We have all seen videos of people walking off of platforms and into street signs because they were too distracted by their phones to pay attention. This has become such a problem that cities have even considered fining pedestrians for texting and walking.
Mobile service providers have an uncomfortably strong grip on the Android platform as a whole. For instance, all four U.S. versions of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge play their carrier's obnoxious jingle every time they boot up. You don't get any say in the matter—if you buy your phone from one of the big 4, you're a walking audible billboard.
Some variants of the Galaxy S6 will allow you to silence the camera shutter sound with an option in the app's settings menu. But this is not true of all models, plus there's an additional annoyance—when you're filming video and you get a notification, you'll actually hear this tone on the final recording.
Smartphones generally have limited storage, but counter this issue with an always-on internet connection. This led to the proliferation of cloud storage services, which allow us to store and access our large media libraries remotely.
Given how much use it gets on a daily basis, the power button is always one of the first hardware features to call it quits on an Android phone or tablet. So if your power button is acting up, or you don't want it to, you can extend its lifetime by simply finding ways to use it less.
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.
For the most part, when you're copying text on your Android device, it's because you intend on pasting it into a different app than the one you're currently using. For instance, you might be looking at a posting on Craigslist. So you copy the seller's phone number, then head to your home screen, switch over to your phone app, paste it into your dialer, and finally make the call.
Android has a permission that allows apps to draw on top of other apps, but as fun as that may sound, it has mostly been used to create floating multitasking utilities. While these can certainly be useful, it would still be nice if this permission were taken literally and we could actually draw on top of apps.
One of the many additions that appear on Android 5.0 Lollipop is a handy menu that lets users correct for or simulate different types of color blindness. While Google didn't flip the switch on this new feature until Lollipop was released, it turns out they had been working on it for quite some time.
Whether it's for handling your business's social media account or just for personal reasons, like trolling an ex-girlfriend's page (not that I've ever done that) or posting on behalf of your pup, there are instances where having two different Facebook accounts on one device is simply easier than switching back and forth.
CyanogenMod has been building upon open-source AOSP apps for many years now. They've made improvements to apps like the stock SMS client, the stock Audio Mixer, and a whole slew of others.
The Nexus 6 has an AMOLED screen that uses virtually no power to display black pixels. To take advantage of this feature, Google included an Ambient Display notification system that shows a black and white version of your lock screen when you get a new message. As a result, the Nexus 6 doesn't use an LED light to notify you of new incoming messages like most phones.
Most new Android devices come with at least one feature that helps control navigation, music, and more through voice-controlled, hands-free communication. While they usually don't end up being completely "hands-free," these apps do stop people from using both hands to perform tasks on their smartphones while driving, therefore distracting them less overall.
Android version 5.0 Lollipop introduced a ton of changes to the OS—and of course with new features, there's always a new set of bugs. One of the biggest bugs of all was a massive memory leak caused by the new screen-off animation, which loaded its assets into memory but never cleared them away.
Not too long ago I showcased ReCam, a free app that lets you schedule recordings and use your Android device as a security or spy camera of sorts. While useful, this app required you to schedule when to record in advance, resulting in you possibly missing the footage you intended to record (assuming your scheduling wasn't as on-point as you wished).
Chrome's Incognito Mode is a great feature for folks that don't want their browsing history tracked. When it's enabled, Incognito Mode makes sure that all cookies and cache that are saved while you're browsing are deleted as soon as you leave a webpage.
Even though my high school days are long behind me, I still find myself waking up in a cold sweat worrying about what my GPA is and what college I'm going to be able to get into. During those days I had to rely on coming up with my own equations to figure out my GPA between grading periods—including AP and honors course, as well as weights for pluses and minuses—but now there are smartphones to do all that thinking for me.
Before you purchased your smartphone or tablet, the device had already embarked on quite a long journey. From product development to manufacturing, your Samsung Galaxy device had already developed a rich history prior to your ownership.
I'm not a fan of this practice, but many developers release their wares on iOS before eventually porting their apps to Android. This was the case for PhotoMath, a popular and very useful app that can solve math problems with your smartphone's camera.
Hangouts is a great cross-platform messaging service from Google that works with almost any device, making it one of the few messengers that can be installed on Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android gadgets alike. With its many useful features, one of the few debatable downsides is its not-so-attractive color scheme.
Live wallpapers, like the classic Mario-themed one we previously covered, is a great way to spruce up your device and get some simple amusement. Unfortunately, they also drain more battery than conventional wallpapers. Which brings me to ASUS LiveOcean.
HTC's fitness-tracking application, Fun Fit, has made its way to the Google Play Store for all to enjoy. And while fitness apps are a dime a dozen, Fun Fit offers what its name implies—fun. Like plenty of other fitness apps, Fun Fit is able to track calories burned, steps, distance, active time, walking time, and running time. Where the app differs is in its presentation.
Using a timer to take a photo is great if you're looking for a quick workout. You have to prop up your phone, frame your shot, set the timer, and sprint to get into the frame. Then when you realize your position was a little bit off, you have to reset the timer and jump back in—over and over again until you get the photograph right.
One of the many unique features that sets Android apart from other mobile operating systems is its live wallpaper system. Instead of the same old boring static image, this system lets developers create apps that provide dynamic home screen wallpapers.
If you're an Android fan, you probably made your choice in mobile operating systems based on the insane level of customization options that Google's software offers. Don't like your home screen app? Simply replace it. Not a fan of a particular app's sharing system? No big deal, just share through a third-party app.
When opening a link or sharing a photo, your Android device will bring up a list of possible applications that you can complete the action with. However, some of the apps included you never use or didn't even know existed, and this leads to unnecessary clutter. Fortunately, if you're rooted, there's an easy way to remove apps from the "Open with" and "Share via" lists.
We've previously covered an app called YouTube Floating Popup Player which let you watch YouTube videos anywhere on your Android device, but it has since been removed from the Google Play Store due to infringement of certain policies.
Yes, they're called volume keys, but they can do much more than adjust your volume. With minimal effort, you can do some amazing things with these physical buttons, like secretly record videos, toggle on your flashlight, scroll through pages, control your music, and much more. And while using them to wake your screen is useful, let's take it a step further and show you how to use them to completely unlock your device, even if the screen is off.
The more we use our smartphones, the more storage space becomes occupied—it's an inescapable fact. But as the data accumulates and chokes off our storage, it can become difficult to identify exactly which files are occupying the most space.
Google debuted YouTube Music Key in November, and for $10 a month, this essentially turned YouTube into a music streaming service. With ad-free music videos and background audio playback, YouTube serves as a viable alternative to Spotify or Pandora for Music Key subscribers.
Keeping expensive mobile devices safe and secure is a priority for most of us, but the process of repeatedly unlocking a phone or tablet can seem like a pointless task. This leads to disabling the lock screen altogether, especially when in a safe place (e.g., home, office, car, etc.).
Problems with eyesight affect people of all ages and walks of life. And while it is possible to increase font sizes on Android, even the "Huge" setting is neither big nor clear enough for a lot of folks.
As one of the most frequently used and popular applications available, Facebook is now attempting to be a little more considerate for those Android users that don't have a bleeding-edge device or fast data connections.
Using my Nexus 7 tablet as a flashlight to light my path on the way to my room late at night is difficult, and honestly, useless. It doesn't have an LED flash for pictures, so using it as a flashlight is essentially just me brightening the display as high as it can go.
Being fixated on all of the great additions to Android 5.0 Lollipop, it can be a little difficult to take notice in the features that went missing. For instance, lock screen widgets. It's speculated that the lack of practical use for lock screen widgets and the implementation of the revamped Lollipop lock screen may have lead to their departure, but some of us want them back!
So you just bought a fancy new Nexus 6 complete with its gorgeous and gigantic display—now what? Unlike Samsung's TouchWiz, stock Android doesn't sport any cool split-screen features, so how do you really take advantage of all that screen real estate?
Adjusting the brightness on your Android device is a simple but highly utilized action. For the most part, aside from the Sprint LG G3 variant, the brightness slider can be conveniently found nestled in your notification panel. And though it is easy to access, there is a small drawback to this feature.
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.
After a few unforeseen delays, the Android Lollipop update is finally here for Google Play Edition HTC Ones. This means that if you have an official GPE M7 or M8, or if you have simply converted your HTC One from a carrier-specific, Sense-based model to a Google Play Edition, you should be receiving an OTA notification shortly indicating an update.
The vague 90-day release window for CyanogenMod 12 has done nothing to stop my craving for Lollipop on my OnePlus One. Luckily, there are other "unofficial" means of getting my hands on it. Since CyanogenMod still gives users a way of building their own variants of their ROM, we can install user-compiled versions of CM 12 pretty easily.