanilla Android Lollipop experience that comes with the Google Play Edition HTC One, I do miss the sweet camera that ships with Sense. Luckily, the people behind Liberty ROMs found a way to port that camera over and now we can enjoy the best of both worlds... well, sort of.
How To: Disable the Missed Event Widget & “Blocking Mode On” Notification for the Galaxy Note 3
Notifications, while certainly helpful, can at times be overbearing. There are banners plastered every which way on your smartphone for almost every application. While many of the notifications can simply be swept away or turned off, the same can't be said of persistent notifications.
How To: Google Just Turned Off a Crucial Feature in Google Photos for Android — Here's How to Fix It
After shipping a redesign of Google Photos and adding a neat new Map View feature for exploring photos, Google has made another change to manage the volume of photos and videos the app is handling during the Social Distancing Era.
How To: Revoke Facebook's Location Privileges on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 (So They Can't Track You Anymore)
Facebook knows who all of your closest friends and family are. When you backpacked across Europe last summer, they went along on the trip. Remember that break up two years ago? Yeah, they were there. The breakfast you ate this morning? They probably have a picture of it. They're even right under your own feet.
How To: Enable One-Tap Page Scrolling in Either Direction on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 3
Recently, Mike over on Samsung Galaxy S4 softModder showed how to scroll from the bottom to the top of a page with a single tap, a feature that Apple is well known for, and something I missed very much on my Galaxy Note 3. However, there's always room for improvement.
News: Top 5 Features Missing from Samsung's Android Oreo Update
At this point, we've seen Samsung's vision for Android Oreo on both the Galaxy S8 and Galaxy Note 8. Just last month, Samsung opened its Oreo Beta Program for the S8 to the public. A few days ago, we obtained and detailed a leaked beta build of Oreo for the Note 8. While both of these updates have some compelling new features, there are always tweaks we hoped to see that didn't make the cut.
How To: Turn Your Galaxy Note 10's Camera Cutout into a Battery Indicator
The punch hole design of the Samsung Galaxy Note 10 has challenged users to find a clear way to deal with it. Although it's less intrusive than a notch, if left unaccounted for, it can be just as much of an eyesore. One of the more creative ways we've found is to use as a battery indicator.
How To: Enable the New Multitasking Swipe Gestures in Android 9.0 Pie
While Android 9.0 Pie introduced some significant changes to the core operating system, the feature most people will be talking about is the native gesture controls. By default, these gestures are disabled — but for those of us wanting to try to the future of Android, here's how to enable the new controls.
How To: Prevent Friends from Snooping Through Your Galaxy S3 When Showing Them a Photo
If you have friends like mine, letting them check out one photo on your phone means they're going to check out all of the photos on your phone. Before you realize what they're doing, it's too late, and they're sending out perverted emails to your coworkers, making you look like a newb at Candy Crush Saga, and viewing your Snapchats for you.
How To: Fully Customize Your Samsung Galaxy S3's Dictionary Using Old Tweets, Statuses, Emails, & Texts
My standard text greeting to friends is something along the lines of "Wazzup biznitch?"—but apparently the auto-correct function on my Samsung Galaxy S3 has a problem with that. Time after time I have to retype it or just add all my made-up words to the word list—and I use a lot of made-up words, because that's what bosses do. But texting isn't the only way I communicate. I also use email, chat, and social media on a daily basis—and I don't always use my phone. So, wouldn't it be awesome if m...
How To: Quick Launch Google Now on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 Using Just Your Voice
While Siri came up on the scene with hardly any competition back in 2011, Google Now has not only caught up to Apple's intelligent personal assistant, but also excelled in certain areas—with its ability to quickly answer questions, give recommendation, and even deliver information that it predicts a user will want.
How To: Blend Your Android's Status & Nav Bars to Match Any App's Color Scheme
While we wait for our chance to get our hands on Android Lollipop, Google has already released Material Design updates to most of their apps. I love the new direction of the updated UI, but something just seemed to be lacking in tying everything together.
News: Here's Why Notifications Are the Best Galaxy S9 Feature When Compared to iPhones
The iPhone vs. Android debate is almost as old as smartphones themselves. While there are a number of reasons to skew towards one operating system or the other, the Samsung Galaxy S9 models have a ton of great features that help set them apart from Apple's iPhones. The coolest feature, in my opinion, is the way notifications are handled.
How To: Hack your HTC EVO 4G to increase battery life
Battery life is often a big problem with new smart phones. In this tutorial, learn how to change the settings on your brand new HTC EVO 4G so that the battery lives longer on the 4G network. Don't get stuck with a dead phone- check out this clip and keep it alive!
News: Five Things You Might Not Know About the Samsung Galaxy S4
The Samsung Galaxy S4 is a great smartphone, but do you know all the tips and tricks within the handset?
How To: Selectively Enable Immersive Mode for Certain Apps on Your Nexus 7
If you've followed our guide on unlocking KitKat's real full screen capability using the immersive mode mod, then your status and navigation bars will be hidden when not in use, giving you a more expansive full screen experience.
News: Android 4.4.3 Update Rolling Out Now for the Nexus 5
It appears that the next iteration of KitKat, Android 4.4.3, is fast approaching. If the past is any indication, today's update to the Nexus 5 software changelog on Sprint's website tells us a new version of Android will begin rolling out within 24 hours. Sprint has broken the news of a forthcoming Android release twice in the past. With 4.4.1 and 4.4.2, a mini-changelog was posted on the Sprint website about a day before Google began pushing updates to its Nexus devices.
How To: Feed Apps Fake Info to Keep Private Data Safe on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2
While we're usually responsible for leaking our own private information through mediums like Facebook, there are other times when we mistakenly and unwillingly allow certain applications to scour through our personal data. Some apps may have enabled permissions for internet access, thus allowing it to share said data with its external servers.
How To: Launch Apps from the Side of Your Android Just Like the Galaxy Edge
The Galaxy S7 edge comes with a feature called Edge Apps that lets you quickly launch your favorite apps by swiping in from the edge of your screen. It's a natural and intuitive gesture, and as a result, we've seen a recent influx of apps that look to emulate this feature.
How To: Go Old School on Your Samsung Galaxy S3 with a Rotary Dialer
Out with the old, in with the new—but sometimes that phrase is reversed. Just take a look around and you'll see some high-top fades from the '90s and some hipster wearing his great grandmother's Depression-era reading glasses.
How To: Tame the Clutter on Your Nexus 7 Tablet & Effortlessly Manage Your Files—Even Cloud Storage
If you're always on the go, the Nexus 7 is a godsend for having everything you need at the tip of your fingers—music, videos, text documents, photos, and more. Unfortunately, as good as that is, it also means one hell of a messy tablet.
How To: Make the Huge Samsung Galaxy Note 3 Easier to Use with Your One Tiny Little Hand
One of the more challenging things about using the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 is the ability to use it with one hand, due to its enormously large (but wonderful) screen size.
How To: Mimic Sony's STAMINA Mode to Save Battery Life on Any Android
When purchasing a new phone, one of the most vital features to consider is battery life. Everyone wants to know how long they can use their device without needing to hug a wall. Increasingly, more and more manufacturers ship their devices with some variation of a "battery saving" mode, which can help combat dead-phone issues in times of dire need for battery life.
How To: Create Custom Video Boot Animations on Android KitKat
Android is all about customization: "Be together. Not the same," as Google's latest ads for the platform put it. Changing your device's boot animation, for instance, is one of the many great ways you can add a touch of personal flair.
How To: This App Gives You Android 9.0 Pie's Auto-Rotate Button on Older Versions
Auto rotation is generally useful, but it gets annoying when you trigger it accidentally. In past Android versions, you could lock rotation into portrait mode as a workaround, but you'd have to disable this every time you wanted to put your phone in landscape mode. Luckily, Android Pie has a great fix for this.
How To: Make the Volume Slider Less Annoying When Playing Videos on a Nexus 5
Let's say you're watching a video and everything's going great, but you feel the need to raise the volume a tiny bit. You hit the volume button on your Nexus 5, and all of a sudden, a giant volume slider appears that obscures half of your video for 3 seconds.
How To: Play Your Favorite Retro Video Games Right on Your Samsung Galaxy Note 2
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...
How To: Download Any Vine Video That You Want onto Your Samsung Galaxy S4
Twitter's video-sharing app, Vine, had some very stiff competition once Instagram added video sharing to its repertoire. Recent figures show Instagram at 130 million followers compared to Vine's 40 million. Many think that Vine is on its way out, but on the contrary, I think it's here to stay.
News: People Are Pissed About the Lava Red OnePlus 5T
Drama seems to follow red smartphones. The internet nearly blew a gasket when Apple released a red iPhone 7 with a white front, and now OnePlus is taking some heat. The new Lava Red 5T comes with black bezels, not repeating Apple's mistake, so why are people mad at the Shenzhen-based company? Because Lava Red is only available in China.
How To: Create App Folders on the Amazon Fire Phone
The first thing we usually do with a new smartphone is download apps, and lots of them. There are your must-have games, utility apps, and of course—the free daily "app of the day" from Amazon. If you're like me, you'll install every single one of these free apps, and whether they get used or not, they'll be waiting in the app drawer.
News: Google Pixel 4a Spec Sheet, Shipping Date, Preorder Links & Box Contents
Last year, many were caught off guard when Google released a midrange Pixel device. It was quickly crowned the best value-buy phone on the market, as it brought most of the camera tech people loved in the flagship Pixel for almost half the cost. Google's 2020 entry in this series has finally made its long-awaited debut.
How To: Get Constantly Changing Wallpapers on Your Galaxy S3 That Adapt to Your Likes
No matter how cool my 3D live wallpaper is, or how often my Google Now wallpapers automatically change, I always want more backgrounds. Zedge has made it easy for me to find new ones, and 500 Firepaper helps me keep my background lively with rotating wallpapers—but these aren't enough.
How To: Automate Battery-Saving Mode, Screen Rotation, & Other Custom Tasks on Your Samsung Galaxy S4
Automation is everywhere in our daily lives. Faucets and hand dryers that turn on for you when they detect your presence. Automated teller machines to handle your bank account. Timed sprinklers to water your lawn every morning. DVRs to record your favorite TV shows when you're not home.
How To: Play Almost Any Old School Arcade Game for Free on Your Nexus 7 Tablet
If you've spent enough time in an arcade like me, you're probably well acquainted with the dreaded "ran out of quarters syndrome." Just when you're about to beat the last boss in Marvel vs. Capcom, or make it to the next level in Donkey Kong, you're all out of quarters to continue the level.