Blog Category: Apps

This is the age of touch technology. Very rarely do we see phones with physical keyboards in the market. It is mostly used by those who love Blackberry, or those who simply must have a hardware keyboard. For most of us, we have adopted the touch based keyboard entry.

Android is so customizable, that you can even switch the default keyboard you use when typing messages and other information for all your apps. You shouldn’t be stuck with the stock keyboard unless you really like that stock keyboard.
The Play Store is host to dozens of keyboard replacements hoping to improve your typing comfort and accuracy while using your Android device. Some of them have very unique functions that may be important to someone, but completely useless to someone else. Today we will have a look at some of the best Android...

Many times you would hear people complain about their phones having a different skin. Regardless if it was Touchwiz, Sense, or Blur, it would always boil down to wanting to have the stock experience since they either find that the skin was too cartoony or it didn’t operate as fast as they had hoped it would.

What some people would usually do is to install custom ROMs that totally change the look and feel of the device. They would even go so far as to install an AOSP or AOKP based custom ROM to make their devices look as close to the original and pure Android as much as  they possible.
For most people, it usually boils down to the launcher. The launcher is your first interface with the device. This is where you arrange your home screen, your widgets, and your...

When browsing online and checking out Android screenshots that people uploaded, you may often notice that their fonts are rather different. Some of them have cool curvy fonts, while others have futuristic and rigid ones. Some look cool while others look simply loony. Still, you wonder to yourself “how do they do this?” Well, worry no more because today, you will learn about adding some custom fonts to your Android device.

Custom OEM Skins
Some Android devices already have custom fonts preinstalled through the OS. One such example are Galaxy S smartphones. These smartphones usually have two or three custom fonts to choose from right from the start. These phones usually have custom OEM skins, since the stock Android experience doesn’t really offer such a font switching option by default.
For those that do have a built in font chooser, your task may...

Jelly Bean is now ranked as the number two most adopted Android version in the current market. While Gingerbread is still ranked first, many are convinced that these devices are mostly older devices or budget devices launched in more remote areas of the world. Hence, in the modern world where people root, customize and tinker with their Androids, Jelly Bean is king.

One of the most key features of Jelly Bean is the “Richer” Notification Shade. In case you don’t know what a “Notification Shade” is, it is what you pull down when you swipe down from the black or grey notification bar at the top of your display. The Notification shade lets you view your notifications in more detail, and with Jelly Bean, you can interact with that notification in more ways than just launching the app involved.
What you probably...

As mentioned before in this blog, one of the key ways to avoid installing a malware application is to take a look at the permissions that it asks for. Most of us would often skip even reading a word of the permissions page before we download an app. That is entirely wrong and should be avoided if you want to be careful.

Of course, truth be told, Android permissions are not inherently bad. They are necessary for certain apps to be able to do their job properly. You see, this permission based installation is actually one of Android’s greatest protective features.
Why Android needs Permissions
Android is in essence, a Linux derivative. It is what most people refer to as a Linux Lite. It is based off the same code, as well as the same security premise. As such, Android is essentially just...

One of the greatest hurdles of the Android operating system is the battle against Android Malware. Just like the Windows operating system, Android is the most widely used operating system for mobile devices in the world. Thus, it is a prime target for malicious minds. While it may be a big negative factor to the OS, there are plenty of ways to deal with this issue without breaking away from your experience.

What is Malware?
Basically, malware is software that was meant to perform malicious behavior. This software can gather data about yourself, such as your credit card details, contact names, messages, passwords and any other personal information.
Malware can also elicit abnormal behavior, such as overheating, unwanted calls, and excessive data use. This can be detrimental to your life, which may include excessive bill charges as well as the destruction of the...

We remember the days back when discovering apps was a chore to begin with. The Android market back then was unintuitive and very unruly. Finding the best app is really difficult, and reviews were few and far in between. Everyone was simply testing the waters and trying to see which one works.

The Android Market quickly grew from just 50 usable apps to about 700,000 before it became the Play Store. Now, we are looking at around 800,000 apps and growing. The truth is, probably just about 20% or less of these apps are actually usable and worth people’s time. The rest of the apps are rubbish or simply not usable enough to hit mainstream acceptance. This is true even for the Apple App Store or the Windows App Store. Store App counts mean nothing in the face of the true...

Battery Icons are boring aren’t they? Most Android devices would have a default battery icon that shows a visual representation of what is your current battery level. For most people, that is not enough. They want to know exactly how much battery power you have left, not just some approximate battery level.

Android does have some built in measures to help you figure it out. You can go to the Android About page in your settings on older devices, while newer devices m ay come out with a dedicated battery setting which shows your current battery level and usage statistics.
Of course, that is a far cry from what people really want. Digging through your settings just to get the current battery level is not ideal. There are apps that try to solve this by either adding a battery widget on your...

Searching for apps in the Play Store is somewhat like trying to find a needle in a haystack. As more and more apps get submitted and approved, finding the thing you are looking for may need a ninja trick or two. Today, I’m going to show you a couple of search techniques that might help you in filtering out all the noise when searching for apps.

The Title Search
Sometimes, a lot of apps may have the same keyword or title that you are looking for. For the sake of the tutorial, let’s try making a search for Zombie Land, a theme after the movie of same title.
Let’s go to the Play Store and search using the string Zombie Land on the search bar. You will get a result list similar to this:

Notice that the app we are looking for doesn’t even...

Google’s Android operating system has come a long way. Their latest version, Jelly Bean is the most feature-packed version of Android yet. One of the most impressive features of Jelly Bean in 4.2.x is the new and improved camera and gallery.

In 4.2.x versions of Android, which is still only available to Nexus device at the moment, features the next step in taking panoramic photos. Rather than taking a flat panorama, your smartphone can now take a “Photosphere” or a single photo which is able to depict a 360 degree spherical view of your surroundings.
If you have ever used Google Map’s Street View function, then you should be familiar with the end product of a Photosphere. You can see the entire surrounding area from a single point in space. It used to take complicated machinery to make a photosphere, but now...