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These Settings Could Save Your Aging Android From the Junk Drawer

Revive your aging Android with these quick and easy tweaks.

My Android phone’s a few years old, and while it doesn’t have the flashiest camera or thinnest design anymore, it still handles everything I need day to day. I used to think I’d have to upgrade just to get the newest features, but that’s not the case.

Thanks to long-term software support from companies like Google and Samsung, older phones can still get a lot of love. And with the right tweaks, I’ve managed to seriously boost my phone’s performance without spending a dime.

Before you start shopping for a new device, try a few of these tips. You might be surprised at how much better your phone can run with just a few small changes.

It’s true: Whether you have a Samsung Galaxy, Motorola or OnePlus phone, it’s likely that you can still optimize your battery life and give your phone a new lease on life by making a few easy adjustments. 

Note that there might be some differences between Android devices, and phone manufacturers often put their own software on top of Android. Certain settings may be missing or in a different place, depending on the version of Android you’re running and the maker of your phone.

Need more Android tips? Check out these five tips to make your Android feel like new again and how to use Android’s AI circle to search features.

Settings to improve your battery life

Living with a phone that has poor battery life can be infuriating, but there are some steps you can take to maximize each charge right from the very beginning:

1. Turn off auto screen brightness or adaptive brightness and set the brightness level slider to under 50%.

The brighter your screen, the more battery power it uses. 

To get to the setting, pull down the shortcut menu from the top of the screen and adjust the slider, if it’s there. Some phones may have a toggle for auto brightness in the shortcut panel; otherwise, you need to open the settings app and search for «brightness» to find the setting and turn it off.

2. Use Adaptive Battery and Battery Optimization.

These features focus on learning how you use your phone, including which apps you use and when, and then optimizing the apps and the amount of battery they use. 

Some Android phones will have a dedicated Battery section in the Settings app, while other phones (looking at you, Samsung) bury these settings. It’s a little different for each phone. I recommend opening your settings and searching for «battery» to find the right screen. Your phone may also have an adaptive charging setting that can monitor how quickly your phone battery charges overnight to preserve its health.

Why you should use dark mode more often

Another way to improve battery life while also helping save your eyes is to use Android’s dedicated dark mode. Any Android phone running Android 10 or newer will have a dedicated dark mode option. 

According to Google, dark mode not only reduces the strain that smartphone displays cause on our eyes but also improves battery life because it takes less power to display dark backgrounds on OLED displays (used in most flagship phones) than a white background. 

Depending on which version of Android your phone is running, and what company made your phone, you may have to dig around the settings app to find a dark mode. If your phone runs Android 10 or newer, you’ll be able to turn on systemwide dark mode. If it runs Android 9, don’t despair. Plenty of apps have their own dark mode option in the settings that you can use whether or not you have Android 10. 

To turn it on dark mode, open the Settings app and search for Dark Mode, Dark Theme or even Night Mode (as Samsung likes to call it). I suggest using dark mode all the time, but if you’re not sure, you can always set dark mode to automatically turn on based on a schedule, say from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. every day, or allow it to automatically switch based on your location at the time of sunset and sunrise. 

Keep your home screen free of clutter

Planning to hit up the Google Play Store for a bunch of new Android apps? Be prepared for a lot of icon clutter on your home screen, which is where shortcuts land every time you install something.

If you don’t want that, there’s a simple way out of this: Long-press on an empty area of your home screen and tap Settings. Find the option labeled something along the lines of Add icon to Home Screen or Add new apps to Home Screen and turn it off. 

Presto — No more icons on the home screen when you install new apps. You can still add shortcuts by dragging an app’s icon out of the app drawer, but they won’t appear on your home screen unless you want them to.

Read more: Best Android Phones You Can Buy in 2024

Set up Do Not Disturb so that you can better focus

If your phone routinely spends the night on your nightstand, you probably don’t want it beeping or buzzing every time there’s a call, message or Facebook alert — especially when you’re trying to sleep. Android offers a Do Not Disturb mode that will keep the phone more or less silent during designated hours. On some phones, this is referred to as the Downtime setting or even Quiet Time.

Head to Settings > Sounds (or Notifications), then look for Do Not Disturb or a similar name. If you can’t find it, search for it using the built-in search feature in your settings.

Using the feature, you can set up a range of hours when you want to turn off the digital noise. Don’t worry, any notifications you get while Do Not Disturb is turned on will still be waiting for you when you wake up. Also, you can typically make an exception that allows repeat callers and favorite contacts’ calls to go through. Turn that on. If someone is calling you in an emergency, odds are they are going to keep trying.

Always be prepared in case you lose your phone or it’s stolen

Is there anything worse than a lost or stolen phone? Only the knowledge that you could have tracked it down if you had turned on Google’s Find My Device feature.

To set yourself up for a successful recovery, here’s what you need to do: Open the Settings app and then search for Find My Device. It’s usually in the Security section of the Settings app.

Or if you have a Samsung device, you can use Samsung’s Find My Mobile service found in Settings > Biometrics and security > Find My Mobile

Once that’s enabled, you can head to android.com/find from any PC or mobile device and sign in to your account. Samsung users can visit findmymobile.samsung.com to find a lost phone. 

If you run into any trouble setting any of this up, be sure to read through our complete guide to finding a lost Android phone.

Assuming your phone is on and online, you should be able to see its location on a map. From there you can make it ring, lock it, set a lock screen note to tell whoever has it how to get it back to you or, worst-case scenario, remotely wipe the whole thing.

And always keep your phone up to date

As obvious as it may seem, bugs and other issues slowing down your Android device could potentially be fixed with a simple software update. 

Before you download and install the latest software update, make sure your device is connected to Wi-Fi, or else this won’t work.

Now, open the Settings application and type in Update. You’ll then either see Software update or System update — choose either one. Then just download the software, wait for a few minutes and install it when it’s ready. Your Android device will reboot and install the latest software update available.

There’s a lot more to learn about a new phone, of course. Here are the best ways to boost your cell signal, and here’s a flagship phone head-to-head comparison. Plus, check out CNET’s list of the best cases for your Samsung phone. More of an Apple fan? We have tips for boosting your iPhone’s performance, too.

Technologies

August’s Full Sturgeon Moon Lines Up With Perseids, Saturn, Venus and Jupiter

The full moon takes place a mere three days before the Perseids meteor shower peaks, and 11 days before the next planet parade.

As long as you’re looking at the night sky, August has a ton of cool stuff going on this year. Among those is the full moon, also known as the Sturgeon Moon. It’s the last full moon of the summer, and it’s coming on Aug. 9.

Per The Farmer’s Almanac, the full moon will reach its peak brightness at 3:55 a.m. ET on Saturday, Aug. 9. Thus, if you want to see the moon at its brightest, you’ll want to look up the evening of Aug. 8 and on into the next morning. It’s not a big deal if you miss it, as the moon will be over 90% full from Aug. 6 through Aug. 11, so you’ll have plenty of chances to look up and see it.

A lot is going on during this full moon, so if you want to make a night of it, you have other things you can look for. Saturn, Venus, Mercury, Uranus and Neptune will all be in the south and eastern sky, lining up nicely in preparation for the planet parade coming in late August. Venus and Jupiter don’t make an appearance until much later in the evening, but they’ll be visible with the naked eye. The other three will require some sort of magnification. 

The Perseids meteor shower is also active, so you may spy a shooting star or two, depending on how dark it is outside. The Perseids come from the Perseus constellation. On the morning of Aug. 9, it’ll be in the eastern sky alongside Venus and Jupiter, so everything will be in the same general area.

Why is it called the Sturgeon Moon?

The Sturgeon Moon is named after the humble sturgeon fish. According to The Farmer’s Almanac, sturgeon were a staple food for Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, and the fish used to be a lot more abundant during mid- to late summer. Of all the bony fish, the sturgeon is the most primitive, dating back to the Cretaceous period over 120 million years ago. Thus, scholars often refer to the fish as a living fossil. It’s also a long-lived fish, with an average lifespan of 50 to 60 years. Females of the species can get as old as 150 years. 

Other names for August’s full moon include the Corn Moon, Ricing Moon, Black Cherries Moon and Mountain Shadows Moon. It’s also been called a Harvest Moon, splitting the name with September’s full moon.

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Technologies

Your Microsoft Passwords Will Vanish in a Few Hours. What to Do Right Now

Microsoft’s go-to password manager won’t be the same after Aug. 1.

It’s time to say so long to the Microsoft Authenticator app as we know it. 

As of this Friday, Aug. 1, the app will no longer save or manage passwords, use two-factor authentication or auto-fill. And it won’t be your go-to password manager anymore, either. Instead of passwords, Microsoft is moving to passkeys — such as PINs, fingerprint scans, facial recognition or a pattern on your device’s lock screen. 

Using passkeys is a safer alternative to the risky password habits 49% of US adults use, according to CNET’s password survey. However, Attila Tomaschek, a CNET software senior writer and digital security expert, prefers Microsoft’s new login over password habits that can risk your data being stolen. 

There’s not much time to learn about passkeys or password manager, but we’re here to help. Here’s what you need to know to get started. 

Microsoft Authenticator will stop supporting passwords on Aug. 1

Microsoft Authenticator houses your passwords and lets you sign into all your Microsoft accounts using a PIN, facial recognition like Windows Hello or other biometric data like a fingerprint. Authenticator can be used in other ways, such as verifying you’re logging in if you forgot your password, or using two-factor authentication as an extra layer of security for your accounts. In June, the company stopped letting users add passwords to Authenticator.

As of this month, you won’t be able to use the autofill password function. And starting Aug. 1, you’ll no longer be able to use saved passwords.

If you still want to use passwords instead of passkeys, you can store them in Microsoft Edge. However, CNET experts recommend adopting passkeys during this transition. «Passkeys use public key cryptography to authenticate users, rather than relying on users themselves creating their own (often weak or reused) passwords to access their online accounts,» Tomaschek said.

Why passkeys are a better alternative to passwords

So what exactly is a passkey? It’s a credential created by the Fast Identity Online Alliance that uses biometric data or a PIN to verify your identity and access your account. Think about using your fingerprint or Face ID to log into your account. That’s generally safer than using a password that is easy to guess or susceptible to a phishing attack.

«Passwords can be cracked, whereas passkeys need both the public and the locally stored private key to authenticate users, which can help mitigate risks like falling victim to phishing and brute-force or credential-stuffing attacks,» said Tomaschek. 

Passkeys aren’t stored on servers like passwords. Instead, they’re stored only on your personal device. More conveniently, this takes the guesswork out of remembering your passwords and the need for a password manager.

How to set up a passkey in Microsoft Authenticator

Microsoft said in a May 1 blog post that it will automatically detect the best passkey to set up and make that your default sign-in option. «If you have a password and ‘one-time code’ set up on your account, we’ll prompt you to sign in with your one-time code instead of your password. After you’re signed in, you’ll be prompted to enroll a passkey. Then the next time you sign in, you’ll be prompted to sign in with your passkey,» according to the blog post.

To set up a new passkey, open your Authenticator app on your phone. Tap on your account and select «Set up a passkey.» You’ll be prompted to log in with your existing credentials. After you’re logged in, you can set up the passkey.

Other password manager alternatives 

Since Microsoft will get rid of all of your passwords in two weeks, you’ll need a new place to store your passwords safely. Tomaschek has a few of the best password manager recommendations after testing and reviewing several. 

The top recommendation is Bitwarden for its transparency. It’s open-source and audited annually. From a price perspective, the free plan lets you store infinite passwords across unlimited devices. The free plan also includes features most password managers would charge for, including password sharing and a username and password generator. 

Bitwarden’s upgraded plans have other upgraded features that could be worth the cost, too. 

Personally, Tomaschek has been using 1Password for a while, and he likes the interface and family plan. Even though it’s second on the list, Tomaschek says it’s just as good as Bitwarden. 

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Technologies

Zelda Spinoff Age of Imprisonment Unravels Secrets Behind the Imprisoning War

The hack-and-slash Nintendo Switch game expands on the lore of The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

A new trailer for Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment was shown at the Nintendo Direct Partner Showcase on Thursday — the first look we’ve had since its debut when the Nintendo Switch 2 was unveiled in April. 

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment will take place far in the past to explain the events leading to The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. The video features Princess Zelda, King Rauru and other characters from the game, and it teases a mystery revolving around an animated suit of armor that could be used by Link. 

The Hyrule Warriors series is a crossover developed by Koei Tecmo and published by Nintendo. The spinoff started back in 2014 and was a mash-up between Koei Tecmo’s popular Dynasty Warriors franchise, featuring Zelda characters with hack-and-slash gameplay. Unlike in the Zelda games, where the action is limited to a few enemies at a time, Hyrule Warriors has playable characters such as Zelda and Link fighting off waves of enemies at once, doing long combos and fighting giant monsters. 

The last installment of the spinoff series, Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, came out in 2020 and acted as a prologue for the events of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Age of Imprisonment dives deep into the history of Hyrule and takes place during the Imprisoning War, a battle referenced in Tears of the Kingdom. The war was against an enemy known as the Demon King and involved the ancient Zonai race. 

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment is set to release sometime this winter for the Switch 2.

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