Diesel passenger car sales go on life support — just 222 sold in January

 

 

 Cheap fuel prices and the Volkswagen-Audi-maybe-others emissions flap have sales of diesel passenger cars down to almost nothing. About 200 diesel passenger cars were sold in January — less than, say, Bentley and Rolls-Royce sell in a typical month, and one-twentieth as many as were sold a year ago.

Diesel SUVs fared slightly better, about a thousand units  in January 2016. The lone strong point was diesel engine light trucks (mostly pickups sold for work use), about 22,000 in January versus 26,000 a year ago. It’s all a drop in the bucket for a still robust US light vehicle market that sold 1.1 million vehicles.

Perfect storm overtook diesels

In good years and bad, diesels go farther on a tank of fuel (500 to 800 miles) and your hands smell bad after you fill up. They get better mileage than the same car with a gasoline-engine. That’s important when fuel cost $3-$4 a gallon. But now it’s down to $1.73 a gallon for regular, or $1.98 a gallon for diesel (as of the week of Feb. 22, average of all regions of the US). The best-selling 2016 Honda Civic (up 43% versus January 2015) gets 33 mpg combined, and a 300-mile trip sets you back less than $16 in gasoline costs. For a lot of people, that’s cheap enough.

The bigger hit on sales came from the diesel emissions scandal that started with Volkswagen, then expanded to corporate sibling Audi, then cast a shadow over all German automakers. They’re the ones supplying the bulk of diesel engine passengter cars to American buyers.

Volkswagen, Audi aren’t selling diesels

Last September, the Environmental Protection Agency discovered VW had a pollution-control cutout that sensed when the car was being emissions-tested, via inputs such as driven wheels moving versus un-driven wheels not moving (as on a roller) and steering wheel always straight ahead. When it didn’t sense the likely test conditions, the EPA said, VW backed off on pollution controls and cars emitted nitrogen oxide at up to 40 times the US limit. The recall affects a half-million VWs and Audis here and the ripple effects may expand to cover as many as 11 million vehicles worldwide. There is talk about whether Porsche (part of the Volkswagen group) and BMW may be affected.

The upshot is that you can’t buy a new VW or Audi diesel in the US now. A year ago in January, VW sold about 3,500 diesels, Audi another 800. That was the majority of the early 2015 diesel passenger car market: VW plus Audi. For January 2016, the highest-seller among diesel passenger cars was the BMW 3 Series with 69 reported sales. The total of all diesel passenger cars sales — all brands, all models — was 222 last month, according to WardsAuto.com. Diesel SUVs and crossovers fared a bit better, with about 1,300 January 2016 sales among Land Rover, Jeep, BMW, and GMC. The only lower numbers last month belonged to Rand Paul, Rick Santorum, and Martin O’Malley.

Good time to buy a diesel (if they’ll let you)

We still believe this is a great time to buy a diesel passenger car or diesel, if you can buy one. Think like baseball philospher Yogi Berra (“the place is so popular, nobody goes there anymore”) only in reverse: Diesels are so unpopular, you should go find one. Basically:

• If the vehicle is for sale (BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Land Rover sedans and SUVs especially), it’s not going to be in demand. Most people are put off by cars with possible emissions problems. Dealers will be anxious to dicker.
• If there are problems that need fixing, the cost won’t put the automaker out of business. Only at VW does the total cost of repairs look steep relative to VW’s total worth (market cap).
• If problems are worse than you expected, or if future repairs reduce fuel economy, you’ll get money back. If the car can’t be brought back into compliance, the car will be bought back.
• The ability to do an entire day’s driving and still have fuel in the tank the next day is awesome. It’s true that you’ll still need bio breaks every couple of hours, but not having to refuel saves 10 minutes added on to one of the rest stops.
• If demand is reduced, so too will be the price. Just remember: About a half-million sedans were sold last month. Only 222 of them were diesels. Many more are sitting on dealer lots.

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Avast set up rogue hotspots at Mobile World Congress, and the results won’t surprise you

 

 

 What’s one of the first things you do when you get to an airport, or roll into a new city for a conference or meeting? For many of us, the answer is: Find a free Wi-Fi hotspot. It is reasonable to expect to find some kind of free Wi-Fi service at airports, hotels, conference venues, some restaurants, and, of course, at ubiquitous Starbucks locations.

However, what if someone decided to place functional, though still rogue, unsecured hotspots in one of these locations? Would you be vigilant enough to notice reasonable-looking but bogus hotspot SSID names? This is exactly what security software company Avast did in Barcelona, Spain during Mobile World Congress (MWC) this week.

Avast set up functional rogue hotspots at MWC’s registration booth at Barcelona Airport with the SSID names “Starbucks,” “Airport_Free_Wifi_AENA,” and “MWC Free WiFi.” All these names look like reasonable names for legitimate hotspot networks. However, hotspots in Starbucks locations are named “Google Starbucks,” and AENA is the old name for the government-owned organization that runs most of the airports in Spain. Its current name is ENAIRE.

In a four-hour test period, Avast recorded more than 2,000 unique users. It scanned the data from these devices for categorization, but didn’t store any data. Avast reported it was able to identify the device name and user identity of 63.5% of these users. For OS, 50.1% of the devices ran Apple iOS, 43.4% ran Android, and 6.5% ran Windows Phone. These percentages are quite different from worldwide market shares for these platforms, which generally are 80+% Android, 14% iOS, and 1 or 2 % for Windows Phone. We can guess that this difference is thanks to the unique mix of the kind of people who attend MWC.

Avast also found that 61.7% either searched for information using Google or checked email using Gmail. Another stats: 14.9% accessed Yahoo, 52.3% had a Facebook app installed, while only 2.4% had a Twitter app installed. And 1% used the Tinder or Badoo dating apps.

Note that Avast only reported about devices running mobile operating systems. Presumably, the registration area at the airport was not a place where people would use a notebook computer running Windows, OS/X, or Linux (though other areas would have been).



The company’s advice will seem obvious to many longtime readers of our site: “Many individuals recognize that surfing over open Wi-Fi isn’t secure. However, some of these same people aren’t aware that their device might automatically connect to a Wi-Fi network unless they adjust their settings,” said Gagan Singh, president of mobile at Avast, in a statement. “With most Mobile World Congress visitors traveling from abroad, it’s not surprising to see that many opt to connect to free Wi-Fi in order to save money, instead of using data roaming services. When taking this route, people should utilize a VPN service that anonymizes their data while connecting to public hotspots to ensure that their connection is secure.”

Avast sells its own SecureLine VPN product. Our own ExtremeTech article, The ultimate guide to staying anonymous and protecting your privacy online, recommends two multi-platform VPN products: TorGuard and Private Internet Access.

Finally, while Avast carried out a planned experiment, there was an interesting unplanned Wi-Fi experiment that took place years ago due to a bug in Microsoft Windows XP. As NPR explained back in 2010:

When a computer running an older version of XP can’t find any of its “favorite” wireless networks, it will automatically create an ad hoc network with the same name as the last one it connected to -– in this case, “Free Public WiFi.” Other computers within range of that new ad hoc network can see it, luring other users to connect. And who can resist the word “free?”

The result was that perhaps thousands notebooks running Windows XP were broadcasting the “Free Public WiFi” SSID after connecting to (but not having Internet access) to another notebook with that SSID. Although problem was fixed in Windows XP Service Pack 3 (SP3), some of us continued to see this SSID for several more years.

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NASA simulates ‘extreme failure scenario’ to test Orion spacecraft controls

 

 

 NASA’s Orion crew capsule is currently on-target for its next unmanned test flight in 2018 as part of the next-generation Space Launch System (SLS). When astronauts are finally on-board the Orion, NASA wants to make sure they have the best control and information software possible, so the agency is currently running a series of Orion simulations on the ground to get this revolutionary crew display system up and running.

The first test run of Orion’s display systems took place early this month in the Rapid Prototyping Lab (RPL) at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. That’s where engineers are designing the controls that astronauts will use to pilot the spacecraft. It’s vital that NASA understands how the display systems it’s developing for Orion work with ground control’s systems. This is more vital than ever for Orion, which is intended to carry humans far beyond Earth’s local neighborhood.

Orion’s controls will have to be optimized for astronauts to manage all aspects of the craft on a long-term mission. If Orion is eventually sent to Mars, as is NASA’s eventual goal, it will be too far away for the ground team to assist with managing the spacecraft in real time. That means a highly-efficient setup is necessary for Orion. The Space Shuttle had more than 2000 physical switches, buttons, and dials, but it was designed in the 1970s. With modern interface technology, NASA has managed to condense Orion’s control system down to three dynamic displays with custom software.



The test several weeks ago was aimed at simulating an “extreme failure” on the spacecraft and how that incident is relayed to ground control. There were two “astronauts” manning the controls of the imaginary Orion capsule, as well as a flight director and control team on the ground. In this scenario, Orion’s power systems have failed, leaving the crew in serious trouble without functional environmental controls. The team worked through how to troubleshoot various systems to get the spacecraft back up and running before any of the pretend astronauts could come to pretend harm.

NASA still has some time to get the on-board software just right. The first flight of Orion was in late 2014 when it successfully orbited the Earth. The next test flight in 2018 will see Orion make an unmanned trip all the way to the moon and back. This “Exploration Mission 1” will also be the first time Orion is launched by the SLS rocket. The first manned mission is currently slated for 2021 or 2022 when four astronauts will use to to orbit the moon. That will be the first time humans have ventured so far from Earth since the Apollo days.

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The Windows 10 Store still isn’t working out for Microsoft

 

 

 When Microsoft launched Windows 10, the company emphasized the new operating system was the foundation for a brand-new Windows ecosystem. Going forward, Windows users could look forward to unprecedented compatibility between smartphones, tablets, PCs, and even the Xbox One. The Windows-as-a-service model meant that no one would be left behind on an ancient operating system. The Windows Store is vital to bringing this vision to reality, but developer feedback is anything but positive.

Digital Trends recently interviewed several long-time Windows developers, including Scott Peterson of Liquid Daffodil. Peterson has been writing applications for Windows since the company launched Windows 2.0, and he makes a living developing custom Windows software for oil and gas companies. Digital Trends describes him as a “steadfast evangelist.”

What Peterson and other developers like Gaurav Kalra of Next Matters see, however, doesn’t have them singing praises to the heavens. While the Windows 10 install base is theoretically much larger than the Windows Phone ecosystem — Nokia and Microsoft have shipped an estimated 110 million Windows Phone devices since 2011, while Microsoft reports over 200 million devices using Windows 10 in the past eight months — the vast majority of their revenue is being driven by mobile devices.

Microsoft isn’t very good at naming things.

According to Kalra, their NextGenReader application has been downloaded more than 300,000 times since it debuted on the Windows Phone store, but just 90,000 of those downloads were to a PC running Windows 8, 8.1, or Windows 10. Both developers are committed to the Windows platform, but neither believes they can honestly recommend it as a practical, money-making enterprise.

Are desktop paradigms killing the Windows Store?

When Microsoft announced that Windows 8 would feature an App Store, and that this represented the future of the company’s software design and distribution plans, user reaction wasn’t very positive. Gabe Newell and Valve built Steam OS as a defensive measure, designed to prevent Microsoft from requiring all PC games to be sold through their own store front, cutting Steam off at the knees. Others expressed concern about how the strict sandboxing requirements would impact application functionality.

It soon became clear that these fears were unfounded. The Windows Store launched alongside Windows 8 and quickly became known as a place where good apps went to die alongside shovelware and scams. A year after launch, it was still common to see third-party programs masquerading as official clients for major Web services and social media hubs. Microsoft has slowly dealt with some of these issues, but desktop and laptop users still don’t use the Windows Store much, if at all.

The original Windows 8.0 store: Now with extra Indian apps in an American market

The criticisms levied at the Windows Store are genuine, but they may not be the root cause. It’s at least possible that what’s holding the Windows Store back is the users themselves.

If you own a smartphone or tablet, the only official way to install new software is through Google Play, iOS, or Amazon. But desktop and laptop users have decades of experience in finding their own software, usually through various online repositories.

Here’s a simple example: If you watch movies or television shows on your PC, chances are you play them back with either VLC or an application like Media Player Classic. If you’re a gamer, you use Steam. If you use instant messenger services, there’s already a suite of applications that can handle them.

In the early days of the iPhone — at least after Apple unveiled the App Store in 2008, a year after launch — Apple showcased the phone by running the tagline “There’s an app for that.” In a way, that’s the PC’s problem: There’s already an app for that, and if you’ve been using the desktop for 10-20 years, you probably know which ones you like and which you don’t.

Microsoft has tried to offer compelling applications built around its new UI, but these applications are often handicapped by intrinsic limitations that their desktop brethren don’t share. Adobe Photoshop’s mobile version can’t use plug-ins, because Microsoft’s API doesn’t allow them for security reasons. Even applications as simple as photo viewers or video players expect all content to reside in a single privileged directory. The problem is, that’s not how most PC users maintain content libraries, especially over a 5-10 year period.

I still think better curation and presentation could solve this problem long-term — Steam’s gradual transformation from an online service everyone loathed to a cherished online gaming hub is proof that people really can change their opinions of a thing long-term. Before it can change people’s perceptions, however, Microsoft needs content worth featuring and then a way to feature it that doesn’t make users feel like they’re being groped at a dive bar by a 300lb used-car salesman.

[Insert nauseating sexual innuendo here]

It’s worth noting that Microsoft isn’t the only company with this problem. Apple’s OS X App Store has lagged far behind its online cousin, with fewer features and limits on OS X – iOS compatibility. Many of the problems MacWorld details within the OS X App Store are also issues with the Windows Store.

 

The difference between the two, of course, is that Apple’s massive mobile infrastructure dwarfs any minor problems it might be having with the desktop App Store. Microsoft, on the other hand, is trying to bootstrap its mobile business by relying on its desktop strength. Things could start to turn around this year as Windows 10 matures, but it’s going to be a long, slow climb.

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25 best Android tips to make your phone more useful

 

 

 Android is the most popular computing platform in the world thanks in part to how fast it has evolved over the years. Google is always adding new features and making changes to existing ones, and OEMs like Samsung and LG can add their own stuff on top of that. It can be hard to keep up, but we’ve got the 25 best tips for Android right here.

Configure a secure lock screen

Android phones all offer various forms of secure lock screens. Most phones will prompt you to do this during setup now, and you should. The defaults are PIN, pattern, and password. Some devices also offer fingerprint security and device-specific things like LG’s Knock Code. To control your lock screen, head to the system settings, and find the Security menu. Some phones have a separate lock screen menu instead. You will need to have a secure lock screen to use features like Android Pay and factory reset protection.

Disable/uninstall bloatware

Most phones come with some apps pre-installed that you won’t want to keep around. Luckily, they can be dealt with these days. Some pre-installed bloat can be uninstalled normally by using the Play Store or finding it in the app settings menu. However, anything that’s part of the system image is non-removable. What you can do is disable it by opening the app menu from the main system settings and finding the app in your list. Right at the top will be a “Disable” button that removes it from your app drawer and prevents it from running in the background.

Set up adoptable storage (on some devices)

One of the cooler additions to Android 6.0 Marshmallow was adoptable external storage. It finally makes microSD cards first-class storage by merging them with the internal storage. To do this, you need a phone running Marshmallow with a card slot.



When you insert the card, you’ll be presented with the option of portable or internal storage. Internal storage will adopt the card as a part of the system, so important data can be stored there automatically and expand your total internal storage. The only drawback is that the card will be formatted and encrypted such that it only works in that device. To use it for anything else, you have to completely reset it and move all data back to your phone’s internal flash.

Add mobile data tracking

Data caps are common across mobile carriers, and data rates just keep getting faster. To make sure you don’t blow through your monthly allotment, visit the data usage menu in the system settings. Some phones call this something a little different, but it’s always right near the top. Here, you can set your plan reset date, create a warning threshold, and even have data automatically disabled when you’re about to incur an overage.

Choose Do Not Disturb settings

Android’s notification settings are a bit of a mess right now. Not only do OEMs often change the terminology, but Google itself has revamped it a few times in recent updates. You’ll find this feature either in your volume popup when you hit the toggle or by going into the system settings for notifications (usually Sound and Notification). It will be called Do Not Disturb on most devices. In this menu, you can choose when DND is toggled on automatically, what is blocked, and if any contacts are allowed to ring through anyway.

Enable Smart Lock

Turning on a secure lock screen as explained above is important to keep your data safe, but it can be a pain to input a code every single time you pick up the phone. You can avoid that with Smart Lock. You’ll find this feature tucked away in the security menu on most devices. It includes different methods of bypassing the secure lock screen automatically. You can keep your phone unlocked when you’re in a certain place (like home), when a device like a smartwatch is connected, or when the phone sees your face with the front-facing camera.



You can even have multiple Smart Lock modules active at the same time. So for example, you could force the secure lock method only when you’re away from home and the phone gets far enough away from your smartwatch to disconnect.

Make sure your photos back up automatically

There’s nothing worse than losing or breaking a phone only to realize your photos aren’t backed up. You can avoid this by simply opening the Google Photos app and following the prompts to enable auto-backup. The default mode is “high quality” and unlimited space. This compresses your photos, but they look surprisingly good. If you want to save the original image, you can opt to use your Drive storage space. You get 15GB free and can buy more.

Get started with “OK Google”

Google search is at the heart of all Android phones, and you can start searching at any time just by saying “OK Google.” This works on the home screen and in the search automatically, but if you go into the search settings, you can get OK Google working everywhere. In the search settings, go to Voice > OK Google detection.


Just turn on the “From any screen” option and the phone will have you say “OK Google” a few times to learn your voice. Now you can use the hotword any time the device ID awake from any screen. Note: Some Nexus phones also support this when the screen is off.

Google Now on Tap (Marshmallow and higher)

If you’ve got a Marshmallow phone, you have Google Now on Tap. This is Google’s attempt to bring the power of Google Now out of the search UI. When you long-press the home button, On Tap reads the text on the screen and offers contextual actions. It might help you make a calendar appointment, look up restaurant reviews, or just perform a Web search. Give it a shot before you jump into another app to take care of things manually.

Try a different home screen

Most Android devices have a custom UI created by the device maker (eg. Samsung’s TouchWiz). That includes the home screen. This is an important part of the experience, and the default home often isn’t very powerful. Installing an alternative like Nova Launcher or Action Launcher can make your device much easier to use. You can use these apps to change the icons, assign navigation gestures, organize apps, and so much more. Any time you want to change between your installed home screens, just go to the Home menu in the system settings.

Use screen pinning

If you need to hand your phone to someone else, you don’t necessarily want them snooping around in other apps. This is easy to prevent — just pin the screen. This should be enabled by default on most devices, but if it’s not, check the security menu.



Tap the pin icon on any app in the multitasking interface and you can lock the screen to just that app. If you have a secure lock screen, you can require that unlock method to leave the pinned app.

Swipe input on the keyboard (most devices)

Tapping with your thumbs is okay as an input method, but most phones have swipe input built-in too. Give it a shot by dragging across the letters for each word. The accuracy varies by device, but you can also install a different keyboard that might suit you better. There’s the Google Keyboard for a clean but somewhat limited experience, and then more complex and powerful options like SwiftKey.

Use power saving modes

All Android phones have power saving modes of some sort — sometimes two or three of them. Head to the battery menu (usually just Settings > Battery) on most phones to see these settings. For example, Samsung offers a regular power saving mode that reduces screen brightness and slows the CPU, then there’s also an ultra power saver that locks the device to just a few essential applications. Most phones offer basic power saving modes like the former that can be turned on automatically when the device reaches a certain battery level. This is definitely something you should set up.

Enable system UI tuner (stock Android Marshmallow)

If you have a stock Android phone on Android 6.0 like a Nexus or Motorola device, you have a particularly cool new toy to play with called System UI tuner. This is an experimental feature of Android that lets you make changes to the Status bar and Quick settings. To activate, long-press on the settings icon at the top of your Quick Settings panel. This will add a new item in the main settings for the UI tuner.



You can use it to hide items like signal, clock, alarm, and so on from the status bar. You can also add a battery percent to the battery icon. There’s even an option to rearrange the tiles in Quick Settings. Some of this already exists on skinned versions of Android like TouchWiz, but this is the first time pure Android has supported it.

Manage default apps

Many actions on Android will ask you to set a default app, but what if you decide you don’t like that default anymore? Some phones have a dedicated default app settings menu (e.g. Samsung), but the surest way to clear out those defaults is to find the app in the app menu under the main system settings. When you look at the info page for an app, there will be a button toward the bottom to view and clear the defaults. That will let you select a new default the next time you perform an action.

Turn on Developer Options

Google hides some of the more advanced tools in a special Developer Options menu that you’ll have to enable to get at things like animation speed, USB debugging, and app standby (which I’ll get to momentarily). To turn on Developer Options, open the “About phone” menu at the bottom of the system settings and find the build number. Tap on that seven times and you’ll get a message that you are a developer. The dev options will now be at the bottom of your main system settings.

Activate guest mode for shared devices

If you want to let someone borrow your phone for a bit and screen pinning is too restrictive, you may have the option to enable Guest mode. All stock Android devices have this, as well as most phones running 5.0 or higher from OEMs like Samsung and LG. To switch to a guest account, tap the profile icon in the upper right corner of the notification shade and select the guest profile.



All your data, accounts, and apps will be hidden from the guest account. There’s also a Users menu in the settings of most devices to control what guests can and cannot do. Note, some carriers remove this option from the phones they sell for some (probably stupid) reason.

Make tweaks to App Standby and Doze mode (Marshmallow and higher)

Google introduced two new battery saving features in Android 6.0 called Doze and App Standby. Doze mode puts your device into deep sleep and blocks most apps from waking it up when it’s been sitting unused for a little bit. Meanwhile, Standby blocks apps you haven’t used recently from running background tasks. These both work fine on their own, but you can tweak things if you want.

Doze mode is accessible in Settings > Battery > (menu) Battery optimization on most phones. From here, you can make apps exempt from Doze, allowing them to operate even when the phone sits unused. This is only necessary if the app isn’t working right under Doze mode. Standby is found at the very bottom of the developer options menu where it’s labeled Inactive apps. This has a list of all apps on the device, some of which will probably be marked as inactive. Tap on any of them to toggle between active and inactive. Don’t worry — inactive apps become active again once you’ve opened them.

Screen casting

Do you have a $35 Chromecast or Android TV? If so, you can do more than stream video to it. Android devices can mirror the entire display onto your TV, and it’s essentially foolproof. On stock Android devices (and a few more) there is a Cast icon in the Quick Settings. Tap that and pick an output device to start mirroring your display. On other phones, just download the Chromecast app and use the screen casting feature included there.

Identify which app sent that notification

Android’s notification system is great, but sometimes it’s not clear which app produced a notification. Should you ever be confronted with a mysterious notification that you can’t identify, there’s an easy way to figure out where it came from.



Simply long-press on the notification and the parent app will be revealed. Tap the info icon to head to the app’s notification settings to disable it if you like.

Manage apps on the Web Play Store

Google includes the Play Store client on Android devices, but there’s also a version of the Play Store accessible online. For some people this is a no-brainer, but not everyone thinks to use the Web-based Play Store. You can do all the same things here that you do on your phone, but faster. Apps and games can be purchased and pushed over the air to Android. You can queue up multiple installs in a fraction of the time it takes on Android. If you’ve got more than one device on your account, you can pick where the app goes.

Adjust animation speed

Android Lollipop and higher includes a lot of flashy animations that help to cover some of the load times as you tap around, and can also help direct your attention to the right areas of the screen. If, however, you’ve got a fast phone and you don’t want the animations slowing you down, you can speed them up. You’ll need Developer Options enabled (see above), then just open that menu and find the settings for Window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale. They all default to 1x, but you can turn them down to 0.5 for a snappier experience. Shutting them off is an option too, but I think that makes things look a little busted.

Use (and remove) factory reset protection

Android 5.1 added factory reset protection to Android, which is nice should your phone ever be stolen. The thief won’t be able to reset and log into the phone without first knowing your Google password. However, you might also accidentally lock the new owner out of your phone (or even yourself) if you sell it.



Factory reset protection is enabled automatically when you have a secure lock screen enabled in Android 5.1 or higher. Make sure you don’t reset your phone less than 24 hours after changing your Google password, or you’ll trigger a 72-hour anti-theft lockout. To disable reset protection for a new user to log into the phone, just disable the secure lock screen, enable OEM unlock in the Developer Options, or manually remove your Google account in the Accounts menu (this also factory resets the phone).

Sideload (safe) apps

The Play Store has plenty of apps, but if you want to branch out a little, there are safe ways to do that. First, head into the security settings on your device and enable “Unknown sources.” That will let you install APKs downloaded from outside the Play Store. Some of the popular ones are the Amazon Appstore, F-Droid, and APK Mirror. Amazon offers a fair number of paid apps for free, and F-Droid is for free and open source software. APK Mirror re-hosts free APKs so you don’t have to wait on staged rollouts and can get old versions of software.

Save offline maps

Google Maps includes support for saving maps offline, and the feature was recently expanded to be more powerful. It’s not easy to find, though. Find the area you want to save offline, then tap in the search bar at the top of the screen. Close the keyboard and scroll the the bottom and you’ll see the option to download.




The app will bring up an outline to indicate the area that will be downloaded and estimate how much space it will take up. The offline data will include streets, basic points of interest, and the ability to use turn-by-turn navigation.

And much more…

After all that, you should be a pro at using Android. This is just the beginning, though. There’s a lot more to discover in Android, and every device is a little different. So, don’t be afraid to poke around in the deep, dark corners of the settings and see what you can find.

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