Mobile

Google has released Android 13 beta 3, and while there aren’t any major changes in this version, that’s probably the point of it as the version has reached platform stability. This means that there won’t be any significant changes to Android 13’s APIs, and developers can tune their apps for the version when it rolls

Amazon is tapping into augmented reality in an attempt to appeal to sneakerheads shopping its site. The retailer this morning announced a new feature called Virtual Try-On for Shoes that will allow customers to visualize how a pair of new shoes will look on themselves from multiple angles using their mobile phone’s camera. The company

Last year, leaked photos of Meta’s smartwatch with a camera made the rounds. But the product may never make it to the light of day: according to a report in Bloomberg, the parent company of Facebook has halted its development. The report does not give a reason for the about-face, but in April, the tech

TikTok users regularly complain of hours lost on the platform, thanks to the video app’s unmatched ability to distract, entertain and engage users by way of its advanced recommendation technology. Its addictive nature has been the subject of numerous psychological studies and parents’ concerns, as TikTok becomes one of the most-used apps among children. In

The news that Apple would offer its own “buy now, pay later” service splitting any Apple Pay bill into installments hit the fintech lending world like a thunderbolt. But it turns out the new feature, while simple for consumers, necessitated a bit of backstage reorganizing at Apple, including a whole new subsidiary that will run

Apple had a ton of big hits in its iOS 16 announcements including a lock screen revamp, updates to Photos, and improved Mail app experience. Apart from that, there were a ton of things that the company skimmed over briefly or didn’t mention at all. As more people are testing the iOS 16 developer beta,

Security is a moving target, and Apple’s latest security release aims to respond better to that: to keep iPhones and Macs up to date with new security fixes, it’s launching Rapid Security Response, which will apply security updates to devices on the fly, outside of version updates for iOS. The feature was announced at its

Take Blip, an online messaging platform for businesses, today announced that it raised $70 million in a Series B round led by Warburg Pincus. CEO Roberto Oliveira said that the capital, which brings Take Blip’s total raised to $170 million, will be put toward product development, mergers and acquisitions, and customer acquisition. Not every customer

A game studio, HiDef, announced today that it is teaming up with camera company Snap Inc. to develop an off-platform Bitmoji-based dance and music social game. The game will leverage Snap’s augmented reality tech as well as Bitmoji, the personalized cartoon avatar maker. Bitmoji joined the Snap family over five years ago, and today over

Today at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), Apple unveiled a slew of upgrades headed to iPad devices in iPadOS 16, the latest version of the company’s tablet-focused operating system. A redesigned multitasking interface — dubbed Stage Manager — makes it simpler to see which apps are open and switch between tasks, while new tools offer

At a developer briefing following Apple’s keynote address at its Worldwide Developer Conference this afternoon, the company went into more detail about the different types of widgets developers can now build for the iOS 16 Lock Screen. Inspired by the Apple Watch’s complications, Apple said these new widgets can help developers leverage key information from

As it continues to chase TikTok, Meta today announced a series of updates and new features for its Reels products across both Facebook and Instagram. Most notably, it’s offering a Sound Sync feature on Facebook Reels and adding support for longer Instagram Reels of up to 90 seconds, instead of 60 seconds, previously. The expansion

A new analysis indicates it’s gotten harder to get an app to the top of the App Store, in terms of downloads, over the past several years. According to new data from app intelligence firm Sensor Tower, the number of downloads needed for an app to break into the No. 1 position on Apple’s iPhone

Google Duo, the company’s video chat service for consumers, will soon merge with Google Meet, the company’s video chat service for business users. The Duo app will soon get all of Meet’s features, including scheduled calls, and then, once the transition is complete, change its name to Google Meet. At that point, the current Meet

YouTube is improving its app’s experience for those who watch videos via their TVs, the company announced today. After observing that many YouTube users were already using the mobile app and engaging with videos as they watched on the big screen, the company is now introducing a new feature that allows users to connect their

Not everyone is on board with the idea of remote work. But for those who are, Slack’s new profile features released today should make some workday tasks, particularly onboarding, a bit easier. Slack now supports pronunciation guides for profiles, allowing users to add name pronunciations in the form of phonetic spellings or audio recordings. They’ll

Ahead of Apple’s big developer conference on June 6, WWDC, new information about what’s in store for iOS 16 has come to light. According to leaks reported by Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, iOS users may expect to see new features like an upgraded lockscreen as well as updated first-party apps, including Messages and Health, updates to

A federal antitrust lawsuit over the long-shuttered alternative app store called Cydia has now been given the green light to proceed, after its initial complaint was dismissed. The Cydia app store, which once featured apps and other tweaks that weren’t permitted by Apple’s official App Store policies, is suing Apple over its alleged unlawful monopoly

All is not well in smartphone land. The industry was headed for a slowdown well before SARS-CoV-2 entered the picture. The glory days of expanding markets and bi-annual upgrades are seemingly at an end, and things have only been exacerbated by two years of financial hardships and supply chain constraints. For all these reasons, it’s

Longtime engineer and product designer Michael Sayman has been building apps since he was a kid, landing him roles at Facebook, Google, Roblox, and most recently Twitter, where he’s often been tasked with developing products aimed at a teenage audience. Sayman was only 17 when he joined Facebook, but had already built several apps —

Yubo, a social livestreaming app popular with a Gen Z audience, announced today it’s becoming one of the first major social platforms to adopt a new age verification technique that uses live image capture technology to identify minors using its app, in order to keep them separated from adult users. While other companies serving a

Today at Build 2022, Microsoft unveiled Project Volterra, a device powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform that’s designed to let developers explore “AI scenarios” via Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (SNPE) for Windows toolkit. The hardware arrives alongside support in Windows for neural processing units (NPUs), or dedicated chips tailored for AI- and machine learning-specific

Dating platform Bumble is looking to enhance its non-dating social features with a further investment into its Bumble BFF feature, first launched in 2016. This friend-finding feature currently uses the same swiped-based mechanics to connect people looking for platonic relationships, but will soon expand to include social networking groups where users can connect with one

Google Maps’ Street View feature was created 15 years ago, and since then, has added more than 220 billion Street View images from over 100 countries and territories. Many of us have taken advantage of its capabilities, especially scoping out unknown locations before heading there in person. To celebrate the anniversary, the company announced upgrades

Epic Games isn’t just fighting the app stores over the right to process its own in-app payments in its popular game Fortnite, it’s also taken up its antitrust legal battle with the tech giants via Bandcamp, the internet music company Epic acquired in March. The following month, Epic filed an injunction asking for the right

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

In 2017, we noted that smartphone screen sizes had settled into a sweet spot between five and six inches. In hindsight, that may well have been wishful thinking. A brief respite aside, it seems that phones have only continued to embiggen, driven by a continued spec war and panel manufacturers like Samsung. Heck, even Steve

WhatsApp is continuing its push into the business market with today’s news it’s launching the WhatsApp Cloud API to all businesses worldwide. Introduced into beta testing last November, the new developer tool is a cloud-based version of the WhatsApp Business API — WhatsApp’s first revenue-generating enterprise product — but hosted on parent company Meta’s infrastructure.

A little bright spot in a market that was already struggling with declining sales well before a global pandemic, supply chain crisis and inflation concerns struck. The North American market saw a small – but hopeful – 4% increase in shipments over the same time last year, per new numbers from Canalys. The primary driver

In 2010, Bastian Gotter invested up to $200,000 into IROKOtv, an African video-on-demand company Jason Njoku, his friend and co-founder, launched in Lagos, Nigeria. For the next couple of years, Gotter, as CFO, was instrumental in turning IROKO — after raising over $30 million from VCs, including Tiger Global — into a household name in