Android is all about the fine details. You can make a little tweak here and a little tweak there and completely customize your experience to be exactly how you want it to be. Sure, you don't need to customize LED colors or screen record, but it's nice to know you can.
Nokia's recent foray into the world of Android brought a plethora of goodies along with it. The Finnish smartphone manufacturer offers a slightly different take on our favorite mobile operating system, with customizations ranging from ringtones to its very own app store.
If you have a limited or restricted data plan, monitoring your usage can be the difference between escaping the month without overage fees or emptying out your wallet.
The inclusion of the parallax effect caused a shitstorm amongst iPhone users when it was released in iOS 7, especially when it came to creating custom wallpapers. It was hard to control, and even disabling it didn't fully get rid of it, making it one of the most hated new features in Apple's latest mobile OS.
It's time. You've experimented with apps from the Play Store, you've switched your lock screen, and maybe you've taken different launchers out for a spin. If, throughout your tinkering, you've found yourself chanting, "More. More. Give me more!" then now is the time. It's time to root.
Let's get one thing straight: CyanogenMod is one hell of a ROM. They've got a great community, a great product, and getting it on your HTC One couldn't be easier with their CyanogenMod installer, which does all the hard rooting and bootloader unlocking for you.
I miss the days where my hardest assignment was drawing a Thanksgiving turkey using the outline of my hand and trying to stay in between the lines. It seems that there is some unwritten rule that adults shouldn't feel the need to draw. Well, not anymore.
In a world where more features are king, sometimes it's a good thing to breathe, take a step backwards and keep it simple. With home launchers, this isn't often the case, as developers add a galore of features to their apps in order to be at the top of the game.
"Enter your email address. Confirm your email address." I absolutely hate seeing those two sentences when I'm signing up for something online, especially on my Samsung Galaxy S3. The less keyboard work I have to do on my mobile the better. Luckily, there is a way to enter your email address without having to type it all out, and I'm going to show you how it's done.
Change is something everyone needs every now and then. President Obama used it as his campaign slogan and adult movie stars use it to hide their real identifies. Change is in itself versatile. You never want to have the same thing day in and day out, and that's why us Android users appreciate the massive amount of customization available.
Initially introduced as an Easter egg deep within Android's operating system, the Daydream screensaver feature turned official in the release of 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Now, it's been out for a few months, which means developers have already figured out how to take advantage of it in their own ways.
Keeping your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 clean and neat can become a hassle, especially if you're an app whore. As the amount of applications on your device goes up, so do your notifications, which will clog up your Status bar with icons alerting of recent news and tasks.
Applications, features, and software running in the background of your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 can drain a significant amount of battery power, even when your smartphone isn't being used. For this reason, smartphone carriers and developers suggest that you turn off Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and other battery hogging features when they're not being used.
A great aspect of using Android is having the ability to change and tweak aspects of the user experience to your liking. You can easily change things like home screens, widgets, and icons on your Nexus 7 tablet, but also core system settings if you want, like volume settings. Most stock systems come standard with a "15 step" volume control. That means simply that you have 15 levels from mute to the loudest volume settings. Whether your an audiophile or just someone who wants a little more con...
When we're dead tired but need to stay awake, we humans can do many things to make the drowsiness go away, from taking a cold shower to downing energy drinks or coffee to acupressure.
With over 8 million active users, CyanogenMod is definitely the most popular ROM for Android devices, which explains why venture capitalists invested $7 million last month for future development.
We've all been in a similar situation before—you set your phone's ringer to silent before heading into class, and when you check your phone hours later, you find that your silenced phone didn't alert you to 8 missed calls and 17 text messages.
If you're new to Android phones, one of the first things you've probably noticed is how notification alerts differs from Apple devices, especially in regards to getting a text message.
Chrome has some built-in Flash support, which is great, but sometimes it just doesn't work—and it doesn't work for everything. Unfortunately, the Flash Player plugin was discontinued by Adobe back in the days of Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), and you can't get it on Google Play.
The new Moto X may not have a lot going for it when it comes to hardware, but there are some pretty cool software features that makes it a tempting device. One of these cool features is its Active Display notifications that appear on the lock screen.
I never really get tired of staring at the beautiful Halle Berry wallpaper on my Samsung Galaxy S3, but occasionally she needs a break. There are literally thousands of different wallpapers to choose from, but since the new Moto X just came out, its stock wallpapers are ripe for the picking. Step 1: Download the Moto X Default Wallapers
The Google Play Store exists so you can download as many apps as your heart desires (and as your memory can hold). Sure, you may only use them once, but it's your choice—and isn't that what life is really about? With that said, the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 already comes with a ton of preloaded apps from Google, Samsung, and your device carrier, like Yellow Pages and Google Earth—both of which I never use. So why is it that Android won't let me remove or uninstall them?!
In old-school Konami fashion, there's an Easter egg lurking inside your Samsung Galaxy S3, and I'm not talking about gingerbread men, robots, or jelly beans. In fact, it's actually an achievement, like those you would unlock in Black Ops on your Xbox 360, and it's pretty easy to find.
While the legality of secretly recording phone calls varies in each country, sometimes it's useful to have audio documentation of conversations you have on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2.
Customizing isn't all rooting and ROMs—there are plenty of ways to customize your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 or other Android device without gaining superuser access. One of the easiest ways is to install an Android launcher, sometimes called a home launcher, that matches your style.
If your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has been feeling sluggish lately, or you've noticed the battery not lasting as long as usual, the problem could be that you have too many applications running in the background.
In a previous softModder tutorial, we installed CyanogenMod on our HTC Ones to approximate the look and feel of the Google Edition HTC One. Unfortunately, this rendered Beats and HTC's ImageChip (among other things) useless.
Thanks to its dedicated ImageChip, the HTC One has one of the best cameras out of all the smartphones currently on the market. Their branded UltraPixel Camera can take full resolution photos while shooting video, has superior auto-focusing, and provides great overall quality for everything from low-light to action shots.
If you're constantly going from dark to brightly lit areas, you've probably noticed that the stock auto brightness feature on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 doesn't work that well. Either the screen is really dim and unreadable, or it's just way too damn bright. Sure, you can disable auto brightness, but then you have to manually adjust the brightness all of the time for that perfect comfort level. This isn't really all that bad of an option, but don't be surprised when you see this: However, the...
As you may have noticed, many of our tutorials cover topics that require you to have root access. When your phone is rooted, backing up apps doesn't require you to connect to your computer, and installing custom ROMs lets you get more useful settings. Rooting also lets you get rid of the Sense-style menus and status bar, and even upgrade to a newer version of Android.
When you have to take four different freeways to go twelve miles, Google Maps becomes a very close and dear friend—especially in Los Angeles. Without my trusty Samsung Galaxy S3, I seriously don't know if I could make it back home half of the time. Of course, you'd probably get better directions using a Garmin, TomTom, or other GPS device, but when you already have a smartphone like the GS3, dedicated GPS units become nothing more than a luxury item.
When you upgrade to a new Android smartphone like the HTC One, you can have browser bookmarks, Wi-Fi passwords, and other settings quickly transferred over from your old device using your Google Account backup. However, you'll still have to download apps individually from your Google Play list, and not all of your saved progress will be transferred over. Fortunately, there is a third-party app that will allow you to backup and restore your apps—with all their data.
The new Samsung Galaxy S4 has something no other phone has ever had before—weather sensors. Older devices like the Galaxy Nexus, S3, Note, and Note 2 do have a atmospheric pressure sensor, aka a barometer. However, they do not have a thermometer or hygrometer like the GS4 does, which measures ambient temperature and humidity.
"We all want to escape our circumstances, don't we?" Benedict Cumberbatch may have been talking about acting, but the sentiment rings true for all of us at some point or another. Whether it's work, school, or just boredom at home—we all wish for an escape sometimes. If only.
Here's a quick and easy video tutorial on how to root any Qualcomm-based U.S. or Canadian Galaxy S4 Android smartphone.
In early 2000, at the age of 19, Noah Kalina began taking a photo of himself with the same facial expression—every single day. Six years and over 2,000 photographs later, Kalina turned his project into a time-lapsed montage on YouTube. In just one day, his video received over a million views.
We've all had that moment when we enter into a classroom, meeting, or theater and completely forget to put our cell phones on silent.
Needing to use your device in bright or low lighting can require an adjustment in the phone's built-in brightness settings. However, there are times when those default settings just don't do the trick.
Google's newest Android system update should be arriving on Tuesday, November 13th, with the release of the Google Nexus 4 smartphone, and Nexus 7 and 10 tablets. All will come preloaded with the new Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS, but what about the rest of you (especially those with the Samsung Galaxy S III) who just got Jelly Bean 4.1.1?!?
The iPhone's ingenious trackpad function offers an intuitive way to place the cursor where it's needed. Not to be outdone, Samsung phones like the Galaxy S20 have a similar feature baked in. If you're running One UI 2, it's even enabled by default.