Google Android Gingerbread

One of Android's biggest strengths is its flexibility. There's usually more than one way to perform the same task, which makes it easy to find an alternate method that works better for you. Android also has some hidden features that newer users might not be aware of, so we mad ...more

Because of the way Google Play works, Android has a "bad app" problem. Google allows any developer to upload an app to the Play Store, regardless of if it works, how it looks, or whether or not it can harm users. Malware scanning happens primarily after apps are uploaded, and ...more

Selecting text on a touchscreen device has always been a major pain point. Those tiny little arrows that let you adjust the selection area are always too hard to actually adjust, making precision all but impossible. Then there's the issue of some apps not even allowing text se ...more

Snapchat made augmented reality selfie effects famous, with Facebook copying the feature across its mobile apps. Of course, others have followed, but their face tracking apps often pale in comparison to the original. Now, Google is giving Android developers the keys to adding ...more

If you're jonesing to play some Super Mario Run on your Android phone, you might not be able to get your fix for some time—at least, until Nintendo figures out the best way to keep piracy down and security high. But if you can't wait for the first official appearance of Mario ...more

Unless you've been hiding under a (moon) rock for the past month, you already know that Saturday, July 20 is the 50th anniversary of NASA's Apollo 11 lunar landing. And while it has been 50 years since man first visited the moon, no human has set foot on its surface since 197 ...more

While browsing the web on a computer, most of us are familiar with using Ctrl + F (or Command + F) to search for a specific word on a page — but what if you want to do that on mobile? If you're using Google Chrome, there's a simple way to search for specific words on iPhone or ...more

The Google Chrome browser does mostly everything well and integrates nicely with other Google services, but it's not exactly renowned for speed. With a rooted device and the aid of an app called Kernel Adiutor, however, you can make Chrome as nimble as some of the fastest brow ...more

Amazon is slowly trying to gain as much influence in the tech world as it has in the consumer market, and with the Amazon Fire HD 7, they have their eyes set on taking on the "budget tablet" space. For the amount of money you spend on the Fire HD 7, you get a pretty decent ta ...more

With Android Pie, Google added a genuinely useful feature for Pixels called App Suggestions, which uses AI to predict the apps you might want to use next. These show up at the top of your app drawer and in the new dock in the revamped multitasking UI for quick access. But here ...more

We've heard a bit about Google Daydream—the new smartphone-based virtual reality platform that is supposed to provide a markedly better experience than Cardboard—but don't really know what it'll look like. Engadget claims we could find out in just a couple of weeks, since Andr ...more

Google's Chrome browser comes pre-loaded on the vast majority of today's Android devices, and it's one of the fastest, most stable, and useful browsers out there. But it does have one major annoyance—while a page is loading, you'll see a link, then reach to tap it, but an elem ...more

Besides having an awesome name, widgets are nice little additions that help make your phone more functional and customized. There are plenty of Android widgets available in the Google Play store and from other third-party sites and developers, but XDA forums member Roymam deci ...more

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 w ...more

Snapseed is an app that you should definitely be using not only if you're really serious about photography, but also if you want to ensure that your online work sets the standard for social media. It's a great companion app to Instagram and VSCO, and it will save your day many ...more

Group chats in WhatsApp are great for communicating with multiple people at once, but that can be a blessing and a curse — any message you send will be seen by everyone, and that's not always ideal. Thankfully, there's a new feature that lets you respond to group messages priv ...more

Once known as S Health, Samsung Health has become one of the most comprehensive health apps available for Android. In fact, we all can benefit from the features the app brings to the table — whether you're a marathon runner or a couch potato. If you're in the latter category, ...more

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. That was the case un ...more

With Chromecast-capable applications slowly seeping into the market, it's difficult to find useful ones that we might use on a daily basis. Class6ix, from developer Class6ix LLC, is a news aggregator that gathers videos from both local and national sources in order to provide ...more

For those of you who have (or had) and iPhone, one of the cooler photo apps for iOS was VSCO Cam, an extremely popular camera with pro-quality filters and effects. Now this app is available for Android on Google Play for your Nexus 7 tablet and any other devices running Androi ...more

Google's got quite a few tricks up its sleeve with their Pixel and Pixel XL flagships, including functionality we've never seen before on Android. One awesome feature is called "App Shortcuts," and the basic premise is strikingly similar to Apple's 3D Touch—just long-press an ...more

While the Galaxy S10 is a beautiful phone, its software isn't for everyone. One UI makes huge strides toward undoing the mess known as TouchWiz, but for purists, it's still not quite on par with stock Android. Fortunately, the beauty of Android is you can change this with a fe ...more

When it comes to watching movies and TV shows in Amazon's Prime Video service on an iPhone, it's as simple as installing the Amazon Prime Video app, signing into it, then playing content. However, on an Android phone, it's a lot more complicated. While there is an Amazon Prim ...more

Our phones have evolved past a simple pocket computer. They have become more like Swiss Army Knives, opening up possibilities that were previously considered Sci-Fi material. Thanks to the recent push into augmented reality, a new world of tools is becoming available to mobile ...more

The 2015 LA Auto Show showcases the best of the auto industry—well, at least according to car companies. Increases in horsepower, better fuel economy, and most importantly—the latest tech—is all on display during the 10-day event in Southern California. Once of my first missio ...more

If you've ever wanted or needed to use an app in a different language than your phone's primary language, your Android phone now makes it a simple process. In the Android 13 software, Google included additional features for accessibility like it does with almost every major A ...more

Google Now is great for looking up movie times or finding your parking spot, but if you need to track down a file you downloaded, you're relegated to using a file explorer and, depending on your organizational skills, this can either be extremely easy or a huge pain in the ass ...more

Running commands on Linux seems so complicated for the layman that it may as well be a foreign language. But for the die-hard terminal users, or for those who are just curious about the Linux experience, there's a new Android launcher that gives your home screen a command line ...more

In this day and age, maintaining your privacy is a perpetual battle, and doing so with an internet-connected device like your smartphone is even more of a struggle. Every website you visit, every app you install, every message you send, and every call you make is a potential v ...more

Alongside the launch of Android 11, Google has gifted Pixel users with several exclusive features, including App Suggestions on the home screen. Another exclusive feature involves Live View, the augmented reality walking navigation feature in Google Maps and one of the more us ...more

Android is a highly customizable operating system. Sometimes, we use these capabilities to add core functionality or streamline the user experience, but there are other times when customization is just about having fun and making your smartphone's interface more enjoyable. Th ...more

We tend to think of Google Play as Android's app store—but there's far more to it than that. Not only does it allow you to purchase apps and games, but you can also buy movies, music, books, and even devices, plus there's always those pesky in-app purchases that it also handle ...more

Ah, the Nokia Lumia series... what can be said about Microsoft's recently-deceased line of smartphones? They might not have been the best, but they certainly weren't the worst, and they did get the job done in terms of what you would expect from a smartphone. The Windows-powe ...more

In the past, some of Google's Nexus devices have had root methods even before the phones hit shelves. The Google Pixel and Pixel XL are basically Nexus devices from a software standpoint, so why have we gone more than a week since release without a working root method or custo ...more

Your friends are ditching Snapchat for Instagram. After the social network turned camera company announced it lost $13.30 per user in its first quarter as a publicly traded company, well, it doesn't look too good for the platform's future, y'all. According to a new report by ...more

Google Lens is a fantastic addition to Google Photos for Android and iOS that allows your smartphone to identify a number of things in your pictures, like landmarks and contact info. Using this power, you can even find out how to buy almost any product you've taken a photo of ...more

We're thinking more and more about our digital privacy these days. When we first started using smartphones, we'd download apps with reckless abandon, allowing permissions lists as long as novels in order to play free games. Now, we know that apps have access to things like our ...more

Android Oreo may not be the flashiest release, but it's got tons of under-the-hood changes. We recently discovered documentation in the AOSP source code that outlines one of these understated features, which has been dubbed "Rescue Party." According to Google, Rescue Party wi ...more

There's a feature in the Gboard keyboard that enables people who cannot talk, type, or swipe normally to still have a way to communicate in the digital age on their smartphones. While it's mainly an accessibility feature for those who actually need it, it's a good way for anyo ...more

Android 7.0 Nougat brought a lot of multitasking improvements along with it, but the most notable addition is a unified multi-window mode (which shines bright in Google's Pixel phones). This means that every Android device can now use the same split-screen interface, and the d ...more

Reading through various internet forums, it certainly sounds like the Google Pixel and Pixel XL are attracting more iPhone users than any of Google's previous Nexus devices. The sales figures seem to back that up, too, as the Pixel is outpacing last year's Nexus 6P, and pre-or ...more

As the first phones to be made by Google, the new Pixel and Pixel XL have several slick customizations that you won't find on any other Android device. There's tons of functional stuff like the new Google Assistant and a much-improved camera app, but also a few aesthetic tweak ...more

So, you just updated to Android 10, ready to explore all of the new features Google has to offer. There's just one hiccup — those gesture controls everyone talks about? They don't work. In fact, the option is completely grayed out, taunting you from the get-go. What's going on ...more

The iPhone has a feature that lets you see how much juice is left in your Bluetooth headphones, but most Android phones are lacking this ability. Thankfully, there's a simple app that'll close this gap in functionality. To be clear, some custom ROMs and manufacturer-skinned v ...more

The '90s were a great decade to be alive. Before the internet became a high-availability service, we were untethered from the bombardment of media present in today's culture. Children ran through the streets with levels of physical exertion beyond what's required to capture fi ...more

Google's Pixel smartphone had a decent head start as one of the first devices to offer ARCore, but that early exclusivity has been frustrating for some Android device owners. Some of that frustration was relieved when Google added more Android devices to the ARCore list in Feb ...more

These days, when you're setting up an Android device for the first time, you'll be prompted to add extra email accounts directly to the Gmail app. It's really simple, too—just sign in with your work or exchange account, then emails from those accounts will be mixed in with you ...more

Bitcoin, the decentralized cryptocurrency notorious for its status as the currency of the dark web, seems to be shedding its shady past and is now enjoying soaring highs not seen since 2014. The highly volatile online commodity reached parity with an ounce of gold back in Marc ...more

Pixels and other near-stock Android phones have the Google Feed baked into their home screen, but sadly, the default OnePlus Launcher doesn't. Even more disappointing is the fact that the OnePlus Launcher actually has the Google Feed code built into it, but it's not activated. ...more

Say you're on a train to work, but you forgot your headphones. You'd normally listen to music to pass the time, but given the circumstances, your choices are to sit silently like a considerate adult, or to blare songs out of your phone's main speaker like a jerk. Thankfully, t ...more

Android Nougat came with a lot of new features, including a futuristic and sleek circle animation. When this article was originally published, it was rumored that the circular design would be used as the new boot animation in Android 7.0—but as it turns out, you'll only see th ...more

We were really rooting for you this time, BlackBerry! With the phone company having minimal success in the past with smartphones, the BlackBerry KEYone was extremely promising. That is until YouTube Reviewer JerryRigEverything discovered a fatal flaw, the phone's screen popped ...more

When Google released Android 4.2, a new feature was introduced for tablets that allowed for multiple accounts to be used on a single device. In order to create a unique experience for each user, apps and personal data were kept separate, and switching between users became as s ...more

With every new Galaxy flagship release comes the age-old dilemma: do I choose great hardware or great software? For years, Samsung has given users the best components available on any smartphone. The problem is the software is an acquired taste. But there is something you can ...more

Starting in October, many Nexus 6P users have been experiencing a bug that causes their phone to completely shut down, even though there was 20% or more battery life remaining. At first, it was thought to be a direct result of the recent Android Nougat update, but a combinatio ...more

Okay, so you finally got around to rooting your Android device—now what? Well, to get the most out of your Superuser status, you'll need to find some good root apps, which will allow you to easily add features, reduce battery drain, remove ads, and much more. Don't Miss: Andr ...more

Texting has become the king of communication—gone are the days where everyone called each other. These days, it's down-right weird when someone calls first. Whether it be on a phone or on a computer, SMS and MMS messages are the most common way people keep in contact, so why n ...more

After getting confirmation from Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, we now know Fortnite Battle Royale will not be available on the Play Store when it's finally released for Android. Instead, users will have to download the APK directly from Epic Games' website — and quite frankly ...more

New updates are always exciting, even more so when Google's behind the wheel. Yes, Android 10 "Q" is here, at least in beta form, ready for software testers to dive in and explore all the new changes. Among those changes, however, lie some issues. We won't sugarcoat it — there ...more

Space might be the final frontier, but NASA is making a detour into augmented reality first. The Spacecraft AR app, developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with Google, debuted exclusively for Android this week (an iOS version is also in the works ...more