Mobile

If you were one of the nearly 77 million people affected by last year’s T-Mobile breach, you may have a few bucks coming your way. The company has just announced the terms of a settlement in a consolidated class action lawsuit, and it isn’t cheap: $350 million to be split up by customers (and lawyers),

It’s probably hyperbole to credit Google’s Pixel A devices for single-handedly keeping the broader line alive during some admittedly lean times. Let’s be honest, much of that goes to Google’s very deep pockets — when you’re one of the world’s largest companies, what’s a little sunk-cost fallacy between friends? The budget devices have, however, been

Factors like latency, bandwidth, security and privacy are driving the adoption of edge computing, which aims to process data closer to where it’s being generated. Consider a temperature sensor in a shipyard or a fleet of cameras in a fulfillment center. Normally, the data from them might have to be relayed to a server for

The days of the Galaxy Note Unpacked events are sadly gone, but Samsung’s foldables are more than happy to fill a phablet-sized hole in the company’s annual release schedule. Over the last couple of years, the company has made good on its promise to fully commit to the form factor, and we expect to see

Bad news about smartphone shipments has become the norm, rather than the exception, in recent years. The trend pre-dates the pandemic, but has only accelerated during the pandemic, thanks to various economic and supply chain impacts. Even so, a high single-digit drop warrants examination and some difficult questions around the industry’s health. New figures out

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. Global app spending reached $65 billion in the first half of 2022, up only slightly from the $64.4 billion during the same period in 2021, as hypergrowth fueled by

Deci, a startup company with 50 employees who are developing a platform to build and optimize AI-powered systems, today announced that it closed a $25 million Series B financing round led by Insight Partners with participation from Square Peg, Emerge, Jibe Ventures, Fort Ross Ventures, and ICON that brings the company’s total raised to $55.1

The anonymous Q&A app NGL climbed to the top of the App Store by tricking its users with questions it claims are sent in by their friends and by charging for useless hints about who supposedly wrote those messages. But many of the questions users receive aren’t from real people; they’re generated automatically — an

Can a smartphone still be cool? They were, once upon a time, in those days when they were more luxury than ubiquity. But what happens when everyone has one — and, more to the point, we all pretty much have the same one? Phones aren’t fashion. They’re not clothes or shoes or even cars. Chances

South Korean messaging giant Kakao confirmed today it will remove an external payment option after Google blocked the South Korean company behind KakaoTalk from issuing updates.  The South Korean company continued using an external payment link in its Android app against Google’s new in-app payment rules. While the app’s updates were suspended on June 30,

Thanks to the pandemic, teams are more distributed than ever. For some companies, that’s led to a disconnect between lower-level employees and leadership, the latter of whom are generally skeptical of remote work. According to a survey from GoodHire, 75% of managers want workers in the office, citing the potential lack of focus and loss

A major shift in the U.S. app economy has just taken place. In the second quarter of this year, U.S. consumer spending in non-game mobile apps surpassed spending in mobile games for the first time in May 2022 and the trend continued in June. This drove the total revenue generated by non-game apps higher for

There’s a growing appetite for alternative search engines. At least, that’s the crux of the argument Richard Socher, the former chief scientist at Salesforce, likes to make. In 2020, Socher co-founded You, a search engine that uses AI to understand search queries, rank the results and parse the queries into different languages (including programming languages).

ChowNow, a startup that builds branded online ordering systems for restaurants, today announced layoffs internally, TechCrunch has learned. According to several sources who spoke to this reporter on the condition of anonymity, around 100 people were affected across teams including onboarding, operations, and sales. “We, like every company, plan our annual budgets far ahead of

Kids and teens are now spending more time watching videos on TikTok than on YouTube. In fact, that’s been the case since June 2020 — the month when TikTok began to outrank YouTube in terms of the average minutes per day people ages 4 through 18 spent accessing these two competitive video platforms. That month,

Just before World Emoji Day on Sunday, we are getting a glimpse of new emojis that we might get to use on our phones in a few months. Folks at Emojipedia have drawn up a draft version of selected submissions in Emoji 15.0 that contains, among others, a pushing hand, a shaking face (or I’m

Google has responded to dating app maker Match Group’s antitrust lawsuit in a scathing new court filing which refers to Match’s original complaint as a “cynical attempt” to take advantage of Google Play’s distribution platform and other tools while attempting to sidestep Google’s fees. The two tech giants have been battling it out in court

“They told me it’s the kanji character for ‘love,’” Carl Pei explains, “but I call bullshit on that. I can’t see it.” The Gliph design is — by far — the most striking element of the Phone (1)’s design. It’s a series of 900 LEDs spread out and overlaid with a diffuser to create a

Neji Tawo, the founder of boutique software development company Wiscount Corporation, says he was inspired by his dad to become an engineer. When Tawo was a kid, his dad tasked him with coming up with a formula to calculate the gas in the fuel tanks at his family’s station. Tawo then created an app for

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the

“I want to do some crazy stuff,” Jason Keats says with a laugh. “I want to bring back that GEM phone.” He reaches behind him and pulls the strikingly slender device off a shelf. The battery’s dead, but as a prop, it still works. Essential released images of the prototype device in October 2019 —

Traba, a jobs board designed to help entry-level workers find available shifts at fulfillment centers and event venues, today announced that it raised $20 million in a Series A round. Khosla led the financing with participation from Founders Fund, General Catalyst, SciFi VC and Atomic, valuing Traba at $120 million post-money. CEO Mike Shebat says

Nothing, the consumer tech company started by OnePlus co-founder Carl Pei and known for its aggressive marketing, unveils a non-fungible token project called Black Dot. Its fans are skeptical. Black Dot is a video clip featuring a rotating, transparent cube with a black dot bouncing off the walls inside and making a crispy, metallic sound.

Glance, a subsidiary of adtech giant InMobi Group, is planning to launch its lock screen platform on Android smartphones in the U.S. within two months, a source familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The startup is engaging with wireless carriers in the U.S. for partnerships and is gearing up to launch on several smartphone models

Google has stopped providing updates to popular messaging app KakaoTalk in South Korea, according to a local report, after Kakao continued using an external payment link in its Android app, against Google’s new in-app payments policy. Google’s new policy requires developers selling digital goods and services to use Google’s first-party billing system, but Kakao has

Onomondo, a startup offering a dedicated wireless network for internet of things (IoT) devices, today announced that it raised $21 million in a funding round led by Verdane with participation from Maersk Growth, People Ventures, and The Danish Growth Fund. In an email, CEO Michael Karlsen told TechCrunch that the new cash will be put

Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record number of downloads and consumer spending across both the iOS and Google Play stores combined in 2021, according to the

Google said Thursday it will pay $90 million to settle a lawsuit with US developers that accused Google of abusing its power of app distribution and charging an unfair fee of 30% for app purchases and in-app purchases made through the Play Store. The company noted that US developers who made less than $2 million each

TaskHuman, a professional development platform focused on coaching, today announced that it raised $20 million in Series B funding led by Madrona with participation from Impact Venture Capital, RingCentral Ventures, Sure Ventures, USVP, Gaingels, PeopleTech Angels, Propel(x) and Zoom Ventures. The latest infusion brings the company’s total raised to $35 million, which CEO Ravi Swaminathan

Google today announced an update to its password manager that will finally introduce a consistent look-and-feel across the service’s Chrome and Android implementations. Users will soon see a new unified user experience that will automatically group multiple passwords for the same sites or apps together, as well as a new shortcut on the Android home