features

The 10 iOS 14 features that will transform your iPhone in 2020

By Nancy L. Germann 3 weeks ago

We didn’t get any fresh hardware at Apple’s virtual WWDC 2020 keynote, but iPhone owners are in for a very promising selection of new features when iOS 14 lands this autumn. There’s nothing as all-consuming as dark mode this time, but with some long-overdue visual shake-ups, genuinely new features and refined privacy controls, it all looks rather neat to us.

Change your default email and browser

One of the most popular upcoming features, according to WIRED’s scientific method of checking Twitter post-keynote, is Apple finally relenting and allowing us to switch default email and browser apps to third parties. You’ve

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The Android 11 features that will actually change your phone

By Nancy L. Germann 1 month ago

Android 11 will be released later in 2020 like clockwork, but developers and anyone happy to put up with a half-finished operating system – bored much? – can try it out now. A beta of the software is available here for Pixel 2, 3, 3a and Pixel 4s. It has some, but not all, of the features of the final version.

We’ve taken a look at the beta on one of Google’s Pixel smartphones to see what progress has been made. On reflection, some changes are long overdue, the kind of tweaks a 2016 buyer might expected to see in

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Google Meet is free. Here’s how to master its most useful features

By Nancy L. Germann 2 months ago

As the world continues to hunker down inside their homes, people are having to get used to socialising and hosting work meetings in an entirely different way. Remote video calls have become a part of everyday life, while ‘Zooming’ has become the phrase most commonly used to refer to video calls under lockdown. As Zoom has risen meteorically in popularity, legacy platforms like Skype and Google Hangouts Meet (now Google Meet) have fallen behind or become obsolete altogether.

But Google, clearly trying to reverse this shift in power within video conferencing, has struck back. Google Meet is now free

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How to pimp Google Meet to give it Zoom’s best features

By Nancy L. Germann 3 months ago

Zoom may have emerged as the poster child for video conference apps during the coronavirus pandemic, but being thrust aggressively into the spotlight has not come without its issues for the company, most recently nagging questions regarding privacy.

But as well as showing which video app is most popular, our current situation has highlighted where others have been resting on their laurels having squandered years that could have been spent finessing their own online conferencing solutions, adding sticky extras and even fripperies designed to edge their offering ahead of the competition. It is telling that not until it became clear

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