The Latest on Android: Page 3

When it comes to texting, Google's Messages app for Android is absolutely top-notch. The app gives you the ability to block those annoying spam text messages that have been plaguing us for so long, send messages from a computer, and can even provide RCS features if your carrier supports the Universal Profile.

Apps don't need to come bundled with an entire browser just to be able to display web pages — instead, they can call on the system WebView browser to render content for them. Android's default WebView renderer is Google software, which isn't quite as privacy-forward as some other options.

Google's legendary phone series fittingly ended with the Nexus 6 (P), and all the replicants that have come in its wake failed to unite the geek crowd quite as well. It might seem silly to think back on a smartphone with a sense of nostalgia, but if any Android phone deserves it, it's the Nexus.

ADB and Fastboot are powerful tools that have always required a computer. But with the right setup, you can now send commands to a phone using another phone.

There are three tiers to Android customization: things you can do by default, things you can do with ADB, and things you can do with root. While root is still pretty tricky to get, ADB mods just got a lot easier.

The first Android update of the year is here. On Monday, Jan. 4, 2021, Google started pushing out the January security patch for the Pixel 3 and all newer Pixels, after having ended support for the Pixel 2 last month.

The iPhone has a setting that will obfuscate the content of notifications on its lock screen until you're recognized by Face ID. Google implemented this same feature in its Pixel phones, but many Android devices have no such option. At least, not by default.

Well before Magisk was in our lives, the Xposed framework was where all the mods and magic happened. Magisk was built on a similar concept with the ability to customize your system via modules. We can thank Xposed for where we are today in terms of root-related mods, but it's not done just yet — it's still very much alive and kicking after all these years.

There are modded Spofity APKs floating around that essentially give you a Spotify Premium account for free, but the music streaming giant has been aggressively banning users who go this route. So if you're tired of listening to ads, but you don't want to do anything illegal, you'll want to know about this new app.

Google switched to gestural navigation in Android 9, and in removing the back/home/recents buttons, they were able to greatly reduce the size of the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. However, there's still a white line, aka "The Pill," taking up space to show you where to start your gestures.

Everyone raves about Gboard and SwiftKey, but the stock Samsung Keyboard on Galaxy devices is awesome in its own right. It's preloaded, so you don't have to do anything to get it, but at the same time, it's packed with features — even some you might not know about.

Nowadays, even the dumbest thieves know that the first thing you should do after you steal a phone is turn on airplane mode. Not only does this make it harder for police to track the phone through cell tower triangulation, but it also disables security features the person you stole it from may have implemented — for instance, Samsung's Find My Mobile service.

Standard notifications on Android are pretty intuitive, but the little popup toast messages that appear at the bottom of the screen can be a bit elusive. They come and they go, and that's about it. You can't long-press them to change their settings or even tell which app displayed them in the first place.

Google dropped several of the Pixel 4's more gimmicky features in favor of perfecting the basics on the Pixel 5. While you probably won't miss Motion Sense or the Assistant squeeze gesture, you'll definitely like the extra battery they packed into the space those features once occupied. Almost 50% more battery, actually.

Android 11 made a pretty significant UI change to the menu that appears when you press and hold your power button. Google created an entirely new system that apps can use to populate quick toggles in this menu, but the trouble is, not many apps are using this system yet.

For the first time in twenty years, Apple created its own custom font in late 2014. Dubbed "San Francisco," it combined elements from Helvetica and FF DIN to create a crisp, elegant, and highly legible font that is now used in iOS, macOS, and tvOS.

The Pixel 5's beautifully slim and symmetric bezels don't leave much room for extra hardware like a notification LED. But with the Ambient Display feature and an inventive app, you can turn the display cutout for the front-facing camera into an animated notification indicator.

The Pixel 5 is a bit of a departure from previous Pixels. Gone are the Pixel 4's Soli-based Motion Sense gestures, the Pixel 3's dual front-facing speakers, and the glass back panel of previous generations. But perhaps the most notable omission for long-time Pixel users is the lack of a squeeze gesture to trigger the Google Assistant.

The Pixel 5 is the first mainstream phone with perfectly symmetrical slim bezels. Most other "bezel-less" phones have had a disproportionately large bottom bezel, and while the iPhone's side and bottom bezels are symmetrical, there's a huge notch across most of its top bezel. The downside to the Pixel's approach is it has a pretty big display cutout for the front camera.

Imagine tilting the top of your phone away from you — it becomes a bit of a trapezoid, right? The top will appear smaller since it's further away, and the bottom will appear larger since it's closer to you — in other words, the perspective is all off. The same can be said of the pictures you take with an awkwardly-positioned phone.

Google's version of Android is best described as AOSP with extra features. But while the Pixel's UI is rightfully praised for its simplicity, those "extra features" aren't as numerous as they are on other OEM skins like Samsung's One UI. Case in point, there's no real system-wide audio EQ.

Just days after Google released the official Android 11 update, Samsung already had a pre-beta build of One UI 3.0 available for developers to test their apps on. So this year's main OS upgrade is likely hitting Galaxy phones even earlier than we thought.

On a PC, you can play sound from multiple apps at once. It's great, but it can also be confusing — there's a volume slider in each app, then the system-wide one, and probably another knob on your speakers. To avoid this dysfunction, Android only has one sound stream for media. But that has its own problems.

Android comprises an entire ecosystem of apps, games, functions, and features, so it would only make sense that it has its own lexicon. Words, phrases, and acronyms that didn't exist ten years ago are now used in an off-the-cuff style by developers and support technicians across the web.

To the developer

I have an Asus Rog 2 smartphone as my secondary device. Recently, I encountered an issue with it. Every time I open the camera it crashes. What would be the reason for the camera app to crash itself? I didn't change any setting and hard to find out the reason

I tried to find out the TWRP recovery image for Nokia 3 smartphone. But there is no official TWRP for Nokia 3? where can I find a custom recovery image for this model?

If you live in the US, it's pretty simple: The Google Pixel 4a is the best phone for rooting and modding in 2020. Its price keeps the risk-reward ratio nice and low, and its unlockable bootloader makes it easy to modify virtually any aspect of Android.

When I receive a text message the S20 phone has a constant ringtone until the message is acknowledged. How do I turn this off?

Every year, Apple adds some old technology to the iPhone and gives it a catchy marketing name, then like clockwork, it becomes the next big thing. Google, on the other hand, creates some truly innovative features, doesn't really bother naming them, then lets them languish in obscurity until Apple reinvents them at a later date.

In a tradition dating back to the Nexus days, Google has always used fish-themed codenames when communicating internally about their phones. Their laptops and tablets are usually named after video game characters. These names often give us the first evidence of an upcoming device when they're used in software commits in Android's open source code.

After teasing the feature in Android 10, Google finally added proper native screen recording to Android 11. But when you start a capture, you'll see a small red indicator in your status bar as long as recording is ongoing, which can really distract from your video. Thankfully, it can be removed with a little ingenuity.

Android updates don't have as many headlining features as they once did, but that's the point. If you keep updating software to add features and fix bugs, you'll eventually reach a point where the main focus is polish. That doesn't mean you can't get excited about a fresh coat of wax.

Google's Pixel smartphones have earned a reputation for taking great photos without relying on top-of-the-line camera sensors. Instead, Google leans on the software side to squeeze super images out of its camera. This also enables them to roll out new features out to previous-generation devices.

Your phone tracks your every move to some extent, and I'm not just talking about Google services. Smartphone manufacturers use telemetry services that run in the background to track how you use the device, mostly for ads or to improve their future products. You don't usually have a say in the matter, but if you have a rooted OnePlus, there's a way you can take control over it.

Like with many aspects of One UI, Samsung's changes to Android's volume panel are controversial. Between the different orientation and alternative design, it isn't for everyone. Fortunately for Android purists, there's an app to solve this problem.

With Samsung's beautiful, large displays, the Galaxy S and Note series are great tools for multitasking. This goes beyond the hardware with tools like split-screen mode, floating windows, bubbles, and picture-in-picture mode. And in One UI 3.0, that last one is becoming even more useful.

VirtualXposed helps non-root Android users to modify their Android smartphones using Xposed modules. Technically, Xposed modules require root access and a module can be described as a small installable Android modification that can modify Android OS or Android apps. For example, you can use the Samsung Music customiser Xposed module to change the color of the regular Samsung music app. With the help of VirtualXposed, users are able to some of the app-related Xposed modules like Samsung Music...

Android 11 has a new power menu with integrated contactless payment cards and smart home toggles. It's definitely futuristic — so much so that it pushed out a tool many of us use in the present: the screenshot button.

Recently I tried to put the pictures in the old Samsung s5 to an sd card. A day later I saw that the pictures and videos were all gone to the lost.dir folder. after some time of searching around the web, I tried to recover them through software and it failed. so now, a new problem has arisen. all the pictures became a folder called UUUUU.UUU. can someone help me recover these corrupted pictures please. thank you.