Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How to make a dirty girl clean

Anon asks:

This question may sound dumb, but I definitely do not want to ruin my phone.

I keep the screen clean every day using a cloth I got from Verizon, but what else can I do to clean things like the speaker holes and slit between the screen and the body? I'm positive there are things I shouldn't do, so I'm asking you.

Thanks

Hiya Anon! And yes, at first this one was a pass for me, and I thought the question was a bit too simple. Then I got to thinking — I'm sure every one of us cleans their phone a different way, and I'll bet a lot of us do it the wrong way!

So, all in all, thanks for asking. The simple questions are often the most important.

I'm going to explain how I clean phones and tablets, but most importantly, I'm going to talk about what not to do. If it gets things clean without any sort of damage or wear, then it's the right way.

Every day I wipe the screen. I use one of these little gadgets (I love these things) for both the inside screen and front display of my Motorola Razr. I have no idea what the fluid inside them is, but it works and is supposed to be guaranteed not to harm anything.

Speaking of fluids, never, ever use window cleaner or ammonia to clean your phone's screen. Both leave residue when they dry, and if even a single drop seeps inside your phone, it can be ruined. If you have a really bad spot (TMI: I once sneezed on my phone screen. Yuck!), use distilled water (not tap water or "drinking" water, distilled only!). Put a drop on your cleaning cloth and sort of scrub the mess away.

To be extra safe, when you're done (or if you sneezed on it), use a second cloth and some 90%+ Isopropyl alcohol all over the front, back, and sides. This kills germs and dries mostly streak-free.

When it needs it (like every month or so), everything gets a proper cleaning. I shut the phone off and remove any case or doohickies that may be attached. The case goes into the bathroom sink, and I wash it with warm, soapy water, then give it an alcohol rub. Set it aside and let it dry.

Next, I give the screen(s) a good cleaning as I described above. While I'm at it, I pay special attention to the camera lenses to make sure they don't have smudgy fingerprints or worse.

Then I want to clean the speaker and microphone holes, as well as the charging port. You can do this in several ways: use a soft-bristled dry toothbrush to go over them, use a wooden toothpick to flick out all the dirt and crusty stuff, or, what I think is best, use a chunk of BlueTak or Silly Putty. Just press it gently in place, count to five, then peel it — and the dirt — away.

Along the edge of the screen, I run a wooden toothpick along the tiny gap and weasel out any dirt that got in there next. When all this is done, I give the screen another wipe or two, then disinfect with some alcohol. Once the case is bone dry, I put it back on.

Done!

Notice I didn't mention things like ultrasonic jewelry cleaners or gadgets like the ones PhoneSoap makes. I would never use an ultrasonic cleaner on a phone because that is a sure way to force liquid inside. Yeah, the liquid may be safe and dry without any residue, but I'd rather play it safe.

As for PhoneSoap and similar products, they should be safe to use for disinfection. I just like the cheap version of using alcohol. You need to wipe and clean your phone anyway, so it only takes a minute longer.

Finally, you can get things so dirty that you need to let someone who can open the phone take a look and clean it up. You probably shouldn't take your phone with you when you're doing something like mudbogging or riding in an airboat, but if you did and it got extra muddy or was dunked in muddy water, stop.

Turn your phone off right away, then take it to a repair shop. If you're the type that tears things apart yourself, take everything apart and hose it down thoroughly with CRC Quick Dry electronic cleaner; circuit boards, ribbon connectors, all of it. Give it an hour to dry completely, then try to put it back together. Good luck.

Jerry's big list of things to never do

• Use ammonia or window cleaner on your phone screen.
• Use bleach to clean or disinfect your phone.
• Use compressed air to try to blow out the tiny holes and crevices.
• Dunk your phone in any liquid, including water, to try to clean it.
• Stick it in the dishwasher.

Any or all of these is a quick way to needing a new phone. Just because someone says your phone is "waterproof" or "dustproof" (it's not) doesn't mean you can use any harsh liquids, high pressure, or heat.

Take a few minutes and be careful with the gadget you depend on and that you spent so much money on. It's worth it.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

What tickles my fancy?

Jane asks:

I've followed Android Central for a long time and enjoy reading the opinions of all the different people working with you. I've had a question all this time: how do you guys decide what is worth writing about? I don't mean news and updated information because that's a given. I mean, the other content about what you all like or what you think needs to change.

Surely you're not just writing what you want, and there has to be some sort of process. If you can share anything about it, I think it would be very interesting.

Hi Jane, thanks for the interesting question. It's nice to step away from wires and tubes and things that go beep every now and then.

I'm going to preface this by saying this is about me. We're all writers and Android enthusiasts here at Android Central, but more importantly, we're individuals. We each have our own process of getting an idea from the back corner of our mind onto the web's virtual paper.

I'll also skip some obvious things. If there is news out there, it will get written because people want to read it. The same goes for announcements from the companies that build all this stuff; when Samsung or Motorola has something to share, it's always worth sharing.

Once we're past that part, things are a little more free-form. The most important thing to me is that we care about something (we, meaning both you, the reader, and I). I could spend all day writing about fishing poles or how to change the spark plugs on a Volkswagen, but would you read it?

The second most important thing is that I have a clue. I don't write about finances, for example, because I don't follow how much companies are earning or spending, as it holds no interest to me. Anything I would write wouldn't be nearly as interesting as it would be if someone enthusiastic about the subject tackled it. We both deserve better.

Finally, some of my interests are tech-adjacent but not really a great fit for an Android website. I love DIY and project electronics, so the Raspberry Pi is one of my favorite products. I'll occasionally share a great deal with you, but I don't have the time to spend explaining how to use it and build a smart device or a reef aquarium controller. Or even a phone. I know, because I've done it, and very few people read it.

When all the dust settles, I hope I can share some information that's interesting and helpful. Helping people is important to me.

We write about what we love

Within reason, of course.

If you take a minute to notice it, you'll find that the writers here have an obvious love of different things. When the right person writes about something like VR glasses or health and fitness, it shows, and the articles are exceptional.

I'm not interested in how a company is building the next generation of super microprocessor that can power things 30% faster. I'm curious about optimizing the existing software to make it more efficient and run 30% faster than it currently does. Without the software, all these gadgets are just a hunk of metal and wires.

I'm also super interested in Chromebooks. They have the potential to do anything and everything with the right infrastructure, yet they're often dirt cheap. A powerful product that's accessible to everyone beats a $5,000 MacBook every time.

It's a little off the beaten track, but I want to try to do my part in holding all these companies accountable, too. Google, Apple, Samsung, and others provide us with the products we love, often making our lives easier. But there is always a cost, and things need to be equitable. If you're forced to give up more than something is worth, or when these seemingly above-the-rules tech companies are out of line, I want to mention it. And there's always plenty of that going on.

Finally, there is the whole Apple thing. "Who cares about Apple? This is an Android website!" is something I get to hear all of the time. Here's an answer: I care about Apple. I also care about Microsoft and Amazon. These companies are driving and shaping the future of our tech. I'll never use an iPhone; I tried it, hated it (though I think the older Mac Mini was the best PC ever). When Apple makes a change to the iPhone that affects consumers or consumer technology in general, that's important, particularly because of the sheer number of people using the product.

We're a service provider

At the end of the day, we're here for you. Yes, Android Central is a business, and we all get a paycheck, but we know we're here to provide a service.

You want to keep up with the latest news and hear what experienced experts have to say. We make sure we have that experience and expertise and offer you our real opinions about what it all means. We're consumers and readers as well as being tasked with writing about it all.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why Google uses Tensor

Ken asks:

I was reading on Reddit about the performance of the latest Google Pixel, and now I am more confused than ever. It sounds like a lot of people consider the Google Tensor a mid-range processor that underperforms where it counts. It's time for me to buy a new phone, so I was wondering what you thought.

Is the Tensor just a mid-range Samsung copy, or is it a good processor?

Thanks

Oh boy, talk about opening a can of worms!

I know what you mean and have seen the arguments for and against the Pixel line of phones, including those centered around a recent article saying it's the consumer's fault for not understanding why Google uses the Tensor SoC.

What do I think? Well, I think the whole thing is the result of a valid question that has turned into two-sided fighting on the internet for fighting's sake. People love to attack what they don't have and defend what they do, and that's never helpful. It's not really our responsibility to understand why companies make the decisions they make, only to buy what we think offers the best value.

What everyone needs to remember is that Google didn't decide to design a chip and use it for no reason. The company also isn't trying to win any social media arguments about chip wars. It wants to further its business model — that's eyeballs on the internet — and is using its own line of products to help make it happen.

Of course, it would love to have a profitable phone division and make money there, too. That means getting more out of a product than was spent to build it, ship it, and market it. While people arguing at Reddit may draw some attention, it's not ever going to dictate Google policy.

A few short years ago, Google needed the Tensor if it wanted to start this phone AI trend. Google needed an engine that could power what nobody was trying to do, and the Tensor was the answer.

Raw performance (outside AI processing) or graphics benchmarks were never major factors, so Google went cheap. It worked, and sales of Pixel devices, as well as user response, have been on a nice upward trend.

That was then, this is now. MediaTek and Qualcomm both sell smartphone chips that do everything Google needs today, and Apple's chip can handle more than the iPhone ever could. These chips are only going to get better, too. Google doesn't have to have a specific and proprietary NPU design inside its phone chips in 2025, like it did in 2021.

But if doing so means things can be "good enough" when it comes to smartphone things or games, while being great when it comes to AI and saving a lot of money building it all, why not continue?

Google could use the latest Snapdragon chip to deliver the same AI performance while enabling more of those smartphone tasks — or, better yet, longer, more immersive gameplay. That would cost a lot more because that chip isn't cheap.

Remember, a Pixel 10 Pro XL starts at $1,199. While that's an absurd amount of money to charge for a phone (in my opinion), it's the new price for a big fancy flagship phone. That's about what you're going to pay for an iPhone 17 Pro Max or a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra.

You should buy the model that works well for what you want it to do. Don't worry about what other folks are buying or why, because it won't affect your own experience. Google is the one that needs to manage the balance between price, AI possibilities, and performance in other areas, while your job is easier: buy what you like.

FAQ

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Who gets to see my photos?

Anon asks:

To me there's a difference between private photos I'm saving on the cloud and ones I am sharing with an app. I was wondering what happens after I upload a picture? Who gets to see it? What are companies doing with them?

Any insight?

Thanks.

Whoa. This is an awesome question that should concern all of us. Thanks so much for sending it in and sharing it with us.

It's also hard to answer in many ways, confusing is plenty of others, and a little disturbing when talking about some companies. Let's dig into it.

First things first: a computer, but not necessarily a person, looks over every single image you upload anywhere. It's for a good reason, because there are photographs that shouldn't have ever been taken and aren't "normal" for anyone to save. Pictures that exploit children are a great example, as are certain types of photos saved or shared with the wrong intentions. Nobody should have a problem wiping all that mess off the face of the planet.

Sometimes — and I stress sometimes — a person will need to check a photo that was flagged as not permitted. I happen to know someone who does this for a living, and she tells me it's extremely disturbing seeing what some people are trying to save. It sounds like this is, unfortunately, a necessary evil.

Some companies do more, of course. Meta is a prime example. In July 2025, it was discovered that the company had trained its AI on every photo uploaded to Facebook, Messenger, or Instagram since 2007. The company states it no longer trains current AI models this way, but never outright says that it stopped analyzing photos.

It's important that this is only for uploaded photos. Meta also has an opt-in service that randomly grabs photos from your on-device library and uploads them to be analyzed.

Other companies make sure to explain that they do not do anything similar. Google Photos, for example, states it doesn't train any AI using your photos, and they would be used for such only if shared with other third parties at your request.

Unfortunately, it's not so cut-and-dried in most cases. Tech companies have privacy policies that they mostly follow, but these are often written in language that's hard to understand, are so long that nobody would need them, and are subject to changes at any time, even after you've agreed to the terms.

It's almost impossible to tell what happens to pictures you share, let alone the ones you save in the cloud and don't intend to share in most cases.

Assume the worst

What most of us need to do is assume that everything we have ever posted online, publicly or privately, isn't ours alone. With the dawn of AI-everywhere, there is a good chance that every word you type and every image you upload is being used to make it all work.

It's easy to assume that X, for example, is using your posts to train AI, because they are closely tied to an AI company. But most AI companies also buy data. That message you posted in the lobby of some silly phone game you downloaded is probably saved and offered as part of an AI-training package for sale to the highest bidder.

This isn't a big deal to a lot of people, but for others, it is. Only you can decide if Google or OpenAI using all of your Reddit posts matters to you (they do). It's also not going to change any time soon in many places: remember, data privacy laws apply, so if you live in the EU, for example, there are different rules for your data than there are in the U.S.

Assume everything you do online is out there for the rest of us to see if you want to be proactive. You can't scrub it away, no matter how hard you try, so be thoughtful before you share anything. No matter how much we may not like it, it will be OK.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Will Huawei ever make phones for the U.S. again?

Raj asks:

Huawei used to make some good phones before they were banned in the United States. Will that ban ever be lifted, and if so, will Huawei return?

Thank you

Hi Raj, and thanks for mailing in with a great question. Huawei still makes great products even without being officially Android-based. While the U.S. ban financially hurt them, the company should be around for a while, as it's very popular in China and other places.

A quick answer is to never say never, but I can't see Huawei's ban being lifted any time soon, and without a major shift in what all the company manufacturers. The ban wasn't about phones or protecting consumers from Huawei's products; it was all about money and market "power".

Why did Huawei get banned?

Officially, Huawei was found to be working with the Chinese state and a security threat to the United States. Without knowing everything that was found and investigated, it's impossible to know how much of that is true, but it doesn't really matter because U.S. interests (public and private) would have just found another reason. Huawei needed to leave the market, and the faster the better.

It's about those little symbols at the top of your phone: 5G. In the U.S., Huawei's phones weren't any better than others when it came to 5G connectivity, but Huawei makes more than phones. A lot more.

No, I don't mean watches or tablets. I mean "heavy" network gear and switches that telecom companies need. In particular, Huawei was able to make network equipment that worked as well as anyone else could build and sell it cheaper. When that happened, companies like AT&T or Verizon, as well as more industrial companies we've never heard of, started to buy it.

The U.S. is weird when it comes to a "monopoly" in the market. Some politicians think one should never exist, some think only the companies they like should be able to dominate a market, but almost all of them feel that if there is going to be one, it can't be a company from China or with ties to the Chinese government.

Huawei is both, and the fears that it was state-sponsored before the ban may or may not have been true, but they are now. The very same thing would happen here in the U.S. if China banned a company with a high market share: the government would do whatever it takes to save it.

You can still buy a Huawei product in the U.S. from a reseller, but the hardware and the software are not going to work as designed, there will be no warranty, and it might not work at all. I'd advise against it.

About coming back

Huawei has thrived despite being banned in the U.S. The company still sells plenty of phones and other mobile products, but it's also a leader when it comes to (you guessed it) AI. If Huawei ever wanted to do business here or with American companies without restrictions, a lot would have to change.

I don't think Huawei would be willing (or should be willing) to step backwards so it can sell more phones in the land of rampant consumerism. It should continue to build out a portfolio of products, services, and mobile offerings without caring what the U.S. government thinks about it. With the company further entrenched with the Chinese government and having expanded into the field of AI hardware, technology, and research, everything the "right" people did not like about Huawei is now even "worse" than it was when the ban was placed.

There is nothing wrong with the company striving to be an example of Chinese national pride, the same way Ford or General Motors once was in the U.S. Of course, I'm not privy to any information that would prove me wrong and have no say in the matter, so I'm going with it.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How safe is it to use your fingerprint?

Charles asks:

I've heard you and others say using your fingerprint to unlock your phone or apps isn't the best idea. Why? Is it not as safe as they tell us? I'm curious as to why people think this.

Thanks

Hi Charles and thanks for asking a great question that also calls me out for things I've mentioned and not properly explained. That's important to do and it helps me remember that I'm not just talking to a room full of techie nerds.

I can't speak for everyone, but some others and I think fingerprints aren't the best way to provide credentials because they're not a password—they're your identity. It's also one of those things you can never change if you need to.

Regarding security, yes, if you try really hard, you can "crack" a biometric sensor like a fingerprint reader. It's extremely complex and riddled with failures before it would ever work, but if something seems important enough, someone will keep trying until they are successful. Think latex, 3D dental printers, and more spy movie style sheniangans.

Like most things surrounding security, this makes it more than acceptable. For most of us, nobody is ever going to try that hard to get into our stuff, even if they have a perfect copy of our fingerprints. And when they start trying, they have to find a way around Android or iOS blocking them after a bunch of failed attempts. I'm saying use your fingerprint without any worries that it gets hacked unless you're the president of a country or a multi-billionaire.

I quickly mentioned that it's not security that makes me think a fingerprint is not the right solution, so let me explain. Note that this doesn't make me right or wrong; it's just a popular idea among people who nerd out trying to break things.

Your fingerprint is your username. You are Charles, and your fingerprints will always say that you are Charles, like mine always will say I'm Jerry. Using one as a type of passcode, while secure, has a few issues.

The biggest is that you can never change them. Let's say in 2026 someone finds a way to crack the encryption that keeps biometrics safe. If you have all of your devices and accounts protected by a fingerprint, there is nothing you can do to change it other than stop using your fingerprints and never use them again.

You will always be Charles, and you will always have Charles' fingerprints. If Joe gets a digital copy of them, they are worthless for protecting anything from Joe. Once Joe can do it, everyone can do it.

I doubt someone will be able to crack into enough encryption to make fingerprint data something they can use, but anything is possible, and we both know people are trying to do it. People are trying to do everything, it seems.

A better way?

Google and Apple are both working on new ways to secure your devices and accounts. In conjunction with folks like the FIDO Alliance, traditional passwords are becoming things like passkeys, and eventually, you might not ever use your fingerprint again.

I don't like any of the current solutions for one reason: corporate ecosystem lock-in. I do not want to have to rely on Google, Apple, or Microsoft to make the right decisions surrounding my accounts and how I log into them every time. If I commit to Google's emerging passkey system, what if I decide I no longer want to use Google for any of my hardware or software needs? Will I be able to keep my accounts and be able to log into them with Google behind it? Maybe. Maybe it isn't good enough.

I don't know a better way. Managing secure login procedures is not something people can do themselves, even though they think they are able to. I currently use a Yubico security key and have two backups because a small security key is easy to lose. I don't recommend my way to anyone, even though it's easy and secure.

What I do recommend is your fingerprint. Yes, I still think there has to be a better way, but until someone finds it, fingerprints work and are safe to use.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Using your phone while charging: Good, bad? Does it really matter?

S. asks:

The battery on my phone can't keep up with me and I need to charge it before I'm done with the day. I usually just use it while its plugged in but was told that's not a good idea. Does it really matter?

Thank you

Hiya S., and thanks for emailing in with a really good question! We all use our phones while they're plugged in at least every once in a while, so this kind of thing is really good to talk about.

The quick answer: using your phone while it's charging, especially fast charging, causes more heat to build up. Heat is bad for every part of your phone, and if it gets too hot, you'll see a warning that it's going to shut down. Honestly, though, it probably doesn't make much difference unless you're always doing it.

Having said that, it does make a difference. There are reasons why you shouldn't, as well as a few simple truths that make the whole issue not worth worrying about.

Heat is bad news

The parts inside your phone are designed to run hot, but heat is also bad for them. That sounds a little confusing, but you need to realize the difference between hot and too hot, as well as the ways your phone deals with all that heat.

Some of the parts in your phone will absolutely burn you if you come into contact with them. Electronics are like that, and the way electricity works "creates" heat, so it's not uncommon to see something like a microprocessor reach temperatures into the 75 °C range.

Your phone has a built-in method to funnel this heat away as fast as it can, though. Some phones are better than others, but every phone has passed testing so that the designers and engineers are satisfied. When you're actively using your phone, it "creates" more heat than when it's idle and the display is off.

Charging your phone also "creates" heat. I'm using quotes around the word creates because technically, it's a conversion of one type of energy into another, but "creates" is easier to understand; it makes things get hotter.

Other things your phone can and will do when it gets close to being too hot are forcing the processor and GPU to run slower, and even changing the brightness and refresh rate of the display. You might notice this, but know it's done by design to slow down the rate at which the heat is "created".

Finally, heat negatively affects the cells in your phone's battery. It lessens the battery's lifespan and capacity and eventually leads to component failure. In severe cases, it can cause a catastrophic failure, which creates something known as thermal runaway, and your phone could catch fire or explode. Thankfully, that rarely happens.

There's also the chance of mechanical damage caused by using a phone while it's plugged in. The cable port was designed to be used when the phone is in one place, and holding it can lead to the USB port connection to the main board coming loose.

In short, using your phone while you're charging it, even with a wireless charger, means it will have a shorter lifespan. But it's not as bad as you might be thinking for most of us.

You aren't keeping it forever

The extra heat caused by using a phone that's charging will make it stop working sooner. There's no question about it. But will it make enough of a difference?

Not counting your battery, which we'll talk about in a minute, the parts inside your phone will still be in fine working order when you buy a new one. If the heat and clock speeds are managed correctly (they are unless you get in there and change things, voiding the warranty), chances are the components will last for decades.

Your battery is another story, though. Plain and simple: you are either going to keep a phone long enough to need to change the battery, or you aren't. Two years is about the amount of time it takes before you start to notice your phone battery doesn't hold a charge as long as it used to, but it's measured by charging cycle and not actual time.

Starting to see what could be an issue yet? The more often you charge your phone, the shorter the lifespan of the battery will be. That's just how it is, and yes, as it gets older, you'll need to charge it more often, making its lifespan even shorter. The extra heat does have an effect here, but not a huge amount.

Ideally, you'll set your phone down and give it time to charge before you pick it back up again. Using it while you're charging now and then won't make much of a difference, but doing it all the time will mean you might end up replacing the battery or buying a new phone sooner than you had planned.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Now you can customize your Google News feed

Google just made it easy to curate your own news "top Stories" in search. I've already had a few people write in to find out exactly how to do it and why you might want to.

It's a good question for something more important than you may realize, so let's answer it!

Top stories is one of those sections that shows up at the top of any Google Search results. You might love it or hate it, but that doesn't matter because it's there. You might as well make use of it.

A good way to do that is to choose where those top stories come from. Usually, Google tries a mix of taking what's relevant and what's popular to decide where search results go, but that doesn't always work best for us. Sometimes, we just want to see what a place we trust has to say. Thankfully, it's pretty simple to set up.

• Open up the Google home page and search for something you're interested in. I chose the Pixel 10 as my example.
• At the top, you'll see a section of "Top stories" and a little "+" icon to its right. Click or tap that icon.
• A new box will pop open that says "Choose your preferred sources."
• In the search box, right below the title, type in the name or home page URL of a site from which you want to pull news. I typed in Android Central, but www.androidcentral.com would have worked exactly the same.
• You'll see a list of relevant results (in this case, our website and forum) that you can choose from. Pick what you like.
• Finally, click or tap the "Reload results" button at the bottom to dismiss the pop-up and reload using your preferences. From now on, every time I search, Android Central will be featured.

Why you should choose Android Central as a preferred news source

Why choosing a preferred site is important

It's time for a little bit of "inside baseball." What you see when you do a web search probably isn't what you think it is because of what's called SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

It's an entire industry developed around getting search results near the top of search engines like Google, and it's huge. It can be a good thing, but like all good things, it can be easily abused.

Have you ever searched for something and ended up at a link that's just a lot of garbage or short blurbs pulled from other websites? Someone tried really hard to make that happen by paying close attention to the way search engines use keywords and relevant topics. If you put the right words in the right places, you can make your way to the front page of Google without actually writing anything.

News websites try to fight it by balancing content with the right keywords in a way that isn't going to trigger anything from the search engine that would look bad. Companies like Google fight hard against disingenuous SEO techniques because you don't want to end up on a junk website. They're constantly changing the science behind how this works, but SEO factories are working just as hard to stay a step ahead of the changes.

In the end, both the end-users and the legitimate news websites are the ones getting the short end of the stick. As a news website, we're constantly monitoring how we can get quality articles out there so you can easily find them. Sometimes, it doesn't work as well as we'd like. Every legitimate website goes through this.

If you want to see what Android Central has to say about the coming Pixel 10 launch, you want to see that in your results. The same goes for any website and any subject. Now, you'll see articles from the places you want to read and trust the most.

Making Google work in a way that's better for you is always worth doing.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

What's wrong with the eSIM?

L. asks:

I read that the Pixel 10 may launch as an eSIM-only phone, and people were very upset about it. Why? I thought the eSIM was supposed to be better technology than the old physical SIM card.

I really appreciate any answer

Hi L, I saw exactly the same thing as you did; the Pixel 10 may be an eSIM-only device in the United States, and people lost their ever-loving minds over the news. Everyone hates eSIM.

Except they really don't.

The easy answer is that you're seeing a biased response from a small group of people. I'll imagine you're a bit of a tech-lover. That means you see articles and social media posts from other tech-lovers, or websites (like Android Central) dedicated to tech-lovers.

Many tech lovers hate the eSIM, and we'll get to why in a minute. But first, realize that most people have no idea what an eSIM is. They probably don't really care, either. Some of the people who do understand happen to like the eSIM. But the people who don't like it are using their voice and letting the world know about it. That's what you're seeing, not messages from people saying they have no idea what an eSIM is. It seems like there is no love.

Now, for why many people who understand it all hate the eSIM: Apple. Yeah. It's easy to blame Apple, and this time, it's even easier.

Apple launched the iPhone 14 in the U.S. as an eSIM-only device. It was not the first eSIM device, or even the first iPhone that could use one. It was the first iPhone that required you to use it, though.

When carriers started having issues assigning numbers to the chip, or started making up new rules about hoops you needed to jump through to transfer your number to a new iPhone, it was pretty messy. Not for everyone, but for enough people.

If your first exposure to the eSIM was trying to convince Verizon to activate your new iPhone 14 without you walking into a corporate store with a receipt and your old phone in working order, there's no wonder you hate it.

For some contrast, my first exposure to eSIM tech was checking a box in the Google Fi app and having my new phone start working without pushing a paperclip into the tiny hole that releases the SIM card tray. It took about three minutes and worked fine.

Needless to say, I don't have the same hate for the eSIM that many do because my experience with them has been good. I haven't used a physical SIM card since the Pixel 3.

That doesn't mean I like everything about the eSIM or that they are perfect. I don't, and they're not. The eSIM gives too much control over a thing you paid for to someone else.

As long as you weren't using a phone that was marked stolen or blacklisted due to non-payment, you could always pop a SIM card in the tray and make it work. You might need to look up some numbers and find the settings, but it was up to you.

An eSIM doesn't work that way. It's a tiny chip that can be flashed with your account data, but you're not the one doing the flashing. The phone maker and even worse, your carrier, are the only means to activate an eSIM. You might pay for one online and get what you need to know in an email, but in the end, you're connecting to another entity that can decide if it wants to set things up. You have no control over the situation.

That doesn't mean an eSIM is bad. It also doesn't mean it's good, either. It is cheaper, more environmentally friendly, and is going to eventually become the norm. If you have problems setting up or using an eSIM, I'd suggest you look at a different carrier instead of a different phone.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Are tri-fold phones going to be more fragile than regular foldables??

Rick asks:

I like the idea of having a phone with a very large display that can fold into a device that's more pocket-friendly. Trifold phones have my attention! I question the durability, though. Foldables in general had a rough start and I like to keep a phone for a full two years. I'm wondering how having more glass and a second hinge is going to affect the longevity of the device.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Rick. You also mentioned that English wasn't your first language and apologized for any errors, so I have to tell you that your English is better than mine!

In regard to your question, it's very important. It's also something that most people aren't thinking about and probably won't until enough people get a tri-fold device to show off pictures of broken ones on social media. That makes it doubly important to me. We saw the same scenario when Samsung debuted the Z Fold, and displays started separating and cracking.

Your reasoning is very sound. The mechanical problems with foldables stem from using super-thin glass and a hinge. A tri-fold will have one more of both. When you make glass that thin, any imperfection will (not might, but will) cause a crack. In turn, that crack will grow until it reaches the edge of the glass itself and can go no further.

When the display layer is embedded into the glass sandwich, you have more than just a crack in the glass to contend with. Any ding or even a fingernail gouge could make the screen unusable.

To combat this, phone makers keep working on how the glass, the display component, and very tough and flexible polymers can be layered to toughen things up. A phone like the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is much better than the original Z Fold, and even better than last year's Fold 6 when it comes to the display materials.

Everything centers on the hinge, though. It's not the flashy showcase part of a foldable phone, but it should be because it's the most important. The hinge only needs to do one thing: open or close. But it has to do it perfectly, or it can add to the issues with using thin glass.

The hinge needs to prevent the glass from twisting while it's being bent. It also needs to be rigid enough to keep the glass firmly in place while open or closed. That's not easy to do, but phones with hinges are a lot better now than they used to be.

I have a feeling that the tech has progressed far enough that tri-folding phones won't be any more problematic than "regular" foldables. That means it should stand up to normal use, but it also means there are two points of failure. We will see more issues because of that extra moving part.

I wouldn't buy a tri-folding phone until version two comes out at the earliest. That gives a company a chance to look at what went well with the first version and what didn't go very well.

Having said that, you can buy a tri-fold today. I don't think something like the Huawei Mate XT has sold millions just yet, but the internet isn't full of people with broken screens or other problems. Samsung's Z model tri-fold, said to be launching this year, will sell more phones, so we'll see if there will be more problems.

Still, the idea of a tri-fold phone intrigues me for the same reasons the Motorola Razr did; it folds up smaller, just like you mentioned. I think they will be the device that unifies mobile computing and eventually can replace a phone, a tablet, and a laptop.

Like you, I need to know they'll be built to last, though.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Does Incognito Mode still help Google track me?

Anon0-mouse asks:

What exactly does Chrome's Incognito Mode do? I got this pop-up while in Incognito Mode about Google helping me log in to an adult website, and it got me thinking that Incognito isn't as private as people think. Does it still help Google track you across the web?

Thanks

Heya Anon, thanks for the question. Millions use Google Chrome's Incognito Mode, likely thinking it makes them more anonymous or offers safer browsing. It does neither.

The quick and dirty answer is that Incognito Mode does nothing except prevent the web browser from caching files, images, and history on the local device; use Incognito on your phone, and nothing gets saved to your phone unless you download it yourself. The same goes for any computer or a Chromebook.

That leaves a lot of things untouched and happening the same way they would if you weren't using it. Here's what's up.

You're not hiding from anyone

When you open an Incognito Mode instance of Chrome, it does a good job explaining what's going on. Most people will never read all that, and some who do won't quite understand it. There was a whole lawsuit about this, which Google lost. I think they shouldn't have because this landing page covers it all.

Here's what it says:

Third-party cookies are blocked

When you're in Incognito mode, sites can't use third-party cookies. If a site that relies on these cookies isn't working, you can try giving that site temporary access to third-party cookies.

Firstly, ignore the third-party cookies bit. Never give any website access to third-party cookies, even on a temporary basis, if you're bothering to use Incognito Mode.

The "Chrome won't save" section is really self-explanatory. Chrome is an app that regularly saves its data to your device, and while using Incognito Mode, it won't save any of that. This data can be useful to make web browsing faster by saving a local copy of things you see from places you visit a lot. Cached data is not a bad thing when used the right way.

The "Your activity might still be visible to" part is more confusing and, in my opinion, incomplete. It might as well just say "everything else." When you're online, you're sending and receiving information, and without that information, it won't work. That goes for Incognito Mode, too.

Every step in that chain of service providers still needs that information if you're going to reach the place you wanted to reach. Your local network (or your school or workplace if you're browsing through either), the internet service provider who supplies data services, the website itself, any authentication providers like Verisign, and any other business needed to connect you to your destination.

It also means Google. Metrics about what websites are visited, the performance of Chrome on a particular site, and the way the server responds are important data to Google because they help make Chrome more reliable. The thing to remember is that since you're not signed in to your Google account in Incognito Mode, none of this is associated with you directly. Ancillary data can still be used to make that connection, though, like your IP address or if you signed into anything.

I would also suggest you take a look at things again, because I can't replicate this. Using the same website with Incognito Mode, I see no prompt asking me to log in with my Google Account. I do see the same message using "Private Window" via Firefox, but not in Chrome.

In either case, I wouldn't advise you to do it.

How to stop all this

I wish I could say the same thing you'll read a million times and tell you a VPN will keep you anonymous. But I can't because it won't. There's really not much you can do to make sure that nobody is tracking anything you do while online.

I sat and thought for a while, and the best I could come up with was some crazy scheme using a Linux live distribution, and forcing a change of your local IP before and after. That still wouldn't be foolproof, but it would be a big pain in the butt just so you can look at naked and sweaty people.

I can tell you what I do, though. I use Google Chrome for work, for shopping, paying my bills, and banking. Any other time, I use an alternative that doesn't come from Google.

I like Firefox and use it on my computers (you can load Firefox for Android right on your Chromebook!) and on my phone. On the desktop, Firefox comes with a built-in privacy mode, but on the phone, you can install Firefox Focus for the same experience.

I can't say Firefox is any better than any other browser; it's just what I've used for years and years. You should check out the others, and there are plenty. Stay away from Edge, Safari, and Amazon Silk if you don't want big tech involved, though.

Long story short — you can't be online and be completely anonymous. The old saying that "nothing is really free" applies and that website you visit as well as the tools you use to get there do whatever they can to use data to make money.

Most of this is anonymized in some way, but it's still able to be tied back to you if someone tries hard enough and has access to it all.

Most importantly, nobody at Google or your ISP cares if you visit Pornhub. Just be yourself, but still try to follow the rules at work or school.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why doesn't my smartwatch have the same health features as one sold in Europe?

Roger asks:

Why do manufacturers launch wearables like smartwatches with different health features in different countries? They always say "pending regulatory approval," but what does that really mean?

Hi Roger, and thanks for writing in and asking! Since so many people use a wearable device for health and fitness, this is an interesting and important question.

The easy answer is that manufacturers mean what they say — they do not have approval to sell a new wearable with a specific feature (hypothetically, say, sleep apnea detection) in all countries, so it's launching in those countries without that ability.

Often, approval is granted and the feature comes with a software update, but not always. It's easy to blame the manufacturers; Samsung or Google should do whatever is needed to get those features out for everyone. But it's not really up to them.

The hardware is already there

Companies usually don't make a different version of the product for different countries. If you buy a Pixel Watch in France and it can monitor your breathing during sleep, it could also do it in the United States as far as the hardware is concerned. Sometimes, even the software is there, buried and hidden, because it can't be used. But usually it's not.

We see phones built differently for different parts of the world, but wearables are a more integrated platform with more stringent hardware requirements, so it's best to just make them all the same. Your watch has the same chips and sensors inside as one sold anywhere else, even if the features are slightly different.

Blame the government

I'm sure every country around the world has some sort of regulatory body that governs the use of medical devices intended to be worn or implanted. Yes, if your wearable tries to detect or diagnose a specific health condition, it is considered a medical device. I'm only really familiar with how it works in the U.S., but I imagine the process is similar everywhere else.

In the U.S., if you build your own medical device, write your own software, and use it yourself, you do not need any sort of approval from anyone. Nobody is doing this, of course, but the provision is there because it needs to be — someone needs to test things during the product development stage.

Once you make your device or software available for others, and especially if you put it up for sale, you need to jump through all sorts of hoops. For health features, this means the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) decides.

The FDA says that any device “intended for use in the diagnosis of disease of other conditions, or in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease” requires FDA approval. Wearable devices are not regulated if they are intended only for general wellness uses. All implanted devices require approval.

Samsung just went through this with sleep apnea detection for the Galaxy Watch last fall. Originally, it was sold in the U.S. without access to this feature because — you guessed it — it required regulatory approval.

The FDA determines if the feature is accurate and consistent enough, as well as makes sure that no consumer health data can be accessed by an unauthorized party. It often sets guidelines for the marketing of the feature; in this case, you should be over the age of 22 and not be diagnosed with any respiratory illness, including sleep apnea. Of course, they can't enforce this, but once it's in print, Samsung is following the rules.

Once all this happens, we can use our Galaxy Watch to tell us if we stop breathing during the night once we receive a software update that enables the feature.

Why not wait until it's approved?

That's a simple answer — companies don't hold back products for this because they want to sell products, and you don't want to wait for it to be approved.

Most people didn't buy a Galaxy Watch only because they wanted to monitor for sleep apnea. I'd say the people who really wanted this feature are just a small percentage of users. I like it, you may like it, most people just don't care.

None of those people could have bought a Galaxy Watch if it weren't available, and would have bought a different model. Waiting until September of last year to release the device would have meant a lot of missed sales from people who didn't plan to use sleep apnea detection in the first place. That's not good for business.

It's worth noting that some companies, such as Samsung and Apple, are able to obtain approval much faster than others. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. My best guess is these large companies have a relationship with the right people and a good understanding of the entire process.

That said, there are some features, such as blood pressure monitoring, that even these companies haven't been able to weasel their way into getting FDA-approved.

If the next wearable you want launches minus a health feature or two, don't be afraid to buy it anyway. Approval is probably coming; it's just that the government only has one speed — a slow one.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Internet issues using mobile data

Dennis asks:

My Motorola Edge 5G UW phone often gives me an error message when I try to open a link when I'm away from home. Is this a problem that can be fixed? I have service on the phone and use Wi-FI while at home.

Thanks

Hi Dennis. I often get a lot of specific questions about technology, and sometimes, general problems that affect a lot of us seem to be forgotten. Thanks for bringing us back to the basics.

You ask, can this be fixed? Well, everything can be fixed, but the real question is whether it's easy enough to fix yourself or if you have to buy something new. Hopefully, we can get it straightened out!

First things to check

What you're seeing isn't unusual for many people. Depending on the websites you need to visit and the quality of your service connection, you may experience problems from time to time. Factors such as how the website is served to you or the quality of your wireless service in a particular location are largely beyond your control, so let's start with what you can control.

In the settings of your phone, there are several things you should review. Unfortunately, every phone is slightly different, and even different carriers can have different settings; however, what we're looking for is relatively simple to find.

There is a setting that allows you to use your data connection when you're not on Wi-Fi. If pages load sometimes, this is probably enabled, but you should check. On my unlocked Motorola phone, there's a slider that's labeled Use Mobile Data, so yours should say something similar. Make sure it's turned on.

Phones and carriers often have a way to limit bandwidth. This can be handy while you're roaming or if you're on a limited data plan, but it can also choke a connection if the website is a little heavy on resources. You're looking for a setting to allow 5G data and one to allow data use while roaming. For now, make sure both of these are on. Remember where you found them in case you want to turn them off again in the future.

Have you hit the data cap?

Every wireless plan has a cap when the data connection is either cut off or slowed to a crawl. You may be paying for an "unlimited" data plan, but trust me, your carrier will slow you down if it thinks it needs to, based on how much you're using and where you are.

Most of the time, they use words like high-speed data to differentiate. Let's say you pay for 10GB of data each month. You should expect to be able to use your service as fast as it can be for those 10GB. Once you've used it up, most carriers will still let things work, just at a very slow rate.

This slow data rate is enough to allow an iPhone or Android phone to still work normally; both need to connect to Apple or Google every once in a while but use very little bandwidth for these check-ins. The rest of the internet can seem kind of broken, though.

If your carrier is throttling your data, pages can take forever to load or shoot you an error message when they get tired of waiting. As typical data speeds increase, this problem worsens — web designers build a page so it looks great under ideal circumstances, but often overlook what happens when things aren't ideal.

You can check to see how much data you've used in the mobile data settings of your phone, or you can just call your carrier and ask. You may even have an app from your carrier that displays this number. If you've used your monthly allotment of high-speed data or use a lot of data in general, you might be getting throttled.

You will need to contact your carrier about this. If they are limiting the bandwidth available to you, there's nothing you can do to change it. They'll probably try to upsell you a higher-tier plan, so be prepared for a sales pitch.

Location matters more than you think

If you zoom in close on any carrier's coverage map, you'll soon see that they are full of holes. Sometimes, they'll have limited service in certain areas; at other times, you'll be roaming via "partner data"; and sometimes, there is simply no service available.

As you can imagine, this is a bigger problem in rural areas than in bigger cities. I live in one of these problem areas, and once Sprint went away, my wireless service got much worse. Yes, Sprint coverage here was excellent, and that's something you won't hear very often.

I can get in the car and drive just a few miles and see 5G, LTE, roaming coverage, and no service from my phone. There's nothing wrong with the phone; it's just a weak connection, lots of forest, and big stone mountains affecting the signal.

There is nothing I can do to fix this. There isn't a lot the carriers can do to fix it. either. It would be impossible to filter out every dead zone by placing a tower or repeater to blanket the area in coverage, and if it were possible, someone would have to pay for it.

If you notice problems in a particular location, it's possible that you're experiencing the same issue. In the United States and Canada, there are numerous areas with inadequate cell coverage due to the vast size and distance between population centers. Verizon or AT&T don't want to spend billions to provide excellent service where nobody lives, so they focus on cities and suburbia first.

Unfortunately, the only solution if this is your problem would be to check if another carrier performs better. Sometimes, you can get lucky, but chances are, if one carrier doesn't offer robust service in a location, neither will any of the others.

If I were to put on a blindfold and just guess at what the problem might be, I would say you're either being throttled by your carrier or live where the connection isn't the greatest. But be sure to check your settings and be mindful of where things work well and where they don't. It could make all the difference.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Does nearly half of the world really have an Android?

Anonymous asks:

Google says there are over three billion Android users. Apple say its has two billion. Are these numbers real?

Man, what a cool question. As someone who loves Android and numbers/math, I love it! Thanks so much for asking.

First, the easy answer: yes, those numbers are real. Google and Apple know they can't just lie about things that are verifiable because the hit to their reputation would be rough, at least for a little while.

They don't mean what you probably think they mean, though. If you pay attention to what they are saying, you'll notice they never actually say three billion people; they say devices. And the way devices are counted is a little squirrelly, too.

For the deeper answer, you have to start with what Android is. Android is a trademarked, privately built operating system owned by Google. It is built using the Android Open Source Project, the base code given away free for everyone. It's also open source, meaning that you can download the code and build it yourself.

Because of its licenses, most changes made to the original AOSP do not have to be open source or have the new code made available. Android is just that: software made using open-source code with changes done by Google, and then further changed by companies like Samsung. To use the name Android, you must follow all of Google's rules.

One of those rules is allowing access to the Google Play Store. For that, the software has to meet a bunch of other requirements concerning interoperability, so an app that works for one device should work the same with another. As long as they are the same type of device, that is.

Remember, an Android device doesn't have to be a phone. Wearables, tablets, media streamers, and more can also be powered by Android, and that means they also have access to Google's Play Store and other apps.

Finally, you have Chromebooks. They also run Android in a way, and they are counted when it comes to the more than three billion devices tag.

How they get counted is what really matters.

Monthly active devices

Your Android-powered devices regularly communicate with the Play Store if it's turned on and connected to the internet. Besides the analytics that Google loves to collect, they check for updates and work with Google Play Protect to keep bad apps away from the device.

As long as a device communicates with the Play Store at least once every 30 days, it is counted as an active device. That means it is part of that 3 billion+ statistic. An old phone you have lying around that only gets powered on occasionally will be counted as active for the month(s) it has been turned on at least once. The same goes for a TV box in a spare room you rarely use or a tablet you never pick up.

This also means that you are one user, but your devices are counted individually. I have two Android phones, one for work-related breaking of software and one for me to use. I also have an Android tablet, two Nvidia Shield Pro TV boxes, three Chromebooks, and a smartwatch. I'm one user with eight devices that get counted.

If everyone were like me, that would mean that the three billion devices are used by only 375 million separate people. Of course, not everyone has eight devices; some have one, and some have more than eight.

I'm not able to find any verifiable numbers concerning actual users and not devices. What I've seen ranges from four to seven billion people, but without the methodology showing how the numbers were reached, what they tell me is useless. And I'm not going to guess.

I can say that there aren't 3 billion+ people out there with an Android phone, though.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Are wearable devices accurate enough to help my Doctor?

Rhea asks:

Are wearables like watches and smart rings ready to be health devices yet? They can track information I need but if they aren't accurate are they helping or hurting? I know you've talked about this in the past but have a few years made a big difference?

Thanks!

Hi Rhea, and thanks for sending in a great question. It's also an important one, especially for people with health concerns or fitness fanatics: Are wearable devices accurate enough in 2025?

The easy answer is no. But that's not the right answer. Accuracy is important, but it's not the only data that can be insightful for your health, and wearables do a pretty good job at it, even if they aren't giving the perfect readings.

To be clear, I'm talking about the things a wearable tracks on its own, like heart rate, breathing, sleep patterns, or (coming soon?) blood glucose. The things you have to enter yourself, like how many glasses of water you drank, are only as helpful as you make them. Cheating and saying you drank eight glasses of water instead of six is kind of silly.

It's true that wearables don't give perfect readings. They're built using fairly cheap off-the-shelf sensors and calibrated to work for (almost) everyone, not to work perfectly until it's recalibration time. Nobody would buy a smartwatch that needed to go back every 90 days to be tested and ended up costing a couple of thousand dollars to be slightly more precise.

But they don't need to be exact to be helpful. NEVER depend on a wearable device to make any sort of diagnosis or determine if you have an emergency in the works. The companies making them will tell you the same — if your watch says you're heart seems fine but you don't feel fine, go to the emergency room. The opposite is true, too — if the watch says there is a problem, but you don't feel like there's a problem, get looked at anyway.

It sounds like I'm saying you shouldn't trust what you see from your watch, and that makes them seem unhelpful. That's half-right; don't fully trust what it tells you, but they can be very helpful because they have one thing going for them: consistency.

I've tested a smartwatch against actual medical equipment, and the results were different, even to the point that the watch didn't see a real problem. What I've found is that while the readings may not be fully accurate, they are great at showing trends

If your watch indicates that your heart rate is 20 bpm different from an actual monitor, but shows a 20 bpm difference each time your heart rate rises or drops, you will see a consistent trend. And so will your doctor.

I've even asked my doctor about this because I am a nerd. She told me that you can't get real-time clinical data from a watch or a ring, no matter the brand. However, you can review your history, and important information is readily available to help her. You aren't in her office hooked up to an EKG 24 hours a day, but you wear your watch whenever it's not charging. Those readings tell a story. That's why she wears one!

I believe wearables play a crucial role in healthcare, particularly for individuals who require additional support in this area. But don't let your Pixel Watch or Galaxy Ring decide if and when you should go to the ER.

Provide your doctor access to your wearable's health history and give them another tool to keep you healthy.

• Smartwatch deals: Best Buy | Walmart | Amazon | Samsung | Dell

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

What does always listening really mean?

Rob asks:

I know smartphones and assistants listen for their wake word. Does that mean they hear everything around them all of the time?

Thanks

Hi Rob. That's a great question that I think a lot of people wonder about: how much does their smartphone or "smart" device actually hear?

The easy answer is everything. Yes, Always Listening means just that — it is always listening. It has to so it can recognize when its trigger word or phrase was spoken, then it can try to do something useful. This means that all smart home and assistant-powered devices from every company, including Amazon, Google, and Apple, must work this way.

The better answer is to explain how it's supposed to work, according to the people who make the products and those who have tested them. Always listening doesn't mean always recognizing or always doing something. I'll use a simple Nest Mini as an example, but as mentioned, this is pretty much the same across all ecosystems and platforms. Any sort of AI or assistant on your phone has to work this way.

As soon as you plug in and set up a Nest Mini, its microphone goes to work. Every sound that it picks up is analyzed using some low-power software and hardware, and unless you've said "Hey Google", that's the end of it.

If it does think it's picked up its command phrase, other processing starts to happen. The software tries to interpret the words it has heard into commands the device can recognize, and then tries to act on those commands.

An example is if I say, "Hey Google, turn off the porch light," My Nest Mini catches the phrase Hey Google so it knows it needs to process what comes next. In this case, it uses speech recognition to determine my request, ensures it recognizes a device named "porch light," and then sends a signal to shut it off.

If it didn't recognize the key phrase of "Hey Google," it would just keep listening for it.

If it recognized its key phrase but was unable to figure out what was being asked, or if it were asked to do something it couldn't, it would respond with a generic error like "I'm sorry I don't recognize porch light" or "I'm sorry I can't do that".

If it "thought" it recognized the key phrase, it would try to figure out what to do next as described above. Usually, it can't do anything because we never really asked it to do anything. In that case, it just goes back to listening. But sometimes, it can be goofy and think it found a command and do something you never asked it to do.

I have a first-generation Google Home here that will start playing YouTube videos out of the blue at least three times a week because it thinks I asked it to do it. Goofy little gadget.

What about privacy?

Tech companies are very specific about what their voice-activated devices will do and how they do it. That's good because having something that hears everything could be a little problematic if not kept on a short leash.

For example, some of the commands it "hears" are recorded and sent back for someone to check. If it was told to turn off the porch light, someone wants to make sure it did turn off the porch light. It does keep track of everything it hears that it thinks is a valid request for a certain amount of time. Some think that this information is sold to advertisers, though the companies making the smart devices say otherwise.

If it heard something that wasn't a valid request, it won't keep track of it, according to the companies who make them.

Yes, this is a very valid privacy concern. Most people don't want Google to spy on everything they say. I know I don't. Not that I'm saying or doing something I shouldn't be (you never know) but it's the fact that it's none of Google's damn business.

You really only have two choices: trust that it's doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing by only processing and acting on things it thinks are valid requests, or don't. I can't tell you what to choose here, but if you don't trust it, you should totally not use it.

Myself? I only ever fully trust something I built with my own two hands while I'm using it myself. I do use Google Assistant, Gemini, and Google Home products, but I'm mindful of where, when, and how. I'd never have one in my bedroom, for example. Especially one with a camera. I do not use any voice-activated smart "stuff" through Apple, Microsoft, or Amazon because I only want to worry about one platform getting more than I want to share.

You probably shouldn't follow my example and decide if you trust it or not, then go from there. Giant tech companies don't care about you as a person, but are almost assuredly doing exactly what they describe with voice-controlled services and products. Not to be kind, but because it's not worth the problems that would arise if they got caught doing something differently.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Will foldables always be so fragile?

Bob (and others) have asked:

I've had three Galaxy Z Folds and they all cracked down the middle. I understand it is a problem, but will it ever be rectified?

Thanks

It's one of those messages you hate to read; foldable phones break a lot more often and for what seems like no reason. Can this ever be less of a problem?

The quick answer is that phones or other devices that use any sort of super-thin glass that folds will always be more fragile than ones that don't. No magic can change that, but they should be getting more durable every year — probably not for the reason you think, though.

The entire problem is the thin glass. To have glass that can bend over and over without breaking, it's got to be thinner than a human hair and treated with a special series of coatings. It's amazing, but by its very nature, it's also extremely fragile.

Making glass bend is about a lot more than the glass. New methods will surely make a more durable sheet of Ultra-Thin-Glass in the future, but the biggest way to alleviate the issue is through the design of the phone itself.

Very thin glass has a very low tensile strength, meaning that any defect — i.e., a scratch, a nick, or a crack — will lead to catastrophic failure eventually. A folding phone with a blemish on the glass will split right down the crease every time.

The solution is to do everything possible to keep the screen from being inadvertently damaged. That's why there's a plastic coating on the glass and a plastic permanent screen protector. It's also why foldable phones don't truly fold in half, and the two sides never touch. When all is said and done, though, the hinge is the single most important part of the design.

Having all the plastic (which feels much better now than it did just a few years ago, because science) in place is easy to figure out. If a piece of dirt from your pocket weasels its way near the screen, it should scratch the plastic layer and leave the glass alone.

That's also why it's built so that the two sides don't meet when it's closed. You don't want the screen to rub against itself, so the phone folds a tiny bit less than 180 degrees, and there is a small lip around the edge of the phone's body.

This prevents tiny scratches. It's also why you should never push anything except the soft end of your finger onto a folding phone's screen; your fingernail or something hard could dent the glass through the plastic coatings. Yes, it's that thin.

But again, the most important and probably most difficult part of the design is the hinge. Imagine if a folding phone's hinge had a little bit of side-to-side wiggle, and what that would do to the edge of a really thin sheet of glass. It would cause a tear along the edge, and that spells the end of the line for your display in short order.

On the flip side (see what I did there?) the hinge has to be easy to operate the way it should. it has to fold smoothly without much force yet stay rigidly in place when it is open. Any movement can create a tiny crack that kills your foldable.

Nobody seems to appreciate the work being done here enough, except the people doing it. The hinge design is 100% why you can have a folding phone in the first place, and as they get better, reports of busted screens become less common — remember the first Galaxy Z Fold and all the pictures on social media of broken ones?

Foldables will never be MIL-SPEC tough or rugged devices, and we probably wouldn't even want a thick, bulky 20-ounce phone anyway. But they are getting better and will keep getting better as more work is done to keep everything moving only the way it's supposed to move.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why do some phones only show up for sale in some places?

T asks:

Why do companies build phones that are never for sale in all countries? I've seen several phones I would like to buy if they were available here.

And several people have been more specific:

When will the Samsung Galaxy A56 come to the U.S.?

Thanks for the question(s), guys and gals; this is another really good one with an interesting answer, and those are my favorite ones!

I'll answer the second part first because it's easier and a lot simpler: only Samsung knows. OK, well, maybe company execs at Verizon know, too, but you get what I mean. Samsung suggested that the phone will launch in the U.S. market, but never said anything more specific than "later in 2025," and that doesn't mean much. It might never come, because of the overall answer of why phones are sold in specific places.

I'm not suggesting that Samsung is lying or anything. The A56 may show up for sale tomorrow, but it may not; it all depends on Samsung's thoughts of its place in the market. That's a big part of the whole picture.

At the root of it all is (you guessed it) money. A company like Samsung wants every model it makes to be a hit, selling millions of units. Many of them are universal — minor hardware differences aside, you can buy a Galaxy S25 almost anywhere. Things get a little murkier from there. There has to be a market for a phone to sell.

With so many different phones to choose from, it can be hard to build something that's best in a specific price range, size, or any other metric you can think of. A company also has to compete with itself sometimes — you might not buy a base model S25 if you can get the A56 a little cheaper.

Ideally, Samsung wants both the S25 and A56 to sell like hotcakes. The company has gigantic marketing teams who get into the science of figuring out the consumer smartphone market so that the right phones are released at the right time to the right places.

A company that makes phones only does it for one reason: to sell them and make a profit. No matter if it's a huge company like Samsung or a small company like Fairphone, the idea is to build and sell products like every other business that's not a bonafide charity.

Sometimes there's a quasi-technical reason. Phones designed for use in different countries may need specific hardware and software inside so they work on the available networks. Building different models, then testing those models, and getting regulatory approval to sell them costs money. If a company doesn't think it can sell enough to make a profit, it may not release it in certain markets.

Additionally, patents and royalties can come into play and restrict where a phone can be sold. Thankfully, that's mostly a thing of the past.

Pure speculation: With the Galaxy S25 being new, the S25 edge due any minute now, and a (hopefully) well-priced new Galaxy Z Flip on the horizon, now is not the time to release a $500 Galaxy A56 in the company's biggest consumer market.

That doesn't mean there won't be a right time later; companies like Google (and probably Apple) will show off a budget model later in the year, and that could be the time for Samsung to jump in with its own.

Or maybe the company will change its mind completely and never sell it in the U.S. The one thing we can be sure of is that Samsung spends a lot of time and money to find the answers because that's part of its business. A lot of companies make great products, but very few can move the numbers that Samsung does.

If I were looking for a new phone right now, I'd keep an open mind and check out every company's website to see what they're talking about. If it looks like exactly what I needed was right around the corner, I would wait a little bit, but if not, I would decide based on what's available right now that fits my needs and budget.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Is Auracast what we've been waiting for?

Jaqueline asks:

I know a bit about Auracast but I'm not sure how it will work when it arrives in Android 16. I understand I can tune into broadcasts, but can I create one? My husband and I would like to share a podcast on our daily walk, but he wears hearing aids and I do not. Will there be a way to broadcast to his aids while listening on my own Pixel buds at the same time?

Hi Jaqueline and thanks for the question, as well as the kind and encouraging words that came with it. Please accept this virtual internet hug of appreciation.

And this happens to be a great question. It's about something new and potentially really cool, but also very specific concerning the feature itself. When they tell us all the wild things something new can do, companies never talk about any real use cases. So we're gonna :)

First, the good news: Auracast is able to do exactly what you want. You are able to create a password-protected broadcast of audio from your phone that any compatible equipment can connect to, so you can play your podcast and listen through your buds while your husband connects with his hearing aids.

In fact, Samsung told me its compatible phones can do this right now since they have incorporated Auracast already and pointed me to an article it has already written that details the process. Without the right hardware here, I can't test it for myself. I believe them, though, because this is exactly the type of thing Auracast was advertised as able to do.

You knew this part was coming, but that doesn't mean it will work that way everywhere.

Auracast is a Bluetooth LE feature and has a set of complete specifications, meaning it should work universally no matter what hardware you are using. If it's compatible, it should be 100% compatible. That never happens in the real world.

In fact, Bluetooth is a great example of how "standards" are already seemingly random, and the version number and the equipment manufacturer mean more than anything it says on the box. Ask anyone with two different brands of phone and a Bluetooth infotainment system from a car maker all about it.

I would not be surprised if things didn't work the way we expected or were told they would, especially at first. Normally, that's not a big deal as long as we get some sort of functionality, but in this case, you might be buying new hearing aids and making sure your phone is advertised as capable, so it could get a little pricey.

No amount of money is too much to spend if it makes you and your husband happy or have a better life, but if it was supposed to and doesn't, that's a bitter pill to swallow.

I hate suggesting this, but I am going to anyway — wait. Let the feature arrive on more devices and somebody will test it to make sure it works the way we expected it to work. Look at your favorite tech websites and audio/Hi-fi websites until someone tries it. If it works, you'll even know what hardware it works with.

I'm very interested in the accessibility aspect of Auracast myself, so I'm in the same boat. Listening in a crowded bar or to a sports announcer seems pretty cool, but to me, the best part of the tech is its (hopefully) better functionality with hearing aids. If I can source the things I need, I'll be sure to give it a load of testing myself and would definitely share any and all experiences.

In the meantime, I'm holding on to a few dollars until I know it will work the way I want it to work with the things I spend my own money on. If you do check it out, please drop me a line and let me know how it went!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Destroying all the data stored inside a phone

T asks:

Every year I get a new phone for work and the IT department says they "securely wipe" the data from my old one before they turn it over to the purchasing department. Are they serious? If you can do that, can you tell me how?

Thanks

Hey T, cool question!

Whenever there's a clear answer, I like to give it right up front because I know a lot of people don't want to read the whole article, so yes. You can do that a few different ways, though some of them are going to destroy the phone. I'm going to assume they are doing it without trashing everything since they are turning it over when they are done.

Another thing to think about is why anyone would need to do this, and that's where we will start.

What is a "secure wipe" and why would you need to do it?

You're probably under the impression that once you delete something from any sort of electronic storage, it's gone forever. It's not.

For regular folks like us, yeah. Once you delete it and empty any sort of trash bin folder that catches everything, you can say goodbye to it. But for people with the right hardware, the right software, and the know-how to use it all, a lot of stuff can be retrieved.

That's because when you delete something, you usually don't delete it. You just delete the bits that tell the system it's there and where it was. For example, if I take a picture of my dog, and delete it after it was saved, the information that makes the picture stays. Only the information that said what it was is removed, and the system thinks the space is now free.

Eventually, the data to create my dog picture will be overwritten by new data, and then it's gone forever. Until then, sometimes you can get it back — if you have the means.

This is pretty universal, regardless of whether you're talking about a phone, a computer, a tablet, or even one of those digital picture frames. Encryption makes it really hard to get any useful data, and your phone is encrypted unless you monkey with it, so it's really not worth worrying about unless you're keeping super-secret important stuff on it.

For people who feel they need to worry about it, they should perform a secure wipe of all the data.

How to securely wipe a phone

There are a few ways to do it, but in this case, they're almost certainly doing it without destroying the storage media. That means they hook it up to something that will completely fill the storage with new, but completely nonsensical data; really just a bunch of 1s and 0s in a random pattern. This will make sure all of the storage is overwritten, and anything old will be truly destroyed.

Though it's a long process, you can do this to your phone yourself. Factory reset the phone, go through the setup without entering any accounts, attach it to a computer, and start copying tons of small text files that are just a single page of "11111111111111111" over and over. This won't clear the system storage, but nothing should ever be written to it, so it's plenty of overkill if you think you need the overkill. Once the phone's storage is full, factory reset it again.

The easy way is with a hammer or a couple of pairs of pliers. Breaking it into tiny bits will ensure you can never get the data from the device. It's also kind of fun. Just make sure you bust up all the small silicon rectangles to make sure you get the storage media.

This is how some government agencies "delete" data from old computer hard drives, and there is a person who gets paid to smash the hell out of them. Once done, just toss everything in a baggie to drop in an e-waste bin, and you're good to go.

While some people really do need to live with this level of paranoia, you don't, I don't, and 99.9% of the people reading this don't. Getting old deleted data from an encrypted device that was wiped is nearly impossible, so the data has to be worth the effort.

If you want something to worry about, look at what the company that provides your phone service is doing with your data instead. The next time someone calls you about an extended warranty, it's not because they got anything from your old phone — it's because your carrier sold them your name and phone number.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

The right way to buy a used phone

Lev asks:

Jerry I appreciate the ways to save money that you share and I have a question. I need a phone and was thinking about buying used. Is there anything special i should know or need to look out for?

Thanks

Heyo Lev! It's great to hear from someone else who likes to be a little frugal; that can be tough if you're a tech enthusiast.

This is an awesome question because yes, there are a few extra steps you should take if you're buying a used phone, especially if you're buying it through a private sale via online classifieds or eBay. Getting a great piece of equipment at a good price is important, but knowing how to keep from getting ripped off is even more important.

Buying a used phone gives you access to high-end devices and features without paying the early adopter tax. It's also more eco-friendly, if that's your thing, and it avoids the instant depreciation a phone experiences once it's sold. Phones are a lot like cars and are worth significantly less as soon as you've bought one.

Sadly, people are people, and there are folks out there trying to move their junk to you and your money to them. Here are a few things you can do to prevent it.

Do these things first

Look at a reputable seller first. There's a very good chance that a place like Back Market will have the phone you want. You also might be able to buy it recertified from the manufacturer or on Amazon. It may cost a little more, but buying from a place you can 100% trust can be worth a few dollars.

Understand any return policy. A private party sale probably won't have any sort of return policy, but other ways to shop might. Make sure you know what that policy is and how it works before any money changes hands.

Ask questions. Make sure the photos you see are of the actual device for sale. Ask if there has been any exposure to liquid or third-party repairs. Anything you can think of, just ask. You might feel like a pest, but if a seller wants your money, they can put up with a few questions.

Check the IMEI/ESN. Especially for any private sales. You can use these numbers to make sure the phone isn't blacklisted due to non-payment, reported lost, or even worse, a stolen device. Call your carrier with the number, and they will run a check for you before you buy anything.

Ask for a photo showing the phone being charged. Ideally, make sure today's date is shown, too. This lets you know the port isn't broken or the battery hasn't gone squirrelly.

Don't feel like any of this is you asking too much. You're about to spend a good bit on money and there are some answers you need to make sure this is the right phone to buy. Anyone selling a phone should understand.

Other things to keep in mind

Saving money is sweet, but there are a few downsides to buying a used phone. Some are obvious, like it will have a shorter update and customer care period because it's already a bit older. Others aren't as obvious.

There is already wear on the battery. I always talk about the battery in a phone, and that's because it's what goes bad first. Unless you damage something, the reason you stop using an old phone will be the battery. The battery starts to degrade the first time the phone is powered on and cannot be improved. This matters because the person who had it before you might have used the dickens out of it, and there could be more wear and tear on the battery than you realize.

Be prepared for some cosmetic imperfections. The glass will be covered with tiny scratches you can't see, but there may be some you can. Don't buy a phone with obvious mechanical damage, but know that even one that looks perfect probably isn't.

With these two things in mind, I suggest you never buy a used foldable. It's damn near impossible to change the battery, meaning only the company who made it can do it and they love to charge out of warranty prices whenever they can. Wear and tear also means something different for foldables because those tiny scratches on the glass cause stress that leads to breaks and fractures near the hinge.

Companies making foldables are working on making things better, but today I would suggest you only buy your foldables new — with a warranty — from the manufacturer or your phone carrier.

None of this should scare you away from buying a used phone, because the positives outweigh the negatives. Spending half as much to get what was touted as the very pinnacle of tech just last year sounds like a good idea to me!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Which apps should I pick?

Sarah asks:

I just bought a new Samsung and it already has apps for mail, calendar, contacts, and other things installed. Is it OK to use these or should I install Google's versions from the app store?

Hi Sarah! Congrats on the new phone. It's always fun using one once the setting-up part is over, and it sounds like you're going through that part right now. I think this is the very worst part of buying a new Android phone, and having a bunch of apps preinstalled is part of the reason why. Phone makers really need to "borrow" Apple's way of making a full backup, which you can restore if you want to.

Anyhoo, the quick answer to your question is that it's perfectly fine to use the apps that are already there, though some of them might be worth changing. Let's dive a little deeper to learn why I think this way.

The "best" apps

The first thing to know is that companies like Samsung use tools built into Android to connect apps to your Google account, the same as Google's various app development teams do. Apps like contacts or calendar tie into Google's cloud, where everything is stored, and they connect automatically once you've set them up.

The real differences are in the UI (user interface). Some companies add a bit of extra flourish to the look with colors or icons, and you might even find different features between different companies' apps. And that can make a big difference.

It's also worth noting that some of those apps are actually from Google because they must be pre-installed on every "official" Android-powered phone. Apps like Photos or Chrome are from Google, no matter which company made your phone.

With all that said, there are three apps from Google you should install or keep installed:

Google Chrome is not the best browser for your Android phone but there are times when you need to use it because so many websites on the internet are specifically made to run best in Chrome. Other browsers share the same base as Chrome (called Chromium), be still, stuff gets broken sometimes.

Google Messages may not have all the features you'll find in a messaging app from another company, but it gets updates to Android's messaging platform as soon as they are ready. I would suggest you use this for text messaging with people who aren't using something like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.

Google Photos is a must-have for everyone with an Android phone. The interface is kind of confusing and goofy, but keeping a cloud backup of everything you thought was important enough to take a picture of is awesome. Make sure you set it up to do it, even if you use a different app to look at things on your phone itself.

Google Gemini/Assistant is simply better than anything from the company that made your phone, no matter which company that is. If you want to use AI stuff, take the time to get it set up.

There are some other apps that you might want to use that don't come from Google, too. Some don't really matter; use whichever contacts and calendar app you like, for example, because they all do the same thing, even though they may look and feel a little different.

Use another internet browser. You mentioned you bought a Samsung, so using Samsung's web browser is a fine idea. You get the benefit of extensions, a better UI, and more features and tools. You still have Chrome to fall back on if things seem like they are broken, but a third-party browser can offer a much better experience most of the time.

Use another messenger if you can. I suggest WhatsApp because it's so popular. There isn't anything wrong with Google Messages, but it's still tied to your phone service, and other apps are much more popular, especially outside of North America. Find out which one most of your friends and family are using and install it.

Use any file browser not made by Google. Google's all suck, there's no gentle way to say it. Some are more advanced than others, but I find Samsung's to be fine, and it should already be installed.

Spotify/Apple Music/Tidal or another online music service might be worth looking into. YouTube Music works fine, but the UI is a mess, and the discovery feeds are garbage sometimes.

You'll see lots of recommendations from other folks online, and it's often worth checking them out. Some are for more advanced users, like manual camera apps, while others offer a great experience for casual users. Most of them are free, so check the permissions, install them, and give them a go — you can always uninstall them later.

Half the fun of having a smartphone is finding cool new things you can do with it, so never be afraid to experiment!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Is this the right phone to buy?

A lot of people ask:

I need to buy a new phone and a particular model caught my eye. Should I buy it or not?

A variation of this question is the one I get most often. There are so many phones to choose from, some are obviously going to be better than others, and there is the whole value proposition to look at; you don't want to spend more than you need to or spend it on the wrong thing.

This question is also one that's impossible for someone else to answer. Good thing it's easy for you to answer, provided you take a bit and consider all you options.

I know, I know, this sounds like a cop-out or a non-answer to a legitimate question. I promise it's not. I have spent more hours than I can count dealing with all aspects of technology and have a good idea of what is good and what isn't, but I don't know what you need and can never know what you want unless you tell me.

Part of the answer is easier to answer because there are some phones you just shouldn't buy if you need something reliable. If it's made by a company nobody has ever heard of or one we've heard a lot of bad things about, don't consider it. Likewise, read what people who did buy one have to say; if everyone hates it, skip it.

I also tell everyone that being an early adopter often means you end up with a lemon. Never buy the first generation of any new technology if you need something you can depend on; let the people who want one for fun have the first dance. Gen one foldables and their janky busted screens fit nicely here. A few generations later, they're fine, dependable products.

That leaves what you should buy. And here's where you have to answer your own question.

What you need versus what you want versus what you can afford

Once you know these three things, your choices will be narrowed down quite a bit. the trick is being truthful to yourself so you make the right decision.

I (technically, my wife) was in this situation not too long ago. She needed a phone and she needed it now. She also needed it to be reliable enough to use every day all day, and we didn't have a mountain of money to spend at the time. She decided on the Pixel 8a, and I thought that was a smart decision. It's not fancy, it is reliable, and the price was right.

Of course, she wanted more; something a little more fancy or a little more high-end would have made her happy. But knowing what was needed (a basic, reliable phone with acceptable battery life) and what was priced right (we got a great deal thanks to a Google Fi promotion) helped me make the right decision. We can put a few dollars back and get something she wants later.

This was a phone emergency, replacing something that was damaged beyond repair.

You have to do the same thing. Something like a Galaxy A phone or a Pixel A phone might be a good fit at the right price. Maybe you need to step down and buy an ultra-budget phone (or you just want to save money because you're frugal like that). Or maybe you can splurge and get the latest from Samsung or OnePlus.

The point is that only you really know the answer here. Make sure whatever you buy is exactly what you need, with as much of what you want and can afford thrown in.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Are International phones still a thing we need?

Phil writes:

Would you explain what an international version phone is and what some of the benefits and main consequences may be if purchased? Or is it simply a pass?

Thanks in advance,

Phil

Hi Phil. This is a great question on two fronts, and I'm really glad you asked. It gives a chance for some useful information to be written, and it reminds people like me that not everyone is techy enough to know what all this stuff means.

For people who just want the answer, an international phone is one designed to work in most countries around the globe. That used to be a bigger deal when phone carriers like Verizon and the now-defunct Sprint had non-compatible networks and charged extra for special phones that worked on them, but nowadays, it matters less.

Read on for more details.

An "International phone" can mean different things

If you were to ask me in a casual conversation, I'd give the answer above, but you might see other ways the words international phone are used, depending on where you look.

An international phone can be one designed for use in many countries around the globe. It can also mean an unlocked phone so you can put a different SIM card in it that is local for other countries. It can even mean a phone sold with a service plan that allows for sending and receiving calls across international borders. The last meaning is most popular for prepaid phones.

The phone's ability to make calls and use data depends on the modem inside it. Every carrier uses specific frequencies and tech to handle calls and data, and any equipment, like a phone, designed to be used with a carrier has to support those, or it's not going to work very well or at all.

Most phones sold today can handle enough different radio bands to cover plenty of those frequencies and will work on many networks around the world. It didn't used to be that way, and even today, not all phones will work in all places.

This mattered a lot just a few years ago. If you bought a phone from a carrier in the U.S. it probably wasn't going to work in Germany or Nigeria, for example. That's because the tech inside the phone's chip wasn't as advanced and couldn't handle that many different bands or because a carrier wanted to ensure you were locked in with a phone that only worked with them. Samsung's Galaxy models were notorious for this, with capable hardware deactivated at the behest of a phone carrier.

It's less of a thing today, thankfully. Chances are, any unlocked phone (one not tied to a specific carrier) is going to work in most places. Some countries like the U.S. and China still use specialized network tech, but unlocked phones can still use a portion of the network.

Drawbacks

There is one big drawback you need to consider. It has nothing to do with how the phone operates, though.

Depending on where you buy it, an unlocked international version of a phone won't come with any sort of warranty. Someone once asked me about this, and my response was, "Can you fix it yourself if it breaks?" If the answer is no, I'd suggest not buying it. Phones are mass-produced by the millions, and there will be lemons. If you end up with one and don't have any sort of warranty, you're stuck.

Other than that, it's mostly the same phone as the model made specifically for your region. Most people want one because the phone is usually SIM unlocked and can be bootloader unlocked so that custom firmware can be loaded onto it.

In essence, an unlocked phone is a device capable of being used in different countries and isn't hard to find if you want one.

You probably don't need one because your phone will work. All you need to do is ask your phone carrier to be sure. If you do buy one, remember you probably don't have any sort of warranty to fall back on if things go sour.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

If Google ignores the DMA rulings, what happens?

Alex asks:

I saw the news about Google not complying with the EU regulations and I was wondering what would happen if Google just ignored it?

Can Google be banned in Europe?

Thanks

Howdy Alex and thanks for such a great question!

Usually, I spend my thinking time wondering how Google will find ways to comply with laws and regulations and still keep an advantage, and never thought about Google just saying no.

I've no doubt that's what it really wants to do: just laugh and keep on truckin' without a care. That's a way to make lots and lots of money, after all. But I don't think Google will. I also think the EU wouldn't go as far as kicking Google out of the continent (so to speak).

Normally, laws and regulations are set up as a compromise. A good example is how countries want factories to make goods but don't want them to just churn out pollution. A common ground must be found that benefits both sides and, in a best-case scenario, also benefits the citizenship. What we are seeing right now in the U.S. and elsewhere isn't quite normal, so it's easy to forget how it's supposed to work.

I think the EU's DMA (Digital Markets Act) is a really good idea. It's not perfect, but no set of regulations will ever be perfect. I also agree with the rulings that Google is violating and want to see the company forced to do the right thing, even if it costs them a little bit of money in the end.

I say I think they will find a solution, but let's explore what happens if they don't.

Two worst-case scenarios

If Google were to just ignore the DMA rulings two very bad things could happen.

The first is that the company is banned from doing business in the EU. While Google may be unfairly using its status to exert more control over things like payments and ads, a lot of people and companies are making money through the company. If Google were to be "banned," that means more than not being able to sell Android phones or TV Streamers; it means not being able to sell ad space or services like Google Workspace, and plenty of companies depend on those services.

Taking Google out of the picture would mean a mad scramble for companies to find replacements that might cost a lot more and could drive many of them out of business. EU regulators and Google both know this, and that's why I don't think this would ever happen — it would have a terrible effect on the very people the EU is claiming to protect and Google claims to want to serve.

Another possibility is even worse: Google says no, and the EU does nothing about it.

If Google were to just keep on doing business the way it always has, even though the DMA has ruled it can't, and nothing happens, it would open a floodgate. Other companies would see this and know that they might be able to ignore the law, and Google would 100% go further.

Imagine a trifecta of corporate greed consisting of Google, Meta, and Amazon, knowing they can do whatever they like without any repercussions. Executives would have visions of swimming in a pool filled with gold like Scrooge McDuck.

The reasons the DMA was enacted would then mean nothing, and companies would try to use any practices, fair or otherwise, to gain an advantage. Then they would use it.

What will probably happen

The EU is going to continue to make demands, and Google is going to continue to fight them. This is normal behavior between two sides with different goals. It's a shame so much money will be spent to try to find common ground, but it is what it is.

Fines will be levied, which Google will appeal and protest. In the end, the rulings will be "bent" slightly, so Google wins a little bit, and the company will pay some money for being so stubborn about it. We're talking traffic ticket level of justice here, not something like execs facing jail time or anything. There will be no re-enactment of Bastille Day or guillotines involved.

This will also send the right message to others: we (the EU) will find a way to enforce our laws and reign you in; we're not afraid to fight it out. Then Google will find another way to skirt the rules until it gets caught. There is too much money to be made for it to go any other way.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Is Gemini Advanced worth $20 a month?

Charles asks:

Is buying Gemini Advanced worth the price? I like that it comes with Google One storage, but it's double the price of my current 2TB plan and I'm wondering if the AI features are worth it.

Thanks in advance.

Heya Charles! That's a great question and one I have asked myself several times. An extra $10 a month (the "Premium" Google One plan is $10 per month and the "AI Premium" plan is $20) isn't a lot of money but every penny counts. It needs to be worth it before anyone should just buy into it.

The answer isn't going to be the same for everyone, of course. Some people benefit from Gemini Advanced features like Gemini in Gmail or the extra tokens for analyzing a ton of data, but I think most people — myself included — aren't going to see $10 worth of benefit.

I don't know your exact needs, so let's take a look at what Gemini Advanced has to offer.

More capable AI models. Gemini Advanced uses the latest, and presumably best, AI training before it trickles down to the free tier of Gemini. It could mean you get better and more relevant responses to any query, whether it's conversational or something more intricate like data mining a document.

Priority access to new features. You'll get to try out the new AI tools before free users have access to them. This could be both a blessing and a curse.

A 1 million token context window. Gemini can analyze bigger and more complex documents with a larger token window. This is one of those things you would know you need, so if you ask about it, you probably don't. If you ever tried to feed Gemini a document and it told you it was too large, more tokens would help.

NotebookLM Plus. This is probably the best feature of the Premium AI plan, and if you are a student or need to keep track of information so it's organized in a meaningful way, Notebook LM is perfect. The Plus version gives you features like more sources, better sharing, and enhanced privacy from Google's cyber-eyes. I wish this was offered as a stand-alone option.

Gemini in Gmail, Docs, and Google Meet. If you want Gemini to help you write better emails or build better presentations, this could be worth it. It also enhances your video quality in Google Meet so everyone can see if you dusted your bookshelf or not.

Listing what is offered is the easy part. Deciding if you need or want any of it is a little harder. As mentioned, I think Notebook LM Plus is almost worth the extra costs and is the only reason I would even consider paying for Gemini Advanced.

However, I asked around the office, and my colleagues agreed with me. The value just isn't there, especially when most of the features will trickle down to the free tier in time.

Without knowing your exact needs, I would suggest you look into how much you use AI right now, then decide if any of these features would make you use it more. Best of all, you can try it free for a month to help you decide, and you totally should. That's what I did before I decided that I didn't need to pay the extra cost, and I have no regrets.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

When is the next big breakthrough coming? This is boring.

Milo asks:

Why are smartphones not getting better? It seems like we have so many places to get better, but all phones are essentially the same now.

Hi Milo, and thanks for asking! This is a polarizing issue, but I can see where you're going — almost every phone is a rectangular sandwich of glass running software that does the same things as other phones. It seems like they all came from a clone factory.

On the other hand, a lot of people are going to disagree. This is because some phones are outliers, like foldables or phones with an S Pen, and the small software features can make a big difference for the people who use them regularly.

Still, if you put 100 new phones in a box, most of them are just like the others, so I get it.

There are reasons for this, of course. A phone maker has two goals when it offers a new product — it wants it to be popular and sell in the millions, and it wants to make a bit of profit from every unit sold. To do this, they have to offer what they're sure people want to buy.

If you look at a Galaxy S25, a Pixel 9, an iPhone 16, a OnePlus 13, or any other "normal" smartphone, you can see they seem alike, especially at a glance. However, the small differences add up and are what makes people choose one over the other.

If you want to take amazing photos without fiddling with anything, buy a Pixel 9. If you want to do the same for video, buy an iPhone 16. Want the ultimate set of specs and hardware for a good price? The OnePlus 13 is for you. And, of course, the Galaxy S25 further refines the software people love with One UI. There are differences even though they seem the same at a glance.

But there are other phones out there, especially on the Android side. It's hard to say the industry is stagnant when you can buy a phone that folds out three ways, a phone that flips open like a Star Trek Communicator, or a phone that silos an integrated smart stylus. A Techno Phantom Ultimate 2 (these names are getting terrible) or a Motorola Razr Plus 2024 (see?) aren't anything like a Pixel or an iPhone. Even the Galaxy S25 Ultra and its S Pen are very different from the base model S25 or any slab phone.

I think phone makers are innovating but in a different way than they used to. We see fewer gimmicks like an IR blaster or a tiny ticker screen and more focus on the things that seem to sell. You and I might have loved the IR blaster or the LG V10's small ticker tape screen, but they didn't add to the overall sales numbers in a way that justifies their inclusion. And that's the real deciding factor.

Phone makers are also working on ways to make their phones thinner and batteries that last longer. These aren't flashy innovations that stand out from the pack, but they're something that people demand. Remember, making a thin device even thinner or packing a bigger battery in a tighter space isn't easy.

We all won't appreciate the design and hardware innovation in the smartphone world of the past few years. I want a thicker phone with a big removable battery, made of quality plastic with enough bezel to hold it without my big, thick thumbs hitting the screen. Better yet, BlackBerry could rise from the ashes and build me what I loved to use.

None of this is happening because what I want isn't as important as what most people want. I think phone makers are delivering what people want, and these small differences make a world of difference when it comes to using your phone.

Eventually, some company will fire off something nerdy, goofy, and weird that enthusiasts love. If it sells, then the other companies will copy it. Until then, we'll see the small differences and minor revisions between models to make them consumer-friendly.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Is there anything I need to do to make sure my phone works while travelling (and doesn't cost me a lot of money)?

T.J. asks:

I'm taking a vacation to Turkey, Greece, and Italy for a few weeks and this is the first time I'll be travelling without my work phone. Will my Galaxy S23 work without costing me an arm and a leg in international roaming fees from AT&T? Is there anything i should do before I leave to make sure?

Thanks

Hi T.J.! I'm jealous that you'll be catching the Mediterranean sun while I'm fighting the snow and slop here on the East Coast. You couldn't have picked a better place to spend a few weeks and I'll bet you have a great time.

For a quick answer to your question — you might be able to pop a local pre-paid SIM card in your phone and bypass those uber-expensive international roaming fees at the cost of not having your normal phone number for a few weeks. It all depends on if your phone is region-locked.

Unless you specifically bought an unlocked phone (something you should always do when you can) from your carrier (there are ways to check if your phone is unlocked) it's likely to have several of the radio bands locked in the firmware. They are still there and capable of working, they just need the lock removed.

Your carrier can do this in a store with technicians and the correct software, but getting them to do so can be difficult; they would rather you pay roaming fees or buy an international plan add-on.

That's actually not a bad idea in this case. If your phone is region-locked to North America spending an extra $10 or so per day is the easy way to use your phone almost anywhere without huge roaming fees. It's certainly less intimidating than unlocking the radio bands yourself through the phone's service menu.

If you're like me though, you'd rather mess with things than give AT&T extra money. The good news is that this has all been figured out and you can find complete instructions to do it yourself. Once this is done, you can pop a local SIM in and go. You might not have the fastest network connection, but everything will work.

What you'll be doing is entering a "secret code" into the phone's dialer to reach a technical menu that allows you to lock and unlock radio frequencies. It's not difficult, but it can be intimidating. That's why I mentioned how much easier adding a daily international add-on to your plan is. You can either pay $100 or so per week or go through a tedious and intricate set of instructions.

There is a third option — Google Fi. If your phone is carrier-unlocked (a different type of lock than region-lock; phone makers and carriers love locking things, apparently), you can buy a month of Google Fi service, which works with no extra fees in all three countries you mentioned. You don't have to sign any sort of contract, and when you're done, you just don't renew it.

You'll have a different number, just like you would if you used a local SIM card, but you won't be paying a bunch of surprise fees or a daily fee to use your phone without roaming charges.

Other than making sure you've enabled some sort of network connection, there isn't anything else to do. Your phone will automatically adjust things like the time and get its new location without doing anything and it should work exactly the same way it does back home.

Now, have fun in the sun for all of us stuck here in the winter weather!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How are the new Tariffs going to affect smartphone prices in the U.S.?

Mark asks:

The Trump administration has said they will be new tariffs placed on goods and materials from China and he has plans to halt some trade exemptions. Since most phones are made from Chinese sourced parts, how is this going to affect prices? Should we be worried?

Hi Mark! this is an excellent and timely question that I think a lot of people have, even if they don't understand how any of it works.

I'm no economist, but I know a bit about manufacturing and have looked into this myself; I'm concerned about it, too. The quick answer for anyone who doesn't want to read the whole article: tariffs and other trade restrictions will make prices go up. It won't be some sort of doomsday situation where even a basic phone costs thousands of dollars, but the companies that make phones will have increased costs and likely have to deal with new restrictions placed by China in retaliation. All of these increases (and a bit more) will be passed on to customers.

What is a tariff?

To try and understand what might happen, you need to know what a tariff is. It's a tax placed on goods that are imported from other countries. Companies that send products to the United States pay these taxes to the government before their goods are allowed into the country.

If an overseas company sends goods that are valued at $10 each, they would be charged $1 per item with a 10% tariff. Usually, these fees are passed along to the company buying the imported products, so instead of paying $10 each, that company now pays $11 each.

There have always been tariffs and levies in place, and you've always been paying for them because they are built into the cost of a product. When those tariffs are increased, the fees will trickle down to you, and you'll pay more.

Most countries have what's known as a De Minimis Value when it comes to imported goods. De Minimis is a Latin phrase that means something is so insignificant that it can be ignored, and a country decides what that value is.

In the U.S., the De Minimis Value threshold is $800. In Canada, it's USD 20. In Australia, it's USD 1,000. It can vary a lot, and it's a way for countries to help balance trading fees with consumer costs. It also means most phones built and assembled in China don't have extra duty fees because their original value is far less than USD 800.

The current U.S. administration is considering nullifying the current De Minimis exemptions, so a 10% tariff on all goods coming from China, even ones that were currently under $800 in value and exempt, will now be levied. This would be a direct-to-consumer increase on things like phones that are built in and shipped directly from China.

These costs all trickle down to the consumer, too.

Should we be worried?

I don't think this is as alarming as headlines like to make it sound. I don't think it is a smart move (did I mention that I'm not an economist?), but I can't see the sky falling and people fighting over loaves of bread in some apocalyptic nightmare scenario. The cheap consumer goods you love to buy are simply going to cost a little more.

The real impact will be on shareholders in the companies importing and selling these products. A 10% tariff on your next phone could mean you'll pay $20 more for it, but 10% of 10 million is a lot of money when it's all added up.

The initial reactions are not great — stock prices are falling and the market is down over 400 points (as of last week) over fears and anxiety about the proposed trade law changes. It could steady itself, or it could get worse. One certain thing is that the executives from these companies have a lot to say about it and are in positions where their voices make a difference.

You and I complain that a new phone costs a little more. The execs at Qualcomm or Apple complain too, but the difference is that their complaints are to people who can make changes. Those government officials will listen, too. They love having big tech companies in their area and will do plenty of favors and pull a lot of strings to ensure the tech giants get what they want. Is it fair? Nope. It's simply the reality of how U.S. capitalism works.

These tech giants — even companies like Samsung, which don't import as many things from China — will react if when anything that affects their bottom line happens. They know there is a limit to how much they can increase consumer prices, and when it is reached, any other fees and costs of doing business come from their coffers.

Love it or hate it, big business controls the economy in the United States and will look out for its best interests. This time, one of their interests (lower costs) aligns with ours.

One last thing I want to mention — you might already be seeing companies talk about how they have to increase prices because of these new trade laws. Remember that they haven't paid anything extra yet and are raising prices on goods they already have.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

What to do when developers break the rules?

Several people have written in complaining about Music Player - MP3 Player from Red Sky Labs (formerly known as Muzio Player). None of them had anything good to say.

It seems that the app went with a freemium subscription model, showing ads unless a user pays a monthly fee. That's fine, but when Red Sky Labs did this, they cancelled the premium plan of users who had previously paid for an ad-free experience.

Play Store reviews confirm this, so I'm naming the company to warn you to consider its past behavior before you give it any money.

I hate to hear about this sort of thing, but it's more common than you think. I've been bitten by the very same bug with another app that went free with a subscription after I gave them $5.99 for extra content. You can guess what happened when the app updated. There is a very good chance something similar has happened to you, too.

Why? Are mobile app stores filled with dishonest people trying to scam a couple of bucks at a time until they've built a fortune? Not really, though those people certainly exist; it's just too easy to get away with it, so app publishers may simply not care.

Here's the rub — it's not legal to do what Red Sky Labs did with its music player. It's also against Google's Play Store rules. And neither of those things matters because of the small amount of money involved. If you pay for a lifetime service, it is expected to last the lifetime of one of the parties. If you change your business model, you need to make accommodations for people who have already paid.

Good luck getting anyone to care about it and help you get your five bucks back because it's only five bucks. You're not taking some developer to small claims court over five bucks. No lawyer will take that as a case because it's only five bucks. It's your five bucks, and if you're like me, you feel willing to fight through Mordor to get it back, but nobody else cares about your five bucks.

Google and Apple should care, and on some level, they do. But they each have bigger things to worry about. With millions of apps moving through mobile stores the majority of time and effort is spent making sure they are safe and they handle the intricate permissions correctly. And that's surely hard to manage, so I'm not surprised that reports about this to Google go mostly unanswered. Do not let this stop you from reporting the offending app.

Also, if you're so inclined, don't forget about posting to Reddit and other social media so other people can read and pile on. Attention is how you rectify this kind of problem. If enough people complain, Google or Apple must act, and the app publisher may even find a way to fix the problem so they aren't forced to give a bunch of people five bucks in app store credit.

Finally, send detailed reports about what's happening to every tech website you regularly visit. When I see several people saying the same thing, I look into it. If it's something other people need to hear — like an app publisher bringing back the ads and keeping the five bucks — I'll write about it.

This app has over 100 million downloads at Google Play. People need to know more about the company before it gets another 100 million.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Does the Samsung Galaxy S25 support Qi2 wireless charging or not?

A BUNCH of people have asked:

Does the Samsung Galaxy S25 support the WPC's Qi 2 specifications? Can I use MagSafe stuff with it?

Alternatively:

Why doesn't the Galaxy S25 support Qi 2 without buying a special case from Samsung?

It seems like everyone wanted the Samsung Galaxy S25 to support Qi 2 with MagSafe so they can stick their new phone to things and charge it or do whatever else someone can come up with using magnets. I've got good news, and I have bad news.

First, I want to say that while Samsung makes some great products, the company can be terrible regarding messaging. My dad would say they could wreck a box of ball bearings.

That could be intentional, maybe to keep an air of mystery surrounding new products, or because we like to pretend leaked information will always be true.

In any case, the Galaxy S25 does support the Qi 2.1.0 (they insist the zero be added and is important) specifications, as listed by the Wireless Power Consortium, which includes:

1. Fast charging: transmitters and receivers can handle up to 15 watts of power.

2. Qi transmitters can be operated using USB power.

3. Better foreign object detection.

4. Choice of a single coil, coil array, or moving coil transmitter.

5. Technical bits and pieces from previous versions.

Notice what's missing from these specs? Anything having to do with magnets. That's because when the Qi2 standard was restructured for version 2.0, the Magnetic Power Profile (what you might think of as MagSafe) was separated and is now its own standard.

You can use the S25 with any Qi 2.1.0 or older charger, and it will charge. It just won't stick to anything because it's not magnetic.

If you want support for the MPP you will have to buy a case that has the magnets in the right(ish) spot.

Yay, technology!

Why is it like this? Couldn't Samsung have just slapped the magnets inside the S25 and called it a day? This is just a scam to sell pricey Samsung cases, right?

Probably not. I'm sure Samsung is very happy to sell you phone accessories like cases, but I think this time there is more to it all. This was the easy way to try and give everyone what they wanted without reinventing the "guts" of the current Galaxy S series.

Qi2 with the MPP is a mostly open standard (meaning any company can license it and use it to build stuff), but it is based on something Apple first started doing. It's great that Apple gave something like this away, and I'm not complaining, but it means the phone was designed first, and the magnetic latching system was built around it.

Engineers at Apple put magnets and a receiver coil inside the iPhone where they would fit in the correct configuration and not interfere with any other components. Everything works great because it was all designed to work together.

When Qi2 first came out, I predicted it was destined to fail because the magnet arrangement and power transmission were both part of the spec. It meant that if you wanted to use the Qi2 spec inside your next phone, you had to put the right magnets in the right places.

This was done so chargers would be universal; you could walk into Best Buy and buy a Qi2 charger and it would work on any phone. But it meant that most phone makers had to rework their phones so things would fit where they were required to fit. So, aside from the HMD Skyline, we never saw any flagship phones using Qi2 because no company wanted to go back to the drawing board for a phone that's been in development for several years.

Some companies will never adopt Qi2 because they have their own proprietary version of fast wireless charging. They might add magnets to it, but you won't be able to use their charger on any other brand of phone and get fast charging speeds. It might not work at all. A standard prevents this from happening, and they are generally a good thing.

When Qi2 was reworked, and the magnetic part became its own standard, it meant that companies would and could adopt better, safer charging specifications. That's a great thing — the changes you don't care about can make a big difference when it comes to efficiency and safety.

Did Samsung do all this on purpose to get you to buy a case? We reached out to Samsung for an official statement and asked if they could share why they chose not to include the MPP on the Galaxy S25. If and when they answer, we'll update this article and publish the statement in its entirety.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why are old duplicate photos in my Google Drive folders and what should I do with them?

Jeremy asks:

I just noticed that Google seems to have duplicate copies of my whole photo library, which, I'm guessing, is a waste of space. There's a whole directory in My Drive that seems to be a duplicate of old family photos I scanned years ago, sorted by year and, I guess, not really needed.

What's going on here? Does this count against my Google storage limit? Most importantly, can I delete all this?

Hi Jeremy! You've stumbled across a secret Google feature that gives you a look at what sets Google apart when it comes to online services: the unintended, multilayered problem.

On a serious note, this happens (or happened, as we'll see later) to some folks who used Google Photos in its early days but didn't affect others. The short answer to your questions: you're seeing duplicates because Google Photos stores its files in a hidden folder in your shared Google storage. Yes, it counts against your storage the same way any files you purposefully uploaded to Google Drive, and you can delete the folder(s) from Google Drive after you verify you have copies in the Google Photos app. For a discussion of the mess, read on!

Not everyone sees these old duplicate files. At some point, Google changed how Photos stores its data, but it still is part of your overall storage space provided by Google. Before this, you could see your Google Photos storage in Drive if you knew where and how to look for it, but it was intended to be hidden.

During the transition, some people had folders duplicated while the way they were stored changed. I've heard this has to do with specific metadata, how the files were added to Photos, or what device was used to upload them. These theories could be correct, or they could be 100% wrong; regardless, it happened, and when it happened, the folders became visible like any other folder in Drive.

These folders are no longer associated with Google Photos and that means they are duplicated elsewhere in a way you can't (easily) find them. It also means they are taking up space.

You have a limited amount of space associated with your Google account. You can pay to have more if you need it, or you can manage your stored and saved files so you don't reach the limit.

These duplicate folders can be safely deleted once you've double-checked to make sure the photos are also stored in the Google Photos app. Do not delete them until you have checked. Never trust anything without verifying it for yourself.

One thing you might want to look at before you delete anything is the quality of the photo being stored, especially if you used to have an original Pixel or a Pixel 2.

It used to be that if you had a Pixel phone, your photos were stored at full quality without any cost to your shared storage allotment. Other photos had their quality reduced; it was still high-quality and is likely good enough for anything other than trying to have physical prints made, but there is a difference.

There is a chance that these "duplicate" photos would be full quality and the photos in Google Photos are not. This situation happened to me when I got hit with the weird duplication bug/mess/Googleism. A bunch of photos I took with the first Pixel phone were stored in full resolution and quality in my Google Drive but the "copies" in Google Photos were not.

It's up to you to decide if you want or need these larger-sized files (I didn't), but if you don't know and don't check, you can't decide.

One last thing to note — this happened to a lot of people, and it's probably worth checking if you are one of them and don't know it. Just open your Google Drive and look through all the stuff that's stored there. If you see folders full of pictures, this is probably why.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why your phone takes time to boot up

Anonymous asks:

I was wondering why phones don't have the same instant-on capabilities that newer laptops and Chromebook do. Is there a good reason?

Thanks

Hey there, and thanks for the great question! It's something I've never thought about, but now that I've been paying attention, I can definitely see that some phones seem to take a while to get up and running if they've been powered off.

The quick and dirty answer for people who aren't interested in all the nuances of what happens when a phone boots up is that your phone is checking the software and file system before you get to use it. On some phones that takes longer than others.

To better understand what's happening, you need to understand how a computer boots up. There are three basic stages: powering, reading, and waiting.

A phone (which is really just another type of computer) sends power to the components on the main board as step one. There are components that need to power up and "run" their software before your phone can get up and running because they tell your phone how to boot itself. These get started once everything has power applied.

Some things need to be in place before Android or iOS can start on your phone. The reserved portion of the phone's memory needs to be set up to act as a buffer for video, run the firmware that enables the cellular radio, and then unpack and run the kernel that tells the hardware how to interact with the software.

Furthermore, if your phone's battery ran dead (it's not really dead when your phone says it's dead and shuts off), you might have to wait a few minutes until the battery has enough power to get all the hardware up and running because software plays a big part in charging your battery. It can charge while turned off, but not as efficiently as it does when software is helping regulate the incoming power.

If you've ever let an iPhone battery run down completely, you know this can take a while to get enough charge then take even longer to boot everything up. Short version: never let your phone shut off because of a dead battery. Turn it off manually when your battery gets super low and you won't have to deal with this.

Once the power is applied where it needs to be and the phone knows it has enough power to start the boot sequence, it checks the system software to make sure it's not been tampered with. If your software isn't signed with the right cryptographic key, your phone will not start unless the bootloader has been unlocked to allow it.

If the software checks out, booting begins. Part of the booting process is checking the file structure, creating dynamic symlinks (symbolic links; it's a Unix/Linux thing), and building a pseudo file system (/proc most of the time) for things like statistics and logs. All of this needs to be in place and working as expected before Android can run on your phone. It's all done automatically, but it takes time.

Your phone also needs to do things like connect to a network, load a user profile, allocate memory and resources for services that run at boot, among other small tweaks to get Android itself ready. Many of these things happen simultaneously, but computers really do one task at a time very quickly so it can take some time.

Once all this is done, your phone is in the waiting state. That's where you unlock your screen and can start using it. It's waiting for input. Some phones can do all of this faster than others, even if they are doing the same basic things.

All computers start this way. Some of the steps are different, but computers all need to apply power so booting can start, check that the software is ready, and then wait for your input. There are tricks that can speed this up, and you've probably used them even if you didn't know them, especially on a Windows laptop.

A PC can store the current state of your computer in a sort of file, then save it to a spot on the memory itself when you're turning it off. Since you're not really killing the power input when you do this, it's ready in an instant when you hit the button and you're right where you left off. This is most likely what happens if you shut the lid on your laptop instead of going through the motions of powering it down.

Android could do this, but when you consider the size of the battery running everything, you'll know why phone makers don't implement this feature. It'd be exactly the same as letting it sit with the screen off, and it would drain your battery in the same amount of time.

Let's get real for a minute and recognize that this doesn't matter in 2024. Older phones (and other computers. too) did take ages to boot up when you power cycled them, but that's not really the case any longer. Some phones, like Google's Pixels, boot up super fast while others like an iPhone take a little longer but none of them take enough time for it to be a problem.

It is a neat question, though, because it takes a look at what your phone is doing between the time you press the power button and the time when it asks for your password.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Finding a lost earbud case the easy way

Daniel asks:

Hi Jerry,

I'm a Google Pixel user, and I need a recommendation for new wireless earbuds. One thing Airpods have is the ability to locate them using "Find My" - both with the case open and the case closed.

The part about being able to locate them inside the closed case is a key requirement - I'm always leaving my earbuds in a different jacket or pants!

Thank you in advance!!

Hi Daniel! I have good news and bad news to share here. The good news is that there are earbuds that do exactly what you want. Perhaps the best earbuds for what you want with a speaker on the case that will work with or without the buds in place of the lid in any specific position are the Pixel Buds Pro 2.

Sony has also updated the WF-1000XM5, WH-1000XM5, and LinkBuds S to support the Find My Device network, although it will only work "during dedicated Classic Audio connection."

The bad news is that your options are pretty slim at the moment, so you don't have a lot to choose from here. There are mixed reports across the internet that the original Pixel Buds Pro work the same way (they didn't for me), but they definitely do not have an external speaker, so that would put a damper on things.

JBL said it would update existing models to be compatible with Google's Find My Device network "soon," but we don't have the full details about when and how they are going to work. The JBL Tour Pro 2 and Tour One M2 are listed on Google's website as having support, so they may be worth checking out. Otherwise, it may be worth waiting for more earbuds to gain support unless you desperately need a new set now.

You've heard the good and the bad news, now how about some "how bad do you want it" news?

Meet the Pebblebee Tag. It's pretty small and kind of expensive but works with Google's Find My Device network and could be attached to an earbud case with some glue or a rubber band if you want to do it. I'm thinking of getting one to stick inside the pouch I carry my IEMs in.

Pebblebee devices work well with Google's network and work with Apple's Find My network, too. This one has a rechargeable battery, so it's not e-waste in six months when the battery dies and you can even save money by buying a four-pack and using one for all kinds of stuff.

I have never touched one, so I can't vouch for them. But the Pebblebee clip works exactly as expected, so I assume these will work, too.

If you're willing to use a Tile, you can buy a Tile Sticker that's even smaller but just as expensive. You will need yet another account on another service to use them, though.

What you want is a perfect reason for a better Find My Device network to exist. I can't wait until every set of headphones or remote has a built-in way to find them after I've used my built-in habit of losing them.

I do think being able to ring an earbud case is going to become the norm, I just have no idea how long that will take.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How do I improve battery life on my smartwatch?

Chris asks:

Is there anything I can do to get better battery life on my Galaxy Watch 6? I hate that it needs charging before the end of the day or when I'm not at home.

Thank you

Hi Chris. Great choice in a watch — my wife buys last year's Galaxy Watch model every year and saves a bunch of money while still having something that is new for her. The Galaxy Watch 6 is really nice.

She also has to charge it every day around dinnertime because it just can't seem to keep up with her all day long. There is some good news, though: you can shut off or not use in order to get the most out of the battery.

The first thing to remember is that your smartwatch is a small, wearable, power-hungry computer with a tiny power source. Super-long battery life is never going to be a thing with a smartwatch and the best we should expect is for it to last between regular charge cycles. What I mean is that you should expect to charge your watch at the same time every day and it should last that long every day, regardless of what you were doing.

And from what I see, we're mostly there. Not counting the random days when something gets "stuck" running and eats your battery or days where it's counting a bajillion steps because you're at Disney World, you probably only have to charge it once per day. You shouldn't expect more from the current generation of technology inside of them. One day it will change, but we're not there yet.

The other thing to remember is that the more you do, the sooner your battery will die. Take my watch — a Garmin Venu 3 — as an example. I get four days or more between charges but Garmin watches aren't the same as a WearOS watch and other than fitness tracking they really fall behind when it comes to the "smart" stuff. An old Casio watch that only tells time gets about 10 years of life from a battery. Your Galaxy Watch can do all sorts of things that will eat your battery.

Enough explaining why we have to charge so often and time to start talking about what we can do to make battery life better.

Number one on the list is the apps you have installed. Most every app you have will randomly start up to do something once in a while even if you're not using it. Some apps run constantly. This eats away at your battery; sometimes just a little bit and other times a lot more. If you don't use an app, uninstall it. It will always be there if you decide to use it again.

Number two is the display. Mind the brightness setting so that it's bright enough to see without being some sort of beacon. Having it too bright does nothing except eat your battery. You can also shut off the always-on display and make sure the screen time-out setting isn't too long.

Next is your watch face. You can avoid displays with a seconds indicator or a lot of complications you don't use to get a real boost to your battery life. One with a black background will also save battery. The less your watch face has to refresh itself, the longer your battery will last.

There are some more drastic things you can do, too. These make your watch a bit less smart but they can have a significant effect on how long your battery lasts so you might want to use them from time to time.

Shut off the features you don't absolutely need. I'm talking about things like GPS or vibration or even Wi-Fi and you'll see a real gain in battery life. Bedtime mode also saves battery at the expense of using some features.

Use power saving mode or "watch only" mode in a pinch to stretch things out to the maximum.

These things can come in handy if you're out later than usual or doing something like camping where charging is pretty inconvenient.

We're probably never going to be satisfied with the battery life on our watch. It does get better every year but we end up doing more and cancel it out.

These tips will help a little but the best advice is to carry a spare charger and a battery pack if you have to have your watch doing its thing and won't be home to charge it.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Does my phone really spy on me?

Caleb asks:

Hi

I have heard people say things like we carry around a spying device or tracking device in our pockets everywhere we go when talking about our phones. Is this really true?

Thanks Jerry!

Hi Caleb! I have heard the same sorts of things, and I've said the same sorts of thing a time or two — because it's mostly true. If someone were to try and invent the perfect passive spying device, it would turn out a lot like the phone we all carry around every day.

The short answer: your phone "listens" to every word if you use any sort of voice assistant but only reacts when it hears the right word. Some apps also listen to what the microphone can hear if you grant them permission. In addition, most apps and services track your location unless you explicitly refuse to allow it, but you can't stop your cell provider from tracking your location in real-time and keeping a log of everywhere you've been.

There is no getting away from it; your phone tracks your movements and probably listens in on whatever it can hear. If you stop and think about it, that's exactly what it was designed to do. No matter what brand or operating system you're using, your phone is tracking you somehow.

You can control some of this because when it comes to having access to the microphone, you have to allow it to happen — nothing on your phone can use the microphone, even the "app" you use to make phone calls, if you say it's not allowed to do it.

You probably don't, though. It's not your fault, either. Some apps, like the phone dialer I mentioned, have permission to use the microphone automatically. The company that made the phone figures you want to talk into one end of a conversation if you plan on calling someone, so enabling it makes sense. Other apps that want to listen to anything have to ask you; that's the little pop-up message you may have seen asking for you to grant permission for it to do so.

The problems are that most people just tap yes or OK without paying any attention, app developers often make it mandatory if you want the apps to work at all, and the wording that explains what's going on isn't super clear. Even if you read everything, you may not understand what you're saying, which is OK.

A great example is an app that's listening and running on your screen when the timeout kicks in, and the display shuts off. That app may still be running and still listening for whatever the developers want to hear. App permissions, especially on Android, are really complicated and intertwined together in a lot of confusing ways.

That said, most app developers aren't trying to spy on your conversations. An app is expecting to hear something specific so it can react to it, just like Google Assistant, Siri, or Gemini does. Technically, your assistant or the Amazon Alexa app is spying on you but only because you wanted it to do it. You granted it permission.

You can shut the microphone off completely on most modern phones to put a stop to all of it for those times you don't want anyone — or anything — to listen.

Location tracking works mostly the same. Your phone comes with pre-installed apps that need your location to work like Google Maps, and you can install plenty of other apps that will use your location in a way the developer thinks makes the app better.

Your location permissions are a little more complex because your location can be determined in different ways. Your phone can get a "coarse" location using Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices that are close to you without using GPS. This is handy and fast in large places; an app could be made to help you navigate Disneyland using only Bluetooth beacons and it would update quickly and use very little battery compared to using GPS. It could also be more precise, depending on the amount and placement of known markers.

Most of the time your phone uses GPS to get its "precise" location, usually accurate to within 3 feet or so.

You can grant permission for just a coarse location or the precise location for most apps. You can also shut location services off completely in your phone's settings, but neither will work.

Now, throw all this out the window when it comes to your carrier actively tracking your every move.

Your carrier can track you using the phone network, and all carriers do it.

They have to do it to make sure you have proper signal coverage, so that's OK. However, they also keep these records and have been known to sell the data to anyone willing to pay for it. That's not so good.

It's technically possible for this to happen even without an active connection. In the United States (and possibly other countries) your phone can make an emergency call to 911 while locked and without a SIM connection to a carrier. This is a safety feature that is a great idea. It also means that cell sites are being pinged by your phone and pinging back; when three cell sites are in range your position can be easily calculated.

I've not heard of anyone being tracked this way but it highlights the idea that the only way to keep everyone from tracking your location is to not carry your phone.

None of this means your phone is a bad thing to carry around. Even without a phone, you can often be tracked through the use of cameras, your car, or when and where you use your bus pass. If someone wants to listen to your every word equipment that can do it from 100 or more feet away is out there and easy to buy.

The average Joe or Jane isn't taking the time to write a popular mobile app so they can listen to or track people, and most apps that can do it have a legitimate reason for doing so. Besides, you are in control of where and when it happens.

As far as your carrier tracking you, there isn't anything you can do about it other than be aware.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them.

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

What's the best setup for automatic lighting that's smart, too?

Thomas asks:

I'm looking for a fully automatic smart light solution for my entrance way and garage. I'd like the lights to come on automatically if it is dark and I walk in with my hands full so I'm not stumbling around in the dark until I can reach for the light switch.

I see a lot of advice and potential solutions, I'm just wondering what is the easiest and best way?

Thanks

Hi Thomas! Sometimes, we get a question that really interests me, and this is one of them. Your problem sounds like something a lot of people will encounter, with plenty of solutions, both good and bad.

I like to answer right up front in case someone isn't interested in reading everything, so I'm going to say that after looking at plenty of different hardware and app solutions over the week, smart lamps from WiZ look like the best answer because of their SpaceSense feature. They do have a few drawbacks though, like every other solution does.

Wiz advertises that you can take two of its smart bulbs, make sure they are at least two meters apart, and configure the app so that they automatically turn on and off as you walk past their position. The company says that the tech uses interference in your home's Wi-Fi signal to tell the lamps that you have entered their field, and you can set the sensitivity in the app on your phone.

I've never used this product, but the idea is sound. It's not difficult to disrupt a Wi-Fi signal, and a human-sized absorbing thing will certainly do it. They offer the same sort of smart bulbs you would see from any other company, made for a variety of fixtures. Of course, you also have things like adjustable color or brightness through the app, and they're compatible with Alexa and Google Assistant.

What I don't like about this product is that you're tied to this brand in any place you want automatic lighting, though that would apply to any solution like this. I'm also not sure how quickly the company could make any adjustments to work with Google as it transitions everything from Assistant to Gemini. Hopefully, a move like that would be seamless for developers, but you know it won't be.

There are two other easy but imperfect solutions. I'm familiar with both and have each installed here at my house, so I can say they work as advertised. However, they don't exactly fit your needs.

The first is a motion-sensing light switch. I use two of Lutron's Maestro switches that have a built-in "occupancy detector" (think motion sensor), and they work really well. However, there are plenty of different brands of switches that do exactly the same thing in the same way. I picked these because they were on the shelf at Lowe's.

They turn the lights on as I enter the room and turn them off one minute after I leave it. They also sense when it's not dark and won't turn the light on. I've never messed with any of the "learning" features that are supposed to tell how bright I want my lights, but it's there if you're interested.

The problem is that this isn't a smart solution that can fit into the rest of your smart home. There is no app or adjustment other than setting how long to leave the lights on after I leave, and there's no integration with a voice assistant because there's nothing to integrate. Think of these as dumb switches with built-in motion detectors.

The other easy solution is to just use "regular" smart bulbs and yell out to something like an Echo Dot or Nest Mini when you need the lights to come on or turn off. You'll still have all the features of a smart light, including adjustable color and brightness, but it's not really automatic because you need to yell into the darkness before anything happens.

If you're not familiar with virtual assistant integration and smart lights, you're in for a bumpy ride. Sometimes, they work flawlessly. Other times, you're left telling Assistant or Alexa to stop playing some random YouTube video and turn the lights on, only to hear "I'm sorry" and a reason why it can't. Voice control is not a reliable way to do anything.

Finally, I want to add that there could be an even better solution out there. No matter how much one person searches, reads, and investigates, he or she can't see everything. What I've recommended is the best solution(s) I know of based on things I know and things other people are saying about products I haven't tested.

If you have a solution that is simple (setting a routine with an NFC tag and Home Assistant isn't on the simple end of the spectrum) and readily available, shout out in the comments because I'd love to check it out.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

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What's the difference between cheap and expensive earbuds?

Larry asks:

Hi Jerry!

What is the actual difference between cheap earbuds and allegedly better brands like Sony and Apple?

I admit my hearing is no longer the best, but I can't tell the difference. My cheap wireless buds are quite reliable, pair well, and hold a charge. Why pay $200.00 for name brands?

Thanks

Heya Larry! I have a confession to make here, and I want to start with it — I'm a sucker for any discussion about headphones. I work with mobile tech for a living, but headphones are my one true hobby that eats every bit of extra cash I have, so I was super happy to see this question come into my inbox. :)

With so many different brands of wireless earbuds to choose from at every imaginable price point, this is an important question. Not everyone wants (or can afford) to spend a lot of money on them, but there are some very real differences. These may make a difference to some people. I think of three places where a more expensive brand can differentiate itself: sound, features, and comfort.

It's tough to make a pair of earbuds that sound great because everything is so little inside of them, and Bluetooth can be a mixed bag to begin with. There are wired earbuds, and some of them sound absolutely incredible, but those are for another article. I'm talking about wireless Bluetooth earbuds.

More expensive sets will probably use better quality drivers with more range between the highs and lows. Our ears can hear very small differences in frequency (especially when we're young) so being able to cover a broader range can make a big impact in what we hear. The quality differences in miniature parts can be quite dramatic. While the differences in sound quality aren't as apparent to you, for many, they are. Higher prices come with better audio quality because the parts are more expensive and the design costs are higher.

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Another big difference can be the "extra" features. Things like noise cancellation and audio passthrough are relatively expensive additions that require extra hardware and added design costs. Other brands go a step further and add specialized buttons or logic to work with voice controls. To top it off, none of this should interfere with the audio quality.

When you add up the few extra dollars here and there, then bundle all the costs associated with adding the features, getting them to work as intended, and then testing it all, the retail prices rise. Personally, I don't need the features you would find in something like the newest Pixel Buds or AirPods, but a lot of people find them indispensable and don't mind paying extra for them.

Finally — and I think this is important to everyone — you want your earbuds to have a comfortable fit that stays in place. We've all had a pair of earbuds that kept popping out, and it can be infuriating, especially when your hands are full or you're exercising.

A lot of thought goes into a good design that works for most people, but it still never works for everyone. Proper fit also affects sound quality as earbuds are engineered so that the driver is a specific distance away from the inner ear workings.

There are plenty of different ways a company can try to ensure a proper fit, like including multiple sets of tips or using a hooked-over ear design, but there is still plenty of design work involved. I think this is the most important feature of any headphones and I'm willing to pay extra for a pair that fits "just right" and plenty of people agree with me.

It sounds to me like you're lucky — you found a pair of cheap earbuds that work great for you. I'd suggest you splurge for an extra pair in case you lose them (especially while October Prime Day is going on)! I used to have an old pair of Soundcore earbuds that weren't very expensive and I loved them. I found out they stopped making them after I dropped one of the pair into Chesapeake Bay.

No earbuds are best for everyone, and some people will spend more than others on them. Once you've found a set that works for you, make sure to try and buy something very similar when it's time to replace them. And try not to drop them in the ocean!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why is Bluetooth still so bad?

Anonymous asks:

Bluetooth has been around for over 25 years and it's still unreliable compared to Wi-Fi or even cellular. Unless I use matching equipment from Apple or Samsung I have nothing but problems with buffering and connection issues. Why is this still happening in 2024?

Thanks in advance

Hiya! I understand your frustration and agree that Bluetooth seems to have more issues than Wi-Fi and cellular (provided you have a good connection) sometimes. That's the key word here, sometimes. And for some people, in some places.

The short answer for people who aren't interested in going deeper: Bluetooth uses a heavily congested slice of frequency, depends on several different proprietary technologies, and different devices have different additions on top of it all.

If you're in the right (wrong) place at the right (wrong) time using the right (wrong) equipment, you're going to have a bad time. Otherwise, Bluetooth can be reliable and even great — it is for millions of people.

Bluetooth is a bit like a layer cake. The base, bare-bones implementation can be open-source and openly available using mostly open hardware, and that's great. But almost nobody uses it that way because it will be exactly what's described above — unreliable — most of the time.

Companies like Intel, Apple, Qualcomm, and other tech conglomerates have built useful additions that make Bluetooth better, more reliable, and even faster on the same frequency because of improved compression. 

If you buy an iPhone and a set of AirPods or a Galaxy S24 and a pair of Galaxy Buds, you're probably going to have a great experience because both sides on the hardware front use the same software and have been built to work especially well with each other. 

That doesn't mean they won't work well with other equipment. It just means that they have been designed to work best with each other. Other, often inexpensive accessories and equipment, may not have the same additions to Bluetooth and can't take advantage of higher output strength or better compression, and the experience isn't going to be the same.

Chances are it's still going to be good though, because the biggest issues with Bluetooth depend on the other equipment around you.

It's getting crowded in here

Without getting into the numbers and buffers, or the intricacies of CSMA/CA, Bluetooth operates in the same "airspace" as 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and plenty of unregulated equipment. The channels in these frequencies are often crowded and when some of the devices make no effort to intelligently work with other equipment, it can be a mess.

The biggest offenders when it comes to Bluetooth network interference are (believe it or not) microwave ovens and old cordless landline telephones. Both emit signals (in the case of a microwave, it's a byproduct) in the 2.4GHz range and will interfere with both 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Microwaves are especially problematic because they do not know they are causing interference and simply do not care; hit the button to start them up, and they leak radio waves through old inefficient seals everywhere.

Bluetooth and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi also can interfere with each other, but that's where CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) comes into play. It's a network protocol that devices use to actively avoid interference and most of the time it does a good job.

When Bluetooth signals are faced with interference there can be audio buffering, connection issues, and connections dropping intermittently. There may not be anything you can do about it other than move somewhere else.

As older devices are phased out and old equipment is replaced with newer and more efficient equipment, the problem will "fix" itself.

These seemingly small problems can all add up to be the reason why Bluetooth is bad for one person while it's great for another. The equipment and your location are important pieces of the puzzle. Don't write off the technology because it obviously works well for millions of people, even if it works poorly for you.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Where can i recycle my e-waste?

Romit asks:

Hi Jerry,

I have a question related to recycling old phones where I live. This place does not have a e-waste recycling system as far as I know. Could you maybe suggest how I can get rid of my old phones?

Thanks

Hi Romit! I love this question because I think the most important thing we should talk about when dealing with tech products is properly reusing whatever materials can be recycled. These gadgets we love are filled with easily recycled materials, and if they end up buried in a landfill, that can't happen. Recycling not only helps keep costs in check, but it also helps leave the world in as good shape as possible for our kids and their kids.

The quick answer for anyone who doesn't feel like reading further is that any legitimate business that sells phones should know where to drop old ones off for recycling or be willing to take them from you for proper recycling. If all else fails, that's usually a great option.

This really showcases the one problem with the internet when it comes to gathering information — what applies to me may not be the case where you are. Many of the websites Google will index for a search about e-waste recycling are written by people who have easy access to a dedicated recycling program, either municipal or private. 

That's not always the case and I know it's not because I don't have access to either option myself. I live in a rural area of the U.S. and I have no government-issued recycle boxes or centers for e-waste and private recycle-for-cash companies like ecoATM don't have any boxes of kiosks anywhere near me. There is a recycling center, but it only takes plastic bottles and aluminum cans because it's for typical household waste.

I can (and do) recycle my old electronics, though. Here in the U.S., we call them "big box stores," and businesses like Best Buy, Lowe's, and Home Depot will accept e-waste and actually recycle it rather than just throw it in the dumpster.

You might have similar stores in your area, and they may also partner with a recycling company that handles e-waste. It's worth asking if you don't notice a kiosk or bin near the front of the store.

Finally, and this should apply regardless of where you live, most stores that sell phones know how to recycle an old one even if they don't offer the service themselves. Here in the United States, any AT&T or Verizon store will take your old phones or tablets and make sure they are properly recycled. In Canada, Rogers will do the same.

In your area, you probably don't have an AT&T or Rogers phone store, but there's a good chance you have a large shop that deals with consumer electronics. They should be able to help you do the right thing and recycle your old gear.

Finally, one last thing to mention is never to send an old phone or tablet off for recycling without erasing all of your data from it. It's very difficult to extract data or sign in to an account on Android or iOS without knowing the correct password for the device, but it is possible. You probably aren't a celebrity or politician with people thirsting to read your private data, but you still have bank passwords and other financial information, as well as photos and other data that's pretty personal tied to your accounts. Be safe, and factory reset your device before it leaves your house.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Can I swim laps with the Pixel Watch 2?

Leo asks:

I've read from Google that you can use the watch for swimming.  The watch has a mode for fitness tracking while swimming, and it will detect a swimming workout automatically. But then the Google advice gets weird.  They tell you to always keep the watch free from moisture.

I believe the warranty doesn't cover water intrusion damage from swimming. Basically, I'm under the impression that you can swim with the watch as much as you like, as long as you don't get it wet.

I know the watch isn't waterproof, but will I be sorry if I just go swim a few laps with it? I would like to add and track my swim laps to the fitness tracking capabilities of the watch. So, I'm curious as to your thoughts!

Hi Leo! I have to admit, I was almost certain there had to be some confusion at play here and there was no way Google was giving such conflicted information. I was wrong and have been down the rabbit hole of the Pixel Watch 2 and its water resistance.

The short answer: Google does advise that you minimize exposure to moisture to maintain the "integrity" of the Pixel Watch 2, but I've found plenty of people using it to track swimming activities in both fresh and saltwater without any negative effect. 

I think Google is just trying to cover all the bases with the confusing language surrounding this all.

The weird, conflicting language originates from the Google Store itself and you can read all about using the Pixel Watch 2 water resistance here. The two paragraphs that seem to have confused Google's AI search snippets and plenty of people wondering about an expensive watch's suitability to track swimming are:

"Caught in the rain? Sweaty during your intense spin workout? Or wearing your smartwatch for swimming laps? The water resistance of Pixel Watch 2 makes it a trusty smartwatch choice for these everyday occasions."

"Keep in mind that, like all waterproof and water-resistant tech devices, it's crucial to minimize exposure to moisture to maintain Pixel Watch 2’s integrity. While you can wear your Pixel Watch 2 for swimming or during your water aerobics class, removing it whenever possible is best to avoid unnecessary moisture exposure."

The Pixel Watch 2 is water resistant up to 5 ATM (atmospheres) which is 50 meters for people who use normal measuring units. That means the gaskets, coatings, and ingress spots on the watch have been designed to keep moisture out to that much pressure. That doesn't mean it can't happen; it only means it shouldn't.

It's also important to mention that you should never expose the Pixel Watch 2, or any water-resistant device, to soapy water. Soap changes the properties of most liquids and can negatively affect water resistance. The same goes for distilled water — never use it on a water-resistant device or soak one in it.

Google recommends you remove your Pixel Watch 2 and clean it after working out, sweating, or washing your hands using fresh water and a soap-free cleanser to clean the band. Allow it to dry before putting it back on. I doubt anyone is following this advice, but it is what Google recommends, so if you don't follow it, your warranty could be affected.

Google also says warranty claims for any damage are each individually considered so there is no blanket condition that water damage is not covered under warranty. It also means they can deny a warranty claim, so you'll need to contact customer care for a resolution.

Google advertises the Pixel Watch 2 as a way to track your laps while swimming and includes software for it. While looking into all this, I came across the Swim.com app as highly recommended versus Google's built-in solution, so I'm tossing that out there, too.

In the end, I can only say what I would do because Google wants to have it both ways.

I'd use it to track my swimming and not worry about it. If the watch is damaged doing the things it is advertised as able to do, I'd expect Google to honor the factory warranty without a problem. I think Google's advice to not use the watch in the water (and we see similar language from all smartwatch makers) is there so nobody can claim they thought the watch was waterproof and didn't bother to read about the feature.

It sounds like a lot of folks agree with me and use the Pixel Watch 2 and the original Pixel Watch to track swimming workouts and have no issues. I honestly expect to hear the same about the Pixel Watch 3 a year from now.

Buying a Pixel Watch 2 when the Pixel Watch 3 has been released can be a great way to save a little money. It seems like it will be fine to track your swimming sessions, especially with a little better software to track it all installed so good luck!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Can I use online banking with a Chromebook?

Peter asks:

I know nothing about Chromebooks apart from the fact that they are cheaper than laptops. I bank online using a laptop. Can I do that on a Chromebook?

Hi Peter! This is such a good question and something a lot of people wonder about. Almost everything you read about Chromebooks talk about the price and how easy they are to use, especially with multiple users. But a lot of basic questions that are important for people to know before they buy one go unanswered.

The quick answer for you: Yes! A Chromebook offers a secure way to access your bank's online portal and the website will look and feel — more importantly it will function — exactly the same as it does on your current laptop using a modern and supported web browser like Chrome, Edge, or Firefox. 

There are some things a Chromebook can't do. You're not going to run any software built for Windows or Mac, so engineering and design software probably isn't going to work. 

You also aren't going to play any graphics-intensive games so all those AAA titles you see online are designed for a Windows PC or a game console.

You will be able to do almost everything else though, especially anything you do through a web browser. The browser on a Chromebook is Google Chrome; almost the same Google Chrome you can install on Windows or a Mac.

The differences are how the operating system interacts with the browser and you'll find even a cheap Chromebook without the greatest specs will outperform most other laptops when it comes to browser responsiveness. The Chrome operating system was built from the ground up with the browser — the tool that most people use most of the time — in mind.

So yes, you can do your online banking, or anything else you do through the web browser, from a Chromebook

Converting old cassette tapes the easy way

Ramon asks:

Before my Grandpa passed away in 1994 he was working on releasing his own album as a mariachi in Mexico. What now remains are a few cassette tape copies of what that album would have been. 

I recently came across my Grandpa's old cassette tape and all looked up production companies associated with the album. All entities associated no longer exist so I'm assuming I'm not attempting to do anything illegal. 

My question to you is, how can I make this cassette tape into a digital format to allow more of the family to have a piece of it as seven cassette tapes are all that remains? 

Thank you for your time!

Hi Ramon! I saw your question in my inbox and had to chuckle because I recently did just what you're asking about! This is so important because streaming services might be easy and filled with popular music but a lot of us have those one-of-a-kind tapes of our lives in action. It sounds like you have a handful of those tapes.

Converting from a cassette to a digital format like mp3 is easy to do in a few different ways. If you have a computer with an audio interface you can use software to "record" the input into a digital file.

You can also send the cassettes to services that will convert them for you if you'd like someone else to do the work.

I found it easy to just buy the right tool. I bought this cassette player and converter from Amazon for about $30. I picked this one because I can record to an SD card versus connecting it to my PC and it works great. Just take a few minutes to read the directions and you're set.

I hope you and your family can enjoy all of Grandpa's music!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

I need my Wi-Fi toggle back!

Allan sent in a very detailed issue about Android's silly decision to remove a quick way to turn off Wi-Fi. The gist of it:

I have an Android Auto WiFi dongle, which auto connects and everything is fine... BUT... when I leave the car and walk away the phone is still connected to the vehicle and the audio is in the car, not on the phone. 

How can I turn off the WiFi temporarily?

Hi Allan. You're experiencing something that a lot of people don't like about recent versions of Android. It used to be you could find a quick settings toggle switch to shut off Wi-Fi completely and even place it as a home screen widget. Not anymore.

There is a way to fix it, but you're probably not going to like it. I know I don't because I like to drop a quick answer at the beginning of any explanation. Here it is: Tasker. But not the Tasker you'll find in the Play Store. I hope you're ready to get nerdy.

I don't know why Google changed the way Wi-Fi settings are displayed or why it decided to remove the easy way to shut it off. I've been told that the current solution — hiding everything in a Network & Internet section of the settings — is a more elegant solution but I don't remember anyone asking for Wi-Fi settings to be made more elegant. Google does what Google does sometimes.

The bigger issue is that with API 29 Google also changed some rules about system settings and connections, making it so an app developer couldn't just create a switch to turn off Wi-Fi. You can still do it, but making a capable app means it can't be in the Play Store and it won't install the normal way.

Thankfully, the developer of Tasker has provided the source and an archived Android app that does exactly what you want. Head here and grab the "Toggle Wifi" version of Tasker 1.2 and save it to a computer. Yes, you need a computer, too. Thanks, Google.

That's the easy part. The harder part is to set up your phone and a computer (Windows, Mac, or Linux all work fine) to use adb (Android Debug Bridge). Since Android 14, you can't sideload apps built on depreciated SDK versions automatically, but you can force install them using the command line.

Once you have everything in order, run the following command:

adb install —bypass-low-target-sdk-block TaskerSettings.apk

You can then use Tasker normally and create a switch or routine to toggle Wi-Fi on and off.

Anytime someone online starts saying Android phones are "better" because it's so customizable I remember that an app like Tasker has to exist and that Google does everything to keep you from doing what you want if it's not what it wants.

I know all of this is done with useability in mind. Google really doesn't want people to be able to easily install old versions of apps that might do unwanted and unintended things. I also know that there could be a switch on your phone in the developer tools section that makes bypasses the target SDK block setting.

Anyway, this terrible solution will work and you should be able to shut Wi-Fi down completely with a tap then reenable it with another right from your home screen once you've done all the work. Good Luck!

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why is airplane mode still a thing?

Anonymous asks:

Why do we need to put our phones in airplane mode when traveling by plane? Can a phone really affect the electronics in an airplane?

Thanks

I love questions like this. Not only is there a bit of a technical issue involved, but it's one of those things that seems like a relic of the past. To top it off, there's no cut-and-dried answer.

In case you're here just looking for a quick answer, I like to give it up front: There are two reasons why the captain or flight crew tells us to use airplane mode. It could electronically interfere with the plane and it forces us to pay attention during take-off and landing.

A quick reminder of what airplane mode means: It is a setting on your phone that disables all radio frequency communication in and out of it. You can usually go back in and enable Wi-Fi or Bluetooth once it's activated, but enabling it will kill any signal to and from your phone. It exists as a quick way to turn everything off at once like you're asked to do on an airplane.

Now, some more about why we still need to do this. Notice I used the word "could" in the short answer above. Nobody is saying that your phone will mess with the electronics on a plane, but there is a chance. While the FAA doesn't have any case data showing that cellular use has caused a problem, there is a chance.

There's actually a chance of it happening with two specific things: the headsets pilots use to communicate with each other and the plane's altimeter. Again, it isn't likely that there will be a problem and no data is saying it has ever been one, but the radio frequency of some signals overlaps with these two systems.

If you can remember back when we had cordless landline phones, you might also remember seeing them mess with broadcast television or even hearing truck drivers talk on the C.B. radio through them. That's because the frequencies used are very close to each other, and one signal can be strong enough to bleed over. It's funny hearing the phone make the TV crackle and beep. It's not so funny if you trying to call your friend messes with the pilot trying to talk to the copilot or a flight attendant.

Interference with aircraft altimeters is another possibly real issue that's already caused problems — not for aircraft, but for Verizon and AT&T.

Without getting too nerdy, I'll explain. C band spectrum in the 3.7 to 3.98GHz range was auctioned off to phone carriers for use with 5G networks. Aircraft altimeters operate in the 4.2 to 4.4GHz range. AT&T and Verizon famously had to halt plans to roll out part of their 5G network in places close to airports because these signals are close enough to bleed into each other. An airplane needs to know how high above the ground it is, and some 5G cell towers could interfere.

If you're flying low enough that your phone tries to connect using these frequencies, there's a chance this could cause interference.

One thing all of this has in common is that it's based on the idea that it could happen, not that it will. When a tin can filled with people is up in the air, anything that has a possibility of making it fall out of the sky is a problem. A pilot and the airlines won't take chances and tell you to turn your phone off. If you don't listen, there may be consequences, too. It sounds silly, but it is what it is.

One last thing — having you turn your phone off means you're not trying to text your friend or boss while the plane is on the runway. Aircraft personnel want you to pay extra attention during take-off and landing, so pulling your head out of your phone for a few minutes is one way to help make it happen.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Can I use an Android phone without a Google account?

Anonymous asks:

Can I use an Android phone without signing into a Google account? Does everything work?

Thanks

Hey, there anon! That's a great question that I've seen people ask from time to time because whenever you turn on a new (or new to you) phone the first thing you'll see is a tech company asking you to sign in. Apple and Google do this, and if you bought a phone from a company like Samsung, it too may ask you to create or log into an account.

The good news is that you don't have to do any of it. But you might want to anyway.

I like to give a concise answer at the beginning of an article for people who want quick info, so as mentioned above no you do not have to sign into a Google account to use an Android phone. Not everything is going to work as expected though, including some really important features.

Any app or service from Google is, of course, not going to work properly without access to a Google account. Chrome, for example, will browse the web just fine but you won't have any syncing tools for access to saved bookmarks or across devices.

Other apps like Google Calendar or Google's Contacts app won't work at all because they depend on information sorted in the cloud under a Google account. The most important feature that isn't going to work correctly is the tool used to find a lost phone. It requires you to sign into the same account as used on the phone to work to "prove" that you are the actual owner. Without access, you can't locate — or more importantly — lock and erase — a lost or stolen phone.

The same goes for things like Samsung's apps. You need a Samsung account to properly use them, just like you need a Microsoft or Apple account to use their services. 

The good news is that the basics will work just fine. You can use the phone for calling and texting, apps can be installed and used as long as they don't need any of Google's underlying services, and millions of people use phones like this every day.

For most people, I wouldn't recommend it. I can understand if you're not keen on sharing your personal life with a faceless giant tech company, but I suggest you read Google's terms of service and understand the privacy and data deletion tools at your disposal before you make any decisions.

Besides, it's easy to make a "fake" Google account and manage it in a way that most of the data isn't really about you.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Picking the right product is so hard

G. asks:

I've never used a Chromebook before but I think I'm interested in changing that. I'm looking for something affordable (under $800), durable, travel-friendly, with great battery life.

I like to draw, binge-watch series, and stream movies. I also do lots of sporadic web browsing so I may have multiple browser tabs open (usually a dozen or fewer). One of the main reasons I mention battery life is that I travel a lot. I'm not much of a gamer but I do play light or moderate games sometimes.

I just want something that can handle all this (and hopefully more). I've read reviews and seen videos and even asked people online and in person, and what I gather is that one of the newer Acer models would work for me. 

I'm still not sure. Why is this so hard?!

Hi there, G.! I paraphrased your question a bit, so it's better formatted for the web, but I am so glad you wrote in and asked. This is hard. It's good, but it's hard because there is so much stuff out there to choose from.

I like to give a quick answer for anyone searching before I talk more about anything, so here's what I think might work best for you:

You mentioned the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (the older model with its own stylus that doesn't use a flawed Intel CPU) and it's the Chromebook that leaps to my mind based on everything you're looking for. It has a great screen, excellent stylus support, plenty of ports, and good battery life. No Chromebook is great at gaming, but a model with an Intel core CPU can play some light Steam games. For what you mention you need it fits the bill while still coming in under your price point.

But I also have to ask if you've considered a tablet. An iPad Air or a Galaxy Tab S9 is going to be better than a Chromebook when it comes to drawing, portability, and battery life. Of course, you don't have access to a desktop web browser like you would in a Chromebook and you're limited to mobile games. Either will also meet your set budget.

The point is that it's incredibly difficult to find a single device that can meet all of our needs, but there are usually choices out there that can come really close. In your case, you're not looking for something to use for office work or school work, prioritize usability over specs, and aren't trying to find some sort of tech unicorn that can do crazy things.

You want something good at the normal things a lot of us want out of our devices. Your needs are a lot like my own — I need to be able to work using the web browser, I want my battery to last, I love to kick back and stream a show or a movie, and I like to draw once in a while. I'm still using an ancient Google Pixelbook, and whenever I think about upgrading, I notice I'm flooded with good choices. Then I give up because I'm worried I'll make the wrong choice and complain that my Pixelbook battery isn't up to snuff.

Ultimately, you have to decide what's right for you and live with how you spend your money. I gave you a few quick, easy choices, but that's a lot more to consider: ARM Chromebooks have better app compatibility (important for gaming and drawing) and battery life, and tablets suck to type on and have a far worse web browser but are better than Chromebooks in some areas important to you, etc., etc.

One thing I think you absolutely should do is take the time to see these devices in person. Visit a store like Best Buy and see what's on display that you can play with for a bit to see if there is something you don't like.

In the end, I think you would be happy with either the Acer Spin 714 or the iPad Air/Galaxy Tab S9. If you want to stop trying to choose and start having fun, either is the way to go.

If you want to keep looking so you know you made the very best choice you could make, you're not alone. Having so many things to choose from makes this a really hard decision.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

So many messaging apps

P asks:

I am using an iPhone 14 Pro. I send a Signal text to an Android phone, it shows a blue bubble like an iMessage. Does this use my data?

If I send an iMessage to the same Android phone, it shows a green bubble. Am I using my data?

Thank you.

Nothing on our phones is as confusing (and ever-changing) as messaging. There are plenty of apps, Apple and Android do it differently, and in most of the world everyone is just using WhatsApp. With Apple focusing on supporting the RCS standard, it seems like everyone is talking about messaging but none of the companies involved take the time to make it simple.

Your questions are great, and I think a lot of folks wonder about the same things, especially if they aren't using an unlimited data plan. I'll answer them really quickly, and then we can explain it further.

Signal and iMessage (the official iOS messaging app) have nothing to do with each other. If you send a Signal message to someone with an Android phone using the Signal app, it's more like using Facebook Messenger than the iMessage app. The bubble is blue because Signal is simply using the color blue for them.

Sending a message with the Signal app uses your data connection or your Wi-Fi.

When you use the iMessage app to send a "regular" message to an Android phone, it's not being sent as an iMessage; it gets sent as an old-style SMS text (for now). In the iMessage app, SMS messages are shown in green.

Sending a message like this doesn't count against your data, but it does count against any limit on SMS your plan might have.

How messaging apps handle my monthly data

A lot of this confusion with Signal is because, as late as last year, Android users of the Signal app could use it to replace their SMS app. All texts and Signal messages went through the same app, with Signal messages being encrypted and having a richer connection to better send photos or other media.

I used Signal this way until the app was changed, and it is no longer a candidate for Android's default messages app. Yes, if you have a lot of messages, the only way you can quickly figure out what is what is by the bubble color.

I still use Signal as my messaging app of choice with the other people I talk to, but they need to use the Signal app, too. It's not a bad idea to have a fully encrypted and open-sourced messenger that is regularly checked by security professionals to ensure its quality.

Of course, it's more convenient to just use Google Messages/iMessage (or WhatsApp) because that's what your friends use.

The Apple Messages app is changing, too. The coming version of iOS is going to support what is known as RCS messaging. This is the new messaging standard put forth by the same people who governed SMS and it's something almost every phone carrier in the world supports at some level.

Apple's RCS isn't going to be like Google's RCS, though, because Google was an early adopter of the protocol and had to add its own "stuff" onto it to make it better. Google's RCS platform supports just about everything iMessage does, including end-to-end encryption. The current RCS standard doesn't have that built-in just yet, but I expect it will soon.

It also appears that RCS messages on iPhones will still use green bubbles, though, which will probably make things still a little confusing for some.

Nowadays, it doesn't matter as much what messaging app you use because they all support the same types of features. It didn't used to be that way which is why apps like Signal gained popularity.

There will always be plenty of messaging platforms and each will say they are the best. Choice is great and we can pick the one that we like.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

How can I filter incoming messages?

Michael asks:

Is there a way to filter text messages based on keywords, or auto-filter spammy texts besides just putting all unknown numbers in a folder? I get about 5-10 political texts from different numbers per day and it'd sure be nice to block them by keywords.

Thanks

Ugh. I'm sure about 200 million Americans with a smartphone feel your pain and I'll wager as many people around the world also get unsolicited political messages and hate it. They prove that a by-product of tech innovation is that spamming people is super easy and must be profitable. Nobody would do it if it wasn't working to make money.

Unfortunately, they'll probably be getting worse in the U.S. in the next few months as the 2024 elections draw near. And it sucks that there's no easy way to stop it.

I always want to front-load the answer for people who aren't going to read down the page and I wish the answer was better news:

On both Android and iOS, it's easy to search through all of your messages by a specific keyword, but you can't block them or automatically filter them using a keyword. It's an omission that seems like an oversight; this should be there and it's not.

You can filter out all messages from unknown numbers but that's not the same thing and may affect things like two-factor codes or legitimate messages from mail carriers or emergency services.

I do want to say that I have found putting my number on the National Do Not Call Registry seems to have lessened the number of messages I get asking for donations. I still get them and I'm not sure of any side effect of putting my phone number on yet another government list but I get fewer of them than I have in the past using the same number. Or maybe it's the placebo effect.

With Google putting Gemini into messaging and Apple doing the same with Siri it would be a great thing each could do. Cross-checking a list of words to a filtering tool is one of those things that AI would be exceptionally good at and many people would find it helpful. Maybe it will come in a future update.

I've been told there are third-party apps that have this ability. SMS Organizer was recommended as one but I'll admit I've not tried any. Since the functions are built into the messaging system I don't see any reason why they shouldn't work as advertised but I will warn you to check the app's permissions closely.

A search could be done on the device and any filtering should also stay on the device, but with any third-party app, you're using personal data as payment so it's always worth checking what a company is collecting.

I'm not familiar enough with iOS to know about any apps with this feature and the web isn't much help because it only wants to tell me how great filtering unknown numbers on your iPhone is. Maybe someone will comment with more info. 

In the meantime, we just have to block them one by one unless we want to use a third-party app.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Why does Google roll out new software so slowly?

Carlos asks: 

Why does Google send out monthly updates and new features so slow[ly]? Every time I read about a Pixel drop I have to wait for it and I'd like to know the reason why.

Thank you guys for everything you do!

Hi Carlos! I feel you and this is a super frustrating thing that a lot of folks — me included — impatiently go through every time Google announces anything different and new for the phone in our hands. It's also nothing new and no matter how much we hate it, Google has a really good reason for doing it this way.

I always front-load the answer so nobody has to read past the first few paragraphs, and this time the answer is really easy: 

Huge Microsoft Windows outage disrupts services globally

This is what happens when you send out an update to everyone at the same time.

I was readying this article when last Friday's Microsoft outage happened and the timing couldn't have been better. I want to make it clear that Microsoft had nothing to do with thousands of Windows Servers crashing Friday morning and the update that broke everything came from a third-party software vendor named CrowdStrike that provides Windows Server security services. In the end, it didn't matter because a single bad update caused global chaos when it went out to everyone at once.

Google tries to prevent this from happening by slowly rolling out software changes and monitoring what effect they have on the folks who have received them.

It's been this way since the beginning. Back in 2014 Google Executive Dan Morrill, one of the most recognizable Android developers and part of the original Android team at Google, explained why it's done and how.

"Rollouts are conducted in phases. Typically they start at 1% of devices for around 24 - 48 hours; we watch the return rates and resulting device check-ins and error reports (if any), and make sure nothing looks wrong before sending it to more. Then typically it goes to 25%, 50%, 100% over the course of a week or two."

Google knows that no matter how much it tests a new piece of software there is a chance it will break things once it's released to everyone with an Android phone. Pixel phones (in this case) aren't very popular but many of the changes in the monthly update for them are also incorporated into Android itself, with the potential to reach almost every phone around the world.

By slowly pushing out a change, and then waiting to see if it breaks anything, the damage is minimized. There have been botched software rollouts. Plenty of them. In most cases, the software was quickly recalled, and whatever caused the problem was fixed, tested, and then slowly rolled out again to make sure it worked.

This is standard practice from Google, Apple, Samsung, and almost every other company that makes phones and tablets. Software is developed and tested in-house, then sent out to a limited number of beta testers, and once everything seems OK it's sent out slowly to gauge its performance. 

This is also why I like to stress that most people really shouldn't install any beta software on a device they want to use. It is expected that things will break and is an important part of this process.

it's frustrating to wait for anything you want to try. Especially when it gets hyped by Google and websites like Android Central. But it's a lot less frustrating that having a phone that stops working. Let's hope Google doesn't decide to stop the slow trollout of new software.

Welcome to Ask Jerry, where we talk about any and all the questions you might have about the smart things in your life. I'm Jerry, and I have spent the better part of my life working with tech. I have a background in engineering and R&D and have been covering Android and Google for the past 15 years.

I'm also really good at researching data about everything — that's a big part of our job here at Android Central — and I love to help people (another big part of our job!). If you have questions about your tech, I'd love to talk about them. 

Email me at askjerryac@gmail.com, and I'll try to get things sorted out. You can remain anonymous if you like, and we promise we're not sharing anything we don't cover here.

I look forward to hearing from you!

Do cell phones cause cancer?

Anonymous asks:

Does using a cell phone increase the chance of cancer? 

Thanks

Oh boy, it's that time again. This question comes up every once in a while after some paper or publication questions the link between phone use and cancer rates. I've seen a recent one implying that a particular brand of phone is more dangerous because it emits radiation and ignores it. You should, too, because there are a few glaring errors, like incorrectly listing what doctors and governing bodies call a safe amount. But it is a valid question and worth discussing once one bogus claim is tossed aside.

Because I always front-load the basic answer, I'll defer to the FCC, which states:

"According to the FDA and the World Health Organization (WHO), among other organizations, to date, there is no consistent or credible scientific evidence of health problems caused by the exposure to radio frequency energy emitted by cell phones."

As usual, though, the simple answer doesn't say it all. Nobody is saying there is no definite link between using a phone and cancer because it's impossible to know. What people at the CDC or WHO do know is that studies show the number of people who develop an illness has no evidence that phone use caused it.

Cell phones communicate with other devices, like cell towers or Wi-Fi routers, using RF (Radio Frequency) waves. The frequency of these waves is about the same as over-the-air broadcast television or the low setting of a microwave oven. They're also non-ionizing, which is really important in this discussion.

Non-ionizing radiation is everywhere at a much greater frequency than your phone emits because visible light is everywhere. If you have enough light to see or there is enough light to feel the heat, you're awash in non-ionizing radiation.

This type of radiation does not emit enough energy to damage human DNA and cause cancer like higher-frequency UV rays or X-rays can. At an extreme level, RF waves can heat human tissue, but your phone is incapable of producing this much energy. 

These are things science knows. Indisputable facts if you will. Using this knowledge we can say that using a phone is no more dangerous than being in the path of a television signal or being inside under a bright lamp. It's far less dangerous than being outside in the sun with no UV protection, which is a known cause of cancer.

The good news is that concern for our safety doesn't stop there. The amount of RF emission from a phone is tested and regulated before you can buy one.

Cell phone RF is measured as SAR, which stands for the Specific Absorption Rate, which is the amount of radiation absorbed by the body. Your phone gives off radiation that your body will absorb, and phone makers have to limit the amount to meet standards.

Different countries and governing bodies have different regulations, but in the U.S., the FCC lists the maximum limit of SAR as 1.6 watts per kilogram of body weight. A phone can't emit more than this amount under any conditions.

As the FCC notes, these tests can be misleading. A phone's listed SAR value is when the phone is operating for an extended period under its highest possible power. Your phone will never work this hard. A better, more accurate SAR value would be based on variables that can't be tested, so the FCC goes with the worst-case scenario.

For practical purposes, this means a phone with a lower listed maximum SAR rating could perform worse than one with a higher listing in your hand under certain conditions. Remember this when you look at lists saying which phones are "safest" based on SAR ratings.

This is what science knows and has tested, but there is still more work to be done. Cell phone usage is a relatively new phenomenon. We don't have hundreds of years of historical data to compare, so we need to keep looking. Currently, nobody can find an actual link between phone use and cancer—but that doesn't mean nobody ever will.

If you want to be safe, nobody will fault you. Use the speakerphone or text instead of making a call. In the meantime, know that almost everything you see linking illness and phone use doesn't jibe with what the experts and scientists who study it every day have to say on the matter.