The Latest from Gadget Hacks: Page 146

Over 90% of ride-or-die iPhone users will upgrade to the latest Apple smartphone, according to a recent survey. Really, though? Well, Morgan Stanley certainly seems to think so.

NetGuard is a well-established app known for its highly secure firewall, which blocks unwanted web activity from individual apps that can take up both precious bandwidth and battery life. Not quite as well known, however, is the fact there's a second official version of NetGuard that comes with a hidden ad-blocking feature, which can be activated with just a little tinkering in the app's settings menu.

Google Assistant will be getting an AI makeover with the addition of Google Lens. This new feature is basically a set of vision-based computing capabilities within the Assistant.

We're all guilty of a little social media stalking now and again. Or ... every day. Who's keeping track? Everyone secretly wants to know what their ex/arch nemesis is doing for the weekend via Snapchat or Instagram Stories.

I made a payload APK with msfvenom and sent it to my phone, Installing it won't be achieved.., Says: Application not installed, I tried to enable Unknown sources and still the same, may this because of connection of the LHOST or what? (sorry for bad english)

The Google Pixel was just knocked off its pedestal as DxOMark Mobile's best smartphone camera, courtesy of the HTC U11. Ouch ...

After poor sales of last year's HTC 10 and the terriblereviews their first 2017 flagship received, HTC really needs the HTC U11 to succeed. But they're not taking things lying down, as they've come up with some interesting tech for their latest handset.

Tuesday gave us what I am dubbing a "patent dump." Can you blame me? The U.S. Patent Office released 56 patents from Apple. 56! Among them, there are patents confirming Apple is working on embedded Touch ID, edge-to-edge displays, and a 3D camera system (surprise, surprise). Some of those things we've heard rumors on for some time, but what is new is one of the patents hidden amongst the bunch, describing an Apple-made avatar system. One whose end-goal is to reflect your current emotional state...

The displays on all of our devices are getting better and better. TVs, smartphones (Infinity Display, anyone?) — any modern device you use, the screen looks great. So we should expect our content to live up to these fantastic displays. Netflix is attempting to do that, by implementing HDR video for LG G6 users.

If you ever get asked to update your WhatsApp to your favorite color, don't. It's probably spam.

There have been a number of rumors about the iPhone 8 over the past couple of months, but the latest speculation about the device's dual FaceTime camera, that could take 3D selfies, has definitely grabbed our attention.

Cinemagraphs are basically artistic photos that have been turned into a GIF to showcase a bit of subtle motion and give them life. Unlike regular GIFs, which can sometimes loop with a jarring cut at the end, cinemagraphs give the illusion of perpetual motion, like water drops off a flower's petal or clouds moving over a scenic sky.

You may have heard of Honor of Kings, the multiplayer online battle arena game so popular that it has the potential to do for mobile what League of Legends has done for the PC in the world of competitive online gaming, but you'll soon hear about its western iteration, Strike of Kings. Tencent, the China-based online gaming giant now looks to expand to the lucrative western market and has released the game to many parts of Europe as a soft launch for iOS devices.

Kik is an extremely popular messaging app, but it has a few annoying features that we all just sort of put up with. You can't turn off read receipts, nor can you hide when you're typing, and the photos you take with Kik's camera show up differently than ones you send from your gallery app. At least a couple of these features should be subject to change, but they aren't — well, not without some tinkering.

Buying a smartphone used is an excellent way to save money, but those savings come with a risk that your seller isn't as forthcoming as they claim. You don't want to end up buying a stolen smartphone because it might not work correctly ... and, you know, it's wrong. Luckily, there's an easy way to check if the phone you're about to buy is legit.

UPDATE 5/12: According to Bloomberg, it looks like the merger is on. Anonymous sources claim discussions have already begun about consolidation. Looks like there might be a new 5G powerhouse after all.

If you have the Xposed Framework installed, there's a module that lets you enable background playback in Android's YouTube app without buying a YouTube Red subscription. But Xposed is not available on many devices—particularly those running Android Nougat—so this isn't an option for everyone.

If you have stuck volume buttons, it can be a real pain to adjust sound levels since your only other option is to use the volume menu in Settings. But even if your volume rocker is working fine, it's still a little weird to have to click a mechanical button to control one of the most central aspects of an operating system that is otherwise entirely touch-based.

Firefox Focus has been out for iOS for a while now, so it's about time Mozilla began porting the app over to Android. It's an amazingly private browser that protects you from trackers and ads when you're surfing the web. It blocks a wide range of online trackers, erases your browsing history, hides passwords, and deletes cookies. This essentially means ads won't be able to follow you around, in the sense that you won't see ads related to your last ten searches on Google.

Sometimes it's impossible to concentrate — let alone direct your personal assistant Siri — when someone is blasting music on their phone or talking to thin air. I mean I'm loud, but not that loud.

Malware attacks on mobile phones are reaching an all-time high and it looks like companies like Samsung are doing all that they can to prevent any unwanted hackers from accessing its sensitive user data.

We're all passionate about something. Maybe it's the environment. Stopping poverty. Finding the best taco joint ... Whatever your cause, the last thing we want is to support companies whose practices go against what we believe. After all, you can't trust someone who doesn't like tacos. So it can be difficult to know which companies to avoid; there are just too many doing too many shady things to keep track of. Until ...

It really is a pain getting an Apple device fixed ... What's a gal to do when there's jelly stuck in your Macbook Pro fan and no Apple Store in sight? (Yes, this actually happened to me. Stop laughing.)

Last week, T-Mobile CEO John Legere got salty. He announced ever so cheerily T-Mobile's intentions to release the first true 5G network in coming years, all while gaily smacking AT&T around for their bogus "5G Evolution" reveal. But could Legere be wrong to say T-Mobile will be the nation's first 5G carrier? It looks as though that title may have to be shared with Sprint ...

There were some new hurdles to clear, and then there were a few more, but legendary root developer Chainfire has created a fully-functional root method for Google's Pixel and Pixel XL flagships. Like past devices, this method relies on the SuperSU ZIP, but now, there's an additional file that needs to be flashed in order to bypass issues with Android Verified Boot (AVB).

Fans of Titanfall now have a great alternative to play on their iPhones whenever they're out and about. Titanfall: Assault has arrived as a soft launch for iOS devices. A hybrid between card-based and real-time strategy genres, the game will pit you against other players with some mech-on-mech action to dominate the battlefield.

If you shatter your new Samsung Galaxy S8 display, then be prepared to pay a hefty repair fee for that bezel-less baby.

Google's working on a new mobile operating system called Fuchsia, and while we don't know much about how they intend to use it, we're now getting a glimpse at what the main interface will look like.

In a series of news about the OnePlus 5, the company posted its first teaser of the upcoming device on its Weibo account. According to GSM Arena, the teaser doesn't show us any sneak peaks of what the phone might look like — co-founder Carl Pei took care of that — though, we are greeted with the caption "Hey Summer! Give me five!"

WhatsApp sneakily made some security changes to iCloud backups without your knowledge, ladies and gents. Not that strengthening security is a bad thing, but still!

If OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei was trying to be slick about using the new OnePlus 5 phone — especially before its speculated summer release — well, he didn't do that great a job of hiding it from us.

You know, I was actually starting to get comfortable with the idea of the iPhone 8 not showing up until next year. As an Apple fan, I made my peace with it. "There's a lot coming in this model," I told myself. "It does make sense that this many features could cause delays." I was fine. But then ...

Oftentimes, seemingly insignificant, nondescript features have the most impact on enhancing our Android's usability. A great example is Nougat's inclusion of customizable Quick Settings tiles, which adds greatly to the user experience by letting individuals tailor their expandable status bars to suit their unique needs.

Up until now, enabling full-time Immersive Mode on an Android device has been a tedious task which required you to run individual ADB commands each time you wanted to toggle it on or off. This was a shame, too, since Immersive Mode helps reclaim lots of screen real estate by auto-hiding your navigation and status bars.

Deep down inside, Kindle Fires are actually Android tablets — the only trouble is, Amazon has layered so much of a skin on top of it all that you can't normally use Android's main app store, the Google Play Store. The Amazon Appstore, which comes bundled with Kindle Fire devices, only has about 600,000 apps, so it would be great if you could access Google Play's library, which boasts 2.8 million.

Your Android phone could be listening to ultrasonic ad beacons behind your back. The unwelcome news comes year after app developer SilverPush promised to quit using its (creepy!) eavesdropping software.

The Galaxy S8 and S8+ are the first Samsung flagships to use virtual buttons, which means this is the first time we're seeing Samsung's design style applied to Android's software navigation bar. Even though the on-screen keys look fairly different from what other OEMs have put in place, they're not anything revolutionary. Still, different is usually good since it separates you from the herd, and like Android's slogan says, we should be together, not the same.

When someone asks me why they should root their phone, one of the top reasons I always give is that it enables you to install the Xposed Framework. Created by developer Rovo89, Xposed basically hooks into the Android system, then allows users to simply install mini-apps called modules that can change almost anything in a device's interface or other installed apps.

The Google Chrome browser does mostly everything well and integrates nicely with other Google services, but it's not exactly renowned for speed. With a rooted device and the aid of an app called Kernel Adiutor, however, you can make Chrome as nimble as some of the fastest browsers on the market.

Amazon's first venture into the wireless phone market was a crash and burn moment — and that's us being kind. Their FirePhone went down in flames almost instantly, no pun intended.