No matter how advanced and multipurpose smartphones become with time, their core function will remain the same; communication and keeping in touch. Then, it also remains no hidden fact that, at least for the foreseeable future, voice calls and SMS messages are not going anywhere, either. On that note, since you’re note always looking at your phone’s screen (hardly anyone ever is), it’s imperative that the device alerts you to the presence of new items that need your attention and addressing, and for that reason, we have notifications – ringer alerts, message tones, LED flashes, vibrations et al – which let us know when our smartphone has new notifications that need to be catered to.
For an advanced Android user, flashing is something they are bound to come across every now and then. Even more so, if you’re a regular visitor of one of the bigger Android modification and customization forums on the web, you’re more likely to have a knack for flashing different ROMs, tweaks, firmware and whatnot more than other users. Then, there are people who have an uncontrollable urge to try out every other ZIP file that they can get their hands on through recovery mode on their Android device, almost like an obsessive need to do so. Another group of Android fanatics that fall in this category are those who rely on nightly builds of any ROM – especially CyanogenMod – since they end up flashing a newer version almost every day.
In a world where we all live our lives on our smartphones, one of the scariest and personally affecting things that can happen to us is the loss of that smartphone. It might not sound like the end of the world on the surface, but if all your personal data, photos of your children and documents for work are saved on a smartphone that's gone missing, you'll no doubt feel its loss.
Modern smartphones are designed to be online constantly. With fast 3G and 4G radios built right in and Wi-Fi on tap, it's fair to say that we live our lives through our smartphones these days, and that means they're full of data that needs keeping safe.
Real Racing 3 has finally arrived for iOS and Android in the U.S., and is available to download right now from the respective stores of each platforms. Being free to play, it's sure to attract a large audience, and if you enjoy the likes of Asphalt or Need for Speed, then Real Racing 3 is a release you'll most certainly want to try out.
Root is one of the fundamental concepts for Android, right from the inception of the operating system, to the point where it has today become the leading smartphone platform, evolving far beyond it was when it started. When it was started, gaining root access on Android wasn’t as simple as it has become today, and much credit for that goes to the Superuser apps developed by ChainsDD, and then the SuperSU by Chainfire. Both these apps have made it “super” easy to get Superuser access, but that, too, is dependent on a custom recovery. And when it comes to custom recoveries, nothing could perhaps ever gain as much popularity as Koush’s ClockworkMod.
Adobe's Photoshop Touch app has been available for quite some time now for those who use a medium or full size tablet device. With so many standard smartphones around, it seems only right and proper that one of the world's largest software developers have taken the decision to extend the app with a version now being available specifically for smartphone devices.
In its essence, Android is a variant of Linux, built over a shell of the open source operating system that has been a major contender in desktop systems for Microsoft’s Windows and Apple OS X. Since the mobile operating system is running a Linux kernel underneath, it therefore follows the same pattern and rules that apply to its elder sibling. Generally, Linux-based operating systems have a very efficient memory management mechanism, enabling users to make full use of the system’s available RAM. However, one thing that has plagued Android since its inception is the sluggishness that the OS generally presents, which becomes even more pronounced as you continue to use your device.
If you've spent any amount of time flashing ROMs or modding elements of your Android device, you'll know how enjoyable and rewarding a process it can be. However, when flashing firmware, wiping your data is always a prerequisite, and while there are various means of backing up your smartphone or tablet, such as a full ROM back up in recovery (known as a nandroid backup), it is something we sometimes wish we didn't have to go through. It's an inconvenient, but necessary predicament, XDA-Developers member Goddchen has sought to make the process of backing up information a great deal easier by creating a sort of all-in-one utility with Easy App Toolbox.
As anybody who spends a great deal of time at a computer will be able to vouch, the timing of GTalk, Facebook, and other notifications received on a desktop, and the time it takes for that same notification to be pushed to a mobile device, are rarely in sync, with a delay of around three or four seconds occurring in extreme cases. However, a fix for this issue has been developed by a member of the XDA-Developers forum, and although it doesn't guarantee that notifications will arrive at the same time as they do on your desktop, it does make the retrieval of notifications much more streamlined.
