The Latest on Smartphones: Page 3

It is safe to say 2020 sucks. With the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest, things haven't been great. But beyond impacting your emotional state, that upcoming phone you've been waiting for has likely had its release date pushed back.

The future of TikTok in the U.S. is all but certain. Microsoft, Walmart, or Oracle could save the day by buying the company, TikTok may win its lawsuit, or China's new restrictions could halt everything — but all could fail. Just like Vine before it, TikTok could be on its way out, only for opposite reasons. But will it matter if TikTok gets banned in the States? With the competition heating up, likely not.

Sure, your search history can be useful, but more often than not, it's a paper trail of privacy infringement. It's perfectly reasonable not to want to see a complete list of your YouTube queries every single time you search for a new video. Luckily, blocking YouTube from saving your search history takes only a few taps.

"What's your Wi-Fi password?" That's usually the first thing guests ask for when you have them over. You tell them the network name, then try to explain your complicated hacker-resistant password, which becomes a whole ordeal. But there's a better way to do it, which doesn't rely on using the same mobile OS as your guests.

Millions of people use YouTube every day, whether it's for trailers, new music, or gameplay walkthroughs. But according to Pew Research Center, over half of U.S. adults use YouTube to figure out how to do things. If you fall into that crowd, adult or not, sometimes it's good to have written instructions to follow along with the video or in lieu of it completely.

Emoji are, without a doubt, an integral part of messaging on smartphones. Whether you're team iPhone or Android, chances are you send emoji daily. However, years after their introduction, emoji remain static in most cases, even with animated stickers and GIFs supported on almost every major chat app. That said, one of those chat apps, Telegram, makes things more lively.

Why pay for a movie when you can get it for free? Thanks to Movies Anywhere, you can claim and download a video for your digital film collection right now at no cost. And getting your freebie flick couldn't be any easier.

If Google's apps, namely Gmail, Calendar, and Meet, are at the center of your workday, then a new, frustrating change may upset your routine.

With bans looming or already happening across the world, TikTok still remains one of the most popular, entertaining, and addicting apps you can download right now. The problem is, browsing TikTok can be a bit painful at night since everything outside of the video feed uses a bright white theme. Thankfully, dark mode for TikTok is here, but there's a catch.

In a similar vein to Facebook's colorful backgrounds for text posts, Instagram has a way to add vivid text-only status updates for your stories. That way, you can conjure up colorful stories that make a statement without even needing to take a photo or video in the first place. And now there are even more fonts to choose from.

Late last year, Snapchat introduced Cameos, deep fake-ish stickers animated from your own selfies. Now, Cameos have evolved as a sticker option to use in photos and videos captured with the app's camera.

Twitter replies have traditionally acted like public spaces. Once a tweet is out there, pretty much anyone can reply to it. In some cases, that makes for good discussion. In others, it can lead to disaster, abuse, and harassment. Twitter's looking to change that by giving you more control over who can reply to tweets.

After the iPhone X eclipsed the $1,000 mark, phone prices skyrocketed. Android OEMs like Samsung started putting out phones in the same price bracket that were crammed with expensive parts. To appease the folks that didn't want to drop over a grand on even the nicest phones, a new segment was created with devices that are still in the flagship tier, but not top-of-the-line.

At the beginning of every year, Samsung drops a fantastic phone in the Galaxy S series, and then tries to top it with the Galaxy Note series in August. This year, Samsung had their work cut out for them. But they managed to improve on their predecessor and properly challenge Apple's best.

If your smartphone is running Android 10, iOS 13, or a newer version of each, you have access to a system-wide dark theme. And that dark theme works well with Google Calendar, but it's not the only way to go dark. If you have an older operating system, it's still possible to darken Calendar's theme on your phone.

After an Instagram creator created a viral sensation last holiday season with the Which Disney camera effect, Disney followed it up with a Sponsored Lens playing a similar roulette with programming from Hulu.

Now that MLB has finally begun to play ball without fans, the NBA is gearing up to restart its season with 22 out of teams qualifying to play in isolation in Orlando and advance to the playoffs.

I've been steadily making my way through the series Hannibal, which arrived on Netflix in June. I've just now made it to the back half of the third season, which introduces us to a new villain who (spoiler alert) seeks to become the Great Red Dragon.

It is surreal how your playlists change over time. A song you loved in January will be forgotten about in May. With hundreds of singles from different artists coming out daily, it is easy to get distracted. Tidal understood this problem and created a solution called "History Mix."

Microsoft and Sony are priming their promotional pumps to hype up their respective next-generation gaming consoles, Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, both of which are scheduled to arrive in time for the 2020 holiday season.

New wallpapers for new smartphones are basically a tradition at this point. That tradition doesn't change with the Galaxy Note 20 and Note 20 Ultra — Samsung is introducing five fresh wallpapers for the new devices. Of course, Samsung would like these wallpapers to remain Note 20-exclusive, but that's not how we roll. Here's how you can get them on your iPhone or Android right now.

Facebook Messenger's user base has grown so much that it has taken over text messaging as the primary contact method for many people. However, sometimes you might want to hide your online status from specific contacts and appear offline to others. There's a neat little trick you should know that can help you achieve this.

Nintendo changed Mario Kart Tour for the better with an option to play the game in landscape mode. That said, the game will rotate automatically, which can mess you up in the middle of a heated race. But you don't need to lock your iPhone or Android phone's orientation setting to fix the problem since you can do so within the game itself. That way, other apps will auto-rotate as usual.

Facebook Messenger is a messaging app first, but of its more than 1.3 billion monthly users, 32 percent use its video chat feature at least once every month. While it may seem pretty straightforward to video call with family and friends on Messenger, there are many tips and tricks that can help enhance your experience.

Google Fi Is a great wireless carrier alternative and can be quite beneficial when used correctly. If you don't require much data, you can easily get away with a $30 or less bill. However, if you wanted to crank out more data during your current billing cycle, there's a setting you should use to keep your data in check.

Google Maps Live View is already one of the more useful examples of augmented reality on smartphones that is available to the average consumer today.

You will likely have a 5G-capable phone within two years. Each carrier is working hard to improve its coverage for the next standard in mobile networks, and though the technology is fairly new and only a handful of phones support it right now, this will change very soon.

5G is here. Well, not everywhere. All three wireless carriers have turned on their 5G networks, but only in select markets. Like 4G, each carrier is doing things a bit differently, which means your 5G experience will not be the same across the board.

Google Photos is one of the most useful apps for storing, sorting, searching, and sharing all of the photos and videos you capture on your smartphone — but if you travel, it just got a lot more useful.

The smartphone market is stagnating. Without hordes of new users rolling in every year, the best way to boost profits nowadays is to poach customers from the competition. That's exactly what Apple appears to be doing with iOS 14.

Now that Google Meet is free for anyone with a Gmail address, you can expect to see invites from Google's service alongside Zoom calls.

With the global COVID-19 pandemic preventing Pokémon GO players from venturing into the real world, developer Niantic has adapted the game for trainers to play in a socially-distanced manner.

A side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic is that small businesses are suffering from forced closures and social distancing, but game developer Niantic has a solution.

It is well documented that what you say and do online is tracked. Yes, private organizations do their best to protect your data from hackers, but those protections don't extend to themselves, advertisers, and law enforcement.

When you look at the top corner of your phone, what do you see? Upon upgrading to Android 11 or iOS 14, you'll see either "5G," "5G+," or "5G E" if you're connected to the right network. But what exactly do these symbols mean? They indicate not only if you're using 5G, but also what type you're connected to.

With thousands of people across the country protesting, you might be thinking about joining the march. But as is too often the case, law enforcement has been called to oversee the protests, and interactions aren't always peaceful or lawful.

It is a scary time to be alive. As states start to ease back shelter-in-place restrictions, the new world you're entering is still unsafe. With a vaccine months away, your best bet is to follow CDC guidelines and use the tools at your disposal.

Whether you're binging "Friends," "Game of Thrones," or Harry Potter movies, if you want to watch HBO Max downloads in the highest quality possible, you can't just use the default settings. Without doing the legwork, the TV shows and films you download onto your iPhone or Android phone will be lower quality than the full HD version you can have.

As protests surge in the wake of George Floyd's murder by a Minneapolis police officer, powerful photographs and videos from the demonstrations have gripped the world, putting our nation's very real and very justifiable widespread civil unrest out into the digital world. Unfortunately, these pictures could put you or others in danger if precautions aren't taken before uploading them online.

Not all 5G is equal. Even if you dropped the cash on a true 5G phone and you see it's connected to 5G in the status bar, that doesn't mean you're surfing the web, streaming Spotify, and binging Netflix faster than your friends with LTE phones.