Live video streaming app Meerkat, which debuted on Google Play earlier this month, is now out of Beta. The company made the announcement via a tweet.

Similar to its iOS counterpart, which has got a lot of coverage recently, the Android version of Meerkat also allows you to stream live video from your smartphone to all of your Twitter followers at once. Read more »

A couple of weeks ago, there were reports of Asus CEO Jerry Shen saying that the ZenWatch successor – tipped to be called the ZenWatch 2 – won’t hit the market until 2016. However, he has now confirmed that the smartwatch will hit stores in the third quarter of this year as planned earlier, according to a new report out of Taiwan.

Dismissing earlier reports as “misunderstanding”, Shen made it clear that the launch time-frame of the wearable, which is scheduled to be unveiled at Computex Taipei 2015 trade-show early next month, “remains unchanged.” Read more »

Following the footsteps of AT&T and T-Mobile, the remaining two of the Big Four US carriers – Verizon and Sprint – have also agreed to settle cramming allegations with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

The two carriers will pay a total of $158 million, of which $90 million will come from Verizon while the remaining will come from Sprint. At-least $70 million of the Verizon’s fine and $50 million of the Sprint’s will be used in customer refund programs, $4 million and $6 million, respectively, will go to the US treasury, while the remaining will go the state governments. Read more »

The next time when you use Hangouts keep in mind that your conversation can be wire-tapped as the messaging service doesn’t employ end-to-end encryption, a fact that was recently admitted by Google itself.

The disclosure was made by the search giant at a recent Reddit AUA (Ask Us Anything) session when it was asked, “Why has Google refused to be transparent about its ability to provide wiretaps for Hangouts? Given Google’s rather impressive track record regarding surveillance transparency, the total secrecy regarding the company’s surveillance capabilities for this product is quite unusual.” Read more »

LG claimed around 67% of the global smartwatch display market and a whopping 91% share of the revenue in the first quarter of the ongoing year, according to a latest report from market research firm DisplaySearch.

As per the report, LG shipped 8 million display units in Q1, 2015, up from 1.1 million units it shipped in the same quarter last year. It was followed by Japan Display, Futaba, and Sharp with 1.4 million, 1.12 million, and 900,000 units, respectively. Read more »

Apple is currently negotiating with Chinese banks as well as Internet conglomerate Alibaba over the launch of Apple Pay in the country, according to CEO Tim Cook. In an interview with Xinhua, China’s state-run new agency, he said, “We very much want to get Apple Pay in China,” adding that “I’m very bullish on Apple Pay in China.”

Launched back in September last year, Apple’s mobile payments service has been continuously gaining ground in the US, where the Cupertino-based company has partnered with over 180 financial institutions till date. However, Cook said he believes the service could take off even faster in China. Read more »

The Edge variant of the next Samsung Galaxy Note phablet, which is said to be internally codenamed Project Noble, has been spotted on benchmarking website HTML5test. The website scores web browsers in their ability to properly load HTML5 elements.

The test was performed on the Samsung browser 3.2 installed on a Samsung ZenZero device running Android 5.1.1 – ZenZero is said to be the internal name of the Galaxy Note 5 Edge. The browser got 503 points, which is a great score – the best-faring currently available mobile browser Chrome 39 scores 493. Read more »

Google has updated the Play Store with a new feature allowing publishers to put their apps for pre-registration.

The feature will not only be helpful for users, who’ll get notified when the app is actually released, but also for app developers, as it will help them gauge interest in their apps prior to release. There’s also an Unregister button in case you no longer want to receive alerts. Read more »

Android has for the first time surpassed iOS in terms of revenue generated from mobile ads, according to a latest report from mobile ad analytic firm Opera Mediaworks.

As per the report, Google’s mobile OS was responsible for 45.77% of the revenue generated from mobile ads in the first quarter of 2015, marginally higher than 45.44% brought in by Apple’s OS. BlackBerry, Symbian, and Windows rounded up the top five with 1.96, 1.27 and 0.09% revenue share, respectively. Read more »

Music-streaming company Spotify is now offering a 3-month subscription of its Premium service for a total of just 99 cents. The offer is only available to new subscribers in the US.

Needless to say, after the three-month period, you’ll be charged the normal rates – $9.99 a month. For those who aren’t in the know, Spotify Premium lets you stream ad-free music, with unlimited skips, and even download and listen to your tunes offline. Read more »

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has arrested two men for allegedly breaking into accounts of some Photobucket users and selling off access to their private information without authorization.

According to the US Justice Department, 39-year-old Brandon Bourret from Colorado Springs, and 26-year-old Athanasios Andrianakis from Sunnyvale (California) developed, marketed, and sold a software application, dubbed Photofucket, which allowed viewers to circumvent the website’s privacy settings and hence enabled them access to users’ private and password-protected information. Read more »

Google has added a new feature allowing users to place food orders with select delivery services directly from its search results. “When you search for a nearby restaurant on your phone, you’ll see an option to Place an order in the search results. Just tap that, choose the delivery service and you’ll be taken to their website to complete the order,” the search giant said.

The feature is currently only available in the US, where Google has partnered with six food on-demand providers, including Seamless, Grubhub, Eat24, BeyondMenu, Delivery.com, and MyPizza.com. Read more »

Spotify, the popular music-streaming company, is planning to venture into the online-video business, according to a report by Wall Street Journal.

The Swedish company is currently looking for partnerships, and has even approached companies that create content for YouTube, the report notes, adding that the video service will be available to both subscribers and non-subscribers alike. Read more »

A few weeks after debuting it in the beta version of the app, BlackBerry has added support for Channels in the latest update to its main BBM for Windows Phone app. The feature is already available in the iOS and Android versions of the messaging app.

“Starting today, Windows Phone users have a new place to join conversations happening right now between people, brands and communities,” the Canadian company said in a blog post. “In real-time you can discover and connect with other #TeamBlackBerry members on subjects that interest you.” Read more »

Back in March this year, Japanese gaming company Nintendo announced that it will finally start making games for smartphones, and now the company has revealed that it plans to release five such games by 2017, with the first one coming by this year’s end.

“You may think it is a small number,” said CEO and president Satoru Iwata, adding that “but when we aim to make each title a hit, and because we want to thoroughly operate every one of them for a significant amount of time after their releases, this is not a small number at all and should demonstrate our serious commitment to the smart device business.” Read more »