Articles by Jerry Hildenbrand

The best Chromebooks are designed from the ground up to work “with the cloud” and they do a fine job at it, but knowing how to manage downloads and files on your Chromebook is important to properly maintain the onboard storage. Even if you regularly work from the cloud, you might want to keep a local copy of a document you’re working on in case you get stuck somewhere away from Wi-Fi. Your Chromebook doesn’t really care where you store your files, but because most devices have 64GB internal storage or less, you’ll want to take a bit of care about how and where you put the important stuff.

What to know about storing files on Chromebooks

Regardless of whether you are using an older Chromebook or something newer like the Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook is a lot like your Android phone when it comes to downloading and storing files. You have a dedicated Downloads folder within the Files app, or you can choose another spot in the user-accessible portion of your storage drive to place a file wh…

New technology will attempt to merge anonymity and user interests to make our web browsing more private.

Every time we browse the internet on even the best Android phone or any other device, we’re being tracked by advertising companies, including the biggest of them all: Google. The good news is that Google plans to stop selling interest-based ads that rely on individual user-tracking across the web as part of its Privacy Sandbox program, and it and plans to begin testing as early as Q2 of 2021.

As the biggest digital-advertiser, Google has the responsibility to make the industry better.

Google is the world’s largest digital advertising company and in 2020, over 50% of global ad sales were made through the company, so the stakes are high. Google seems to be optimistic about how it can shift not only how it supplies interest-based ads but is confident that this could trigger a major shift across the industry as a whole.

To be clear, the only way to offer ads based on your inte…

Fixing the latest bugs and exploits in Android every month.

Google has detailed the latest Android Security Bulletin and released the fixes for Pixel devices.

These are exploits and other security concerns that affect Android as a whole. Issues with the operating system, kernel patches, and driver updates may not affect any particular device, but these need to be fixed in the Android base by the folks maintaining the operating system code. That means Google, and they’ve detailed the things they have improved for this month.

Updated factory images for Pixel devices that are supported are available, and over-the-air updates are rolling out to users. If you don’t want to wait, you can download and flash the factory image or OTA update file manually, and here are some handy instructions to get you started.

The company that made your phone uses these patches to send an update out to you.

These changes have been released to the people making the best Android phones for at least 30…

Android 12 can make your phone dance to the music.

Android 12 has plenty of features to explore, but one of the coolest may be the ability for your phone’s haptic motors to work in tandem with an audio stream. Vibration is something every Android phone — from the best phone to the most budget-friendly phone — already has and every phone can also play sounds through its external speaker. Pairing the two might lead to some really innovative stuff!

What are haptics?

Inside of every phone is a small motor that is purposefully made to be off-balance, called a linear resonant actuator. When Android tells a phone to vibrate, this motor spins. Because it’s off-balance, it shakes and vibrates while it’s spinning and this vibration is what we’re feeling when our phone is on mute and someone calls.

Haptic feedback isn’t a small feature, and it isn’t easy to get it right.

These vibrations are useful for other things, too. The most familiar — and for many the most vital — thing…

Google’s Jetpack Compose is a new concept in designing how an app looks and works, and it’s pretty cool!

Google’s developer team loves to make tools to use with Android Studio and show off how they work. The development of Kotlin and Android Jetpack libraries has changed the way a lot of developers who write the non-Google apps we love work. But its newest tool might be one of the best yet, specifically when it comes to apps for “big screens”.

A big screen can mean a lot of things, but in this case, we’re talking about tablets and Chromebooks. It’s no secret that even the best Android tablets or the best Chromebooks all suffer from one of Android’s biggest flaws: plenty of apps look really bad or just don’t work as they should once you move past a phone screen.

A big part of the reason for that is that Android apps are usually resizable to infinity — really, you can sideload apps onto a huge television with the right Android TV box, and most work. They just look very ugly, and o…

Privacy and security are two very different things that often get lumped together. Especially when it comes to messaging apps.

You just got one of the best Android phones and chances are one of the first things you’ll do is message a friend to tell them the good news.

When we send a message to someone, we should expect a few things: that they’ll get the message, nobody else can read the message, and no other company is tracking anything we do while we’re chatting it up. Unfortunately, it doesn’t usually work that way.

Most one-on-one ways to message someone are secure to an extent. Nobody can read your Twitter DMs unless they are logged in as you. Google and Facebook spend a lot of money to make sure the servers that transmit messages are locked-down tight. Apps like Signal and Telegram are developed with help from security specialists to make them secure.

Most messengers are secure, but few are actually private.

Unfortunately, privacy is another matter. Most messaging apps …

Four years of important updates is a feature that puts Samsung at the head of the class when it comes to Android phones.

Android enthusiasts care a lot about updates, and we should. When you spend the money on one of the best Android phones or even a budget phone, you expect the manufacturer to support their products. If you have almost any Samsung phone from the last few years and care about updates, you just hit the jackpot as Samsung has committed to offering four years of security patches to a huge list of its Android phones.

Security patches and maintenance updates may not be very sexy when compared to new OS versions with more features, but these are the important kind of updates. They make your phone better even though you might not be able to see any difference — just know that things like paying with your phone or using your banking app or even online shopping is safer and more secure because of those small, unassuming security patches.

The best part of this news is tha…

Before you can even get started with the Raspberry Pi, you’ll need to find the best Raspberry Pi 4 SD cards, as that’s how you’re going to be able to install the operating system. That means it’s essential to find the right card. One that’s fast and robust enough, has ample storage, and won’t break the bank. If you picked up one of the best Raspberry Pi kits, then you likely already received one in the kit, but if not, or if you need to expand the storage a bit further, here are your best options.

Best all around

Samsung EVO+ 32GB

Staff Pick

Samsung’s 32GB EVO+ card ticks all the right boxes when it comes to using it in your Raspberry Pi 4. It’s fast enough, hits the maximum native format size, and it’s nice and inexpensive. If you’re not sure which card to get, pick this one.

From $10 at Amazon $11 at Best Buy

More storage for the pro

Silicon Power Superior Pro 64GB

If you need more space, the 64GB version of SanDisk’s Extreme Plus card is a great option as long as…

The Google Pixel 5 is the best Android phone when it comes to security. Google builds its phones to be secure from the start, and its monthly security patches guarantee you won’t be left behind on future exploits. Some of the most secure Android phones available to date are on this list to keep your mind at ease while staying safely connected.

Best Overall: Google Pixel 5

The Pixel 5 is updated directly from Google with the latest version of Android. Outside of any new features that may come with, the device security model has been updated and strengthened by a dedicated team that regularly audits and enhances the code used to build Android. On top of this, Google releases updates to the security model at the beginning of every month for the people who build Android phones to apply to its software. These are important, more important than any other update.

Equally important, but often overlooked, is transparency. You shouldn’t have to trust a company when it says something is …

It’s a little of the same but a little bit different too. It was just time for a change in scenery.

I just couldn’t deal with the Pixel 4’s poor battery life any longer. That’s something you’ve probably heard before, either in real-space or written on the internet because the phone really does have the worst battery life of any product since the battery was invented in 250 BC. Seriously, though, it is bad. Really bad.

I hated to do it because I thought everything else about the phone was marvelous and that it was still one of the best Android phones I’ve used. Of course, it was only marvelous when it had enough juice to stay powered on. I first moved to the OnePlus 8 and was really digging it but was having problems with Google Fi and activation. I did what any tech writer would do in this situation, and just got another phone instead of trying to figure it out with Fi tech support.

And now, for the first time since the Galaxy S7, I’m using a Samsung phone. I don’t hate it. I don’…