This is one of the most bizarre news stories coming out of the Android community this week. The Interesting Engineering page on Google+ posted a picture of a smartphone airbag concept. The idea is best described through the picture posted above. Basically, your Android smartphone (or iPhone, like the one in the picture) would be able to monitor sudden changes in trajectory or motion that would suggest the phone was being thrown or dropped onto the ground. When the phone registered these…
AndroidAuthority is one of the most influential websites in the Android community. And the website recently chose its top Android smartphone of the year for 2012. In results that should surprise nobody, the Samsung Galaxy S3 came out on top. The specific name of the AndroidAuthority award is “the most important Android smartphone of the year.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best, but it does mean a smartphone has achieved a unique blend of popularity, performance, style, and…
Many Android smartphones come pre-installed with Flipboard, a popular news aggregator app that pulls stories from major new and sports agencies as well as your Facebook and Twitter pages. You flip through pages, see what you need to see, and that’s it. But for whatever reason, Flipboard never had a dedicated tablet version. After fans began clamoring for the app on popular Android tablets like the Note 10.1, Nexus 10, or Galaxy Tab, the development team behind Flipboard finally took…
If you’re one of those people who gets excited about incremental updates to the Gmail app (don’t be shy), then you probably noticed that Gmail 4.2 came with a cool swipe-to-delete feature that allows you to swipe to the left or right to banish an email to your trash bin. But if you downloaded the Gmail 4.2 app, you may have noticed that you don’t have access to this feature by default. You have to enable it yourself. Here’s a step-by-step guide to enabling swipe-to-delete in Gmail…
Android 4.2 has already been installed on a wide number of devices around the world. But most users don’t know how to use all of the cool new features in Android 4.2. If you want to get the most out of your Android 4.2 upgrade, then make sure you’ve taken a peek at all of the following features: 5) Developer Options Wait a minute. I’m not an Android developer, you’re thinking. I have no right to access developer options in my Android device, right? Wrong! Android 4.2 opens up the…
Nobody likes watching their smartphone slowly die when they’re out late at night. And it’s easy to hate your tablet when it dies halfway through a ten-hour airplane ride. So how can you make sure these situations never happen to you? Well, one of the best ways is to look at the battery life rankings of various Android tablets and smartphones. As reported by TechCrunch, some Androids have incredibly powerful battery lives, while others fall disappointingly short. How do you know which one…
For those who don’t already know, there are two broad groups of Android devices. There are stock Android devices which run the ‘vanilla’ Android operating system, and then there are third-party Androids which run a modified version of that operating system. Any device with ‘Nexus’ in its name – like the Nexus 4, Nexus 7, or Samsung Galaxy Nexus – is considered a stock Android device with the basic Android OS installed. Meanwhile, popular Android smartphones like the Samsung…
Google has a real winner on its hands with the Nexus 4. It’s arguably the world’s most cost-effective Android superphone. At an unlocked price of just $299 for the 8GB version and $349 for the 16GB version, the Nexus 4 has been winning the hearts, minds, and wallets of users all over the world. But there are two major flaws with the Nexus 4. The first flaw is that the Nexus 4 doesn’t include 4G LTE coverage. That’s Google’s fault, as they didn’t feel 4G LTE functionality was…
When you first get a new Android, there are some common apps that you should download right away from the Google Play Store. Most people use Facebook, for example, and we’ve all used Google Maps to avoid begin lost. Whether you just bought a new Android or you want to make sure you’re not missing out on some important Android apps, here are the seven most popular Android apps in the world based on the fact that they all have over 100 million installs: 1) Facebook The world’s most…
If a picture can say a thousand words, then perhaps a video can speak a million words in a matter of seconds. The rise of Facebook and Twitter has completely redefined the act of sharing your thoughts and moments with friends and family. However, in this rapidly paced world filled with an increasing number of people with short attention spans, it is important to polish up your innovations with healthy doses of creativity and excitement in order to stay relevant in the market. Platforms like…
