Smartphones

Report: Apple Is Slowing iPhone Production

The iPhone is Apple’s cash cow, pumping out over 60 percent of its revenue every year. So if Apple’s putting the brakes on iPhone production, implying a slowdown in sales sometime later this year, that could spell disaster for the world’s most valuable corporation. A report in the Wall Street Journal claims exactly that: Apple’s…

Use These Six Apps to Track Friends and Family on a Map

Any kind of individual geotracking may sound unnerving at first, but if you can control who is able to see your location and when, it can be a convenient way of keeping an eye on the kids, making sure everyone meets at the same bar, or working out how long it’ll be before your better…

5 Apps to Give Your Phone Extra Superpowers

If you’re wanting to go beyond the basic stuff everyone does with their phone—either by extending its capabilities or by taking more control over what it already does—we’ve got just the collection of tools for you. These automators, taskers, and shortcut makers can quickly hack Android or iOS to do your mobile bidding. Tasker What…

How to Update Your Google Calendar When Traveling Across Time Zones

As you make your way around the world or simply across the country, you may want your calendar appointments to shift to match your current time zone, or you might need them to stay fixed no matter where you are—fortunately Google Calendar lets you switch between both options if you delve into the settings for…

Access Android’s Hidden Safe Mode to Troubleshoot Problems

Just like Windows, Android has a special Safe Mode you can use if your device isn’t behaving as it should—all third-party apps are disabled, enabling you to see if your woes are being caused by one of those apps or something more fundamental that’s going on with your system. Here’s how to find it. On…

Virtual Reality Lets You Live the News Instead of Reading It

I look to my left and see a sorrowful parent sitting on the curb, comforting his daughter. I look to my right, and I see notes of sympathy among many flowers. Around me, I hear people murmuring respects and singing in French. I’m in the middle of a vigil in the streets of Paris, a…

Watch a North Korean Military Parade In VR With This Free App

I went to Pyongyang today: I stayed in an immaculate North Korean hotel room, watched as the country’s ballistic missiles paraded past me, and saw thousands of followers wave flags and flowers in honor of their leader. No. I didn’t have a special invitation from Kim Jong-un. I went in virtual reality. In a collaboration…

You Will Finally Be Able to Buy the OnePlus 2 Like a Normal Phone

When it came out earlier this year, we said that the OnePlus 2 is a great phone with an invite problem: you can only spend your money on OnePlus’s phone if you have an invite to do so. It’s a dumb system, and starting tomorrow, it will finally die. In a blog post, OnePlus has…

Samsung Has a New Smartphone Boss

J.K. Shin, Samsung’s longtime head of mobile (and the boss who oversaw the company’s rise and fall as the Android kingpin), is moving on. Samsung’s smartphone division hasn’t had a particularly healthy last few years: while it owned the market with the Galaxy S3 and S4, the follow-up phones have failed to captivate the market,…

How to Quickly Flush the RAM on Your iPhone

Apps misbehaving? Phone acting sluggish? If you’re experiencing any kind of problem with your iPhone, then emptying out the device’s RAM can often do wonders. It effectively ditches everything the phone was trying to juggle in its memory at once. Restarting your iPhone is one way of doing this, but there is a quicker option.…

Clever Physics Explains Why a Dropped Phone Lands Screen-Down

Believe it or not, it’s not Sod’s Law that dictates a dropped smartphone will land screen down: it’s actually the same physics that influences buttered toast in free-fall. As part of a PR exercise to encourage people to buy its shatterproof phone, Motorola set physicist Robert Matthews— best known for his authoritative paper, “Tumbling toast,…

Lumia 950 Review: Microsoft’s Best Ideas Still Don’t Fit In Your Hand

Microsoft’s Lumia 950 is the first interesting Windows phone to be released in a while, mostly because it’s the first phone designed specifically for Windows 10. It’s a phone created with the ambition of turning around Microsoft’s flailing mobile efforts. At the very least, Microsoft has made a smartphone that’s usable. After forcing myself to…

The Next Cheap Android Phone Comes From…Pepsi?

It’s pretty easy to find a random Chinese Android phone to slap your brand on these days. So easy, in fact, that Pepsi is having a go. Made by the Shenzhen Scooby Communication Equipment Co, the Pepsi P1 doesn’t actually look half-bad. There’s a 1080p screen, aluminum unibody design, 2GB of RAM, and even a…

Walmart Will Sell You an Android Phone for $10

Need a burner but want to run the apps you’re used to? Walmart has the answer, in the shape of its incredibly cheap new LG Android smartphones, which you can bag for $10. Before you get too excited, it’s worth managing your expectations. The LG handsets feature a 3.8-inch 480×320 LCD screen, a dual-core 1.2…

A Touchscreen That Knows the Angle of Your Finger Is Way Cooler than 3D Touch

What’s most impressive about this touchscreen that knows the exact angle of the finger touching it is that it’s the same display hardware found in every smartphone on the market right now. Its special abilities are all enabled through software, meaning your own phone is already capable of this. Apple wants you to believe that…

OnePlus X Review: Great on the Outside, Just OK on the Inside

When OnePlus founder and CEO Carl Pei first showed off the new X in our Manhattan office, I was impressed. Nice glass design, kind of a hybrid iPhone/Xperia look. The textbook definition of “premium.” But it’s really what he said next that got me. Update: The OnePlus X is no longer invite-only, and you can…

9 Free Apps to Get Fit Using Only Your Smartphone

You don’t necessarily need the help of a wearable or a smartwatch to help track your steps and monitor your activity—most modern-day smartphones have all the sensors and hardware you need to keep an eye on how much (or little) exercise you’re getting. Here are 9 apps up to the task of improving your fitness,…

How to Exclude Certain Apps From Android’s Battery-Saving Doze Feature

You may have heard one of the new features in Android Marshmallow is Doze, a standby mode for your apps that slows down background processes and pings to the cloud while your device isn’t being used. While there’s no way to turn Doze itself on or off, you can exclude certain apps from it if…

The HTC One A9’s price is up and down like a yo-yo. After starting life at $400 then jumping up to $500, it’s now on sale in the HTC online store for $400 once more. Whether you wanna buy the thing, though, is another matter entirely.

Droid Turbo 2 Review: Definitely Shatterproof, But Also an Eyesore

There is no shortage of high performance Android phones out there, and it can be hard to find a good reason to go with one over the other. The Droid Turbo 2 has a couple of features that say hey over here, pick me. pick me!! But a great phone has to feel right in…