Articles by Jerry Hildenbrand

Artificial Intelligence is the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to our daily lives.

I’m what a lot of people used to call a futurist. Not the science fiction writer kind of futurist, but the guy who recognized early on that when technology really started booming in the late 20th century everything was going to change. I naively hoped that everything would change for the better, but we all have dreams when we’re young that get crushed as time goes by.

But tech has changed the world in almost every way, and it affects every one of us every day. The next big leap in tech, which we’ve already seen and watched blossom, is AI. AI is neither artificial nor intelligent, no matter what the name implies. But it’s here to stay — and it’s going to become a more significant part of the everyday products that shape our world.

AI is a fancy word for a novel way to program a computer. Whether in your phone, watch, or a giant server room deep under a mountain, computer parts can not …

Best answer: Most Chromebooks on the market today have 4GB of RAM, and that is indeed enough to get by. If a model you’re considering has options for 8GB of RAM, though, I’d highly recommend it now that Chromebooks are getting significantly longer support lives.

What is RAM?

RAM stands for Random Access Memory. Think of it as a container where the things you’re doing on your Chromebook — both what you can see and what’s happening behind the scenes — can store and retrieve data randomly. That means it can access any byte of that data without affecting the preceding or trailing bytes. That makes it fast because the location of the data you need has no effect on the time it takes to read, write, or overwrite it. With no moving parts, there are no mechanical limitations on access times.

RAM is also volatile — once the integrated circuits lose their power, the data disappears. That means it’s different from your Chromebook’s storage (what we think of as a hard drive) and isn’t us…

None of the parts that are yours will work without the parts that aren’t.

The Lithuanian Defense Ministry wants you to “throw away” your Chinese smartphone. Seriously — it advises you not to buy any smartphones made by Chinese companies and to throw away the ones you might already own because of the software that powers them.

This stems from research that shows how flagship phones from Xiaomi, which are also some of the best Android phones, built for the European market, can detect and remotely censor things like any expression of freedom for Tibet or Taiwanese independence. Of course, this isn’t all of the story. As many of us understand, this is normal for products sold in China — even Apple and Google bow to Chinese regulators when necessary. As we’ve seen before, sometimes Western software versions from Chinese brands leave tracking and censorship tools in place.

To be perfectly clear: We reached out to Xiaomi directly, and a company spokesman adamantly denied actual wrong…

An impressive upgrade with none of the appeal of its competition.

Microsoft took the wraps off its 2021 lineup, and of course, that includes an Android phone — the Surface Duo 2. The introduction of the device was a slick affair and spent plenty of time telling potential customers why they might want to spend “foldable” money with Microsoft. The company did a good job conveying why the Surface Duo 2 is a great device but not enough when it comes to claiming the best foldable phone spot.

Technology for technology’s sake serves no one.

What I think the company did exceptionally well was explain why the Duo 2 is great without telling us its predecessor wasn’t. We didn’t hear how much better version 2 is compared to version 1, just that it was fast and capable. We also heard no comparisons to the Duo’s true competition, which of course is Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3. This, in my opinion, is where the mistakes started.

From what I’ve seen — I’ve never used a Fold or…

Android 12’s new Privacy Dashboard is the one place where you can see exactly what apps are using which permissions and when they are doing it. It’s not perfect — Android’s permissions can be a little confusing, and Google isn’t giving up much information about what each of them means, but it’s a great addition nonetheless. Getting there isn’t difficult once you know where to look. And remember, the best Android phone doesn’t have Android 12 just yet, so you’ll need to be using a Google Pixel with the Android 12 beta installed.

How to open the Privacy Dashboard in Android 12

Open your phone’s settings menu.
Scroll to the Privacy section and tap the entry.

In the new window that opens choose Privacy Dashboard at the top of the list.

Once you have the Privacy Dashboard open, you can choose a category to see which apps have used the associated permission. You’ll find obvious things like Google Maps using your location and the phone app using your microphone. Still, you might …

What started as a way to ensure every app works on every phone is now how Google maintains control over its own software platform.

Google brought one of Android 11’s best privacy features to every Android phone the company still actively supports, and it did it through the magic of Google Play Services.

Soon, every phone running a version of Android 6 or later will be able to automatically revoke system permissions if you haven’t used the app in a while. Android 6 is the cutoff because it’s also the minimum version that supports the latest adaptation of the beast that is Google Play Services. It’s also quite old, and you’re going to find newer software on all of the best Android phones you can buy in 2021, as well as the not-so-great ones.

This move is more important for your privacy than it may appear at first glance. In an interview with Google’s privacy team, I spoke with product manager and privacy specialist Charmaine D’Silva at length about this feature when it was new. Her …

Best answer: IP ratings refer to the “International Protection Marking” ratings given after a series of tests were performed to see how much dust and water can enter your phone and under what circumstances. Each number and letter stands for a different level of protection, and the full list of them follows below.

Tougher phones

Manufacturers are making Android phones more rugged than they used to be. It’s a big selling feature. Phones from Samsung, Motorola, and even Google now come with some degree of water- and dust-resistance. You can even pick from the best rugged Android phones. What those numbers represent are important deciding factors for many when spending cash on a new phone.

You’ll usually see “ruggedness” described with an IP rating or a MIL-STD rating, or both. Those are standards (loose ones in some cases) that determine how resistant something is from the elements. Things like water-resistance, shock (both electrical and physical), temperature, air pressure, and a h…

The Google Pixel 6 will either be awesome or horrible, and I can’t wait to find out which.

I’m not someone who likes to chase hardware specs when it comes to my phone. Sure, I’m a sucker who buys a new PC video card every year, and I have spent more time and money than I like to admit on monitors or keyboards, but when it comes to my phone, I value stable and boring over shiny and new. Crazy, right?

It’s all about that chip.

All that flew right out the window when Google finally confirmed it was putting an SoC of its own design into the Pixel 6. It’s a phone I’m actually excited to buy.

Don’t get me wrong. I am fully and painfully aware that the Pixel 6’s hardware and its fancy Google-designed Tensor chip may be a complete disaster. In fact, chances are good that it will be pretty bad doing at least one of the things I depend on my phone to do right. But it could also be something very different in a good way and change the entire game when it comes to phone hardware, much th…

Google giving manufacturers more control is what made Android so popular.

With over two billion users, Android is the most popular computer operating system in the world. There are more Android users than iPhone users and even more Android users than Windows users. It’s amazing what Google was able to do with the platform in 10 years. But Google really isn’t the reason why Android became so popular.

We all know how different Android can look and feel on different brands of phones or even different phones from the same brand. This is why there are more than 2 billion users. With Android, Google used this system to make manufacturers and phone carriers want to use it because everyone can make more money. Money is what matters here, and there is plenty of it to go around.

Wear OS 3 has arrived with the Galaxy Watch 4, and we see something very similar. It’s an Android Wear OS-powered wearable with Bixby instead of Google Assistant (though Assistant may be coming), it ties into Samsun…

The Galaxy Note wasn’t just about the S Pen.

The Galaxy Z Fold 3 is here, and for a lot of people, it might turn out to be the best Android phone. But for a substantial portion of the Android crowd, the Galaxy Fold is also a reminder of how disappointed they are with one important detail.

You see, Samsung decided the Galaxy Note line is done. Kaput. Fin. The company hasn’t come right out and said it, but the Galaxy S Ultra line and the Galaxy Fold are the essentially spiritual successors to the Note line — and things just aren’t quite the same.

Right up front — I’m not a Galaxy Note die-hard. It’s my favorite Samsung model throughout the years, but only because I really love using the S Pen. It’s just not the phone I would carry around all day, every day, so I didn’t. If you’re wondering what my ideal phone would be, well, that would have to be the LG V10 running the Pixel version of Android 11. But such an animal only exists in my mind. Oh well.

You might think that includin…