BlackBerry announced that a major update is coming to BBM for iOS and Android. Version 2.0 of the popular adds a host of new features to the popular messenger, headed by voice calling.

Voice calling works over both Wi-Fi and cellular connection and allows a user to call his/her BBM contacts anywhere in the world. The feature is available free of charge. Read more »

Benchmarks are a big part of our reviews and Basemark X is one of the newer ones we’re using. The company behind it, Rightware, just announced that it has covered all three major smartphone OSes, which is a must-have for inter-platform comparisons.

The latest version, Basemark X 1.1, is based on Unity 4.2, a popular game engine and IDE. Read more »

Rumors indicate that this month’s Mobile World Congress event in Barcelona could see more than one announcement from Samsung.

Besides the anticipated Galaxy S5 flagship, sources indicate that new editions of their popular Galaxy Tab series of tablets and Galaxy Gear smartwatch could get announced. Read more »

Over the last few hours Rovio has released three teasers about a new Angry Birds game. The pictures are very clear – they even have the #NEWANGRYBIRDS hashtag in the corner, so it isn’t just another update.

There is no other information but the teaser pictures, which show popular birds watching something in the distance. There is the Stella logo plus the “Best Friends Forever…Most of the Time” message. Read more »

HTC launched customizable Double Dip cases for its HTC One flagship. The protective cases are split into three parts and you can customize the color of each one.

Just to be clear, those are cases – HTC isn’t painting the One in wildly different colors, like Motorola does with the Moto X. Read more »

Google will soon start rolling out v5.4 of the Google Play Music app for Android and it brings with it several useful changes. One of them is the addition of offline radio feature that lets you cache radio stations within the app for offline playback. Just choose the ‘Keep on device’ option for a station to save it on to your device.

The Play Music app will also let you manage all your associated devices. The online service has a limit of 10 devices and to add more you need to deauthorize old ones, which previously had to be done through the web interface but can now be done from within the app itself. Read more »

According to a report in The Verge, Microsoft is considering bringing support for Android applications to Windows and Windows Phone. Planning for the radical move is said to be ongoing and in early stages.

If materialized, the shift in strategy will aim to counter the lack of popular apps available on Microsoft’s OS platforms. Despite featuring mainstream titles such as Flipboard and Instagram, Windows Phone still lacks many of the popular iOS and Android apps and games. Read more »

We’ve seen the HTC M8 (the HTC One’s successor) star in plenty of leaks but they all have something in common – low quality photos. XDA-Developers user hamdir collected all leaked photos and created beautiful renders of the M8.

Some of the things are dubious – like the second camera. The images that showed it were called out as fakes by an HTC regional director, but there are plenty of leaked images that feature a second opening above the camera (including back covers). Read more »

Samsung said it will be trying hard to expand its tablet market share in 2014 and it shows. The company already released a quartet of Galaxy Tab Pro tablets and the ultra low-end Galaxy Tab 3 Lite 7.0 and now we learn that a trio of fourth generation Galaxy Tab slates will be joining them shortly.

The Galaxy Tab 4 slates will bring quad-core 1.2 GHz processors to the series, better cameras and Android 4.4 KitKat and will come in three sizes – 7.0, 8.0 and 10.1. All three new slates will feature TFT displays of the modest 1280×800 pixels resolution. The connectivity departments will include Wi-Fi a/b/g/n, GPS with GLONASS a microSD card slot and an optional 3G/LTE radio. All new slates will come with Samsung’s premium Hancom Office, E-Meeting and WebEx services plus the Remote PC app preinstalled. Read more »

Verizon will start offering the Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10.1 2014 Edition slate soon. A leaked official picture, courtesy of @evleaks, show the black version with embedded Verizon and its 4G LTE logos on the faux-leather plastic back.

Naturally, Verizon will be offering the LTE-enabled version powered by the Snapdragon 800 chipset. Read more »

Samsung has released the Android 4.4 KitKat kernel source code for its Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1 and Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 tablets.

If you have a thing for developing kernels and ROMs for huge powerful slates, then the source links below have the codes for you to play with. Read more »

Flappy Bird gathered insane interest over the past few days. Initially developed in 2013, Flappy Bird has become one of the most popular titles in both Android Play Store and Apple App Store, generating millions of downloads. Its creator – Dong Nguyen – even promised Windows Phone port is coming too.

And then, just when we though the free game is certain to break records, the developer decided to remove Flappy Bird from all stores. Until today the reasons were unclear, but the speculations went crazy – from death threats to patent issues and lawsuits. Read more »

Verizon just announced that the Nexus 7 with LTE will be available on its network this Thursday. No, there’s no new Nexus 7 tablet, this is the 2013 edition of the Google slate. It’s exactly the same device that went on sale in the US in September last year, just that now it has (finally!) received certification to use Verizon’s LTE.

There was some finger-pointing between Verizon, Google and Asus that ended with the carrier deciding to wait for Android KitKat update, citing issues with the Jelly Bean software. Read more »

Yesterday, we saw some screenshots from the upcoming Sony D6503 ‘Sirius’ smartphone, said to unveil at the MWC 2014. The screenshots showed us the camera interface with the option to record videos in 4K and 1080p60 and stills in 20 and 15 megapixel.

Today, we have the screenshots of the lockscreen interface on the D6503. The lockscreen has been redesigned in KitKat to display the album art fullscreen but Sony is sticking to its own interface design, showing the album art in a tiny square next to the playback controls. One new addition is the progress bar to skip through the track and the addition of camera button at the bottom. Read more »

The Samsung Galaxy Grand Neo has made its way into our office and we’re hard at work on the full review of Samsung’s latest budget large screen offering.

Did Samsung put enough under the hood of the Neo to make it a worthwhile investment for those looking for affordable big screen droids? Let’s take a look. Read more »