Gadgetory

hello and welcome to cnet's to fix the show about do-it-yourself tech and how to's I'm Donald Bell i'm eric franklin and in this show we're gonna give you all kinds of advice for your smartphone people love smartphone tips we're gonna give them to you that's right everyone has a personal digital assistant on their phone yeah they're always worked perfectly we're going to show them how to make them work for you syrian can be your best friend or your worst enemy it's all about how you talk to her so here are a few ways to make sure the personal assistant works a lot smarter for you for instance siri doesn't always let you finish your sentence text my best front just like that she totally cut me off so there's an easy way to make sure this never happens again when you say your command tap and hold the microphone and keep holding it until you're done saying what you need to say like this text my best friend i finally figured out why the pizza didn't arrive ! wait a second she got everything I wanted problem solved okay how do you pronounce the name sometimes Siri can't figure out how to pronounce a name or recognize one that you're trying to call so the next time that happens do this that's not how you pronounce also Bugatti okay how do you pronounce the name celso okay thank you which pronunciation should i use so so that sounds right select ok how do you pronounce the name bull got to okay thank you which pronunciation should i use pull a gun mm-hmm o ngati that's right okay okay I'll remember how to pronounce celso Volga tea from now on perfect now we won't have any other problems with that name even though she has her quirks you have to give her some credit SI r you can actually understand commands that go beyond the basic calls an appointment setting let me show you one scheduled dinner next wednesday at five-thirty p.m. at boca nova with ellis and tom okay i set up your events with Alice and Tom 4 jun 25th 2014 shall I schedule it yes I scheduled their event with Alice and Tom 4 530 p.m. jun 26 2014 and since i have allison in my contacts she'll also receive an invitation for the event if you need to launch an app or toggle a setting using Siri can be a lot faster than digging up an icon Siri can handle both tasks so i can say something like turn bluetooth on ok i turned our clutter and she'll get it done for me I can also do something like launch Spotify and there's my app Siri is smart but you can make her even smarter by giving her constructive feedback so for example give me directions to Barbra co ok which matt go after what you want at this point swipe down to reveal the original command and use the tap to edit function to correct her hit done and your correction will be sent to Siri for a new answer Plus she'll understand you better in the future getting directions to barback Oh personal assistants like Siri aren't perfect but with a little bit of work you can make the relationship a lot more beneficial for you okay I'll send it I'm surprised Syria might actually be useful for once yeah I've been mostly using your for comic relief just asking you're the most dumb question Lisa having fun with it yes I'm having fun exactly it's time for a quick break when we come back we're going to show you some alternative android software keyboards yeah just get your typing skills super fast down you welcome back you know I'm not really the best at typing on a smartphone screen okay but it's probably cuz I'm not using the right keyboard that's right a lot of people don't know this but you can replace the keyboard on your Android smartphone to really trick it out yeah I'm going to show you how to do that right now if you're not a whiz at typing on your smartphone I'm here to tell you it's probably not your fault there are dozens of factors that make typing on a smartphone a total nightmare it could be the size of the screen or the size of your hands or the auto correct software or the spacing between the keys fortunately if you and your keyboard software aren't getting along there are some great options out there worth trying i'm going to show you for keyboard replacements for android that with any luck we'll also come out to iphone users this fall with iOS 8 let's start with the google keyboard one that you'll probably never see on apple's app store now just because you're running android doesn't mean you're actually using google stock android keyboard in many cases like on this HTC One m8 you get the manufacturers spin on the keyboard if you do nothing else look up the google keyboard in the Play Store and give it a shot it's a free download and for a lot of people it's the keyboard to end all keyboards aside from having a nice spacing and a swipe to type option for one finger typing there are features here that Google is uniquely great at one is text to speech which google has been perfecting for years the quick brown fox the other is an intelligent predictive text software that minds everything google knows about you to predict your next word it's the next best thing to a full Google brain transplant and did I mention it's free another great option out there that's free is swiftkey this one also does a great job of tailoring its predictive text suggestions based on the access you give it to your emails and your text messages I don't know why it creeps me out more than Google's constant spying on me but at least the process is entirely opt-in swiftkey does a lot of what google keyboard does swipe typing predictive text custom dictionaries but what makes swiftkey unique is that the keyboard itself can be resized to match up nicely with those sausages you call fingers just press and hold the swiftkey icon and you get a menu of all sorts of resizing options next up we have swype which is well worth the 399 price tag swipe was one of the first companies to come up with a whole one finger swiping texting method and are arguably the best at it if you really want to be speedy with one finger typing this is the one and because they're owned by nuance you also get the whole dragon dictation software built in which does a great job of letting dictate your writing the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog but if the whole swipe typing thing just doesn't feel natural give flexi a shot it's 399 but this is my choice if you want to just get blazing fast at typing there's no swype text no dictation just an insanely smart and forgiving autocorrect and the ability to move forward and backward through your sentence by flicking left and right you can mash on this thing and a while drunken stupor and still make sense when you go full Jedi you can even make the keyboard invisible and then just trust in the force to make a coherent sentence so there you have it four ways to take your smartphone typing to the next level now instead of hunting and pecking you'll be swiping and dictating and mashing your way to a better keyboard experience you know it's kind of amazing that that swiping thing actually works in Sicily no it's a mind-blower if no one's seen that before it's like magic oh it is but we can really bring them to tears is when they realize that they don't have a lot of storage on their smartphone we're gonna show you some ways that you can expand your storage on your android phone most android phones include storage expansion via microSD card slots but sometimes you need more than that i'm going to show you three alternative ways to increase your storage capacity the first option is to use a micro USB flash drive like this one you can get it for about 40 bucks for 64 gigabytes once you have a loaded with content download a file manager like ES File Explorer plug the drive into your device then an ES file explorer and navigate to local then USB 1002 which is usually the name of the USB port on your device now you can access all that extra content another option is to use a Wi-Fi storage device like the raft power here the thought being is that you can wirelessly access your content and you don't have to be physically connected to your smartphone in order to do so you can find one for about 40 or 50 bucks first insert an SD card that you've already loaded up with content download the custom app call Rev file hub once the drive is turned on and the Wi-Fi light is glowing go to your phone's Wi-Fi settings and find the device now open the app tap home and you should see a folder with your content in it open the content you can easily stream it wirelessly to your phone or tablet one extra bonus if you connect your phone the drive will charge its battery lastly the cheapest way to extend your device's storage is use a cloud-based service like google drive dropbox or box box is probably my favorite because the interface is so simple once it's set up which really just entails a quick download and thumbing through a few screens it's incredibly easy to upload and download files just tap the plus button select file and hit upload downloading is just as easy just select the file tap more options select download and then select the folder you want to save it in and click OK those are three ways to save files access files and consume media when you've run out of room on your Android device that's it for this week's show thanks for watching you want to send us feedback we're both on twitter you can reach me at need opal i'm at donalds we also have a new email address an email address that's right what is it the fix at cnet com so email us let us know what you think let us know what you want to see in future episodes we want to hear from you awesome thanks for watching guys see ya you