Gadgetory

welcome to CNET's the fix the show about do-it-yourself tech and how to I'm Donald Bell and I'm Eric Franke and this week we're gonna show you how to optimize your phone since most of you can't ever seem to put them down I'm one of them I can't ever seem to put my phone down but I do wish it was sometimes faster yeah well one thing that could be slowing you down is your web browser this week we're gonna put three web browsers to the test and seeing it going with the new browser could give you an edge we're here at the k1 speed racetrack what better venue for a mobile browser speed test we've got three different browsers here we're gonna see it going with one over the other could give you an advantage that's right in order to make it a fair test we're all using the same phones we're all using iPhone 5s --is we're all connected to the same 4G wireless hotspot and we all make sure that we've cleared our caches cleared our cookies and cleared our browser history and what we're going to do is load three types of web pages okay we've got a new site a picture heavy website and a media rich site and I'm going to use Chrome I'll be using Safari I've got opera the underdog all right new york times at first sure let's go NY key rhymes calm I'm gonna go one two three go and on go thank you go alright one two three go all right we're off yeah you're out a gun I'm still lagging way behind this part and I'm done all right I you want some coffee I'm taking a bit longer than I expected yeah I think it knows I press go come on opera you sure we're all connected to the same 4G hotspot does it not like opera what do you think about moving on we'll come back so just it got a hiccup but I mean I think that's a real-world result you know for whatever reason we that happens for sure all right well maybe it's going to do better in the next round all right where we going up we have one of my favorite websites pinterest.com water come on my favorite obvious I hope I spelled it right all right come on two three go all right we're off again yeah and the sharon done already problem I've said I'm like a quarter of the way up I'm done I think you that's why did you search for pinners no no no that was an accident so I'm done now she has done all right I went that one opera what are you killing me nice nice came through finally now we're later alright operas let me down okay last one giant bomb dot-com I love it already one two three go alright come on giant bomb time bomb come on come on Safari I think I might win this one again I might run this again waiting thoroughly there it's that's like almost there finally oh oh I got some HTML fun maybe our hot spots for to reception it's not super excellent little weird glitchy hiccup do you guys mind if we do that and get that email we'd have to clear the cache yeah so guys let's redo this because my loading experience ran into a little glitch so we're going to clear our patches and try that one again it happened sometime dude we're doing a real-world test ready yeah yeah yeah count one two three go alright I'm nervous the age of Opera has the page up we're still on white pages no problems again it's button it's a reset all right 40 hotspots rebooted it says it's ready to go maybe that's gonna help us get a little extra speed one two three go all right wow this is so much better dad yeah done I knew it I'm sorry to say that I had a lot of I had a lot of hope for opera yeah but opera just flopping all over the place so yeah real quick let's go through some how-to tips some quick tips for each of our browser okay all right so on opera a couple different things I would do to really optimize the speed here maybe actually get me to finish loading a page I'd go into settings and there seems the first two options here are for loading images you guys could turn load images off especially on a text heavy page like New York Times that might be helpful or if you want to keep your images there but change the quality of them I could change the image quality from high down to low and see if that helps me and I'll just say briefly about safari is that it is your default browser so any link you click on like an email or something it's gonna open in Safari that's a nice little perk right there but also if you have an iPad you can take advantage of the reading list so if you don't have time to read a story on a web page you want to just push it to your iPad you can totally do that very easily with Safari and chrome is jam-packed with features one of my favorites is that one that preloads pages based on where the browser thinks you're going to go next and then another great one is tab syncing so if you're on Chrome desktop and you move over to your phone you're going to be able to load those exact same tabs pick up just where you left off all right we can all safely say that Chrome was the winner of this particular test yeah yeah no no chrome is the winner I mean everyone thought it was good you press the button I press the magic button with my magical fingering yes sorry guys I demand a rematch you crazy oh that was a rigged race was it rigged there was no way that was fair I had no idea we'll do a rematch we'll make sure you win this time okay that's all I'm asking we're gonna take a quick break when we come back Sharon Vaknin joins us and she'll have some great tips on how to extend your Android phone battery life rematch you welcome back have you ever wished that your phone's battery life would last just a little bit longer maybe even a lot longer thankfully Sharon back miss coming up she's gonna have some advice for all you Android users that have you reaching for your chargers a little less often you know Android gets a pretty bad rap for having a short battery life but if you spend a few minutes with your phone settings you can easily turn that around today I'm showing you a few tips using the Nexus 5 running Android 4.4 KitKat but if you have any phone running 4.1 and above these tips will apply to you too for starters tone down that GPS there are lots of ways that sucks up your battery life even when you're not using Google Maps so head on over to your phone settings then location and choose location services from the bottom here and you'll want to disable both location reporting and location history chances are you're probably not using them and another tip for GPS back in that location menu head on over to mode and choose battery saving mode when you don't absolutely need pinpoint location reporting this way your phone will use less resources to find out where you are and here's another really good tip you know Google now ok Google where is the nearest pizza place you might not realize it's using a lot of your battery life so head on over to the Google now interface and scroll all the way up to this magic wand top it and from here you can see what Google now is showing you you've got your sports teams your stocks your places the ones I use the most battery life are again the ones that rely on GPS so go down to everything else and disable all of the features that you really don't need like traffic reporting and nearby places if you don't use those features you're just wasting battery life for absolutely no reason and here's one that everyone should know even you iOS and Windows Phone users Wi-Fi and brightness will always hog the lion's share of your battery life you don't want to disable Wi-Fi you still need to use it but to stop in the blow head on over to your settings and then to Wi-Fi and here tap the menu button and go to advanced in this menu disable scanning always available so it's not looking for networks when you're not trying to connect to Wi-Fi for brightness make sure that Auto is disabled and that you're adjusting your brightness manually to the lowest comfortable setting you'll be surprised how much battery it saves you finally there may be some apps that are draining your battery life but without you even realizing it so to find out what those apps are and to get a sense of your battery usage in general go to settings then battery and here you'll have a list of apps and services that are using your battery with the top two almost always being your screen and of course Wi-Fi so there you have it hopefully those tips will help you get a little bit more mileage out of your Android phone those are some pretty good tips yeah and up next Eric here breaks down everything you wanted to know about your phone's battery including when to replace it if you've all your smartphone for at least two years you probably notice that your battery doesn't last quite as long as it used to you that's because most smartphones use living and ion batteries which typically only function normally for about two to three years so how can you tell if your battery needs a replacement well here are three easy ways to figure it out the first is that your phone just isn't lasting very long now this is pretty obvious but if you charge your phone and then you unplug it and it dies immediately or even if it dies in like an hour or two a so telltale sign that there's something wrong you also want to make sure that it's not a software problem so you'll want to make sure that it's happening consistently also check for any software updates that may address the issue make sure you have the latest offer updates that's always important number two is that your phone gets hot and I'm talking really hot like uncomfortably so a normal functioning battery will periodically vent excess heat but one that's on its way out will have a lot of trouble doing that which will result in you playing a hot potato which you're really really hot phone and lastly if you can access your smartphone's battery you'll want to check for any swelling or bulging on the physical battery itself now this is a properly functioning new battery so you won't see that here swelling or bulging occurs when one of these cells inside the battery has ruptured due to overheating so you'll definitely want to stop using it immediately because it can still explode or catch fire now two ways to extend the life of your battery is to one never leave it plugged in and charged to capacity for an extended amount of time and to never let it deplete completely to zero doing either of these will adversely affect the life of your battery the big takeaway here is that lithium-ion batteries don't last forever and eventually you're gonna have to replace them whether that's replacing just the battery or your entire phone that's it for this week's show thank you all so much for watching if you want to reach us here with any show ideas i'm at donald on twitter on twitter I'm at lead opal and next week is all about televisions how to set them up and even some tips on installing them I'm gonna set one up in my new place cool dude see you guys next time you