Apps & Software

How do the Broadcom, Qualcomm, Huawei, and Trump tariff headlines affect you, and your phone? It seems the war of words between the United States and China is moving to a war on trade and a fight over intellectual property theft is brewing. President Donald Trump announced new tariffs on Chinese exports as a way of retaliating against China’s IP theft. A crackdown on China’s rampant IP issues is long overdue and it’s also a convenient solution to the separate problem of competition in manufacturing between the U.S. and China. The exact details of the tariffs have been rolling out over the past day orRead More →

Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds (PUBG) lit the world on fire last year. It sold millions before it even left Early Access on Steam, and kicked off the battle royale gaming craze we’re experiencing right now. Now this FPS juggernaut is on mobile. In PUBG you play as a mercenary who parachutes, along with up to 99 other players, onto an island. Once they land, players scavenge for weapons, ammo, armor, and other supplies in a last-man-standing death match. The game’s map starts large, but quickly shrinks as the electrical storm around the island collapses into progressively smaller circles, forcing players together as the game goes on.Read More →

At the end of March this year, Google announced its plans for shutting down the goo.gl URL shortening service. Those who have never used the service before won’t be able to create new short links starting from April 13, 2018, while existing users can continue to use all features until March 30, 2019. The service will be discontinued on that day, but all the links created will still work. If you’ve been using Google’s URL shortener, it’s time to think about transitioning to a different service. In this post, we take a look at the five best ones available. 1. Bitly Bitly Bitly is oneRead More →

Update (04/10/2018): The LineageOS team has issued an apology following their April Fools’ joke that made headlines last week. The joke consisted of two parts — one relating to cryptocurrency and another, which attracted the most complaints, involved a persistent “validation error” notification (read more on the specifics in the original coverage below).  In a message on its official blog (via Android Police), LineageOS’s ciwrl said that, in hindsight, the notification “was in bad taste for a platform such as ours.” “While we did not set out to inflict harm to our users, its clear by the feedback that we’ve received that many saw [the notification] as notRead More →

Pokémon Go features a new event that centers around Kanto, the series’ starting region. The event nets players increased spawn rates on certain Pokémon, new boss raids, and more. The event has only gone live in Japan, though that could change soon. Even though Pokémon Go now offers creatures from the Johto and Hoenn regions, it did not forget where it started from. The Kanto region where the series as a whole got its bearings, making Pokémon Go’s new Kanto event all the more special. Already live in Japan, the event will increase the spawn rates of first-generation starter Pokémon Charmander, Squirtle, and Bulbasaur. The increasedRead More →

If you like games that push mobile devices to their limits and need a new puzzle adventure title in your life then you might want to check out Returner 77—a sci-fi mystery title that launches on Android tomorrow via the Google Play Store. Developed by the somewhat awkwardly named Danish studio, Fantastic, yes, Returner 77 is a 3D adventure game in the vein of the Myst series with first-person, escape the room-style puzzles which should please fans of games like The Room and the excellent Agent A.   10 best escape games for Android Escape games are a sub-genre of puzzle games. They are vastlyRead More →

Instagram is rolling out a new feature to certain Android devices called Instagram Focus. Using Instagram Focus, you can take portrait mode-style images right in the Instagram app. Only Android devices with native portrait mode capabilities will be able to use Instagram Focus. Back in March, we told you about how a hidden portrait mode setting in Instagram’s code pointed to the possibility of a fully-fledged portrait mode camera in the app. It looks like our assumption was dead on, as today Instagram announced Focus, a portrait mode camera feature for select Android devices. If you have an Android phone that supports portrait mode (otherwise knownRead More →

Welcome to our Android 8.0 Oreo update tracker. Following its public release in August 2017, Oreo is steadily finding its way to more and more Android smartphones. Google has been working to reduce fragmentation and ensure that more devices receive the latest Android version in a timely fashion. It’s still a work in progress though; the Android 8.0 Oreo update is still far from widespread, as the Android version distribution figures show. You’re probably wondering “When will my phone get Oreo?” This tracker will help with that question. We’re collecting all the information we can find on the rollout of Android 8, including past OTAsRead More →