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Everyone please copy Verizon's latest spam call fighting tool immediately
The ability to block calls based on area code alone is a feature that's long overdue
I've had the same phone number since Google Voice launched back when I was in college, over a decade ago. I've moved (lemme think) seven times since then, and not a single person I still know is calling me from the Bryan-College Station area. So when spammers copy my area code in a lame attempt at engagement, I only answer the phone if I'm in the mood to waste time and mess with some criminals.
Check out a grab bag of deals on Anker's most popular gadgets
Woot's 'Prime Day Favorites' offers batteries, chargers, headphones, and security cameras
Hey Amazon, y'all doin' alright? Over the last few months you've kicked off almost every single budget mobile accessory brand for alleged review manipulation, and now Anker is the cheese which stands alone. For example: it's the only one that's getting its very own "Prime Day Favorites" highlighted section on Amazon's subsidiary and sister site, Woot.com.
Reminders via Google Search are broken again, again
Does Google even care about this feature anymore?
Look, we're not engineers. And we're certainly not responsible for keeping all the various parts of one of the world's biggest technology companies running smoothly. But we can recognize a pattern. like the one where Google's reminders tool in Search keeps breaking. It looks like it's been broken for a few weeks, which will be a familiar state for the admittedly small amount of users who rely on it.
Samsung's free TV Plus service is now available on the web and Chromecast devices
Samsung TV Plus is making a major push to appear on non-Samsung screens
Samsung is one of the only super-giant international tech companies that's pretty much all about hardware, with all of its ancillary business categories supporting its devices. So of course it's the next technology company to ... let me just check my notes here ... launch an ad-supported TV service. Okie dokie. Samsung TV Plus, previously available on the company's smart TVs and phones, is now up for general viewing on the web.
Watch out for these FBI honeypot phones if you like to do crimes
This modified Pixel 4a is a narc phone. An Android policeman, you might say
Criminals use cell phones. And because police agencies know this, they tend to be a little more cautious about said phones than regular users. Cautious enough to, say, buy a special fully-encrypted phone that purports to be 100% untraceable, and use the completely hack-proof messaging app contained within. Some of those criminals came to regret it as they discovered their super-secret phones and messaging service were, in fact, provided by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation and other police forces around the world.
Take a look behind Google's corporate curtain with a former employee's critical comics
Yeah, we're definitely saving a few of these for Android Police headers
Recently a Googler who went on to better (if not bigger) things shared a massive collection of comics and doodles that he'd created during his time at the Googleplex. His art has the feel of political cartoons, even if they're only ever on one broad topic. Taking a look at them can give us some humorous insight into the culture that's brewing just under Google's corporate surface. Manu Cornet worked for Google for over a decade as a software engineer on Search and Gmail. He quit earlier this year, telling The Information that Google's continuing slide into moral ambiguity left him feeling disillusioned with the company famous for its early "do no evil" years. During his tenure at Google, Cornet's frequent cartoons lampooning the company's culture and decisions became a notable part of his fellow employee's work lives, a sort of private in-joke in an employee population of more than 100,000.
Several of Cornet's comics made their way out into the internet at large, including his most famous doodle comparing the corporate structures of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Apple, and Facebook. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella even credited Cornet's cartoon on the first page of his book, crediting him with shifting up the CEO's thinking into a phenomenally successful restructure.
Cornet self-published a series of his comics as a book in 2018 as Goomics, with a second volume going out last month. You can buy both volumes on Amazon, or look at all of them for free on his site Goomics.net. They're an interesting look at the inside of one of the world's most powerful tech companies, albeit limited to a single critical perspective.Cornet accepted a job at Twitter. He's now starting up a new round of internal company comics, "Twittoons."
Bowers & Wilkins PI7 review: Even great-sounding earbuds aren't worth this much
Fantastic audio quality and neat Bluetooth tricks can't justify a $400 price tag next to the best of Sony and Apple
The true wireless earbud market is on fire at the moment, at just about every budget level. But according to the reviewers (including our own), Sony's the king of the ultra-premium hill. A smaller audiophile brand, Bowers & Wilkins, is aiming to usurp the throne with its very first set of TWEs, the PI7.How did it do? Well, not great. While the earbuds are super-comfy, stylish, and the Bluetooth transmitter case is a brilliant add-on, the active noise cancellation is nowhere near top of the line (or even midrange). That makes these otherwise unremarkable buds a hard sell at their $400 price point.
Google tries to move the goalposts in response to Play Store antitrust suit
A lengthy blog post attempts to dismiss some of the complaints made by dozens of state attorneys
It's been less than a day since a coalition of dozens of US states sued Google in a federal court for antitrust behavior, citing its collection of fees for distribution on the Play Store. Google has fired back with a lengthy blog post in the standard corporate "nu-uh" counter.
Google just got handed a massive multi-state antitrust lawsuit over Play Store fees
It's only the latest in a long line of Google's ongoing legal woes
The mobile market has been hemming and hawing over the cuts that Google and Apple take for distributing mobile apps ever since Epic made its big stink over Fortnite last year. It looks like that story is having a domino effect, as a new lawsuit against Google has been filed in United States federal court. No less than thirty-six states and the District of Columbia, representing more than half the country, are suing Google for monopolistic practices.
Truecaller beats Google to the punch with OTP cleanup, and adds Dark Souls-style caller comments
Perfect for the intersection between OCD and laziness
Last month we reported that an upcoming version of Google Messages will automatically delete all of those one time passwords and verification codes littering your text message inbox. Either someone at Truecaller was already working on that feature, or they lit a fire under their butts, because the latest version of the app does just that.
App claims to test your phone's water resistance without a plunge
It uses a phone's barometric sensor to test internal IP seals
Android developers are the best. Watch them for long enough, and they'll come up with tools that you didn't even know were possible. For example, this little app claims it can tell you whether the water-resistant seals in your phone are still intact. Water Resistance Tester is a free download in the Play Store.
The Samsung Galaxy F22 is official with a massive 6000mAh battery (but it's still not a fighter jet)
It's a modified Galaxy A22 LTE for the Indian market
Read update
The part of my brain that never progressed past the age of seven knows that two things are cool: fighter jets and Sonic the Hedgehog. The latter has been through some rough times since 1994, but supersonic airplanes remain perennially awesome. So when I saw "Galaxy F22," I had a fleeting notion that maybe Samsung had made a tiny fighter jet, or perhaps just a phone that was themed after a fighter jet. Like it had exhaust port decals around the speakers or something.
Sony WF-1000XM4 teardown: What makes the best earbuds around sound so good?
"There's something so satisfying about seeing a gadget in pieces." -Dr. Claw
Sony's long-awaited WF-1000XM4 earbuds are here, and by all accounts, they're fantastic. You know what they look like on the outside, but in the words of ethically questionable surgeons, "What about the guts?" A Chinese audiophile site has meticulously dissected the ANC earbuds and documented each and every step in beautiful detail.
Samsung tells the three people still using the OG Galaxy Gear that it's time for a mandatory update
Switch to Tizen or lose app support via the Galaxy Store
Remember the original Galaxy Gear? It was among the very first Android Wear devices, released way back in the halcyon days of 2013. A huge experiment in wearable tech, it was every inch a first-gen product, including an oddball 1.9MP camera mounted on the proprietary wristband. In the years since Samsung switched from Wear to its internal Tizen OS, eventually sending an update that completely overwrote the original OS in 2014.
OnePlus may be thinking about entering the tablet market
A European trademark filing for "OnePlus Pad" has fans speculating
The Android tablet market is something of a wasteland. Samsung puts a lot of effort into making really good tablets, Amazon puts a lot of money into making, um, a lot of tablets, and everyone else is an also-ran. Can OnePlus shake up the market for tablets the way it has for Android flagship phones? It might just take a stab at it soon.
10 apps with millions of Play Store downloads found stealing Facebook login info
If you've downloaded one of the following, you might want to check your account
Google has a lot of moving parts behind the scenes, trying to keep malware off of the Play Store. But with seven figures of apps posting and updating constantly, even it doesn't have a perfect record. Such is the claim from a security researcher last week, which said they found ten apps with variations on a trojan horse program. The apps are fairly innocuous based on their title and description, but each is designed to scrape a user's phone for Facebook login credentials.
Super-practical pop-out selfie camera drones are absolutely, definitely coming to a phone near you
A recent VIVO patent shows off the wildest phone design we've seen in a while
The long war of the notch has come to an end. No longer need we argue about teardrops versus hole punches, or look for half-hearted solutions like pop-up cameras or cams hidden beneath the screen. Nope, I have seen the future, and the future flies around your face like a little plastic mosquito. Say hello to Vivo's latest international patent published at WIPO (and spotted by a Danish site), the "Electronic Device." It's a phone with a little camera drone inside. I could go into more detail, but the design illustrations seem to be pretty self-explanatory: the tiny, ultra-thin drone pops out of the top of the phone on its little tray, takes off with diminutive rotors, flies around to take photos or videos, and then docks again for charging and safekeeping.
Sony's PlayStation Video app can't cast anymore
Chromecast compatibility was dropped ahead of a general service shutdown in August
Most of the time when an app gets updated, it's either fixing something that went wrong or adding in something new. The latest update to Sony's official PlayStation video app doesn't fall into either of those two categories. The sole change to the app, according to the changelog on the Play Store, is "Chromecast support has been removed." What?
Chrome for Android starts showing most-visited site tiles in the Omnibox
Curb your enthusiasm: it looks like another server-side switch
If you're anything like most web users, you have a core dozen or so sites that you visit regularly (including Android Police, right? Right?), while the rest you only peruse when it's pertinent. Chrome for Android is starting to recognize this, and give you more visible suggestions for your most-visited sites via new icons in the Omnibox.
One of Samsung's most anticipated phones of the year leaks in four earthy colors
The Galaxy S21 FE struts its stuff in the latest leak
Last year, Samsung heard users' frustrations dismayed at the skyrocketing prices of flagship devices like the Galaxy S20. So it came out with its first "Fan Edition," the S20 FE, which was pretty much the same hardware with some strategic corners cut to make a dramatic decrease in the price. We've been hearing about this year's version of the phone since April, but today we get to see it in no less than four different flavors.