Maximize Battery Life

If your phone has an AMOLED display, it doesn't waste any battery to power black portions of the screen. This is because the individual pixels that make up an AMOLED screen emit their own light, which means the backlight you'd find behind a traditional LCD screen is not presen ...more

The Pixel XL reportedly uses the same exact display panel as the Galaxy S7 Edge, but according to third-party testing, Samsung's flagship gets at least ten percent brighter than Google's. The same can be said of the regular Pixel, which tops out just shy of its bigger brother' ...more

While Leap Motion and Microsoft are looking to capture natural human motion with cameras, Enflux figured out how to do it with a shirt and pants that feel completely natural. Video: . Everyone's trying to figure out the best way to interact with virtual environments now that s ...more

Microsoft has the HoloLens and Google has their money on Magic Leap (as well as their own Tango and Cardboard, among others), but we've heard next to nothing about how Apple plans to enter the virtual/augmented/mixed reality space. A new patent offers some clues. Apple could ...more

While it's been rumored for a few months, Apple finally unveiled its new 4-inch iPhone SE at the Apple Special Event on March 21st. Apple sold 30 million 4-inch iPhones in 2015, many of which by first-time Apple buyers. With Apple's flagships getting bigger and bigger, the co ...more

Android Marshmallow introduced a pair of new battery-saving features called Doze and App Standby, and according to the general consensus, both features are a rousing success. Average battery life has increased dramatically for virtually every phone or tablet running Android 6. ...more

There have been plenty of rumors and lots of speculation about the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, and now we're finally getting our first look at Samsung's newest flagships—in the form of two images. It looks as if Samsung has eliminated the "camera bump" on the new Galaxy S7 Edge.. T ...more

The Ring/Silent switch on the side of the iPhone has always had one purpose—to toggle ring mode/silent mode. But in iOS 9, Apple gave us another choice, and that's locking the orientation of the screen. This could be a great new feature for some of you. Personally, I usually ...more

Believe it or not, not every Apple lover is willing to make the commitment and fork over $350+ for the Apple Watch. Like many others, I'm not willing to put that much faith into Apple's first attempt at wearable tech. Thankfully, if you or a buddy have a Moto 360 (which costs ...more

Even if my phone has only 1% of battery life left, I'll keep using it until I can get to a power source somewhere. Most times I never make it to a charger, and my device eventually powers down on its own. Yes, there is a low battery warning, but it'd be more helpful if we cou ...more

With audible alerts and subtle vibrations, the Apple Watch makes it difficult to miss incoming notifications. But soon enough you'll realize that not every notification is worth receiving on your Watch and can ultimately render the experience annoying under particular circumst ...more

Looking back at my childhood in the '90s, I can't help but feel like I was deceived. Movies that took place in the "future," like in the year 2015, would showcase awesome technology. You know, self-driving or flying cars, hoverboards, and virtual displays controlled with hand ...more

With developments from tech giants Apple and Samsung being shared throughout the interwebs, the term smartwatch has become increasingly popular over the last year. That being said, smartwatches have been around for a while. The Pebble watch and Sony's SmartWatch were out befo ...more

Transparent status bars and new lock screens weren't the only new additions that came with the Galaxy S3 KitKat update. Along with better battery life and a smoother user experience, we got a new toggles design and recent apps menu. Of course, Samsung's infinite wisdom left th ...more

It's here... Update: May 1, 2014 We got word of an imminent update yesterday, and it's here today! Our 2012 flagships should be seeing over the air updates starting today, and the Android 4.4 build has been officially confirmed by Sprint. While a staged rollout will eventual ...more

The new HTC One and Nexus series devices have already replaced their physical navigation keys with soft keys, and it's inevitable that we'll see more and more of this on future mobiles. Samsung continues to buck the trend entirely, but no manufacturer as gone as far as to remo ...more

The old "my battery is dead" excuse for not calling your mother may soon be a thing of the past. A team from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), led by Professor Jo Byeong-jin, has developed a "wearable thermo-element" that can be built into clothin ...more

The more you use your device, the more you'll download and install apps. These apps range from helpful to fun to simple distractions, but after a while, you may notice slow down on your device or a marked reduction in battery life. One potential cause can be that plenty of ap ...more

The status bar is an omnipresent force on our Samsung Galaxy S3s; always there to give us that vital information about battery life, date and time, Wi-Fi access, and much more. But there's just something about that default black bar that's so...boring. When Google launched An ...more

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 ...more

If you're anything like me, you'd like the ability to fully exit your iPhone apps to help free up memory, improve battery life, stop background processes, and fix unresponsive apps. The thing is, you can, with the help of the app switcher. Force-closing apps also helps keep yo ...more

For being an inexpensive tablet, the Nexus 7 packs a 1,280 x 800 pixel resolution into a relatively small display, offering a very sharp-looking 216 pixels per inch. What does that mean? It's one of the best e-readers on the market. An often overlooked feature that's embedded ...more

When it comes to our smartphones and tablets, we're always on the lookout for ways to beat the oh so common rapid battery depletion problem that affects practically every mobile device. We'll do anything and everything to keep our battery life at an optimum, from turning off c ...more

For most people, the battery life on a DSLR is more than sufficient, but if you want to do a really long exposure or time-lapse, one charge might not last long enough to get the shot you want. You can always connect it to an extension cord to charge while you shoot, but that c ...more

The Jelly Bean update brought a lot of cool features to the Samsung Galaxy S3, but one nasty bug remained. Something was causing "Android System" usage to be consistently high. Of course, the percentage of this process that is used is dependent on what you're doing at any give ...more

Inverting colors on your mobile device not only saves battery life, but also helps prevent straining your eyes, especially during the nighttime. Bright white screens interfere not only with your eyes, but with your sleeping patterns, as well. The bright lights greatly reduce y ...more

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. If you are expecting an important email and want to check your phone durin ...more

If you have a Barnes & Noble Nook, you may be surprised to find that your eReader can do a lot more than just display ebooks, which makes it a great alternative to those more expensive all-in-one tablets that do everything (seriously, everything). If you want to get more bang ...more

Samsung catches a lot of flak for all of the "bloatware" it preinstalls on its Galaxy line of devices. Many users complain that "TouchWiz," Samsung's custom Android skin, causes lag with its overabundance of features. But some of these features can actually be pretty handy, li ...more

If you lose your AirPods, AirPods Pro, or AirPods Max, you can turn to Find My to locate them. But sometimes, things don't go according to plan, and many things can go wrong. For example: Nothing happens whenever you try to play a sound through your AirPods. Their location wo ...more

It's easy to forget just how cool face filters are. Augmented reality has come a long way, and apps like Instagram now offer a suite of impressive effects to play with, but some of the best ones aren't easily found. There is a treasure trove of exclusive, custom face filters t ...more

As a parent, navigating smartphone usage with your children can be a perilous journey as you hand them that new device they've always wanted, or even your older hand-me-down phone or tablet. Smartphones offer a lot of opportunity and convenience, but not without potential ris ...more

Mobile gaming has exploded in recent years, with experts predicting 2.4 billion global mobile players by the end of 2019. It already accounts for 47% of the worldwide gaming market, besting console and PC. No wonder we've seen the rise of gaming smartphones, a class of phones ...more

Apple's latest update, iOS 14.2, is finally here. As the name implies, it's the second major update to hit iPhones since Apple released iOS 14 in the fall. The update brings at least 13 new features and changes to all compatible iPhones, including over 100 new emoji and eight ...more

There are a lot of things your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 can do straight out of the box, but there's also a ton of things it can't, or simply could be better at. That's why most of us end up rooting—to enhance the mobile experience. Today, I'll be showing you some of my favorite ...more

Do you have a lot of stagnant energy in your life right now? Maybe all you need to do is check to make sure the drains are working properly in your kitchen and bathroom. Or place a small fish tank somewhere in your home to attract more wealth and prosperity. Feng shui is an a ...more

When it comes to squeezing as much battery life as possible out of our smartphones, most people aim for software solutions, or ones that can otherwise be easily managed right from the touchscreen. Managing Wi-Fi and data connections, fine-tuning screen brightness, and install ...more

It's tough to keep pace with Apple lately. As expected, only one day after the public release of iOS 11.2.5, the company released iOS 11.3 to developers. A day after that, Apple pushed it out to public beta testers, too. With new Animoji, more transparent battery information, ...more

If you cover a particular area in tech long enough, you develop certain pet peeves, and one of mine happens to be devices that attempt to keep us wed to the Google Glass style of augmented reality. And while I remain mostly uninterested in such devices, one of these products r ...more

Update 1/17: Tim Cook chimed in about the upcoming iOS upgrade with expanded battery health data. We'll expand on that below. Today, Apple announced that they'd be dropping the price of their battery replacement by $50, from $79 to $29. While this will help ailing consumers' ...more

If you're in the market for a non-root ad-blocker, developer Julian Klode has an app that you'll definitely want to check out. It uses Android's VPN system in a similar manner to alternative apps like NetGuard and AdGuard, but it's got a new twist that should save lots of batt ...more

If you upgrade to an iPhone 12, 12 mini, 12 Pro, or 12 Pro Max, you can take advantage of super-fast 5G speeds, but which 5G network are you actually getting and is it better than the others? Depending on your carrier, you may see 5G, 5G+, 5G UW, or 5G E in the status bar next ...more

Apple has their regular iPhone 11, then two higher-end "Pro" models. Samsung went the other way — they have the Galaxy S20 and S20+, then there's the S20 Ultra. But one thing these smartphone lines do have in common is the base model flagship. How do they compare? Where the i ...more

Just as we published our rumor roundup for the HTC U11 Plus, the internet happened: A Facebook video revealed the flagship HTC U11 Plus and the midrange HTC U Life in all their glory. The video was in German and has since been taken down, but according to a translation, it rev ...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

It's time to trip out with your tablet. If you're not looking to drain that precious battery life with a fancy-looking live wallpaper, then apply an optical illusion that appears to be moving on your Nexus 7 (or any other Android device) instead. Many of these visual illusion ...more

Have you ever noticed how your home screen and lock screen wallpaper moves underneath your notification, app icons, really anything on display? It's a cool effect, but to some, might be a bit jarring. On top of that, it also uses up precious battery life. If you're sick of see ...more

Apple's AirPods Pro offer three different audio modes for your convenience: "Transparency," which pumps in sound around you,"Noise Cancellation," which actively blocks out surrounding sounds, and "Off," which uses neither mode. Off saves battery, and does a decent job at passi ...more

Google pushed a new kind of augmented reality walking navigation to the mainstream last year, and now startup Phiar is hoping users will use its AR app in the same way for driving navigation. The company is currently inviting the public to sign up for its private beta launch, ...more

We have seen Kickstarter-launched wearables before, but this one is particularly unique and may even have you blinking a bit in wonder when you see how it functions. Startup GWD Bio-Intelligence has just launched pre-sales for its HiiDii glasses, a device that allows the user ...more

Until Star Wars-style 3D hologram projection technology becomes commonplace, the near future of certain kinds of remote work is in robotics. Now, a new dynamic is using augmented reality to give this kind of telepresence a kind of superpower. This week, Double Robotics unveil ...more

Sports technology company Form is testing the waters for augmented reality wearables with a product aimed at a very specific user group. On Tuesday, the company unveiled Form Swim Goggles, a $200 pair of goggles outfitted with a see-through display designed to feed activity d ...more

If you've been paying attention to the smartphone industry, you've certainly noticed a rise in dark mode lately. With most phones now sporting OLED panels, which use less power to display darker colors, users have been begging developers to include a dark theme in their apps. ...more

Compared to the original AirPods, Apple's second-generation AirPods have better battery life, Hey Siri support, a more stable connection, faster switching between devices and call connections, less latency for gaming, and an optional Wireless Charging Case. If you plan on preo ...more

If you use the mobile Slack app, whether for work, school, or play, you know that the background color in discussions for channels, threads, and direct messages is white and that most of the text is black. Unlike with the sidebar, there's no way to customize the colors that ap ...more

Augmented reality developers who have exhausted their treasure trove of video tutorials and panels from the recent Magic Leap developer conference can now shift their continuing education attention to Unity. The Unite Los Angeles 2018 conference took place on October 23, with ...more

We've spent years waiting to see what all the secretive fuss was about, and now that the device is in our hands, we can finally begin showing you images of what the Magic Leap One experience looks like. This is especially important given the fact that the vast majority of the ...more

The S9 and S9+ are both fantastic phones. However, there's no getting around the fact that the S9+ has its advantages. In fact, it's an objectively better smartphone than its smaller counterpart — Samsung has given the S9+ features not found in the S9, meaning you'll be missin ...more

With the Galaxy S9 finally making its debut, flagship season is officially underway. But even though Samsung's latest offerings are the newest phones out there, they already face some stiff competition — namely, the LG V30. The LG V30 has only been on the market since Septemb ...more

Just a week after news leaked out about Intel's 2018 plans for smartglasses, the company revealed what the device looks like and how it works in a new video (bottom of this page) released on Monday. Intel's Vaunt smartglasses weigh just 50 grams and come closest to looking li ...more