Look, tests are no fun, and doing poorly on them is rarely an option. Whether you're studious or a slacker, everyone needs a little boost now and again. While students have found ways to cheat as long as tests have existed, the invention of smartphones has greatly enhanced the potential to get ... creative.
If you're on iOS 11.4.1 or iOS 12 and go more than an hour without unlocking your iPhone, an "Unlock iPhone to Use Accessories" message will appear whenever you connect your iPhone to a computer or other device that tries to use the Lightning cable's data lines. This is to protect you, but it can be annoying if you have no reason to believe that law enforcement or criminals will have access to your iPhone.
This week, Samsung officially kicked off the Oreo Beta Program for the Galaxy S8 and S8+ in North America and several other markets. The full list of changes is quite substantial, so we'll be running through them in a series of posts detailing what's new. First up, the Galaxy phones inherit notification channels from Android 8.0.
It's been an exciting week for Tesla. First, Elon Musk offered a preview of the nearly complete Model 3, then China tech giant Tencent invested $1.78 billion in the company. Now, Tesla has officially updated its Autopilot software today for Tesla owners with Autopilot 2.0 hardware.
Having control of your basic motor functions is something most people take for granted, but for individuals with Parkinson's disease, that is not the case.
Super Mario Bros. is one of the most renowned games in history. It helped resurrect a dying video game industry in the mid-'80s and still remains one of the best-selling video games of all time—one reason why the new NES Classic Edition is so popular and impossible to get these days. Its simple story of a plumber trying to rescue a princess resulted in a video game empire for Nintendo.
If you have any group chats going, you're surely familiar with this scenario: One person sends a picture, then, within 30 seconds or so, all other participants chime in with one-word responses like "Cute," or "Awesome." It's a social nicety, so you have to expect this behavior, but that doesn't make it any less annoying when your phone randomly beeps and vibrates ten times in a row because of it.
When ringtones and vibration alerts miss the mark and fail to grab your attention, causing you to miss an important call or text, LED flash alerts are a great backup plan. While we already showed how to activate this on Samsung devices, the apps shown below make this feature easier to toggle on and off. Plus, they work on devices that don't have flash alerts included in the system settings.
How many times have you witnessed a beautiful moment that you would have loved to capture on film, only to watch it slip away as you struggled to unlock your phone and open your camera app?
Lock screen apps are a dime a dozen, but every now and then one pops up that defies expectations. We've already covered some good ones for the Samsung Galaxy S4, including Picture Password Lockscreen (which gives you secret unlock gestures), SlideLock (which improves notifications), and TimePIN (which gives you a more clever PIN).
Allowing us to easily get features that would otherwise be available only through flashing mods and custom ROMs, Xposed Installer has been a godsend since its development, simplifying the sometimes tasking and potentially harmful process of changing the core components of Android's operating system.
I've said it before, but there are few things quite as annoying (or embarrassing) as having your smartphone go off at a time where it just shouldn't happen. Imagine a nice, intimate evening with your significant other; you dim the lights, snuggle up, and "this classic" comes on. Or, your phone goes off in a meeting, and your boss gives you that look.
Phone interruptions are commonplace, as is evident by my historically epic missed phone call list, ranging from annoying sales people to my mom checking in every five minutes to see if I'm still alive.
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.
Ringing and vibrating alerts on your smartphone can be a bit distracting when you're at work or school, but silent alerts can be a little too subtle if you want to know when you get a notification. Even the tiny LED alerts can be easily missed. So, is there's something in-between loud and almost-not-there alerts? In today's softModder tutorial, I'm going to show you how to get flash alerts on your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and other Android devices. That way, whenever you receive a call or text m...
Just because your Samsung Galaxy Note 2 is on silent doesn't mean that the world stops spinning. Emergencies can pop up at any time, even when your phone is put away during a lecture in class, in the library, or at an important business meeting.
While the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 has an integrated LED for notifications, it only works for a few things, like charging and low battery, and it only flashes two main colors (red and blue) when the screen's off. As someone that usually has their phone on silent or vibrate, it's hard to tell when I receive important messages or notifications. Sure, I could set a specific vibration or ringtone for individual apps, but that can quickly get annoying and distracting, especially at work or school.
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.
Custom ring and text tones are great for knowing who's attempting to contact you without having to actually look at your iPhone. However, this feature is useless when your device is in silent/vibrate-only mode.
I've called 911 accidentally more than a few times on my iPhone using the Emergency SOS triggers, but it's also just as easy to trigger an unintentional call to emergency services using an Apple Watch. These accidental 911 calls can put a strain on local public-safety answering points, or call centers, as well as local authorities and emergency medical technicians.
My reliance on autocorrect has made me a horrible speller. I take it for granted that it'll catch all my mistakes, but it only ends up making matters worse (especially when it inadvertently makes correct words wrong). So instead of relying on autocorrect to fix typos, why not try to completely prevent mistakes from happening in the first place?
You have a cool picture that you want to show someone, but when you hand your phone over, they start swiping through all of your photos. Surely, you've encountered this scenario before. I definitely have.
Starting on Android 4.2, a new feature called Quick Settings was integrated into the Notification tray, which allows you to quickly turn on and off certain device features such as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, etc. These toggles also provides a shortcut to the feature's more advanced settings by long-pressing on the icon.
The sound I get when receiving a new text message is the camel from that Geico commercial yelling "Hump Day!" Sure, I could find a less obnoxious notification sound, but it makes me laugh every time, and that's important.
SNAP. That's the sound of your Samsung Galaxy S3's camera going off. Not that big of deal, unless you're trying to take some top secret pics or some candid shots of your friends. The shutter sound gives you away, and the next thing you know, you're deleting pictures. On most other smartphones, if the users turns the phone on silent or vibrate, the shutter sound is killed. If that doesn't do the trick, usually muting the shutter sound itself in the settings will do the trick. But for some of y...
Apple has begun selling their new iPad mini at stores around the world starting today. The mini, a smaller and cheaper alternative to the larger iPad, has a starting price of $329 and is expected to sell around 1 to 1.5 million units in the first weekend, far below the 3 million iPad 3s sold last March (who all probably want their money back). Something that's sure to be brought up in the following days, as with most new devices, is the battery life. As we previously provided you tips on savi...
Our everyday lives are inundated with displays from smartphones, computers, tablets, TVs, and other devices, so it's important to find ways to limit your screen use wherever possible to improve your overall digital well-being. One simple thing you can do if you have an Apple Watch is make your watch tell you the time so you don't have to look yourself — and this little-known feature is easy to unlock.
Haptic feedback and vibration of our smartphones have come a long way in recent years. These features are much more premium now than they once were, but most users are still unable to adjust the intensity for notifications or phone calls. Most higher-end devices make less noise on surfaces than in the past, but adjusting these values can still come in handy even today.
Extra hardware buttons have become a trend with smartphones lately. Often, these are unmodifiable buttons designed to launch a voice assistant. That isn't the case with the BlackBerry KEY2. Making a return from the KEYone is the Convenience Key, which also received an upgrade.
While Sony as a company is well-known in the United States, it smartphones are not. For years, Sony has stuck with a boxy design with sharp edges and large bezels — however, they're finally getting with the trends. As a result, the Xperia XZ2 Premium offers a rare combo: A super powerful phone which is also pretty sexy.
Students have been passing notes in class for decades, so what's the big deal about sending a quick text message? Everybody does it, even your teacher was surely guilty of covertly communicating with his or her peers back when they were in high school.
Google's Android L developer preview has given Android a more refined look, with developers excited to update their apps with the new Material Design UI. While some apps are slowly getting updated, QKSMS (QK for quick) is a 3rd-party text messaging app that was built with Material Design in mind.
Here's a routine that I'm sure all of us smartphone users go through at least several times a day. You notice your Samsung Galaxy S4's notification LED blinking, grab your phone to see what it is, and enter your PIN. Only instead of anything important, you find that it's just some online store enticing you with sales promotions, or some other email that you could have easily done without.
Sometimes... no, most of the time, I don't want to do anything, so I was excited to find a developer teaming up with Sir Isaac Newton to create an application that encouraged my slothfulness.
Smartwatches are great for notifications. No need to dig your phone out of your pocket or purse when someone texts you — just glance at your wrist! It's great for driving, walking, and any other activities where you need to stay connected to your surroundings. Except it can still be a little distracting, depending on your settings.
It seems like each day our phones become more integrated into our lives. School, work, shopping — so many tasks either require a phone or heavily benefit from one. But our phones are a double-edged sword that can easily distract us and harm our mental health as well.
When you misplace your Android device, finding it with the Android Device Manager, or even better, Whistle Me, can help you find it no problem. But what about when your phone is not just hiding under the couch cushions? Your worst nightmare just came true. It's officially gone.
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 to perform certain functions without even touching your phone.
Normally, you'd have to jailbreak your iPad or iPhone to play any games that aren't available in the iOS App Store, like the now-extinct Flappy Bird game. But this isn't the case if you want to play some of your favorite old school Nintendo classics.
Back in 2007, YouTube user HouseholdHacker posted a parody video on how to make a high-def speaker for under a buck. MythBusters took on the challenge and busted it.
