Samsung has today begun pushing out the much-anticipated Lollipop update to all unlocked models of its flagship phablet, the Note 4, located in South Korea.
For those in need of a refresh, the Lollipop upgrade brings support for multiple accounts, improved notifications, a smoother multitasking experience, Ambient Display, smarter internet connections and the recently-announced Material Design guidelines.
To start the update, make sure you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network. Then, from the home screen, press the Menu key, followed by Settings. Scroll to the bottom and tap ‘About Device’, followed by ‘Software Update and ‘Update Now’.
Come comment on this article: Samsung starts pushing out Lollipop update for the Note 4 in South Korea
Touchwiz’s biggest critics have been waiting years for Samsung to get with the program, in terms of better optimizing the UI and removing extra “junk”. In the past few years we’ve heard more than one rumor about how Samsung will slim down Touchwiz, only to walk away disappointed in the end. Could things be different this time around with the Galaxy S6? We hope so.
In addition to rumors suggesting that Samsung is going to be optimizing Touchwiz to give “Nexus-like” levels of performance, about two weeks ago now a report from SamMobile suggested that Samsung would also be removing much of the bloatware. Instead, those wanting the removed apps could simply install them from the Samsung store or even Google Play. Now SamMobile is back with even more details about what to expect from the Galaxy S6’s hardware, and it’s looking pretty impressive so far.
Beyond simply decoupling many apps from the Touchwiz experience, Samsung is reportedly making it so nearly all pre-installed Samsung apps can be uninstalled by a user
Beyond simply decoupling many apps from the Touchwiz experience, Samsung is reportedly making it so nearly all pre-installed Samsung apps can be uninstalled by a user without special permissions or access to root. For all that it’s removing, it also seems that Samsung is introducing quite a few new pre-installed apps to the picture including a number of Microsoft apps such as OneNote, OneDrive, Office Mobile and Skype. More than likely this could have to do with the recent agreement Samsung and Microsoft reached, relating to their previous patent dispute.
It’s not just the apps that are changing, SamMobile’s “insider source” also claims that the much faster TouchWiz/Lollipop experience will have numerous Lollipop animations and effects, more colorful designs for Samsung apps and several other changes as highlighted n the list from SamMobile below:
• Samsung’s default keyboard app supposedly looks more like a mix between the keyboard on the Galaxy Tab S and the iOS keyboard.
• More theming options are available
• You can select between 4×4, 4×5 and 5×5 icon layouts for the app drawer
• The app drawer no longer supports endless cycling through the list of apps (meaning you can’t go back from the last page to the first without going back through the previous pages).
• The music app still runs in full-screen mode at all times
• The dialer app looks “green as grass”, or that’s what we were told.
It’s important to remember that all of this comes from a source we can’t independently confirm, and so we’d take this news with a grain of salt. After seeing Samsung promise big and deliver much more modest changes with each new phone, it’s hard not to remain skeptical at this point — though perhaps slowing sales have finally given Samsung the push it has (arguably) been needing.
What do you think, excited by the Galaxy S6 and the rumored Touchwiz changes? How likely do you think these changes are, or will most of them prove to be nothing more than rumors or exaggerations?
HTC today has pushed out a pretty big update to its standalone Zoe app, which lets you stitch together images and video clips into seamless highlight reels.
The app’s got a new highlight engine, which brings along with it some new themes, transitions and effects. (But don’t worry, Islandia is still there.) It also makes it easier to download and save Zoes, discover new content from other Zoe users, and it’s increased support for Android 5.0 Lollipop. You’ve also got the prerequisite bugfixes and performance enhancements as well.
Anecdotally, the update definitely has give the app a smoother and much more native feel to it. If you’ve yet to give Zoe a try, it’s definitely worth looking at. The update’s available now in Google Play.
Last week, Ally somewhat accidentally discovered that if you change an iMessage’s group name on your computer, it changes the name for everyone on the thread. It not only led to some pretty hilarious griefing for our other co-workers, but got me thinking about other ridiculous tricks and trolls for making iMessage conversations a little more — shall we say — interesting. So here are ten ridiculous games, tricks, and other nonsense to keep you and your friends laughing throughout the day.
Changing the group name won’t send your friends alerts the way traditional texts will, but it does change how new messages show up — when you receive a text, the group’s name will show up next to the sender. There’s room for lots of silliness here, as well as emoji, and everyone has access to changing the name — you can’t lock it down.
If you’re messaging with someone who gets impatient waiting for text messages, you can grief them with an oldie but a goodie: a gif of the text message in progress icon. This doesn’t work perfectly on Macs or with people who have read receipts enabled, but it’s still worth a giggle or two.
Whether your friend has an aversion to a particular song or you just want to send a little Rick Astley love their way, you can use iOS 8’s iMessage vocal recording feature to send a clip of a song — prerecorded or sung yourself — to your friend in need.
Just don’t be surprised if they retaliate.
One emoji or two to spice up a conversation is all well and good, but do you know what’s even more fun? Creating stories out of emoji. You can use the return key and the emoji keyboard to build all sorts of storyboards and tales, depending on your patience — and use o the return key.
Of course, if you don’t want to spend the time building a narrative, you can always torture your friends with an emoji dump by sending 1000 copies of an emoji their way. The old-fashioned way to do this involves a lot of copying and pasting, but if you have Workflow, you can use Myke Hurley’s devilishly horrible script for auto-sending 1000 copies of an emoji someone’s way.
It may not be as sophisticated as a Facebook or Game Center game, but there are a variety of old-school board games you can play with a few emojis and some creativity. Connect Four’s a fun one, but you can even rock checkers or chess if you’re patient.
Can’t find the right emoji for a response? That’s what reaction gifs are for: You can use third-party keyboards like PopKey or a gif search site like Giphy to help pick the perfect gif response for a particularly silly conversation, or even make a gif of yourself using Workflow or GifMill.
Selfies aren’t just for your Instagram feed: They can be super-useful at expressing all sorts of emotions that emojis or gifs are lacking in. Excitement, rage, horror, joy — whatever you want to express toward your buddy, you probably can with a quick-shot selfie.
This one was suggested by Dave Addey on Twitter, and what an awesome suggestion it was:
@settern I sometimes pretend I’m a text adventure.
— Dave Addey (@daveaddey) February 5, 2015
I did this with a few friends last week, and it’s pretty hilarious where it will take you: One of my friends tried to keep to the original Zork script by looking up a walkthrough; one started inspecting strange things on the ground; and one had me spin up an entirely new adventure for hours that left us both laughing. If you want to practice your storytelling and confuse your non-geeky friends, this is a pretty great way to do it.
File this down as another way to confuse your buddies and end up laughing: iOS 8’s QuickType keyboard is great for predicting and filling in long words you don’t necessarily want to type in full, but it’s even more hilarious when you let it drive your conversation entirely.
Use only QuickType to create a message, and it will attempt to create a logical sentence as best it can… albeit, a logical sentence that twists, turns, and meanders. Your results can be pretty fantastic.
I won’t spoil this one for either party, but pro-tip: If you’re feeling glum and want a cheer-up, texting 866-740-4531 is a guaranteed smile.
I received a bunch of other great ideas on Twitter, but if you have a personal favorite fun thing to do over iMessage, leave it in the comments.
Imagine the horror of a bricked or water-damaged phone and the sudden realization that all of your valuable photos, contacts, and sensitive information are drifting away in the digital wind. We think that years worth of collected data is invaluable. Luckily for you, iDrive is asking less than the price of some cheeseburgers.
This iDrive plan affords you a lifetime of unlimited cloud backup secured by 256-bit AES encryption with an optional private key. You can add up to 5 devices, so all of your tablets, phones, and PC’s can stay connected. There’s even support for Facebook and Instagram backup. Sufficient storage space with built-in security is worth investing in at any price, especially $10!
See more at deals.androidguys.com
Imagine the horror of a bricked or water-damaged phone and the sudden realization that all of your valuable photos, contacts, and sensitive information are drifting away in the digital wind. We …
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We’ve all seen those hunky power strips with the flickering orange indicator lights curled up in the corner like some sort of unsightly electrical snake. Nothing sucks the life out of your …
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It’s here! Microsoft has today flipped the switch and released its promised Windows 10 Technical Preview for phones. Outside of what we saw at the Redmond event on January 21, this is our first real opportunity to take a look at the next major version of Windows for smartphones.
If you’re already enrolled in the Windows Insider program, to download it you’ll need the Windows Insider app on your phone and from there the rest is relatively easy.
We’re heading into a holiday weekend here in the United States so you know what that typically means. That’s right, Amazon is giving away a bunch of free apps and games. For the next couple of days (Feb 12-14) you can grab up to $140 worth of stuff. Among the titles being offered up at no cost are Trivia Crack, Shazam Encore, OfficeSuite Professional 8, Cut the Rope: Experiments and more. There’s 37 available but you can pick and choose what you get!
In addition to the limited time promotion, Amazon is dangling a few other deals.
Amazon
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Apple’s enormous Campus 2 building site in Cupertino, CA, has been pretty much off limits since construction began (excepting hard-to-restrict aerial photography), but San Francisco public radio station KQED got a quick on-the-ground tour of the site which, well, it’s very much a construction site right now. Lots of concrete and steel and whatnot, just arranged in the ring of the Apple Campus 2 design instead of more traditional right-angled structures.
The new complex is being built on a former HP campus site. Said KQED’s Amy Standen:
“What Apple inherited on the property was several older buildings, all of which were broken down and deconstructed. Much of the material from those old buildings was recycled into new building material to make the new campus, according to Apple.”
Apparently 95% of the debris from the old buildings is being recycled and will be reincorporated into the new structures. The prodigious use of on-site recycled materials means that Apple’s reduced the impact of the construction on the surrounding community — nowhere near as many concrete trucks have been rumbling through Cuptertino to pour the building’s enormous foundation and subterranean parking structure, for example.
Source: KQED
Carphone Warehouse in the UK is now selling the three current smartphones in HTC’s Desire range. They include the Desire 320, the Desire 620 and the Desire 820, the latter of which which we reviewed in December.
Microsoft has just published the list of Windows Phone compatible with the Windows 10 Preview.
Unfortunately, the list is definitely a subset of phone with many of the high-end ones being left off the list. Of course, this will likely change in the coming weeks and months but for now, these are the supported devices for the Windows 10 Preview.
AIVAnet 