How to install Android 11 Developer Preview on the Essential Phone

Last month, Google pulled the trigger and released the first Developer Preview build of Android 11 a little bit earlier than much of us anticipated. While it was an exciting prospect to be on the very bleeding edge, it was a bit of a mixed bag more than anything. Shortly after, Google released another Developer Preview build, ironing out some of the bugs reported in the initial release. This indeed is the ultimate gift to entertain all of the geeky owners of the Pixel 4, 3a, 3 and 2 devices during their quarantine (may the Pixel 1 rest in peace). And despite Essential pulling the plug on the PH-1, declaring no further support beyond the February security update, it’s fair to say Essential’s engineers were a bit too stubborn to let it go, treating their geeky users with the biggest surprise yet: Android 11 support. Here is a simple procedure to install the latest Developer Preview build of Android 11 on the legendary Essential PH-1

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How to use your Android phone’s fingerprint sensor to unlock your Windows PC

The best part of the Apple ecosystem is how all their products work together. If you have a MacBook and an Apple Watch, you can use your Apple Watch to unlock your MacBook. However, Windows and Android are increasingly tying in better too. Now, you can easily use your Android phone’s fingerprint scanner to unlock your Windows PC.

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How to reduce the amount of blue light emitted from your tech devices

Unless you’ve been living under a rock all this time, I’m sure you’ve seen or at least heard of by now the recent study conducted by researches at the University of Toledo in which everyone is freaking out about. Apparently, the blue light people encounter—from laptops, televisions, phones, and even the sun itself—prompts a chemical reaction that kills photoreceptor cells thus damaging your eyesight and slowly making you blind when you reach your 50s or 60s. Fortunately, all is not lost, and there are several things that you can do to reduce the blue light emitted from your tech devices. Biohackers Lab has created a useful guide for techies who want to test blue light filter levels.

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How to connect your Wear OS watch to a new phone—without wiping

If you’re like me, you probably reset your phone or change ROMs fairly often. I frequently clean flash on my phone, and as you probably know, this means setting back up your Wear OS device to connect back to your phone, wiping the watch and all data on it. It’s possible, however, to keep your data and simply sync your watch to your newly set up phone.

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Android Tip: How to hide the persistent background task notification in Android 8.0

Android 8.0 includes a useful feature with it which shows you the information about the background apps as persistent notification. These are the apps running in the background on your device. This helps you understand which apps are using screen overlays and which apps are running tasks in the background while you are using another app. It’s incredibly helpful if you want to know what apps are causing battery drain or running for too long in the background. If you’re on Oreo and are tired of snoozing that notification about apps running in the background, you can use these apps to permanently silence them.

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[Update: Fixed by Yahoo] Here’s how to easily fix the Yahoo Answers “infinite scroll” bug in Chrome

A little over a week ago, we brought attention to the “infinite scroll” bug on Yahoo Answers where, if using Chrome, answers would fly straight down the page before you could even glance at them. After being a known bug for nearly two years now and Yahoo not bothering to do anything whatsoever about it, I’ve scavenged the internet and finally found a simple solution to this mess.

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