How to Activate Your Android with No Service

So you finally decided to make the switch from iOS to Android, huh? Well first off: welcome to the world of tomorrow. And secondly: good call, mate. In all seriousness, switching between mobile ecosystems can be quite the hassle. Even after you've grown accustomed to the new ...more

You might think you need to buy a thousand dollar phone to get a great experience while streaming movies and TV shows from services like Netflix, Hulu, and YouTube, but that's just not true anymore. While phone prices keep rising and the midrange segment now ranges from $300–$ ...more

In the new Android P, the multitasking view is reminiscent of webOS days. As a result, enabling split screen mode no longer works as it once did. However, it's still easy to use, whether or not you're using the new "Swipe up on Home button" gesture or have stuck with the old-s ...more

Armis Labs has revealed eight vulnerabilities, called "BlueBorne", which put 5.3 billion Android, iOS, Windows, and Linux devices that use Bluetooth at risk. With it, hackers can control devices, access data, and spread malware to other vulnerable devices through networks. In ...more

There is much to be learned about Apple Music and the revamped Music application introduced in iOS 8.4. Throwing their hat into an already competitive field with other companies like Spotify, Tidal, or Rdio, this is a bold move on Apple's part. So, before you consider signing ...more

One of the biggest features of Android Oreo is a picture-in-picture mode that lets you watch videos in a floating window while you're using other apps. Honestly, it's fantastic and intuitive, but there are a few ground rules you'll need to learn to master the new feature. Cur ...more

This year's I/O was all about bringing Android into the future and onto new devices. On top of announcing the upcoming "L" release of its mobile OS, Google showcased Android Wear, Android Auto, and Android TV. With a unified design language and notification mirroring, the var ...more

Apple's music streaming service just got a major update on Android devices. The Spotify competitor has implemented some changes for users on non-Apple phones that have been available to iOS devices for some time now. Nevertheless, Apple Music users on Android should welcome t ...more

When you've exhausted your data plan, streaming isn't an option unless you want overcharges. While Apple Music makes it easy to download songs for offline listening, you need to add the music to your library first. This creates an extra step in downloading music, but it doesn' ...more

If you've ever wanted to hang out with a flying unicorn that sounds like actor/comedian Patton Oswalt, get ready to get Happy! NBC Universal Media's new augmented reality mobile app promotes the new series "Happy!" on the SYFY channel. The app brings to life the title charact ...more

Whether you were exposed to the COVID-19 virus or just taking precautionary measures, self-quarantining is a tremendous disruption for anyone. Still, we all have to eat, pandemic or not. But unless you like eating canned food for two weeks, you're going to want to explore othe ...more

Whether you use Google Calendar, Exchange, iCloud, or any other service, you need a good Android calendar app to keep you organized on the go. For many folks, the obvious answer was always Sunrise Calendar, but Microsoft purchased the company behind this awesome app in a class ...more

Staying alert to directions and changing the music you're listening to on your smartphone at the same time can be cumbersome, but Google Maps wants to fix that. One of the mapping service's features allows you to control music playing on Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play M ...more

If you've ever seen one of those Samsung commercials from about a year back, you know that the Galaxy S series of phones come with a feature that allows you to do certain things by making gestures in front of your screen. They call this feature Air Gesture, and it enables you ...more

Everyone loves sharing pictures and quick video clips with Snapchat, but while the service itself is tons of fun, the Android app is one of the worst on the market. For one, Snapchat takes terrible photos even on high-end Android phones. And to make matters worse, the app is a ...more

The Android Nougat preview build for Nexus devices comes packed to the brim with new functionality: multi-window mode, a dark theme, and a data-saver toggle, just to name a few. However, unless you have a Nexus device, it will be a while before you get these exciting new featu ...more

Steam is by far the biggest and best service for getting games on your Linux, Mac, or Windows PC. With their catalog containing everything from the biggest blockbusters to indie games created by one-man development teams, it's no easy task to keep track of their best values—un ...more

If you can't find the remote for your Android TV or Google TV, don't like using its voice control feature, are sick of using the directional pad to type, or can't get it to work at all, use your smartphone instead. Using your iPhone or Android phone as a virtual remote control ...more

When it comes to text documents and spreadsheets, Microsoft Office is the be-all and end-all office suite—but it's not cheap. Paying anywhere from $140 to $400 puts a big dent in your bank account, especially if you're a broke college student eating ramen for breakfast, lunch, ...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

Who here binges TV on a regular basis? I know I do. Never before have we had so many options for watching our favorite shows, especially when you consider how easy it is to stream from anywhere on a mobile device. But sometimes, all that choice gets a little overwhelming. What ...more

Google I/O is like Christmas for smartphone fans. At their annual developer's conference, the Mountain View search giant gave us a glimpse of what they've been working on over the past year—and they've been quite busy, to say the least. Don't Miss: Meet Allo, Google's New AI ...more

Auto manufacturers are slowly starting to debut models with Google's new Android Auto software baked into the dashboard console. Starting with the 2016 model year, we should see vehicles from Honda, Ford, Chevrolet, and many others sporting the new software. Now, many manufac ...more

The level of customization that Android has to offer is insane. You can replace the stock keyboard and home screen with any third-party app of your choosing, allowing core experiences to be tailored to fit your needs. Another system-level feature that can easily be replaced i ...more

Getting on the phone for customer service can be extremely frustrating. First you've got to find the correct phone number for your region (good luck trying to get customer service from a sales department), then you have to listen to the annoying automated system to navigate yo ...more

With most of HTC's staff working on getting Sense updated to Android Lollipop, their piecemeal approach to individual app updates now comes to their Gallery app. The new update is available for all HTC devices running KitKat, but if you have the HTC Service Pack installed, it ...more

If your mechanical home button or capacitive navigation keys are on the fritz, doing something as simple as navigating your phone's interface becomes a tedious chore. In this situation, some users have turned to root mods that enable Android's software navigation bar to solve ...more

Are you thinking of switching from an iPhone to an Android phone? Before you make a permanent change from Apple to the other side, it's good to try out the other ecosystem and see if it makes sense for you. If you can't get your hands on an Android phone to try it out, you can ...more

Netflix is more popular now than ever, but it still has a ways to go before satisfying everyone. Whether it's a lack of availability, buggy or unattractive apps, or just not being able to find anything to watch, lots of people have their complaints. But there is a way to make ...more

Project Fi, Google's MVNO, is running a new promotion on the latest and greatest from LG. From July 16 until the 29th, whenever you order and activate the LG G7 ThinQ or LG V35 ThinQ, you will receive a $300 service credit. When you do the numbers, that equals a minimum of thr ...more

Google is rolling out a new feature that will integrate your Gmail account with Google searches. The feature will add results pulled from your email correspondences to create more "personalized" Google search results. Google is currently doing a test run of the service. To act ...more

After poor sales of last year's HTC 10 and the terrible reviews their first 2017 flagship received, HTC really needs the HTC U11 to succeed. But they're not taking things lying down, as they've come up with some interesting tech for their latest handset. The biggest new featu ...more

Google Photos is a fantastic service, giving you unlimited storage on either your Android or iPhone. With all this free space, some pictures can get lost in the shuffle. Fortunately, Google will now let users "Favorite" pictures — whereupon they're automatically put in their o ...more

For some time now, iPhone owners have been able to use Siri to listen to and reply to text messages, but that functionality has been lacking on Android. That is, until Google silently rolled out a similar feature for Google Now (thanks to Android Police for the tip). Perfect ...more

There's a lot of misinformation about VPN services, and it stems from the fact that not all of them are created equal. Some focus on privacy, others on security, and a few VPNs are seemingly even purpose-built for the polar opposite: data collection. We made this guide to help ...more

Trying to figure out which music streaming service to subscribe to can be a difficult task when the playing field is so crowded. Each has its benefits, as well as downsides, so finding the right one for your needs and wants can take a lot of overwhelming research. But we've do ...more

When traversing the web, you'll regularly come across websites that require you to create an account. With the majority of these accounts, protection is limited to a simple password. Despite this, many people are still using weak passwords such "123456." For these reasons, you ...more

Ever feel like you're receiving notifications way too late on your Android device? Many Android apps use Google's Cloud Messaging service to send and receive notifications, including Hangouts, Gmail, Pushbullet, Facebook, and even WhatsApp to an extent. To ensure that your ph ...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

As phones' screens get closer to seven inches, now is the perfect time to take advantage of Android's split-screen mode. This feature has available since Android 7.0 Nougat and allows you to divide the screen into two halves, with a different app on each side. Although Pictur ...more

Despite its fifth-place finish in our ranking of the best transcriber apps on iOS, Voicera is still worth highlighting due to numerous factors that set it apart from the crowd. Besides being completely free to use on both iPhone and Android, the app's AI-based transcription se ...more

The convenience of storing things on the cloud can definitely make life easier, but if you're storing sensitive files, it could be a total disaster if anyone hacked your account. Some encryption services can be expensive, but if you just need it for personal use, there are som ...more

Your Note 3 is a magnificently large phone. So much so that it has a handful of built-in options that make it easier to use with one hand, collectively called "One-handed operation." While these settings are helpful, they have to be manually enabled and disabled whenever you'r ...more

On all Samsung Galaxy models, certain messaging and social media applications provide red badges on their home screen icons that indicate the number of notifications you've received. If you're like me, you probably don't appreciate these indicators. But thankfully, they're eas ...more

There are tons of good reasons that you might want to use Android on your desktop. Perhaps your favorite game is only available on Android, or maybe you use a messaging service that doesn't have a Windows companion app. Whatever the reason, if you've ever found yourself wishi ...more

Most of us have some sort of malware scanner or antivirus program on our computers, but what about our smartphones? A lot of people don't realize that computers aren't the only devices that are susceptible to malicious software and apps—they can follow you on your smartphone o ...more

Hi guys, this is going to be kinda like a follow up to my previous post on hacking facebook with the remote keylogger. If you haven't seen that post I suggest you do. So like you can click here. Anyway let's move on. Even though people are the weakest form of security, some o ...more

As of 2016, there are approximately 1.85 billion Android smartphones worldwide. This growing popularity has led to an increasing number hacks and cyber attacks against the OS. Unfortunately, Android users need more protection than what is offered by Google. The good thing is t ...more

When Apple recently unveiled iOS 8, many of the newly-added features in their mobile OS seemed eerily familiar to Android users. This is probably because the vast majority of these new features have been available in Android for quite some time. If imitation truly is the sinc ...more

Google has a habit of starting on new projects for Android, then hiding them away if they didn't quite complete them in time for a major release. We saw this with multi-window mode last year (which is now an official Nougat feature), and this year, there was the hidden night m ...more

Nearly every connection to the internet is dependent on the Domain Name System. DNS, as it's more commonly called, translates domain names like gadgethacks.com into IP addresses, which is what network devices use to route data. The problem with DNS servers is that they don't h ...more

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 p ...more

I don't know of a pain greater than of the one felt after cracking the screen of your phone. After I managed to crack my screen, rendered unusable, I immediately began to panic as to how I was going to recover all of the photos, videos, and documents stored on my device. After ...more

Out amongst the ether of the internet lies a completely different version of the Netflix library you've come to know and love. Because of licensing and rights fees, the streaming media giant maintains separate libraries for each country it services. Ultimately, this means that ...more

Safari has a convenient "Find" feature to search for specific words and phrases in a webpage, and Apple Books has a similar feature for e-books and PDFs. But those do nothing for you when searching text in the real world. Hardcover and paperback books are still very much a thi ...more

Ever since Facebook announced Spark AR at the 2017 F8 Developer's Conference, the social media giant has been looking for ways to implement its mobile augmented reality camera platform in the lives of everyday users. But aside from Facebook-centric pursuits, the company has a ...more

It's not so difficult to stay at home during the coronavirus lockdown when there's so much free entertainment to take advantage of. That seems to be the M.O. for many studios and streaming services, as they've made so many shows and movies available to the public for free. Tha ...more

If you're having a "Netflix and chill" night, the last thing you want to worry about is finding something to watch—after all, you have better things planned for the night. With so much streaming content now available for cord cutters, settling on just one title to watch can b ...more

If you somehow forgot the pattern, PIN, or password that locks your Android device, you might think you're out of luck and are destined to be locked out forever. These security methods are hard to crack by design, but in many cases, it's not entirely impossible to break into a ...more

A growing trend for many artists (most recently Kanye West) is to offer exclusive or experimental tracks on music streaming sites like SoundCloud or YouTube before releasing them anywhere else. On rare occasions, some of these great songs never make their way onto an official ...more