Phones

You want one, but which is the best weather app for Android? With so many options to choose from, which is going to strike that delicate balance between useful and easy on the eyes? Are they worth spending for? We run through a few to give you a great idea of just what’s what with Android weather apps. From some familiar faces to a few niche oddities, we present the best weather apps for Android, even crowning a winner! The Weather Channel Who’s going to beat the standard, right? The one who started our fascination with weather in the modern […]

What’s Summer without having the mood set with live Android wallpapers? If you don’t take a minute to stop and enjoy the short season, it’ll pass you by. Once Fall is here, Summer is at its furthest point from us, so better take advantage while you can. You don’t have to put sunscreen on and get sand between your toes, though; in fact, you never even have to put your phone down! Let’s face it, you’re not going to put your phone down, even if we suggested it. In our connected lives, our smartphones are the central nervous system, and

Technically this app doesn’t require root access, BUT it definitely makes it much cooler. The app I’m referring to is called Helium and it’s creator, Koush, needs no introduction in the rooting world. He’s responsible for creating some of the most well known rooting apps (ROM manager, Clockworkmod Recoveries, etc.) which have millions of downloads each. This new app, though, is something he says is “…the missing app sync and backup solution for Android”. Frankly, I can’t argue. Helium allows you to not only backup all of your apps and their data on your device, but it also has the

Rooting is the process of gaining root access on a device. This allows us full access to all aspects of the device’s operating system. The most popular thing to do once you gain root access is to flash a custom recovery image. Custom ROMs, overclocking kernels, adding certain new features, etc. all require what is known as a custom recovery image. When an Android device ships from the manufacturer, it has a recovery mode built in. This is used to restore the device if it becomes unresponsive and to perform updates to the operating system. Once you have root access, however, we can replace this recovery image

A quick overview of what ART is and why you might want to install it. Any app on Android has to be compiled (translated to run on the device from the raw app code) to run on your device. The program that does this compiling at the moment on Android is called Dalvik and it uses a JIT (just in time) compiler to compile the Android app’s code as you open it (just in time making more sense now?). This has its benefits as it allows less storage to be needed on the device (since the compiling takes place every

Screen recording on an Android device isn’t a new concept to those with root access, they’ve been doing it for years frankly. But for the millions of users that don’t root, screen captures (still shots as opposed to video recordings) are all they’ve been able to do. This changes with Android 4.4 (aka KitKat). Now you can use ADB (Android Debug Bridge aka using the Android SDK) to achieve this without root access at all. Simply setup the Android SDK, plug in the device and type the one line command to begin recording. Here’s how to record your Android device’s

When Google recently announced that their new Google Home launcher would be able to run on older versions of Android and not just Android 4.4, I figured some of you might want it, too. Let’s face it, anytime I can replace the Samsung TouchWiz UI, or LG UI, with a Google UI version of the app, I’m going to do it (or at least try it out). Here’s how to install it while waiting for the official download to be available from the Play Store at a later time. I. Before You Begin Allow your phone to install non-market apps

I’m all for combining apps. So when Google announced the new Hangouts app that allows me to use SMS from inside it, I wanted it. Let’s face it, anytime I can replace the Samsung TouchWiz UI, or LG UI, with a Google UI version of the app, I’m going to do it. Hangouts, if you aren’t familiar, is Google’s old Gtalk instant messaging platform rebranded as “Hangouts”. It is integrated with Google+ and now, thanks to this update, is even integrated with your SMS. Even though Google announced this new version, they haven’t put it in the Play Store for

This post is sponsored by Moborobo, a great free all-in-one Android management tool to manage contacts, apps, and even SMS from your desktop. Still have all your contacts in Yahoo? Haven’t joined the Google bandwagon yet? Eh, no big deal. Unless, of course, you might be trying to sync your contacts on your new Android device since it has no option to sync with Yahoo. So what do you do? Here’s how to get all your Yahoo contacts to sync on your Android device. I. Setup Gmail Account 1. Head to mail.google.com and register for a Gmail account if you

You might have heard about Facebook’s new app, Facebook Home, that replaces the home screen on your Android device. This new app launched on April 12th in the Google Play store but is only currently available for a handful of devices. Thanks to some impatient developers, that exclusivity didn’t last long. You can now download and install on the Facebook Home app on any Android device. Here’s how. I. Install the New Facebook APKs 1. Uninstall your current Facebook app and Facebook Messenger and Facebook Home if you already tried to install it and failed. (You can do this by going