Latest Articles
Why and How to Use Google's Firebase Suite: What Its Tools Can Do for You
In this article we explain why you should check out Firebase, and how it can help you succeed with its tools!
The fundamental building blocks of Android app development can be whittled down to an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and a device or emulator to run it on, and while these are enough to build an app, a host of other tools augment the developer experience, aiding the team behind the product to scale the product, improve the user experience, increase engagement and retention, and earn more.
Physical Versus Virtual Buttons -- it's More than Just Placement
Explore with us whether hardware keys should remain on Android, and if their slow phase-out is the right thing for the platform!
Up until late 2011, hardware buttons were the widely-accepted norm for buttons on a handheld device, with Android’s hardware partners taking advantage of the free rein given to them, going on to flirt with a variety of functions, icons and positions in a somewhat-wayward manner. In November that year, Google took charge of the playing field with the launch of the Galaxy Nexus, the device that pioneered Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and with it, the first legitimate implementation of softkeys on Android. As has been the case with numerous such niches, Google taking a step caused most of the OEMs to fall in line over the years, and softkeys became prevalent on a wide number of device lineups.
Tasker Week: Theming and Design using Scripts and Scenes!
Can Tasker be used to make your phone prettier? Sure it can! Learn how to use Tasker to control or improve your phone's aesthetics!
We've entered an age where aesthetics, layout and a delightful user experience is almost as important as functionality itself, with user expectations setting a high bar for design standards. How does that apply to tasker? Well, there's two tangents to design in Tasker - theming apps and designing scenes.
From the Community to AOSP: Root-Only Features that Made the Cut
Learn about which of the features you take for granted actually originated from the enthusiast and developer community!
Android is by far one of the most widely loved mobile operating systems, owing its disruptive growth not only to the Open Handset Alliance, but also to the host of useful features that the system packs, features that are actually productive rather than just bells and whistles.
Disk Encryption: The Good and The Slow
Learn about the adoption of full disk encryption on Android devices, where it succeeded and where it failed!
In a world where personal information is not so personal, entire bank accounts are linked to our smartphones, and surveillance and cyber-crime are at an all time high, security is one of the majority aspects of the technology sphere.
The Dark UI Side: Why People Love Dark Themes
Join us as we explore some of the factors behind why Dark UI appeals to power users much more than Light UI, and explore some arguments on both sides.
Designing for the user is a practice widely accepted and followed in the design community, and while it seems to be a fairly straightforward declaration, diving into it proves that that task is substantially more daunting than it seems.
Android as a platform has always been about its open source nature and the freedom it provides to the end user. From simple modifications like icon packs to more extreme ones like the MultiROM project, each passing day sees the community produce something new, something wonderful that further enforces the platform's openness.
Material and Material Dark Hit Samsung's Theme Store
New Material Design themes have been released on the Samsung Theme Store, allowing S6 and S6 Edge users to choose between light and dark Material styles
The latest version of Touchwiz, launched alongside the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, was aimed at providing a vastly improved software experience in lieu of the bad reputation its predecessors had gained. While this iteration turned out to be a vast improvement in terms of lack of bloatware, fluidity and user experience, Samsung's OEM skin fell short in the aesthetics department by a long shot, abandoning a plethora of Material Design principles and leaving users wanting more.
Samsung Releases 16 New Themes on the Theme Store
Samsung's theme store brings system themes to Touchwiz, and the collection continues to grow as earlier today, sixteen new themes were made available.
The launch of the S6 and S6 Edge back in March saw the latest version of Touchwiz being released alongside the devices, with some serious effort put into it this time around, in a bid to move away from the notorious reputation Samsung's Android skin has gained over the past few years. Memory efficiency and decreased bloatware were the obvious fixes, but Samsung went above and beyond, adding features that end users actually needed. One of them is the homebrewed Theme Store that allows users to style their device using a multitude of themes from the store.
Amazon's efforts at producing a budget-friendly tablet yielded the Kindle Fire HD 6 and 7, and despite the online retail giant's substantial efforts at marketing the devices, enthusiasts weren't impressed, their judgement buoyed by the tablets' desolate scene in the modding community.
Samsung's last few flagships have fallen short of expectations by a wide margin, with the South Korean manufacturer, more often than not, finding itself vastly overshadowed by other flagships. Contrastingly, this year's flagship was the result of Samsung turning over a new life and coming out all guns blazing with the S6 and S6 Edge, and despite the lack of a mainstream Qualcomm processor, each passing day marks another step towards Samsung regaining its former glory.
LED Music Effects: Music-Based Light Show on Your Device
LED Music Effect synchronizes your device's audio with its notification LED, giving rise to a spectacular display of light in tune with the music
Music appeals to us at a very primal level and whether it's fast beats or slow melodies, the experience is immensely pleasing. And thanks to XDA Member levuphuong, you can enjoy music on your device with more than one of your senses, albeit the method only works for devices that are rooted and possess a multicolored notification LED.
When Google announced Android Wear early last year, the starter devices from LG and Motorola showed off exquisite watchfaces in their promotional content, creating as much hype for watchfaces as there was for apps of the new form factor. Come Google I/O when the first devices were made available to the public, developers and users everywhere were disappointed by the lack of an official watchface API. While some chose to make use of unofficial methods, others waited patiently and were rewarded when Google announced that the Android 5.0 Lollipop update for Android Wear would bring an official API with it. In the time since then, we've seen watchfaces of every shape and style, from regular analog and digital faces to information-driven and luxury ones. Despite the large selection being beneficial in most ways, the variety sometimes makes for a hard pick, and today we simplify that choice by looking into some of the best watchfaces available on Google Play
In the past few years, a heated debate has been waged - and goes on to this very day - about the superiority of mobile operating systems, and because of different perspectives, there is no clear victor in the arguments pitched, save for one - customization. Google's Android operating system is known far and wide for its limitless and flexible customization options, and goes wholly unchallenged in this domain. System themes, custom bootanimations, recovery themes, icon packs, APK mods - Android has it all, and more importantly, Android has a vibrant and enthusiastic community supporting each of these design disciplines, and today we look at some of the best CM12 themes that the community has to offer.
Android's charm as an operating system is multi-faceted, and that's after downplaying it considerably. From openness to variety to usability - Google's mastered it all, but one arena where it obliterates all competition is customization, of all forms and fashions. Whether it's live wallpapers, custom home launchers or edited color strings somewhere at the heart of an APK, the possibilities are endless, or as Google likes to put it - "the playground is open". Of the various customization manifestations, icon design is one area that has gained tremendous traction as of late and with icon packs being released almost every week, consisting of multiple variants, shapes, styles and colors, enthusiasts are often faced with the dilemma of having too many options to pick from, and while tastes may vary from person to person, some icon packs stand out from the crowd and today we look at some of the best free icon packs available on Google Play.
Android TV Launcher Pushed to Google Play
Learn about the release of the Android TV Launcher on Google Play and what it means for the future of Android TV
Over the past decade, the tech universe has seen two drastic and widely contrasting changes with regards to software. Earlier, developers aimed to pack as much variety and functionality as possible into a single piece of software--and while it worked well at first, users quickly found themselves saturated with features and functionality that was seemingly added just for the sake of being added. As a response, many developers sought to simplify their apps by unbundling related software, eventually leading to what we've seen in the Android with Google Drive (and its offshoots Docs, Sheets, and Slides) and the Google Now Launcher.
APKTool Updated with Android Lollipop Support
Find out about the latest Apktool update, which adds support for Android Lollipop and more
One of the beauties of Android is the level of flexibility we have over our devices. Whether it's tweaking a kernel or changing the system theme, the possibilities are numerous and often breathtaking. While kernel and framework modification is not for the faint-hearted, visual customization is an area in which every user dabbles to some extent--whether through simple things like changing icons, or through more advanced actions like app modification.
Increase Your Multitasking Workflow with C-Floating Windows
Find out how to increase your multitasking easily and efficiently with the C-Floating Windows app that enables apps and widgets to float over current app!
Technology has put life on the fast track. Lazy, relaxed days have turned into hurricanes of work and productivity, as people strive to do as much as possible in as little time as possible. As such, the tendency to do multiple things at a time, or "multitasking" has become quite popular. Most desktop operating systems offer native multitasking, but less so in mobile operating systems, due to various limitations. However, further evolving has made mobile devices more than capable of running simultaneous tasks, and while the AOSP doesn't have windowed multitasking yet, features such as multi-window and floating apps are available in OEM-provided and custom ROMs.
Turbo Editor Supercharges Your Device's File Editing Functionality
Easily and efficiently edit your files on your Android smartphone or tablet with Turbo File Editor.
File editing has never been one of the strong suites of smartphones and tablets for a variety of reasons--screen size and a lack of a physical keyboard being two predominant issues. While one can correctly state that some devices can fit the bill and handle a file editor, such as the hybrid tablets with physical keyboards or any other tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard, there's still the issue of the absence of a powerful text editor, similar to the much acclaimed Notepad++ that desktop operating systems enjoy. Or at least, this was an issue.
Learn How to Run a ROM Off Your External SD Card
This guide shows you how to run a ROM off of your external SD card, which can prove to be extremely useful in the event of corrupted internal memory.
Aftermarket modding has been around since practically the beginning of the modern day smartphone, but its build-up on Android has been pretty explosive. Since the early days of the HTC Dream right up to the current generation of devices, almost every device has received its fair share of third party modifications. These can come in the form of ROMs, kernels, scripts and more, but ROM development has taken front and center stage. Obviously, the word ROM stands for Read Only Memory. And for our modern devices, that's the NAND-based Flash ROM that makes up their internal storage. However, in the development community, the term has come to mean a custom operating system image that you install (or flash) onto the internal storage of your device.