mobile devices

Breathe Battery Technologies bets that software will eat batteries too

The startup has developed software for lithium-ion batteries to endow them with either faster charging speeds or greater longevity.

Google Photos redesigns its Memories feature with vertical swiping, more video and other creative tools

As consumer social apps shift their focus to video for social expression and adopt more creative tools, like those for collage-making, Google Photos’ often more utilitarian app will now do the s

Starbucks details its blockchain-based loyalty platform and NFT community, Starbucks Odyssey

Starbucks is today officially introducing Starbucks Odyssey, launching later this year — the coffee chain’s first foray into building with web3 technology. The new experience combines the

This Week in Apps: Twitter’s edit button, BeReal clones, Trump’s Truth Social gets blocked

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 th

FTC sues data broker Kochava for sale of people’s sensitive location data, including visits to reproductive health clinics

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Monday announced it has filed a lawsuit against data broker Kochava Inc. for selling geolocation data from “hundreds of millions of mobile devices,&#82

NFL+ streaming service launches in the US, replacing NFL Game Pass

Today, the National Football League launched its streaming service NFL+ which has been officially priced at $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year. However, with this launch, the outgoing NFL Game Pass wi

Solana launches web3-focused smartphone Saga to improve crypto-mobile relationship

The co-founder and CEO of Solana, Anatoly Yakovenko, had a Steve Jobs moment when he stood in front of an auditorium in New York City and announced the launch of Saga, an Android web3-focused smartpho

Spotify is developing ‘Community,’ a new place to see your friends’ activity in the mobile app

Spotify is developing a new feature called Community that would allow mobile users to see what sort of music their friends are streaming in real time as well as what playlists they’ve recently u

UK’s antitrust watchdog finally eyes action on Apple, Google mobile duopoly

The U.K.’s competition watchdog has published its final report on a comprehensive, year-long mobile ecosystem market study — cementing its view that there are substantial concerns about th

MIT researchers uncover ‘unpatchable’ flaw in Apple M1 chips

Apple’s M1 chips have an “unpatchable” hardware vulnerability that could allow attackers to break through its last line of security defenses, MIT researchers have discovered. The vulner

Google Lens comes to Chrome for searching using images from webpages

Google has been working to better integrate its visual search tools from Google Lens into its browser to enable new types of searches that can identify what you see, not just search for things you typ

Google TV app to add casting as Android TV ecosystem grows to 110M monthly active devices

Following last year’s makeover of the Google TV app, which added features like movie and TV recommendations, critics’ scores and more, the company today announced at its Google I/O develop

Wordle! (but not that Wordle!) is now in the hands of mobile tech firm AppLovin

After the popular online game Wordle went viral, an unrelated older mobile game that shared the same name benefitted, gaining an explosion of downloads as iPhone users mistook it for the web game maki

Pinterest addresses the TikTok threat in its first quarter earnings

Pinterest may have beat on revenue and earnings in the first quarter, but the company is not out of the woods yet when it comes to carving out a place for its service in today’s competitive land

HBO Max app just had one of its best quarters to date, but app performance still has room to improve

Sensor Tower’s “Q1 2022: Store Intelligence Data Digest” report saw HBO Max as a top contender for the most downloaded apps in the U.S. Not only did the app make the top five list, but it also h

MEPs vote to expand scope of common charger rules

European Union lawmakers have taken a step closer to agreeing on rules to standardize how a range of mobile gadgetry is charged. Today MEPs in the European Parliament’s internal market and consu

PayPal’s new credit card pays 3% cash back on all PayPal purchases

PayPal is revamping its co-branded PayPal Cashback Mastercard credit card, issued by Synchrony, which will now give users 3% cash back when they check out using PayPal and 2% cash back on all other Ma

YouTube to stream free, ad-supported TV shows for the first time

YouTube today announced it will for the first time stream free, ad-supported TV shows — a move that puts it into more direct competition with the growing number of free streaming services on the

Google Photos update adds a handy import option alongside other organizational changes

Google today announced a number of changes ahead for its popular Google Photos app for mobile devices. With the update, the company plans to make it easier to organize, import and sort through your al

Put the zoo in Zoom with these horrific 3D animatars

A picture’s worth a thousand words, but this image of Zoom’s newest feature can be summed up in just one: what? Zoom is introducing a feature today that lets you show up to your work meetings as a
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