Best Android video player: 5 you should check out

There are a number of very good Android video players available, with a variety of functions. If you’re looking for a better experience than the stock Android video player, here are my top 5...

For the pleasure-seeker: MX Player 

MX Player is a master of the Android video player scene – it just works. It plays tons of file types, has subtitle integration, and the best on-screen gesture controls you’re likely to find in an Android video player. You can pinch-to-zoom and control the volume and brightness levels just by sliding your finger up and down the screen. You can also intuitively scroll forwards or backwards through the video you are watching. The advertisements are unintrusive – they’re only apparent on the pause menu – but the downside of MX Player is that you sometimes may need to manually download codecs for certain videos, which can be annoying. 

For the optimist: VLC for Android Beta

VLC player has long since been a hit on PC, and for good reason. It has great functionality and an impressive range of features – its one of those video players that can just play anything. VLC integrates similar on-screen controls to MX Player, but it is maybe not quite as smooth. VLC for Android Beta is, naturally, still in its beta stage, meaning it might be more buggy than some of the other video players available, but it also means it’s being updated regularly with an eye on optimization for users, so it might be worth sticking with.

For the paranoid: RealPlayer Cloud

RealPlayer Cloud, described on the Play Store as “like Dropbox for videos”, offers a great video suite with online video search and cloud storage. Stepping away from the all-in-one video audio picture viewer RealPlayer once was, RealPlayer Cloud makes use of online storage and cloud syncing, to share videos between multiple devices. It does require you to make an account, which can be a pain for some people (like me), so it’s not as easy to get started with as some other players, but this is of course because of its cloud functionality.

RealPlayer Cloud offers 2 GB of cloud storage space when you install it, and has a beautiful interface. It includes a useful web video search function that gives you recommended videos of the day, too. It did take some of the online videos a while to start, but the ability to share clips between devices and upload them to the cloud was great. It’s a fantastic free app.

For the multi-tasker: MoboPlayer

MoboPlayer’s interface isn’t all that pretty, but it has some nifty features that make it stand out. Mobo Player supports a “floating windows” mode for users who quickly need to shrink their video to access something else on their device. The videos do need to be decoded before you can do this in some cases, but it’s a neat feature nonetheless. It also scans your storage folders to find all of your video files when you first load it up. The actual video player itself maybe isn’t quite as nice as some of the others on the list, but it’s strong in other areas, and also contains an online video search feature, which is useful. The initially ugly interface can be customized, too.

For the modder: BSPlayer 

One thing BSPlayer is not, is total BS. BSPlayer comes with a very intuitive interface, making searching for your videos a breeze. It features all of the classic facets of good video players: hardware and software encoding, a huge amount of supported video formats, and built-in subtitle tracks. To add to this there are a number of themes and skins available for customization to spruce it up too. Another handy option is the ability to choose whether playback always begins at the start of your video or the last played part. It’s a really nice video player which uses on-screen gestures for navigation – download it if you’re interested.

5 Ways to Speed Up Your Android Phone in Under 5 Minutes

You used to love your Android handset, but now that it has slowed down considerably, the bloom is off the rose. When you hit the home button or launch a new app, it takes what seems like an eternity to switch to the new task or back to the desktop. Maybe your Android phone has become so slow that letters appear a second or two after you type them. Fortunately, you can rekindle the romance and speed up your Android phone in under 5 minutes if you use these simple tips. Talk about a quickie!

1. Clear Your App Cache (30 seconds)

Over time, your programs write to the app cache on your phone and eat up precious system resources while slowing everything down. You can clear the cache on any individual app by visiting its property page in the Settings menu and tapping the clear cache button, but with dozens of apps on most phones, it could take an eternity to do this manually.

App Cache Cleaner, a free app, makes it easy to delete the cache on all your apps at once with just a couple of taps. After installing and launch App Cache Cleaner, simply tap Clear All and you’re done.

Of course, the cache will fill  up again over time, and you’ll want to delete it again. App Cache Cleaner has an Auto Clear feature. If you enter its settings menu, tap Auto Clear Interval and select a duration, it will automatically clear the cache on a regular basis. However, this means that the app needs to run in the background

2. Disable or Uninstall Unused Apps (60 seconds)

You may not know it, but many of the apps you never even use may be running in the background, eating up precious system resources. From the app that you tried for 5 minutes last month to the shopping app that came preloaded on your phone, every unused app has the potential to weigh your phone down. It’s easy to uninstall apps you’ve downloaded yourself, but crapware is a little harder to dispose of.

If you have rooted your phone, you can completely remove every trace of your preloaded apps. If not, you can still disable those apps through the settings menu. It should take about 10 seconds to uninstall or disable each app you don’t want. It should take you approximately one minute to get rid of 6 apps, longer if you have more crapware to dump.

3. Install a New App Launcher (30 seconds)

Your phone’s app launcher controls your desktop, lock screen apps menu, and other critical parts of the UI. Though every Android phone comes with its own preloaded app launcher, you can install a third party launcher that will not only change the look and feel of your device, but also speed the time it takes it to navigate around the OS. There are many different launchers available in the app store, but we found Lightning Launcher Home to be among the fastest and easiest to use.

To use Lightning Launcher or another launcher of your choice:

1. Install Lightning Launcher from the Google Play store.
2. Tap the Home Button. A menu appears asking you which launcher you want.
3. Select Lightning Launcher and Tap Always.
   

Downloading the Lightning Launcher, and setting it to run as your default should take 30 seconds

4. Remove Unnecessary Widgets and Shortcuts (30 seconds)

Even with a speedy App Launcher installed, your phone will use more memory the more widgets and shortcuts it has in memory. Look through your desktops for widgets you don’t absolutely need and remove them by long pressing and dragging them off screen.

A number of phones with widgets that advertise services such as media stores or news services. Unless you really want to look at a list of hot YouTube videos or Google Play Books on your home screen every day, remove these.

Dragging half a dozen shortcuts and widgets off  of your desktops should take 30 seconds.

5. Limit or Disable Background Data (10 to 60 seconds)

Your email, your Gmail, your Facebook, your Twitter and your backup app all want to ping the Internet for data on a regular basis. All that syncing not only eats up your battery, but also takes up system resources and slows your device down.

There are some services you may want to sync in real time, but there are others you can check manually. For example, if you don’t need to be alerted the moment you get a Facebook mention or receive an email to your personal account, you can prevent those from connecting in the background.

To disable background data for all apps:

1. Navigate to Settings.
2. Tap Data usage.
    
3. Launch the context menu by tapping the three dots in the upper left corner of the screen or hitting the menu button (on Samsung and LG phones).
   
4. Toggle Autosync data to off and tap Ok on the warning that comes up.
   

To disable background data for Gmail, Google+ and other Google Services:

1. Navigate to Settings. You can get to the Android settings menu from the notification drawer or apps menu.
2. Tap on Google under accounts.
    
3. Tap the account name.  If the sync icon next to the account name is green, it has sync permission. If it is gray, syncing is already disabled.
   
4. Toggle all types of data syncing to off, including email, contacts and calendar.
   

To turn off background data in other apps such as Facebook or the standalone email client,  you must go directly into their settings’ menus and find the option to never update or update manually. Disabling all your background at once should take just 10 seconds, but if you want to manually disable Gmail, Facebook and email client autosync separately, this process could take as long as a  minute.

Depending on how many apps you need to uninstall and services you wish to disable, you could finish speeding up your phone in as little as 2 minutes and 40 seconds. That’s a very small time investment to make your smartphone snappier.

Why is my Android phone running slow? Here’s how to speed up your phone !!!

When you first got your shiny new Android handset you were probably blown away by how fast it was. But over time you may well have noticed that your phone is starting to run slow. Don’t worry – it doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with your smartphone, and there’s a lot you and do to help. Here are some top tips you can use to help speed up your Android phone and get things running quickly again.

Top 5 Android security apps

360 Mobile Security 

A major player in China, developer Qihu burst onto the scene and claimed the top spot in AV-Test’s September 2013 report with a virtually flawless detection rate of 99.9 percent, the highest of any of the security apps tested. In the latest March 2014 report it achieved a detection rate of 100 percent. The focus with 360 Mobile Security is firmly on detecting and nullifying threats to your system. It has a very streamlined, elegant design. It’s extremely lightweight, and it’s completely free.

Tips to charge your Android phone battery faster

What’s worse than a dead phone? One that takes too long to charge! This has certainly happened to most of us before: you’re rushing out of the door and you happen to see there’s just 5% left of battery! Here are some tips on how you can get your Android phone to charge faster!

Here’s how to charge your phone faster!

How to find a lost Android phone

The more we do on our phones, the more lost we are without them – but dropping, mislaying or losing your phone needn’t be the end of the world. There are several ways to find a lost Android phone, and if the worst happens it’s possible to lock it and / or wipe it too.

If it’s on, Android Device Manager can help you find it anywhere in the world.

What to do with your old Android phone before selling it: 5 easy steps

Are you wanting to give away or sell your old smartphone or tablet that you no longer use? Did you just get a new Galaxy Note 4 or Nexus 6 and suddenly don’t need your old HTC One? Do you know what you have to do beforehand so as not to pass on your details to someone else? Today we’ll explain how to clean up your device as if it was brand new before it changes hands! We’ll also suggest some places to offload that baby if you do decide to sell an old Android phone.

If you’ve got an old phone you no longer use, why not sell it? Here’s how.

11 Things Android Phones Can Do That The iPhone Still Can’t

With its iPhone 6 and iOS 8, Apple has introduced a few features that have been available on Android smartphones for quite some time.

For example, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus will be the company’s first smartphones to come with near field communication (NFC) — a technology that lets phones talk to one another via a short-range radio.

This means you can exchange data and make payments by simply tapping your iPhone against another compatible device.

Still, you can still do a lot of things with Android phones that you can’t with the iPhone.

You can add a bigger battery to most Android phones. The iPhone’s back isn’t removable.

Many Android phones, like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and LG G3, come with a removeable back — which means you can take out the battery. This is especially helpful if you find your phone dying quicker than expected. With some Android phones, you can simply pop off the back, take out the battery, and put a new one in when your phone is dead. The iPhone relies on a single rechargeable lithium-ion battery, which can be removed or replaced only by Apple technicians.

With some Android phones, you can open multiple apps at once.

Several Android manufacturers layer their software over the plain version of Android, often adding their own features. On Samsung and LG phones, for example, you can open more than one app at a time and run them alongside one another. On LG phones, you can even move these apps around in separate windows, change the transparency of those windows, and resize them, as shown in the screenshot to the right.

iPhone 6 vs Galaxy S5

iPhone 6 or Samsung Galaxy S5 – which should you get?

The Samsung Galaxy S6 is still more than six months away. That’s a lifetime in smartphone terms. The Samsung Galaxy S5 and iPhone 6  are two of the hottest phones to get right now but which one should you get? We’ve put this handy guide together for you whether you’re nearing the end of your contract or you want to buy one of these flagship phones outright.

VIDEO: Watch our video comparison

14 Essential Tweaks to Perform on Your New Nexus 5 Smartphone

The Nexus 5 is great, but you can make it more great.

Google has been making iterative improvements to the Nexus flagship phones for five generations now, and the appropriately named Nexus 5 is perhaps the most competitive phone to come out of Mountain View thus far. The Nexus 5 offers us our first look at Android 4.4 KitKat, which is the most significant update to the platform since Ice Cream Sandwich two years ago. This phone debuts unique software and hardware features that you’ll want to take full advantage of, and it’s a steal at just $349 for the 16GB model.

This device is a great experience out of the box, but you can always make it better. Here are our14 essential steps to getting your Nexus 5 configured properly and ready for heavy use.