Google is launching the Android Experiments I/O Challenge today in an effort to bring more interesting open-source apps to its Android Experiments showcase. The three winners of the challenge, which will run until April 13, will get a trip to this year’s Google I/O developer conference. The five runners-up will get Nexus 6Ps (which, in […]
Typically, mobile apps are stand-alone experiences that play nicely with the operating system but aren’t fully integrated in it. Cyanogen — the company best known for its Android-based Cyanogen OS — is launching MOD today, a new developer platform that will give app developers the ability to integrate their apps more directly into the operating […]
BMW was among the first auto manufacturers to introduce integration with iPhones in 2011. Now, five years later, the company has at last announced at the New York International Auto Show that BMW Apps will integrate with Android devices. The first three apps to work with the iDrive system in the 2016 BMW 7 Series are […]
Here at Mobile World Congress 2016, the annual Barcelona-based flesh-pressing of the telco industry, Google and a bunch of carriers have put out a press release talking up how they are apparently ‘aligning’ to try to drive adoption of RCS. Aka the Rich Communications Services interoperable messaging standard that carriers have been trying to push for years. Carriers’ aim with RCS […]
A panel session probing the perennial heads or tails of mobile device commoditization vs mobile device innovation here at MWC 2016 earlier today heard an interesting range of views. Speakers ran the gamut of mobile makers big and small (Samsung, Motorola/Lenovo and Wileyfox), through to chipset maker Qualcomm, alternative open Android flavor Cyanogen, and mobile operator […]
Mobile OS maker Jolla, who with its Android alternative Sailfish has been trying to carve out a niche for a third platform in the smartphone space for the past five years, has announced it’s signed a new OEM partner: African OEM Mi-Fone. “Mi-Fone is one of the first African device vendors, aiming to be one of the […]
Google announced two small but useful updates for Gmail on Android today: rich text formatting and instant RSVPs. Rich text formatting has long been available for Gmail on the web, but this is the first time Google has brought it to mobile. The formatting options are pretty straightforward: You can bold, italic, underline, color and […]
A startup comprised of a trio of ex-Google engineers is doing something Google has roundly failed to do: make Android compelling on larger-screen devices like tablets and even PCs. Jide Technology, which was founded in 2014 and raised $1.6 million on Kickstarter last summer with a pitch to build “the world’s first true Android PC,” has tweaked the platform to make it […]
Amazon has confirmed that version 5 of Fire OS for its Fire tablet removes support for device encryption. In a statement sent to TechCrunch the company said: “In the fall when we released Fire OS 5, we removed some enterprise features that we found customers weren’t using. All Fire tablets’ communication with Amazon’s cloud meet our high standards for privacy […]
Confirming reports from earlier this year, which spoke of a forthcoming revamp of the Facebook Messenger application for Android devices, Facebook today began rolling out a new, Material Design-styled version of Messenger on Android to all users worldwide. The updated application now features a bright blue navigation bar at the top of the screen with […]