If you read this blog regularly enough you’ll be familiar with scrcpy, an ace root-free way to mirror your Android smartphone on your Ubuntu desktop and interact with it. Scrcpy is free, it’s open source, it’s awesome. Oh yeah, and it’s updated regularly! Which is what this post is about: telling you what’s new and notable in the latest release, scrcpy 1.14 — so let’s get to it!

Encryption and interoperation: finally and finally again

The very first Android phone, it has been long established, was the HTC G1/Dream. Or at least that's the conventional wisdom. While the G1 was the

We all know how quickly the weather can change, and that's how fast a weather app can change, too. Dark Sky announced on March 31 that it had been bought by Apple and that its Android app will be shutting down this summer. Dark Sky even used a severe weather alert to spread the news in other apps that use Dark Sky's API, just to make sure you'd know even if you didn't use its app.

When you think of cheap Android tablets, you probably think of the Amazon Fire series, but Walmart is also in the game with its in-house "Onn" tablets. As spotted by 9to5Google, recently Walmart started selling two new models of its Onn tablet: the 8-inch "Onn.8 Tablet Pro" for $99, and the 10-inch "Onn.10.1 Tablet Pro" for $129.

QR codes are all around us these days. Many offline products like flyers, some newspapers, brochures, posters, and billboards come with them to give you quick access to online resources without you needing to copy some long URLs. QR codes are also great for sharing contact information and Wi-Fi passwords. You need some software in order to read them, though. Luckily, these days most Android phones come with pre-installed solutions, so you don't have to download yet another app. There's also a lightweight website that does the job without trackers and ads, and some browsers even come with built-in scanners.

Learn how to send messages and files over a corporate network without using any services.

Google Play Music is expected to permanently shut down later this year.

Microsoft acquired SwiftKey about four years ago, and apart from some addition like optional Microsoft accounts, Bing, and the company's translate feature, not too much changed about the popular third-party keyboard. Earlier this year, though, Microsoft's name got more prominent in the app's settings, and now, the Redmond giant has decided it's about time to make it even more obvious whose keyboard you're using. The latest beta version of SwiftKey is now called "Microsoft SwiftKey Keyboard." On the feature front, it only brings new emoji for Android 10 users.

Cleaning it all up is a big job

you can use you mobile phone to contant beacon

Samsung doesn’t release more than two major Android OS updates for its devices and doesn’t really keep flagship devices on the monthly release schedule for security updates beyond three years. That’s just the way it is and there’s no indication of this changing any time soon.

90Hz and 120Hz panels are the latest trend in the smartphone world but don’t be fooled by the marketing taglines. Not every 120Hz phone offers the same display quality, features, and certainly not the same battery life. There’s a lot that goes into a great display besides just the frame rate on the spec sheet.

Google's Messages app is packed with features, including a built-in markup tool, reminders, context-aware recommendations, a dark mode, RCS support,

Alien: Blackout, is now free to download and keep forever on mobile for both Android and iOS. Alien: Blackout is available to download for free only for today.

Think you might stop using an app in a few months? This new option is for you.

The Hangouts brand will live on in the consumer chat app that replaced Gchat.

What might some Android apps be quietly doing behind the backs of their users? The answer, according to a succession of studies, is quite a lot, probably more than some users would be comfortable with if they knew about it.

What if you want to communicate over your smartphone without using a phone number or even sim card (Wi-Fi only)?

Apple kicked Alex Jones out of the App Store in 2018. The Google Play Store has finally followed suit.