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Bertel King, Jr.-

Bertel King, Jr.

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About Bertel King, Jr.

Bertel is a Linux user who likes budget smartphones more than flagships, uses a custom ROM, and gets his apps from F-Droid. When he isn't writing short stories for Android Police, you might find him penning the fictional kind. Otherwise, look for him reading pixels that were converted to ink and paper.

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Artem wanted someone on the team to write up a deal alert in which we point our readers toward a selfie stick. After a contentious debate in which no one else agreed that we should do this, here I am.I've never used a selfie stick. I don't even take selfies without a stick. I have no problem with taking a picture of myself, but something about the ease of doing so with a phone makes the experience feel too narcissistic. Besides, front-facing cameras tend to be crap.I don't know what makes any given selfie stick better than another, but Artem says this one is pretty good. After plugging the stick into your phone's earphone jack, you can take photos using a button on the handle. This, I'm told, separates pointless selfie sticks from the more pointless ones. Plus this stick comes from Spigen, and it has 4.3 stars.

Facebook recently introduced live video. Now it wants more users to start recording themselves. To entice people to do so, the company has rolled out a few enhancements.

A good review can make all the difference when deciding on an app. But a review is only as good as it is relevant, so Amazon is tweaking the way the Appstore displays them.

Portable chargers are nice. They don't quite make up for phones with crappy battery life, but they come close. Plus they bring the peace of mind that comes from knowing you won't be tethered to a wall if your phone decides it won't make it through the evening.You can grab one at full price, but the reason you're reading this is so that you don't have to. So let's cut straight to the chase. Kmashi is offering a 20,000mAh external battery on Amazon for .98. With the coupon code 3Z9KLROS, you can knock that price down to $19.99.Why pick this pack over another one? Well, aside from the obvious availability of a coupon code, there's the added benefit of having Quick Charge 2.0 compatibility. That's something that was missing the last time we highlighted a Kmashi battery with this capacity at this price. You have two USB ports to work with and a flashlight that can come in handy in the dark.

At this year's CES, Huawei announced a version of its Android Wear watch intended for women. Last week, we saw some of the options appear in renders on Huawei's Chinese website. Now the watch has appeared on the Google Store.

Google has shared this month's look at how many users are accessing the Play Store using which versions of Android. The numbers probably won't surprise you. Marshmallow still sits at a low 4.6%. Lollipop's numbers have barely budged in either direction.

Staying private online is easier said than done, but a few services are popping up that promise to shield your conversations from prying eyes. The Signal messaging app, previously known as TextSecure, comes to mind. But the WhatsApp team has been working on securing its messages using some of the same code, and now, after testing things out last month, the service is ready to roll out end-to-end encryption to all users.

Sometimes phones spontaneously reboot. The problem isn't too big a deal, unless your phone is encrypted. Then the phone sits, not taking calls, not pulling down email, and wasting battery life as it waits to decrypt.

From a user perspective, a phone is either snappy or it's not. If it isn't, the device is either old or garbage that a manufacturer should be ashamed of shipping.

Channel 4 has an Android app that lets users view TV shows and content on demand. Now the UK-based broadcasting network is taking things to the next level with the introduction of live broadcasting over Wi-Fi and cellular data, a feature it's calling Watch Live.

We've already told you about the LG G5 being available from AT&T for $688. And if you've been following the coverage, you know it was only a matter of time before the phone went live on other carriers' sites too. Well, it has. The G5 is now ready for purchase from all five major carriers in the US.

The high-end of the market attracts all the fame and glory, but millions of people are carrying around prepaid low-end phones in their pockets. And these days, the low-end of the market isn't what it used to be. Android enthusiasts will know that phone you pulled out isn't top-of-the-line, but the average person will think that 5-inch 720p display looks pretty snazzy.

CNN rose to prominence at a time when 24/7 cable news coverage was an impressive technological feat. These days keeping the camera running doesn't wow people quite like it used to.

Opera serves the same role on Android that it fulfills on desktops, being that quirky browser that one or two people you know checked out a while back. There's that one guy who swears it's better than anything else out there.

For an idea of how much money carriers make providing you with service, look at what they're willing to give away to gain a new customer. Consider AT&T. Starting tomorrow, the company will give a free 48-inch Samsung Smart TV to customers that buy a Galaxy S7 or S7 Edge on AT&T Next and activate a new wireless line or start DirecTV service.New AT&T customers are eligible for this deal. So are existing customers that are willing to sign up for DirecTV. If you already have both, you're out of luck, plus non-Next plans are ineligible entirely.AT&T describes the TV as the LED J5200 model, which currently goes for around 0 on Amazon. The unit comes with Samsung's Smart TV interface, not Android TV.

CyanogenMod 13 comes with Android 6.0, and it has been around since the fall. But bringing each device up to date takes time. Many have spent the past few months on 12.1. My Moto G 2015 (the one I showed off last week) is one of those devices.

Using the carpool lane can cut time out of commutes, but it comes with the hassle of coordinating with another worker. That's annoying. It's so annoying that Lyft is now willing to pay people to do it. Sort of.

There are many ways to go about watching movies on an Android phone or tablet, but when you fire up Google Play, one method takes center stage. That's Play Movies, Google's out-of-the-box way for you to buy or rent licenses to stream TV shows and films.

There are plenty of portable Bluetooth speakers out there, but how many of them look like a Naquadah generator?

Snapchat isn't merely an app you open up to take photos that will probably get you in trouble someday. It's also a place to have conversations that you will ultimately regret. But at least with version 9.27, you're likely to enjoy that conversation more than you would before.

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