Google first announced Allo and Duo, its new messaging and video chat apps, at its I/O developer conference earlier this year. Duo launched about a month ago and today it’s Allo’s turn. With Allo, Google is combining everything it has learned from its previous messaging products with the company’s machine learning smarts. Indeed, Allo marks the first time you’ll be… Read More
Ride hailing services aimed at women drivers and passengers are a small but growing niche. See Jane Go is officially up and running today; drivers and passengers can download the app on iOS or Android to get started. SafeHer will be launching in Boston this fall with plans to expand to four cities soon after. In reporting on See Jane Go and SafeHer (the ride hailing service known briefly… Read More
Whether you’re working out of a dorm room or running a billion dollar company, a little pivot can go a long way. At their worst, pivots can derail a company’s success, but at their best, they demonstrate a company is still attuned to its user base — no matter how big it gets. Digit, a fintech service that helps people save, launched a year and a half ago with the… Read More
Google has been given another extension to respond to European Union charges its Android mobile operating system is in breach of the region’s competition law. Read More
There’s much anticipation about Chinese smartphone company Xiaomi’s long-awaited entry into the U.S. market. And we don’t have long to wait. Kinda. TechCrunch understands that Xiaomi will begin selling its first mainstream product in the U.S. — an Android set-top box — as soon as next month. Read More
HBO has what looks like an expansive new epic TV series on the way, only this time it’s swapping fantasy, swords and castles for androids, AI and western duds. Westworld is a new sci-fi series coming to the cable network beginning in October, based on the Michael Crichton film from 1973. IN the original, a high-tech theme park with western, medieval and ancient Roman-themed sections… Read More
Art filter app sensation Prisma, which has revved up from nothing to an incredible 55 million+ downloads for its iOS and Android apps in just two months this summer, has now added an offline mode. Read More
Google today announced two major changes related to its mobile search results. The one you’ll probably notice first is that Google is removing the “mobile-friendly” label that highlighted pages that were easy to read on mobile from its mobile search results pages. In the long run, though, the second change may be more wide-reaching: starting on January 10, 2017, the company… Read More
The rise in consumer usage of ad blockers is leading to a few creative alternatives to try to achieve a ‘better relationship’ between ad tech and web browsers. To wit Russia’s Yandex, which has just announced it’s adding a complaint button to its Android browser to lets users report ads they find annoying. Read More
Google surprised everyone when it launched a public beta of the Android Nougat back in March. Annual updates are nothing new for Android, but not only did this announcement come very early, it also offered users the option to easily install the beta with an over-the-air update. Now, half a year later, Nougat is out of beta and available for Google’s own Nexus devices (the Nexus… Read More
What growth there is left in the smartphone market continues to center on emerging markets where consumers are upgrading from feature phones. Read More
Google Classroom, the company’s platform that brings together Google Apps for Education and a number of tools for managing classes and content, is getting one of its regular summer updates today (right in time before the next school year starts). While Classroom has traditionally focused on offering tools for teachers and students, this new version now also brings in parents and guardians. Read More
Google has had another appeal against Android antitrust charges turned down by a Russian court. At issue is how the company requires handset makers using its Android OS to also pre-load Google apps and services onto devices in order to get access to the Play app store. Read More
Google has a new operating system called Fuchsia in development, with the early results publicly available on Github (and you can even compile and run it yourself, should you feel daring. The new OS differs from both Android and Chrome OS since it doesn’t run on a Linux kernel, and instead uses as its core code something called Magenta, which might make it better suited to running on… Read More
Microsoft looks to have inadvertently made some of its own orphaned devices useful again, after accidentally leaking a debug policy that could allow owners of Windows powered hardware such as earlier iterations of Windows Phones smartphones or ARM-powered Windows RT tablets to install alternative operating systems like Android and Linux. Read More
LinkedIn announced today that it is open sourcing a tool called Test Butler, which was developed in-house to overcome limitations on Android app test emulators. As LinkedIn was developing its latest Android app, it decided to completely overhaul the way it develops and tests apps, but it ran into a huge testing limitation, one that was slowing it down it in an unacceptable way. “We… Read More
Google today rolled out a new feature for Android users designed to keep their accounts more secure: notifications about newly added devices. That is, when a new device is added to your Google account, you’ll receive a push notification on your current Android device about the security event. The notification will ask, “Did you just sign in?” If the activity appears… Read More
Samsung’s all set to steal the smartphone spotlight tomorrow at its big Unpacked event, but LG’s kicking August off with an important announcement of its own. The electronics giant will attempt to send a shock to its struggling mobile device wing with the launch of the V20, a new flagship that will be the first handset to ship with Android 7.0. LG’s still keeping plenty… Read More
Pokemon Go is definitely big enough to start generating its own ecosystem, and one new Android app hints at how far things could go beyond simply crafting a better Pokedex. PokeFit gives PoGo trainers a dashboard overlaid on their game screen to track play time, distance travelled, steps walked and energy burned. PokeFit, from P3 communications, helps trainers get a real-time grasp on the… Read More
Flagship phones are often make or break in the mobile industry. Just ask LG. The Korean company’s G5, an ambitious effort at modular devices, continues to weigh on the company’s financial performance this year. Read More
Google officially announced this morning the launch of “Family Library” – a program that allows up to six family members to share their purchases from Google Play across devices. This includes the ability to share music, movies, TV shows, books, apps and games across Android phones and tablets, and, in some cases, across the web, iOS, and other connected TV platforms like… Read More
There’s nothing worse than answering a call from a number you don’t recognize and getting locked into an awkward sales or marketing call. Well, those incidents may be less frequent for many after Google added spam call detection to its phone app for Android. Read More
It’s been a busy week for the Google Maps team. As we reported earlier today, the Google Maps apps are getting a WiFi-only mode and the team is also bringing more crowdsourcing tools to the mobile apps as well. The company kept the biggest announcement for today, though: Google Maps on iOS, Android and the web is getting a new and cleaner look with a more subtle color scheme.… Read More
The hits just keep on coming for Prisma. Just over a month after launching on iOS and almost immediately capturing the imagination of the Instagramming masses in the process, AI-fueled photo filtering app is Prisma is now live for all Android users. That’s a mere five days after the app first launched in beta on Google’s mobile operating system, through a limited invite… Read More
Plenty of people still like to read their comics on paper, but increasingly, phones and tablets are the devices of choice for keeping up with the Justice League. Last year, Google introduced a new reading experience for comics in its Play Books store for Android that makes it easier to follow along with the story. Today, the company is launching yet another update to the comics reading… Read More
