Since the Razer Phone's announcement in 2017, we've seen a new subgroup of phones emerge. Gaming phones are now a thing, leading to companies like ASUS creating phones that are thoroughly optimized for the mobile gaming experience. And with their second iteration, they perfected it. ASUS released the ROG Phone last year. They took their expertise with PC gaming and applied it to the phone, using Snapdragon 845 chips from the highest bin and creating accessories that made it unfair to play games with people using "regular" smartphones. But ASUS was plagued by the same problem the entire... more

Audiophiles should know Pandora has an option to increase its sound quality. Change one simple setting and you'll enhance your experience with high fidelity audio. Even if you're not an audiophile, who wouldn't want the best possible sound? Most carrier plans include unlimited data nowadays, so Pandora's default lower quality audio is really only intended for a select few. In cases where you are at home on Wi-Fi or on the road with an unlimited plan, there's really no reason not to have Pandora's boost mode on. Don't Miss: Disable Those Annoying Artist Announcements on Pandora Enabling... more

I don't know about you, but I go to Pandora to listen to music. So when the music stops and an audio message from an artist starts updating me on their tour dates or some new product, I get pretty annoyed. The good thing is you can turn these off. Even if it's a musician I like and support, I don't want to listen to someone talking. Having the option to turn off artists announcements helps me focus on what is important to me at the time of my music playing. You may like an artist's older music and not like the present music they are promoting. Turning off the specific artist announcement... more

When you're going somewhere for the first time, it's nice to know what the destination will look like. Street View in Google Maps is the perfect tool for that, though it's always been a little awkward to access. But now, Google added a new overlay that will put Street View content literally one tap away at all times. Instead of having to enter an address or drop a finicky pin in a specific location, then selecting the Street View preview just above the place card, you can now enable a Street View overlay. Not only does this make it easier to open Street View to a specific spot, but it also... more

Editing photos on a phone, while not as good as editing on a desktop, is getting better and better with powerful tools to whip photos into shape. But sometimes you just want a simple edit, like making a color photo black and white. Instead of downloading a separate app to fine-tune the picture, you can just use Google Photos. Applying a black and white filter can add a vintage feel to your photos or simply stylize them in a way that better matches the memory you captured. But Google Photos doesn't actually have a filter called "black and white," so removing color from your photos isn't... more

Microsoft is catching up by adding the revered dark mode feature to its suite of apps. The biggest name to get this treatment is Outlook, and it looks great. Dark mode is slowly rolling out, meaning only some people have it right now. So it's time to check and see if you have dark mode on Outlook. It won't be long before dark mode will be a standard feature among all major apps with a master toggle helping us globally switch the dark UI on. In fact, Android 10 and iOS 13 both just added a global dark mode. But until then, we still need to manually turn dark mode on. With dark mode, your eyes... more

Another year, another battle between Samsung and Apple. We recently saw what Samsung is bringing to the table this year with the release of the Galaxy Note 10+, and now it's Apple's turn. For those who want a truly large device, Apple is offering the iPhone 11 Pro Max. Let's see how they match up. The iPhone 11 Pro Max is a follow-up to the well-received iPhone XS Max. In addition to the name change, the new phone brought several new features, including a sizable screen upgrade (the largest ever) and 4 GB of RAM (the most ever). We already compared last year's model to the Note 10+, and it... more

Dark mode for Gmail is here. But not all users have it yet. Reports say the latest update to the Gmail app has brought with it dark mode. Gmail may be the last major app in Google's suite to not have dark mode and now it is rolling out. Find out if you're one of the lucky few to have the long-awaited dark mode for Gmail. Skip ahead to instructions: Android | iPhone Google has slowly been releasing dark mode for its apps, and we've been patiently waiting for Gmail to get the feature. Now, it's here (for some) and we can finally see our emails in dark mode and make Gmail match the rest of our... more

Samsung decided to shake things up this year. In the past, the Galaxy Note series was one large phone. This year, it's two phones: the Galaxy Note 10 and Note 10+. So for the first time in a long time, we can compare the latest standard iPhone, the 11 Pro, to a Galaxy Note device. On the surface, the iPhone 11 Pro appears to be a small upgrade from last year's iPhone XS. Physically, you will have a hard time discerning the difference unless you turn it over and see the new triple camera in the corner. But looks are deceiving, as the Apple A13 chip is already a huge upgrade. On the Android... more

iPhones with Face ID all retail for at least $999, which many still believe is just too much for a smartphone. But that's okay, because Apple just introduced the iPhone 11 for roughly $700. It's not necessarily the best value, though, because the iPhone 11 already has some stiff competition in this price range. Last year's version of the iPhone 11 was called the iPhone XR. This model accounted for 38% of all US iPhone sales in Q1 2019. By contrast, the more expensive iPhone XS and XS Max combined for 21%. But there's more competition this year. While there have always been high-end Android... more

Scanning pictures and uploading them to Google Photos is a great way to digitize your collection. With unlimited high-quality storage and text recognition capabilities, it's hard to pass up. And for your older family pictures, Google Photos will soon even colorize black and white images. Unfortunately, the colorization feature is not available just yet. But we do have reason to believe it's coming very soon. The feature was first announced at Google I/O 2018. After a year of radio silence in May 2019, Mashable called Google out about it. At that time, Google Photos product lead David Lieb... more

In our comparison of the best gaming phones in 2019, the winner actually surprised us. A phone that most people don't know about from a brand you probably haven't heard of ended up as the clear winner. But how? Well, it ticked so many flagship boxes despite its midrange price tag. The Nubia Red Magic 3 is a phone that's probably not on your radar. It's likely you haven't heard of the Nubia brand, which is a sub-brand that ZTE uses for its more adventurous smartphones. You may not have even heard of ZTE, but that's okay too. ZTE had issues with the US government recently, which had previously... more

Gboard is often considered the best keyboard for iPhone or Android. Google made sure to jam-pack it full of features, and you should expect nothing but the best when it comes to Google's own first-party software. But with so many capabilities, a few things might slip through the cracks. I'll be sharing five simple features that Gboard has to offer to help increase your level of productivity. A few of these might be known, but they could also be overlooked by some at the same time. I'm here to help remind you of these features and make your typing experience as productive as possible. Of... more

As with our desktop browser, our phones often have multiple tabs open at the same time. But phones don't have each tab listed horizontally across the top, so to switch between them, you need to go to the tab switcher page and then find the link you wish to reopen. Well, if you are using Chrome, there's a faster way. On either your iPhone or Android device, open the Chrome browser. If you don't have it yet, you can install it below. Install Google Chrome: Android (free) | iOS (free) With two or more tabs open, swipe to the left on the address bar to switch tabs. This gesture will bring you... more

Mobile gaming has exploded in recent years, with experts predicting 2.4 billion global mobile players by the end of 2019. It already accounts for 47% of the worldwide gaming market, besting console and PC. No wonder we've seen the rise of gaming smartphones, a class of phones that specialize in mobile gaming. We update this comparison at least once a year. Unlike previous iterations, we're finally seeing a mature gaming phone market. Manufacturers basically threw stuff at the wall to see what would stick with the first generation of gaming phones, but their successors learned from past... more

After months of back and forth, ZTE is finally making their return to the United States. The last phone the Chinese company released here was the Axon 7 Pro, a low priced flagship phone that competed well against the OnePlus 3 and 3T at the time. Its successor is the Axon 10 Pro, which adopts the same strategy. Before ZTE was placed on the US blacklist, they were on the rise. They modeled their phone releases after OnePlus, offering flagship specs at midrange prices. Since they left, the landscape has changed a bit. OEMs such as ASUS have adopted the strategy and created real value with... more

Screen recording is an essential tool for sharing what's on our smartphones. If you want to send your friends and family an unsharable video you're watching or a cool trick you discovered on your phone, recording your screen is one way to do so. Messenger, Facebook's standalone chat app, is looking to simplify the experience by implementing screen sharing directly in your video calls. Unfortunately, screen sharing isn't available at this time. In fact, it's most likely still in early development. If we thought you'd be able to test out the feature by signing up for Messenger's beta on iOS or... more

If you want to make a collage to post on Instagram, you can easily use Layout, its sister app, to do just that. However, it's not possible at this time to make collages directly in the Instagram app. When you tap the Layout button on Instagram, you're sent to the Layout app itself. But that seems to be changing, as Instagram is testing Layout functionality for its Stories feature. We know about the upcoming update to the Stories camera thanks to Jane Manchun Wong, a known feature-finder in the mobile app world. She dug into the Instagram app's code behind the scenes and found it and other... more

Boomerangs are undoubtedly one of Instagram's most iconic features. If you don't already know, Boomerangs record up to 20 frames of video, then loop that video back and forth (hence the name). For the entirety of its existence, however, there's only been one way to shoot Boomerangs, but that won't be the case for long. Instagram is currently testing five new Boomerang options for its Stories camera. Instagram didn't announce these Boomerang options. Instead, we learned about them through Jane Manchun Wong, who dives into apps looking for features in development. She dug into the Instagram... more

There have been hundreds of reports of Google Calendar users receiving notifications for events they didn't create. These "events" are actually spam ads and potential phishing threats. If this has happened to you, you're not alone — but luckily, there's a way to put an end to it. Spammers have found a way to exploit Google Calendar's integration with Gmail. By default, if you receive a calendar invitation in Gmail, Google Calendar will auto-add the event even if the invitation goes straight to spam and you don't accept it. Once they realized this, spammers started adding calendar invitations... more