Mobile Phone

Facebook is paring down its collection of standalone apps. The company’s experimental “teens-only” app Lifestage, designed to counteract Snapchat’s threat, has been pulled from the App Store. Its disappearance was first spotted by Business Insider, and Facebook confirmed its removal. However, Lifestage isn’t the only Facebook app that’s being killed …

The Galaxy S8 has a reputation for being a rather fragile phone, but the newly announced Galaxy S8 Active should offer a bit more durability. That’s the whole point of Samsung’s Active line of phones, which have been available for all of its recent Galaxy S devices. However, this year …

Venmo today rolled out a feature designed to make it easier to find friends within its mobile payments app, so you can add them to your connections list or get paid yourself. The feature, found under the new menu option “Scan Code,” is available now in both the iOS and …

Samsung was riding high on the success of phones like the Galaxy S7 last year when it launched its most ambitious phone yet; the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7. The phone was sleek and capable with a built-in stylus and the prettiest display on any phone in the world. However, defective …

Amazon has quietly launched a new feature called “Themes,” designed to make it easier for shoppers to navigate a product’s customer reviews. Now, in the Amazon mobile app, you’re able to see which words have been used the most frequently across the reviews left by other customers, and then tap …

Google today announced it’s rolling out a change to its Play Store so that better-performing apps – meaning those that experience fewer crashes and those that don’t drain your smartphone battery – will be ranked higher than apps with bugs and other performance issues. The goal with this new ranking …

In April, Google unveiled a new vision for its Google Earth application, two years in the making, that introduced more ways to explore the planet through guided tours, informational cards, integrated 360-degree videos and Street View imagery, and more. Initially, the new Google Earth was available only on Android and …

The PayPal partnerships keep coming. The still growing payments giant today announced a new deal with Skype that will allow users in 22 countries worldwide to send money to other Skype users through an updated version of the Skype mobile app. This extends PayPal’s potential reach by a sizable amount …

VSCO is a brand well-known among photographers who take advantage of its presets for desktop and its mobile app featuring film-inspired filters and pro image tools. Now the company is moving into video editing, with the launch of its first video editing tool on iOS. The tool will allow users to apply presets …

Back in 2014, a pair of Berkeley alumni, Antoine Balaresque and Henry Bradlow, had an idea for a camera-equipped drone that had the potential to change the entire drone market. The Lily Camera, “built” by Lily Robotics, was advertised as a dead-simple device that anyone could operate, mostly because it …