Washington Works Blog

The line between genuine productivity and mindless distraction has become thinner than ever. From the magnetic pull of brightly-colored smartphone apps to the heavy mental drain caused by repetitive manual tasks and digital clutter, your relationship with your business' technology can easily shift from a helpful partnership to a major hindrance.

When was the last time you actually powered down your Android smartphone and gave it a much-needed restart? Chances are you go way too long in between restarts, but what if the reason you haven’t done so recently is because you can’t? Whether it’s wear and tear on your power button or some other issue, it’s good to have alternative ways to restart your Android operating system. Today, we want to show you how.

Keeping your smartphone safe for work is something that we all need to do. Not only do you have all of your personal data, if you use it for work, it probably has access to work emails, files, and other sensitive information, making it a target for hackers. To make sure it stays secure, here are some simple tips anyone can follow.

Have you ever imagined what life would be like if you weren’t buried in papers all the time? Loose sheets of paper, sticky notes, printouts… it’s all so wasteful and bad for the environment. But you can make a difference by going 100% paperless; that is, if you have the gumption for it.

The smartphone market used to be a hallmark of innovation, but nowadays, aside from the folding form factor, smartphone manufacturers have decided that the technology works, more or less, the same. What does this decline in innovation mean for you and your business? It might actually not be all that bad.

If you work on a computer often, you’ve almost certainly been told to clean your cache. It usually amounts to clicking a button on a login screen or in the user settings. In today’s article, we will tell you all about cache and how to clean it on your iPhone and Android device.

What would you do if you lost your smartphone? While some might do their best to keep their composure and work to find it, there’s no mistaking the amount of data stored on our favorite mobile devices. Today, we want to walk you through some strategies for finding your misplaced or stolen device.

Google’s Project Zero team has discovered 18 zero-day vulnerabilities impacting the Samsung Exynos modems—four of which enable remote code execution. Let’s talk about what this issue does, and what needs to be done to minimize risk.

No one wants to lose their phone, but it does happen. Whether you’ve left it somewhere or it has clearly been taken, you need to know how to respond to this situation. In this week’s blog, we will give you some tips on what to do if your phone has gone missing.

Have you ever cleared a notification on your phone, then gotten a sinking feeling a couple hours later, like you’ve missed something important? Well, worry no longer, for we will show you how to turn on your Android smartphone’s notification history feature. This should alleviate at least some of the stress you might experience about clearing notifications.

WhatsApp is one of the world’s most popular messaging applications. With over 2 billion users, WhatsApp is known for its relative security, as it is one of the few messaging applications that offers end-to-end encryption. A modified version of WhatsApp, called YoWhatsApp, has been reportedly deploying malware.

I feel like we’ve been talking a lot about the horrifying cybersecurity threats that loom over our heads, and thought it might be nice to really appreciate just how gosh-darn cool some of these devices we all have can be instead. 

When was the last time you wished your device had just a little bit of gas left in the tank? Smartphone batteries tend to degrade over time, regardless of how preventative and proactive we are with our day-to-day use. To help you be as productive as possible with your smartphone while the battery is still functional, we have put together a list of tips that you can use to help keep your battery as full as possible throughout the workday.

If you’ve lost or misplaced your smartphone (or tablet), it’s critical that you act quickly. Every second counts, especially if you suspect that your device was stolen. Here are the steps you need to follow immediately, even if you think you simply left it at a restaurant or in the backseat of a taxi.

Google’s Android operating system has about a 71.9 percent global market share, making it the most used smartphone operating system in the world. It’s well-trusted, and although the experience differs since phone manufacturers customize Android to fit their device, generally the operating system is pretty stable. This wasn’t the case for a massive number of users around March 22nd, 2021.

Nobody intends to lose their smartphone. For some of us, our mobile device is glued to our hands for a good portion of the day—it’s hard to imagine simply leaving it somewhere, right?

Mistakes happen. It doesn’t take more than a few minutes to set your smartphone up so you can track it down easily if you lose it. 

If you need a reason to upgrade to Android 11, it comes with a highly useful selection of options when you access the menu that appears when you hold down the power button on your device. However, you have the option to add much more value to this menu. To do this, you’ll need to make a small investment in an automation-driven third-party application known as Tasker. 

As capable as the Android platform is, there are a few significant shortcomings that can negatively influence the user’s experience. Here, we wanted to offer a few tips to help you eliminate or avoid these shortcomings as you work with your mobile device.

Today’s smartphones are equipped with assorted ways that users can authenticate their identity, from the now old-fashioned PIN to basic biometrics. However, while these options are available on a wide range of phones, not all of them are equally secure. Let’s look a bit closer at these authentication measures to find out which is most effective.

Smartphones are basically the most popular piece of technology ever. They can be used for much of the computing that people deem necessary. It’s no surprise that since they pay over $1,000 for these devices that your employees are going to take them everywhere, including your office. There was a time when employers were horrified by this fact, but today smartphones can just as easily be used for work as they are for distraction.