Hidden Features of IOS 10

Apple’s new operating system iOS 10 updates are significantly great and features a lot of various changes you may have missed in case you are not looking out for them. Mentioned here are 10 small alterations and changes to Apple’s recent and latest mobile operating system which can make major difference in your life.

1. Apps in Messages – In case you have downloaded iOS 10, you may have noted that messages’ appearance is different. However, there are quite major changes to Messages, more than expected. Now you have an App store for messages which appears at the left side of the text bar. These apps allow you to do various tasks such as looking up movie times, or buying tickets or making a reservation on OpenTable inside the app. It also provides you the ability to coordinate plans quite easily.

 2. New Tricks in Siri – The Siri Assistant has become quite smarter in the case of iOS 10, however, most of the people won’t actually think to ask it to show off her features. Now, Siri works with many apps and you can guide her to use Venmo, or you can also use WhatsApp to transmit messages on that network. Along with this, you can order Siri to carry out sophisticated searches on your smartphone, like finding emails, photos consisting of various objects and even people.

 3. Searches Made Smarter – Now user can use Apple’s object recognition feature to make discovering the exact photo you wish to find with ease. All you have to do is ask Siri to find images consisting of cars or even your dog. The user can also type these different searches by itself.

 4. Locating People – As it becomes easier to detect people in your images way better than before. In the photos app, you also receive an app section called “People” which utilizes facial recognition technology to group the images of the same people. By clicking on “Select” on the screen, you can easily identify various persons in the pictures.

 5. Photo Markup – Now the user can type or draw on any image you click. This makes your photo album on your phone appearing like your own Snapchat account. This particular feature present in the deep, but the users can easily access this feature through opening the image and finding out the three-slider icon which opens up with options to edit the image. By pressing on the three-dot icon within a circle, you can choose “Markup”.

 6. Filtering Emails – As the email inbox can become cluttered, it makes it quite difficult to find the correct email that you are looking for. With its new Mail App featuring in this iOS 10, it comes with a filter button present on the bottom left corner of your phone. It also you to filter flagged or unread messages along with sending messages directly to you or messages with attachments.

 7. Basic Photo Editing – This feature might not draw much attention to everyone, but the users who look for photo editing features will find this features quite alluring. Apple now allows the user to click and edit various RAW images by using different apps like Adobe Lightroom for mobile. Even the photographers can enjoy the commit more advanced editing even with the images taken by their phones.

 8. Closing all tabs at once – In case you surf a lot on your mobile browser, you may have various tabs opened in your Safari browser. Unlike the past when you had to swap to shut down any page, now you can long press the “Done” button present in the page management menu and close all the tabs simultaneously in one go.

 9. 3D touch – If you iPhone 6s or even iPhone 7, Apple has various features using 3D touch which includes the hardware feature that allows you to push down on the screen to pull up many menus. It also includes the flashlight app which now has three different levels of brightness. You can also find that via the icon in control center. You can also utilize 3D touch on the timer icon too which allows you to set countdowns for one minute or one hour. The “X” icon present at the top of notification screen can clear various notifications at an instant.

10. Prioritize Downloads – If you are in a situation to do lot of updates to download, you can take use of 3D touch app to move the priority update at front of the queue.

With this we end our take on Apple’s iOS 10 best features that are hidden within the system. Try these tools and features and enjoy a whole different experience with your new iPhone. In case you find these features helpful then do let us know. You can mention your views and suggestions in the comment section below.

Why buy Google Pixel?

Here are some key facts that you probably don’t know but should know about Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL flagship Android smartphones.

If you took a keen interested in Google’s recent Pixel event, then chances are that you must be wondering whether or not you need the new Pixel or Pixel XL smartphone in your life. If you are still undecided about it, and are wondering whether it’s worth getting it over, lets say, Samsung Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, Note 7 or even iPhone 7, then these 15 facts should help you make the right decision.

 

Google Assistant And Some Other Android Features Exclusive To Pixel

Pixel’s specs may not be earth shattering, and benchmarks may not be mind blowing, but when it comes to software, Google will make sure Pixel has the absolute best Android experience out there. What this means is that this will be the only Android phone in the world with Google Assistant, along with the new Android 7.1 home Launcher. There are also some other features like the Smart Storage, built-in phone and chat support, and more that will remain as exclusive features of Android for Pixel lineup and will not come to any other Android phone. You can find more details on this in our separate post here.

No Water Resistance

This is one smartphone that you aren’t going to want to put to the water resistance test. The likelihood is that you would be an unhappy consumer left with a beautiful, but entirely soaked through and useless smartphone. Pixel has an IP53 rating, which means it is protected from limited dust ingress and some slight water spray, so you’ve been warned. This is kinda disappointing given the competition from other 2016 flagship smartphones that it faces, such as the IP67 rated iPhone 7/7 Plus or the IP68 rated Galaxy S7/S7 Edge/Note 7.

Non-Expandable Storage

This is a confusing design decision in our eyes. Instead of following the trend of other Android phones by putting in a microSD card slot, Google has opted Apple-like approach by making the device available with internal storage option only. As such, Pixel is only offered in 32GB and 128GBstorage capacities with no way to expand the storage later as is possible on most other flagship Android smartphones.

Non-Removable Battery

The 5-inch Pixel packs a 2,770mAh cell while the 5.5-inch model is powered by a 3,450mAh battery. If you are one of those Android users who prefers a phone with a removable battery, then you may want to look elsewhere.

Wi-Fi Calling Feature Supported On Both T-Mobile And Verizon Carriers

If you don’t have the greatest of signals, but still need to make an important phone call in locality to an accessible Wi-Fi network, then the good news is that the widely available Wi-Fi Calling feature will work regardless of whether you are using the Pixel phone on T-Mobile or Verizon carrier.

First To Get Latest Android Updates

This is probably something that is extremely important to Android users. Pixel not only runs Android 7.1 Nougat out-of-the-box, but it’s also guaranteed to benefit from the latest Android updates in the first instance before any other Android phone out there.

Android OS Updates For Just 2 Years

If the above is appealing and a definite positive, then it’s tinged with a little sadness in the fact that while Pixel may get Android updates first, but it will only get them for the first two years before the hardware is presumably left unsupported. Feels a little like they giveth one hand and taketh away with the other. A phone that starts from $649 should have a longer software support from Google in all honesty.

Features 3.5mm Headphone Jack

Yes, believe it or not, thanks to Apple removing the headphone port from the iPhone 7, actually having a 3.5mm port on a new device is now classified as a feature. It was once upon a time an expectation, but times are changing.

No OIS

Yes, Google did show a demo at the event showcasing how stable the videos shot using Pixel were. While that maybe true, it is worth knowing that the phones actually don’t come equipped with real OIS (Optical Image Stabilization) onboard for the camera. Google is instead using the gyroscope and software trickery to make the videos as stable as possible.

No Stereo Speakers

While HTC 10, Nexus 6P (Pixel’s predecessor), Moto Z, Moto Z Play, LG V20, iPhone 7, iPhone 7 Plus all pack stereo speakers, Google for some reason decided against it for its Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones.

No Wireless Charging

While both the Pixel phones support fast charging, what they are both missing though is a feature which is easily found in most top of the line Android smartphones of 2016. Wireless charging. Yes, the Pixel phones don’t charge wirelessly.

Unlimited Photos & Videos Backup In Full Quality To Google Photos For Life

This is a big one! And it becomes especially important when you consider that the phones do not offer expandable storage, and even more important if you’re planning on grabbing a 32GB version.

Top 10 Free ios apps available now

It’s hump day, and one of the best ways to get over the hump is to download a bunch of free apps to distract you from the fact that Friday is still two whole days away. Thankfully, we’ve managed to cobble together a list of 10 free iPhone, iPad and iPod touch apps for you to download, but you’ll have to act fast, because they’ll only be free for a limited time.

These are paid iPhone and iPad apps that have been made available for free for a limited time by their developers. There is no way to tell how long they will be free. These sales could end an hour from now or a week from now — obviously, the only thing we can guarantee is that they were free at the time this post was written. If you click on a link and see a price listed next to an app instead of the word “get,” it is no longer free. The sale has ended. If you download the app, you will be charged.

ACDSee Camera Pro

Normally $4.99.

ACDSee Camera Pro lets you harness the full power of your device’s camera.

RAW Support
Shoot RAW on capable devices and write captured photos in DNG format.

Lossless TIFF/PNG
Write captured photos in lossless TIFF or PNG format, or choose one of three JPEG quality settings.

Manual Controls
Precisely control exposure, focus and white balance, including a custom white balance preset. Real-time overexposure and underexposure visualization.

Shutter Priority Mode
Set the shutter speed and ACDSee Camera Pro automatically chooses the ISO for proper exposure.

Selfie Mode
Look your best with skin smoothing and lightening, plus a front-facing torch/flash for low light situations.

Real-time Effect Filters
Choose from 24 effects including high quality black & white, Orton, film grain, halftone, and various color tone filters.

Real-time Adjustments
See brightness, contrast, vibrance, sharpness, clarity, skin tune and vignette adjustments in real time and add additional noise reduction during capture.

Exposure Bracketing
Capture three exposures at once at different exposure levels.

HDR Fusion
Combine three shots taken at different exposures to create a single image with high dynamic range, with manual override of composition parameters.

Flash Fusion
Combine a naturally-illuminated capture with a flash-illuminated capture.

Video Mode
Capture those special moments with video and apply filters and adjustments in real-time.

Flash Modes
Choose from six flash modes: Off, On, Auto, Torch, Torch & flash, and Flash Fusion. All modes work with either the rear-facing or the front-facing camera.

Touch Focus and Exposure
Touch to select focus and exposure point. For more precise control, independently select focus and exposure points.

Lockable AF, AE and AWB
Independently lock focus, exposure, and white balance.

Cropping modes
Crop before you shoot to square, 4:3, 3:2, and 16:9 aspect ratio. Independent settings for front and rear cameras, still photo and video modes.

Level Indicator
Compose your shots with precise alignment using a dual-axis level indicator.

PaintMee

Normally $1.99.

Prepare to experience something quite unique: Just pick any photo from your library. Watch it immediately animate stroke by stroke into a high quality impressionistic oil painting. Share your masterpieces with the world.

PaintMee combines rock solid, world unique art generation algorithms and professional quality output with extreme ease of use and a high level of entertainment. Only available for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch!

Exceptional ease of use is employed through-out the app. Only the currently relevant controls are visible at any time. No screen cluttering, to keep focus on your art.

Six carefully balanced parameter controls are available for you to play around with. Individually, all deeply impact the look of the final painting, and when used in combination the possibilities are virtually endless. Even applying identical settings twice generates two completely unique paintings! You make the settings, you are the artist

The algorithms are very flexible and stable to guarantee great results with any input image. Although the processing is highly complex, heavy optimization keeps waiting times at a minimum, making PaintMee not just incredibly powerful but also, just as importantly, fun to use!

The finished paintings are internally stored in a resolution independent format, so you can zoom as deep as you like into them to inspect the paint. Any painting can be saved in sizes up to 1920 x 1280 (2.5 megapixels), regardless of the size of the source photo.

A full screen crop feature lets you quickly and easily specify exactly what part of the source photo to use and the shape of the canvas in a single simple step.

Support for smooth animation is built right into the core of the algorithms. If you wish, use the slider to enjoy the painting at a lower pace. You can even halt the animation completely and save snapshots of your unfinished work of art!

Save your paintings to your photo album, to facebook, to an email, to the shared documents folder or to the clipboard for use in other apps.

We Maps

Normally $6.99.

We Maps is a simple navigation app on the Google Maps and Street View.

We Maps Features:
– Auto Navigation for current location
– Create a route on the Google Maps
– Latest Street View
– Simple Search
– Multiple Pins
– Full Screen
– Latest traffic data
– Latitude and Longitude
– Four kind of maps
– Landscape
– Designed by Meruem

Weather Now

Normally $3.99.

Amazingly beautiful 3D images of our planet draws your attention for so long that you may forget that the application has other useful features that allows you easy access to precise, global weather information.

Features:
• Easily select different cities using the city carousel with national flags
• Chic 3D “home screen” with high-quality real-time image of the earth, atmosphere, the stars and the sun
• 15-day forecast chart with detailed daily weather conditions, independent day and night temperature charts
• 48-hour hourly forecast with detailed information with real-time changing of chart step
• Database of 80 000 cities with weather information, quick look-up and automatic detection of location
• Temperature on the icon badge
• Customized Weather Widget
• Weather Maps

The main features of “Weather Now” are the “home screen” and the forecast page with a unique way of scaling the charts. On the “home screen”, you can get information on the selected location such as local time and current weather with detailed weather conditions, and, of course, an incredibly beautiful three-dimensional image of the globe with realistic-looking atmosphere, the sun and the stars. You can manually turn it, increase and decrease its size, run the slow spinning animation or stop it. Installed in a cradle or dock station, the application can run as a screensaver, attracting your friends and fellows.

The weather forecast is provided by CustomWeather, Inc, an American weather provider of global weather information for over 15 years. CustomWeather is a leader in technology and meteorological innovation, providing local weather information to companies and application developers around the world.

IMPOSSIBLE ROAD

Normally $2.99.

Guide THE VESSEL down the roller coaster-like track at speed, scoring for each gate you make it through. Navigate hair-pin bends, jumps, banked curves and adverse camber in the quest for the perfect line.

And when you learn how to cheat the game, and you discover that it is rewarded not punished, the leaderboards will belong to you.

– Universal app, for iPad, iPhone, iPod touch.
– 3D Touch support (3D Touch compatible device required)
– Support for iOS controllers and some other arcade control peripherals.
– 4 colour themes
– Original minimal techno soundtrack.
– Game Center leaderboards.
– Challenge your friends to beat your score (iOS 6.0 and Game Center required).

SelfieX

Normally $0.99.

The app lets you take selfies with the better rear camera of the iPhone. The problem is, when you turn the screen away, you can’t see if your face is framed the way you want it to be. This app voices directions to guide your framing: right, left, up or down.

When you aim the iPhone at your face at the right angle, the app automatically takes a photo.

Turn your phone back to make quick edits (crop and tune brightness, contrast, saturation) and share.

How it works:
1. Aim your iSight camera at yourself
2. Listen to the instructions while catching the angle
3. Turn your device back
4. Edit, save and share

Sleep Note

Normally $0.99.

Alarm Clock, dream notes, timer, stopwatch, night clock – all this is Sleep Note.

Now dream analysis by lunar cycles is an innovation in the world of alarm clocks. After waking up you have the opportunity to create short notes about dreams and keep your records chronology according to the lunar calendar. By analyzing the nature and theme of your dreams you can find a pattern of moon influence on your emotional state which provides you with a better understanding of your subconscious mind.

Sleep Note includes a multiple alarm with all the features you need for a pleasant and secure awakening. We’ve endeavored to create for you a truly useful alarm clock with unique melodies which is able to detect the rising and setting of the sun automatically and the moon phase as well.

Use Sleep Note as a bedside clock with a convenient function of screen brightness change with movement of one finger. Sleep Note is equipped with very flexible settings for each user and doesn’t leave anyone indifferent.

By downloading the Sleep Note you additionally get a very beautiful and stylish timer with a stopwatch.

2BeDone

Normally $0.99.

2BeDone organizer can become your perfect companion!
You can easily organize your life with 2BeDone!
2BeDone will help you effectively manage your time. It is also an ideal application for learning how to optimally organize your personal time and professional activities.
The application allows you to create unlimited numbers of notes, tasks, reminders, things to do, and shopping lists. Outsource everything that does not fit in your head!
2BeDone is also a convenient and safe place for your thoughts, ideas and wishes.
Working with 2BeDone is much more comfortable than with other standard applications. All thanks to an intuitive, feature-rich and informative organizer, as well as its user-friendly interface.
Try it once, and you will realize that you can’t live without it!

The main advantages of 2BeDone:
• Ability to set tasks for the day, week, month, and the whole year;
• Real time synchronization;
• Synchronization of data between all your devices;
• Reminders via push-notifications;
• Ability to leave comments for tasks;
• Ability to create notes to store your thoughts and ideas;
• Scheduled events;
• Easy navigation between sections “Tasks and Events” and “Notes”;
• Functional colorful calendar that gives full information about the list of things to do and your scheduled events.

Organize your life easily!

Stixels 8 Bit

Normally $0.99.

All the 80’s kids dance! Stixels is an awesome collection of 1980’s style pixel art for you to use to give your messages flair! Whether you need to reward a friend with some coins, send them an extra life or toss them back down the ladder with a hammer, this set makes messing an 8-bit blast!

The Mystery of the Crystal Portal HD

Normally $4.99.

Featuring innovative hidden object gameplay, an intriguing storyline, and stunning full-screen graphics, The Mystery of the Crystal Portal is a thrilling escape for the whole family. Embark on a brain-bending adventure with Nicole, whose father went missing after making a discovery that could “change the course of humanity”. Nicole searches the globe on an eye-popping quest to discover the truth behind his invention.

• 7 Picturesque Settings
  ● 22 Levels and Mini-Games
  ● Loads of Brain-Bending Fun
  ● Use pinch to zoom in and out to find all objects
  ● Support Game Center

 

Viv vs Siri-Google vs Apple

Samsung has agreed to acquire Viv, an AI and assistant system co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, Adam Cheyer and Chris Brigham — who created Siri, which was acquired by Apple in 2010. The three left Apple in the years after the acquisition and founded Viv in 2012. Pricing information was not available, but we’ll check around. Viv has been billed as a more extensible, powerful version of Siri. Viv will continue to operate as an independent company that will provide services to Samsung and its platforms.

The first of two main pillars to Viv’s special sauce is its interconnected nature — other agents like Siri are only starting to allow multiple silos of information across apps and services to start talking to one another and become links in a user’s command chain. This allows more conversational and complex queries that more closely resemble how people actually talk.

The second is the programmatic nature of Viv’s back-end systems. Utilizing “breakthroughs” in program synthesis, Viv says its AI is capable of writing its own code to accomplish new tasks. This “software that builds itself” is not new in many other verticals, but Viv was one of the first big splash announcements using the technique that we had seen in AI. Viv calls this “dynamic program generation,” and it allows Viv to understand the intent of the user and to create programs to handle tasks on the fly, even if it’s never heard that particular one in the past.

When Kittlaus left Apple, he wrote an article called “Siri Is Only The Beginning,” and later wrote that there would be a “Cambrian Explosion In AI,” enabling the technology to power many existing and new systems.

If you take a look around what’s going on in the market these days, and our readiness to really expand on our distribution, it made perfect sense when we discovered that our visions are so completely aligned, and our assets using the core technology in this huge distribution, the opportunity that now is the right time, and Samsung’s the right partner.”

Samsung, of course, has been locked in a battle with Apple over the very top shares of the smartphone sales volume market. As a single manufacturer, it is the only competitor on the planet giving them any fight (and it’s still not even close in the actual profit department). Samsung has seen its smartphone fortunes wane and then wax recently as its slumping sales recovered with two solid models. Unfortunately, those sales have been marred by a recall of the Galaxy Note 7 due to exploding batteries.

Outside of that, though, Samsung has been looking at a larger struggle as it wrestles with how to take control of its own software destiny. Google is becoming more and more of a direct competitor (or at least making a sincere attempt) every day. Whether it uses Tizen or some other software package based on Android, Samsung’s future looks much brighter when it owns the hardware and what runs on the hardware than when it is beholden to Google for updates and features.

“This is an acquisition that is being done by the mobile team, but we clearly see the interest across our devices,” says Samsung SVP Jacopo Lenzi in an interview. “From our perspective and from the client’s perspective, the interest and the power of this really comes from taking advantage of the Samsung scale overall, as well as the richness of the touch points we have with consumers.”

Acquiring Viv gives them an honest-to-god competitor to Siri and Google’s Assistant . With the caveat, of course, that Viv has not yet launched — making it impossible to tell how it will hold up in real-world usage just yet. As we’ve seen over the past 12 months, such an AI-powered assistant is going to be instrumental for any mobile platform. Apple’s AirPods work incredibly well with Siri given how easy they are to wear for long periods and the multiple beam-forming microphones that make input more accurate. If Samsung wants (duh) a competitor in this space, it could do worse than Viv and its team.

Though this acquisition is being made by the mobile group, there are opportunities beyond that, as well. The Amazon Echo, Google’s Home and the smart home hub Apple has been preparing are good examples of how big companies are fighting tooth and nail to secure a place on your counter top. Samsung’s release explicitly calls out areas like home appliances in addition to mobile and wearables.

Samsung, of course, purchased SmartThings for around $200 million back in 2014. Viv as a cross-platform agnostic brain that can power the half-dozen or so main SmartThings verticals makes a ton of sense. And Samsung has washers, refrigerators and all kinds of other home appliances. We’re seeing more and more that the “Internet of Things” play is less about the “Internet of Things” — which is a dumb term that should actually die in a fire. Instead, it’s about what happens when nearly everything is guaranteed to have some sort of microprocessor and radio and how those devices recognize you, their context and their integration into your life.

“Without talking about specifics, we do see the evolution of the customer experience being enabled by AI particularly as we continue to add devices to their system, to IoT, and the importance of something like this to really allow you just to engage with technology in the way they really want to which is simple conversational interface,” says Lenzi.

And those smarts are not about the devices, but about the brain that controls them. A brain that could easily be powered by Viv. I asked Kittlaus specifically about whether Samsung would be locking Viv away inside its ecosystem, to bolster its differentiation from Google’s flavors of Android or iOS.

“Samsung is clearly…very well positioned to take a leadership position in that space because for this entire new space of things — vision, having this assistant everywhere, the seamless interactions and conversational commerce, and all the things that we’ve talked about — it requires a new backbone. Pull these together, we’ve got an opportunity to create critical mass around that.”

Samsung’s purchase of Viv, then, might be less about creating a voice-powered assistant to rival Apple or Google’s offerings and more about a voice-powered interface that remains the same across all of its devices, from phones to home hubs to doorknobs to refrigerators. That would catapult it directly into the very, very small group of companies that are vying to use AI as a way to acquire and retain customers.

If Apple, Amazon and Google can boil the frog on the concept of AI as the core operating system and devices as simple armatures attached to that core, then why can’t we, is Samsung’s question.