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A common problem in home networks is a sluggish Wi-Fi connection, which is frustrating to all family members and even when the network is shared with visitors. At its worst, the problems could cause videos to stutter, downloads to stall, and remote work to suffer.

Fortunately, there are a few things one can do to remedy some of the issues that relate to lousy Wi-Fi networks. We've collected some of the best tips on how one can try and fix the problems, regardless of the service provider.

Google shut down its streaming game service Stadia late last month and this means that some people have Stadia controllers lying around that seem to be of no use. That is fortunately not the case, as there's a way to take advantage of the controllers on other platforms.

Google had the controllers restricted to Stadia only when the platform was up and running. However, they support standard Bluetooth connection, which has been enabled by Google for other platforms, now that their platform is defunct.

Enabling the controllers on other platforms requires Google's tool, but the procedure is luckily fairly simple.

1. The Stadia controller needs to be first connected to a computer via the USB cable.



2. After that is done, the user needs to direct their Google Chrome web browser on the computer to this Google website. Note that this might not work with other web browsers.



3. The switching should be enabled in just a few moments by following the instruction on the website.

Google notes that this change is permanent and after switching to Bluetooth mode, the Wi-Fi mode is no longer available.

Sharing a Netflix account with a person in a different location is possible and indeed very common, although the company doesn't necessarily enjoy this behavior from their customers.

However, sometimes sharing of accounts happens even without the knowledge or approval of the account owner. Perhaps the Netflix account was logged in to a TV of an ex-partner, or children have shared the passwords with their friends. Occasionally hacked Netflix accounts are also shared online.

The disadvantages of allowing unwanted guests to use your Netflix account are many. Some of the more important reasons include the following. First is the moral quandary; someone else is using a service I pay for. Another one is that the other user can totally mess up the recommendation algorithm, which is important in finding new content that matches your tastes. And thirdly, this is technically against the User Agreement, which can result in the termination of the service.

Fortunately, Netflix has made it easier for users to kick out unwanted guests. One way to do that was always to switch the password. This would result in changing passwords to all legit devices, and now there's a much faster and more convenient way. Netflix mobile app has a feature, which allows the account holder to check which devices have used the Netflix account recently and from which parts of the world.

Do you know someone whose computer is way beyond its best-before date, and they, unfortunately, do know have the skills or the expertise to do much about it? Or do you own a pile of old laptop computers that do not have any use as is?

Google offers a simple and straightforward solution for these situations: ChromeOS Flex. The new ChromeOS version released in the summer of 2022 turns any old Windows, Linux, or Mac computer into a Chromebook. And what's better, it's all free.

Chromebooks and the operating system run on them, ChromeOS, are meant to be a lightweight solution that removes most of the unnecessary clutter that comes with a regular computer. Moreover, much of the computing happens in the cloud, which makes having powerful, heavy, high-consumption components unnecessary. This means that even a lesser computer can run ChromeOS efficiently.

The only thing you'll need in addition to the computer the operating system is going to be installed on is an empty thumb drive. As you test out the OS, everything is run from the thumb drive, so no files will be lost at first.

Google promises the compatibility of ChromeOS Flex only on officially supported devices, but our experiences are that ChromeOS Flex seems to work on practically all somewhat old Windows computers. However, Apple's computers, using the new proprietary Apple chip, do not work with ChromeOS Flex.

Robot vacuums are meant to make day-to-day life easier in several ways. When they are used efficiently, they can keep the house clean continuously - at least when it comes to floors. In addition, by using the timed cleaning features, the noise made by the vacuums isn't a worry.

However, the problem is that there is a wide array of different kinds of robot vacuums at various price points and from a myriad of manufacturers. There are both cheap and expensive models not worth investing in like there are good products at all price points. Even affordable vacuums can be perfectly fine, although with more money comes more features.

We have tested robot vacuum at AfterDawn since 2018. Our product-specific test periods usually last for several months, so we gain actual real-world results and find out quirks and problems that one might not find in short reviews. This also gives us a great overview on how a wide range of robot vacuums compare.

What do you need to know when choosing a robot vacuum?

Here we are going to list the most important points and features that one should consider before purchasing a robot vacuum.

1. Cleaning result
   
2. Connectivity
   
3. Timers and remote control
   
4. Languages
   
5. Barriers, rugs, and carpets
   
6. Size of the home
   
7. Self-emptying robot vacuums
   
8. Obstacle avoidance
   
9. How about a robot mop?

Year 2022 was supposed to be the year when we were planning to get out of the pandemic and get back to normal lives. Well, Russia decided differently and the entire year will be remembered as the year when a new war started in Europe.

Despite the war and horrors of it, tech world had some interesting developments during the year - lets try to wrap those changes up here.

The rise of the artificial intelligence

Since the very dawn of computing history, people have dreamed about the possibilities of artificial intelligence. Turing test has existed for decades and every now and then we've heard about the developments in AI research.

But the yeat 2022 as the year when AI finally became part of our everyday lives.

It all started with DALL-E in Spring of 2022, when OpenAI released its text-to-images AI project to the public. Suddenly, the entire web was flooded with psychedelic images created by the weird artificial intelligence software.

Soon after, in summer of 2022, open source world pushed the envelope further, by releasing Stable Diffusion project. An open source project doing exactly the same as DALL-E did: generate images from text prompts, but doing that better and with more customization options.

Chinese phone manufacturer OPPO has grown in recent years in Europe and Asia and has become one of the major Android phone manufacturers in the world. Now, company is following the footsteps of other Android manufacturers and is improving its update policy dramatically.

From year 2023 onwards, all new OPPO flagship models will be eligible for 4 major Android operating system updates and 5 years of security patches. Basically all new OPPO flagship phones released next year with Android 13 will get updated to Android 14, Android 15, Android 16 and finally to Android 17.

New policy matches the policy in place for Samsung and is in line with OPPO's sister brand, OnePlus, which made recently a similar policy change for its upcoming flagship models.

Policy change wont cover those phones released in year 2022 or before that, so current flagship models like OPPO Find X5 Pro wont be eligible for the four updates.

OPPO hasn't made any official statement on how midrange phones or low-end phones will get updates in future. But it is obvious that the longetivity of the phones is getting more and more important for consumers - and manufacturers are responding to that need.

Samsung sent us their modern, top-level robot vacuum cleaner for our test and review.

The Samsung Jet Bot 90 AI+ has a whopping price tag of around €1,400, and is the Korean CE giant's first attempt to push itself to the top of the world of robot vacuum cleaners.

We tested the robovac, which first went on sale in 2021, for a month and a half. As always, in our test we examine not only the cleaning power of the vacuum cleaner, but also its ease of use and especially the practicality of the device in a Finnish home.

The first half of the test period was spent in a typical and "easy" Finnish home, from the point of view of a robovac. The other half was a more challenging environment, including the presence of a pet that sheds hair, a bunch of carpets of varying thickness and shape, and a significant number of different obstacles that can make life difficult for a robot vacuum cleaner.

Due to our extensive past experience testing robot vacuum cleaners, we have a good understand of the potential challenges and problem areas that a robovac can encounter while doing its duty.

1. Samsung Jet Bot 90 Ai+ appearance and design
2. Technical information
3. Self-emptying charging dock
4. Samsung deployment
5. Samsung SmartThings smartphone app
6. Specialty: Camera surveillance
7. Activities
8. How should a robot vacuum cleaner be used?
9. Battery life
10. Carpets
11. Furniture
12. Other obstacles - and their avoidance
13. Pets
14. Problems
15. Cleaning traces
16. Summary
17. Is the Samsung Jet Bot 90 AI+ worth buying?
18. Pros
19. Cons
20. The stars

We received the Garmin Forerunner 955 smartwatch for review a few months ago, just after it was released in the summer of 2022. Depending on the variant, the smartwatch costs around $500 and is among the more expensive options from Garmin's selection of smartwatches.

The Forerunner model in particular is designed for specifically runners and exercise, as one can imagine from its product name. It is a direct successor to Garmin's Forerunner 945, which we tried previously and liked.

We took the new Forerunner for an extensive test during the three-month testing period, using it around the clock. We used the watch to measure exercise, sleep, stress, and general well-being.

After a long and arduous testing period, it is time to see what Garmin Forerunner 955 is about and how it handled our tests.

World's largest email service, Gmail is down. Email service owned by Google has vanished or is experiencing problems for all of its users currently.

The problems began around 15:00 UTC today and as of now, have lasted for more than an hour.

According to the DownDetector which monitors web service's online status, the problems are global and have just worsened during the past hour.



Gmail problems are widely reported by Twitter users, but Gmail's official support hasn't made an official statement about the issue yet.

EDIT 15:20 UTC: For some users, the web interface works fine, but new incoming messages aren't coming through at all.

We were given one of Samsung's new generation of robotic vacuum cleaners for a review: the new Samsung Jet Bot 80+, which is also sold under the name Samsung Jet Bot+.

It is a robot vacuum cleaner with a self-emptying dust container, which was released in the European market in 2021. Before this current series, Samsung was out of the robot vacuum business for years - bot now the company has decided to make a return to the market.

As usual, we put the robot to a work for more than three months. During our test period, the vacuum cleaner took care of cleaning the floor surfaces of two different apartments, as the only tool used for cleaning the floors.

Important to our test (as usual) is how suitable the product is for pet owners. Therefore, the test appropriately included everyday experience with how the Robo copes with pet hair and other problems that pets bring with them to the home.

The selling price for this product is around €500 in Finland, so it is placed in a difficult price segment in that sense: in the 500 euro range, top products are also available from competitors that manufacture robot vacuum cleaners, and they have more of a reputation in the market than Samsung.

When browsing mobile phones, headphones, Bluetooth speakers, etc. a device's IP classification is often mentioned. This refers to the devices waterproof and dust-resistance rating. There are a large number of IP classifications however, and most people don't know much about them. Here, we take a look at what the numbers mean.

A typical mobile phone IP rating can be, for example, IP68. Correspondingly, you often see IP57 rating in headphones. This is actually two separate numbers: the first number means dust resistance the second number means water resistance. The higher the number, the better!

The tests are carried out in official laboratory conditions and an official, approved IP classification is given to the device after the tests are concluded.

The first number of the IP classification, dust resistance, is defined as follows:

Number	What does it mean?
0	No protection against dust at all.
1	Protection against objects up to 5 cm in size, i.e. particles larger than five centimeters cannot enter the device's structures.
2	Protection against 12.5 mm particles. That is, objects larger than a good centimeter cannot enter the device's structures.
3	Protection against 2.5 mm particles. Small, but clearly visible, quarter-centimeter-sized particles cannot enter the device's structures.
4	Protection against 1 mm particles. Pieces with a diameter of a millimeter - and pieces larger than that - cannot enter the device's structures.
5	Protected from dust. In practice, no dust gets inside the device to the extent that it would hinder the operation of the device. Dust accumulations may occur.
6	Perfectly protected against dust. Dustproof.

Many home network problems are related to a slow Wi-Fi connection, which causes tension for all family members using a wireless network. At worst, the problems cause video stuttering, slow download speeds, and can even make remote work difficult or impossible.

Fortunately, a lot of wireless network problems are relatively easy to solve. In this guide, we listed easy tips to improve your own WLAN connection, which should work with all Internet operators.

1. What causes WiFi problems?
2. Start by measuring Internet speed
3. Does the problem affect all devices?
   • Problems with only one device? What to do?
4. Change the WLAN channel
5. Switch from 2.4GHz to 5GHz network
6. Channel width
7. Find the right place for the base station
8. Is someone else using your network?
9. Mesh network, will it help?
10. Change base station
11. Use wired Internet connection

What are the common causes of WiFi problems?

In practice, the most typical problems are caused by bad placement of the base station, obstacles and neighbors. The base station is the part of the network that transmits the WLAN signal: in many homes this is the same thing as a modem or router, which itself has a WLAN base station / router.

Do you feel like your phone battery is draining too quickly? The phone is relatively new, but the battery doesn't last as long as you think it should? There can be many reasons for this - and some of them have clear and easy solutions.

In this guide, we go through the most typical reasons for rapid battery drain with phones, and look at potential reasons or solutions.

1. Display brightness settings
2. Display speed and accuracy
3. Network problems
   1. Force the phone to a specific network
   2. Turn off Wi-Fi
4. A program or background process gone wild
5. Monitor application's battery usage
6. Cold weather
7. Wait a while...
8. Check condition of battery
9. The battery is defective or exhausted

Screen brightness

The most battery-consuming part of your device is its display. Smartphone screens have become much larger and brighter. Therefore, the screen brightness has a huge impact on battery consumption (and how long the device will run on a single charge.)

Sometimes, Android updates can go horribly wrong. The intentions of manufacturers are usually good. After all, new updates bring about new features, performance improvements, security improvements, etc. Every now and then, however, a new Android update can pose significant problems for end users.

For an example of when things can go wrong, you only have to look at OnePlus' infamous Android 12 update debacle. This system update was completely rejected by users of updated devices. It significantly altered the user interface of the operating system - according to many users, for the worse. In addition, some users reported that the update was plagued with bugs.

This news made a lot of users of affected headsets ponder a delay to updating the device.

But.. What happens if you don't update your phone to the latest Android version?

In summary: In the short term, nothing really!

However, after six months or more, thing start happening under the hood that the user cannot see, but which can be potentially significant issues.

Device and Data Security degrade with time

A manufacturer will stop supporting older versions of Android with updates, because a new version is available for the device and they want you to update. Unfortunately, this can include security updates too.