Remember when BlackBerry and Palm dominated the fledgling smartphone market? Things have changed a lot in the past decade. Research firm IDC reports that a billion smartphones were shipped in 2013, and 80 percent of them were running Google’s Android operating system. Apple’s iPhones come in second at just over 15 percent, and everyone else […]
ios
iOS 7.1 beta 5 released to devs, quickly jailbroken by Evad3rs
Apple recently released a fifth beta of iOS 7.1 to developers, offering bug fixes and new voices for Siri designed to sound better in UK and Australian English, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. The update also patched some of the exploits used by the latest jailbreak utilities — but it didn’t take long for the folks […]
Now you can use SwiftKey on an iPhone (in one app only)
Good news! You can finally use SwiftKey’s excellent keyboard to enter text on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. Bad news! There’s a catch. Apple still doesn’t actually allow third-party keyboards to replace the stock keyboard. But you can add keyboard functionality to an individual app. So SwiftKey created a standalone note-taking app called SwiftKey Note […]
Lilbits (1-28-2014): Does Samsung still need Tizen?
Tizen is a Linux-based operating system that’s strongly backed by Intel and Samsung, among others. While its Linux roots could make it an appealing option to hackers, geeks, and open source enthusiasts, it isn’t really designed to give you more control over your device — it’s designed to give hardware companies and wireless carriers more flexibility […]
Google’s Chromoting remote desktop app coming to iOS (and Android)
Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop is a tool that lets you remote control one PC from another. Just launch Chrome on a PC, install the add-on from the Chrome Web Store, and you can login to your work PC from home, access your desktop from your laptop, or basically take control of any PC that you […]
Google Play Movies & TV now available on iPhone and iPad
Google’s online movie and TV rental service is now available for iOS. Up until now if you’ve wanted to view content you’ve purchased from Google you’ve needed an Android device or a PC with a desktop operating system. Now you can access your Google Play video library on an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad using […]
Chrome for Android, iOS can now cut your bandwidth usage by 50 percent
Google Chrome for Android and iOS is a fast, simple, and powerful web browser for phones and tablets. Now there may be another reason to use it: Google is giving users the option of enabling data compression that could reduce data usage by up to 50 percent. The feature has been available in Chrome beta […]
Lilbits (12-23-2013): Updating your devices (officially or not)
Want to make sure your gadget is running the latest software? Sometimes that’s easy… sometimes it’s less easy. And sometimes it’s officially unsupported. Today’s roundup of tech stories from around the web includes a few OS updates: Hackers have figured out how to install Android 4.4 KitKat on Google’s now-defunct Nexus Q media streaming orb. […]
Jailbreak iOS 7 on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch
Team Evad3rs have released tools for jailbreaking an iPhone iPod touch, or iPad running iOS 7.0 through iOS 7.0.4. Evasi0n  7 is available for Windows, OS X, or Linux and lets yu jailbreak your device in a matter of minutes. Jailbreaking an iOS device allows you to access files and settings that would otherwise be […]
Chrome apps coming to Android, iOS, leaving browser behind
Google currently has two operating systems: Chrome OS for notebooks and desktops and Android for phones and tablets. But the lines are kind of blurry since you can run the Chrome web browser on most Android devices. What I’d really like to see is support for Chrome extensions and plugins on Android devices — but […]