Back when we were doing our Android One review, our editor at Pricebaba, Aditya Shenoy rightly puts: “Stock Android is like a piece of bread and the manufacturers apply various toppings on top of it.” It is very obvious that you will eventually want to break out of the stock look and have your own set of customizations. The first logical thing you can look for is to change your launcher....

That pretty much summed up the sentiment of a few US and UK based colleagues who saw Xiaomi’s global Vice President launch the Xiaomi Mi5 at Barcelona yesterday. For, while the product presentation did go off smoothly, it had not the element of insane magic that many had heard so much about (for the record, it is true – we wrote about how Barra channeled Steve Jobs at the launch of the Mi 4i in India last year)....

I am talking about that phenomenon, the “gaming” phone. One which had been in a period of hibernation but has since burst back into the spotlight thanks to a device from Razer and a leak about a Xiaomi device. On the face of it, there seems nothing wrong with the concept – after all, there are gaming computers and notebooks, so why should there not be gaming phones? Gaming is a rage on mobile phones too – just look at the number of people playing games in the Metro or a bus or in a café, if you do not believe us....

The software was not created to allow piracy, and instead was developed so that gamers can play unsigned third party applications as well as games. If developers can come up with some useful and LEGAL third-party homebrew applications, then I don’t see the harm in this. Though PSGroove doesn’t cost a penny, you would have to copy it over USB development board (AVR HW) of your choice which normally costs $20....

We had previously seen how to jailbreak iPhone 3G on iOS 4 using redsn0w 0.9.5b5-3 on Windows, but it didn’t support iPhone 3GS. PwnageTool 4.0/4.01 supports iPhone 3GS but you must be on already pwned 4.0 Beta or 3.1.3 or lower firmwares. This means if you had used Spirit to jailbreak iPhone 3GS 3.1.3, then wait for a different release. Guide to Jailbreak iPhone 3GS with iOS 4 using PwnageTool 4....

Now, Dropbox users (both Basic and Pro) will be able to open and edit Microsoft Office files directly from within Dropbox. This won’t require a Microsoft account or an Office 365 membership. All you need to do is authorize Microsoft Office Online in Dropbox, like you do with any other app. On the Dropbox’s website, the Open button will open the document in a new tab in the Office Online interface....

In the movie ‘The Social Network‘, Erica Albright berates Mark Zuckerberg for making personal remarks about her on his blog and points out that the internet isn’t written with pencil, but ink. Well, technically that isn’t true either. But, yes we get the point – the lesson that we shouldn’t share things that might offend others. Today, the internet is thick with embarrassing stuff, as well as extra critical information like credit card and bank details....

It is not just the presence of Android that makes the Priv special. The device also comes with a form factor that was made famous by the likes of Nokia in 2007 – the slider, in which the keyboard slides out from under the display. And it is curved touchscreen display (a la the Galaxy S6 Edge) too – a 5.4 inch AMOLED affair with a resolution of 1440 X 2560, giving it a very impressive pixel density of 540 ppi....

Let us get one thing dead straight. In terms of appearance and aesthetics, there is no difference between the Redmi Note 4G and its 3G brother. Like the latter, the Redmi Note 4G is slightly more than half a foot long at 154 mm and is also 78.7 mm wide and 9.5 mm thin. As in the previous edition, the front is dominated by a 5.5 inch display, with a front facing 5....

We were spot on. For once again, the folks at OnePlus have gone with a design that is rather different from the past. Gone is the trademark sandstone finish back that marked the first two editions of the device (those mourning for it can get a cover of the same texture) and so too is its removability – the OnePlus 3 is a unibody device. And yes, the leakers seem to have got it right – it does seem to bear more than a passing resemblance of devices from a Taiwanese company that was once considered the last word in Android phone design, but since when was “looking like an HTC device” a bad thing, really?...

Once you determine that a particular freeware is safe and is from a trusted company, it can do wonders to your work. Today, there are thousands of freeware available that people no longer prefer buying software. Freeware junkies are as many as the number of freeware softwares available. Here I would want to throw light on some of the most useful and maybe, less-known freeware to make your Windows experience even more worthwhile....

Honestly speaking, I had never heard of this software till now. A quick background check revealed that Steganos is a German company which has been in security based product development since 1996, with several products like Steganos Privacy Suite, Steganos Safe, Steganos Password Manager, Steganos Internet Anonym VPN and Steganos Trace Destructor. Steganos Privacy Suite is user-friendly with a simple interface. Users can secure portable device, manages and organizes all password and access information with password manager, and delete unwanted data permanently with file shredder....

Google Talk users can now make free VoIP calls international calls thorugh GTalk2VoIP. It is an online radio, VoIP and SMS service provider for Google Talk and other popular IM clients like Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo etc. Due to the recent partnership between Talkster and GTalk2VoIP, users can now make fast and free calls to any number in the world. All the other free VoIP services require registration, but you don’t need any registration with GTalk2VoIP....

“Now-on-tap” lets you use the google search engine from any app. To use it, you just have to press and hold the home button to let Google analyze anything you’re using on the screen and then it shows relevant information based on the things it analyzed. For example, if you have any place on the screen and then use Google “now-on-tap”, Google will show you the address and other relevant information for that place....

Positioned as a successor to the Gionee S5.5 and S5.1 smartphones launched in 2014, the handset is just 5.5mm thick and has an aluminum magnesium alloy unibody design with Gorilla glass 3 on the front and rear. The naming has been changed this, because the previous models carried in their name the thinness in millimeters, which hasn’t happened this time. The smartphone features Mediatek’s new 64-but 1.7Ghz octa core processor, comes with 2GB RAM and 16GB of storage....

A quick Googling shows several threads on different forums, including Gmail help forum, where several users have complained about the same. Most of these users complain about Gmail’s non-stop loading and non-display of messages even after signing in. One such complaint goes like this As you can expect with any Google forum, there haven’t been much help from Google, but in one of the threads, a Google employee has suggested this solution- There are no clear indications available for the cause and pattern of the issue, like when using a particular browser or while using a particular OS etc....

The new pop-out key joins the bottom-right row of quick actions and resides between the resolution and cinema mode options. The icon is similar to the picture-in-picture available in beta on Google Chrome. The new dedicated window it leads to, however, is unlike other third-party implementations we’ve seen in the past. It’s essentially a shrunken down mini YouTube player since hovering at the top reveals the search bar if you’d like to play another clip without returning to the source tab on your browser....

And after a few weeks of using the latest Google flagship, the Pixel 2 XL, one cannot help but get a similar feeling. Yes, the phone has a very distinct design (although it cannot be called premium – the feel of the metal back seems almost grainy and plasticky), with its dual tone back (we got the black model) and its hardware is right up there with the best – a 6-inch quad HD display squeezed into a compact frame that is a mere 6....

The answer to that question will perhaps end up determining whether you will invest in Google’s Pixel a series of devices. We have been using the larger of those, the Pixel 3a XL for a while now, and whenever someone has asked us if it was worth buying, we have replied with the very question at the beginning of this review. For the camera is really the star of the Pixel 3a XL show....

However, the results disclose that Android users aren’t particularly installing the best titles and as a result, there are some bizarre entries too in terms of sheer download numbers. While globally, “Face Changer 2” leads, “BeautyPlus Me – Perfect Camera” is the front-runner in India. As expected, “Pokemon Go” is the most trending game followed by the multiplayer behemoth, “Clash Royale” that is actually the best game of the year according to Google....