Smartphones

Microsoft noted Tuesday that it has begun to crack down on apps whose icon, description or name can be misleading. In a blog post, the software maker noted it has removed more than 1,500 such apps and has worked with developers of other titles to change the potentially confusing information. “Every app store finds its Continue Reading →

For some teenagers, wearing last season’s jeans will always be unthinkable. But a growing number consider texting on a dated smartphone even worse. For teenage apparel retailers, that screen-obsessed teenager poses a big threat in the still-important back-to-school sales season. Muscle shirts and strategically ripped jeans no longer provide an assured spot for retailers like Continue Reading →

Apple is widely expected to reveal a mobile payments system alongside the iPhone 6 at its press event on September 9th. The system — supposedly designed to take on Google Wallet, Isis, Paypal, and others — would allow you to use your phone to pay for items at the cash register, and it appears Apple’s Continue Reading →

By signing in to a law a bill that requires anti-theft kill switches on smartphones, California Gov. Jerry Brown has set what will likely be a nationwide standard for wireless devices shipped across the nation. The law, which Brown signed Monday, takes effect in July 2015. It requires smartphones sold in the state to come Continue Reading →

On Friday afternoon, Apple opened up an iPhone 5 battery replacement program after discovering that a “very small percentage” of units “may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently.” The iPhone 5 was originally launched in September 2012, and Apple says that the affected units were sold between that month Continue Reading →

A security precaution skipped in mobile applications such as Facebook’s Messenger could be abused to make an expensive phone call at a victim’s expense, a developer contends. Phone numbers often appear as links on a mobile device. That is possible by using a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) scheme called ”tel” to trigger a call. URI Continue Reading →

If you’re putting your Android phone or tablet up for sale on eBay, then a factory reset might not be enough to destroy all of the data on it. On some devices, the files and photos on your phone aren’t actually erased—just the references and file structure around them. With a few hacking tools, anyone Continue Reading →

This back-to-school season, students more than ever are arriving to classrooms equipped with digital devices and learning tools. Apps, videos and other online resources that can be accessed from iPads, Androids devices, Chromebooks and the like are profoundly impacting the learning process. While many elementary, middle and high school students are already accustomed to technology-enabled Continue Reading →

How do we identify and discard energy-inefficient apps? According to two Stanford computer scientists, the solution lies in another app. Adam Oliner and Jacob Leverich designed a program called Normal to tell you which other apps you ought to kill. It’s a telling problem that iOS message boards are plagued by constant complaints of mysteriously Continue Reading →

This seemingly random assortment of colorful rectangles, reminiscent of a terrible paint swatch accident, actually represents the state of Android fragmentation in 2014. OpenSignal, a website dedicated to mapping all things mobile, pulled together this data and saw 18,769 distinct devices downloading its app on Android. And we thought last year was bad. How bad Continue Reading →