Android software

When looking for an app that does something in particular, you may find yourself installing a handful or two for a bit of trial and error. While space on your device may not be an issue, you won't want to keep all of the apps that fail to perform the way you need them to. At this point, you're faced with the fun task of either going to the Google Play Store, or opening the Applications menu in the Settings area, to remove the apps you don't want. How fun! OK, not really.

If this is a … Read more

Every year, the geekiest of geeks make their annual pilgrimage to Austin, Texas, for the increasingly hip and increasingly crowded South by Southwest festival.

The event is split into three branches for film, music, and interactive, but we at CNET tend to focus on the last of these, for obvious reasons. SXSWi, as the tech-focused portion of the festival is sometimes called, acts as a sort of gigantic picnic-slash-cocktail-party for tech entrepreneurs, investors, and even regular enthusiasts to mingle at and talk bits and bytes.

And while the sentiment has noticeably tapered off a bit this year, many app developers … Read more

Are you a Mac user who wants to pull a photo off your iPhone, iPad, or Android device quickly, without having to go through iPhoto? There's an easy way to do that, built into your Mac: the Preview app.

For ages, I was frustrated that the Mac wouldn't let me browse my iPhone or Android phone to drag-and-drop pictures I wanted, in the way that I could when plugging them into my Windows PC.

If only I could browse like on the PC

On the PC, my phones appear like a drive within Windows Explorer, which is wonderful:… Read more

The next time you're looking for your misplaced Android smartphone, check the freezer. It's possible, however unlikely, that someone is trying to hack into your data using a new FROST attack method.

Researchers at Friedrich-Alexander University in Germany have learned that it is possible to access personal information on Android 4.0 smartphones using a chilling technique.

Called FROST, or forensic recovery of scrambled telephones, it amounts to placing the phone in temperatures of -15 Celsius for roughly 1 hour. After removing from a freezer, you must repeatedly power on and off the phone and hold down the … Read more

The folks at Twitter announced Monday that the standalone TweetDeck apps for mobile will no longer be supported after May of this year. While Twitter says that it is putting more resources toward the Web version (which can easily be used on the desktop), there are surely plenty of people who are upset that their beloved mobile clients are going away.

For those of you looking for an alternative to TweetDeck, here are a few mobile apps that should prove adequate for your tweeting purposes.

Tweetbot ($2.99) is an extremely popular Twitter client for good … Read more

Following closely on the heels of a Samsung Galaxy Note 2 security vulnerability, another Samsung user has found that the bug affects other models.

Unlike the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 flaw, the bug allows for full access to the Samsung Galaxy S3. The method is similar in that it requires a fleet-fingered user to hop through a number of screens.

As discovered by Sean McMillian, the smartphone can be manipulated by tapping through the emergency call, emergency contacts, home screen, and then the power button twice. McMillian admits that the bug isn't consistent -- sometimes, he said, it works … Read more

Taking a page from Opera and Amazon playbooks, then writing on it some more, Google is using its own servers to speed up page loading on its mobile version of Chrome.

The feature, called proxy browsing, is enabled in the Chrome 26 beta for Android, though it must be manually activated through the chrome://flags interface by selecting "Enable Data Compression Proxy." With proxy browsing, a server with a fast Internet connection and more processing horsepower than a mobile device loads the Web page on behalf of that mobile device.

The chief advantage of the approach is that … Read more

commentary How do you feel about Firefox as an operating system? Or Ubuntu on your phone or tablet? Is Windows Phone 8 worth switching to? BlackBerry 10 means that the company formerly known as RIM isn't dead yet, right? And what the heck's a Tizen, anyway?

Depending on the OS, these questions and more will begin to plague mobile phone reviewers, phone providers, and consumers at large within the year at the most, and probably sooner.

Some people think this is a bad thing.

Yesterday's IDC report that smartphones will overtake feature phones in global sales this year … Read more

Today marks exactly one year since Google rebranded the Android Market into the Google Play store and the company is observing the occasion with limited-time deals and freebies.

Deals this week include $5 books and 99-cent movie rentals as well as select magazines for only $1 each. What's more, a number of television shows are being offered at no cost, including "Breaking Bad," "Community," and "Justified."

A handful of Android games also have gotten in on the birthday love, offering free, exclusive in-game features. Disney's Gnome Village, for instance, features an Android-exclusive … Read more