Sony has put up a new promotional website for its recently launched Xperia M4 Aqua smartphone. That said, this is anything but a normal such venture. It’s called “Dirty Phones”, and focuses on, well, how dirty phones can be. Literally, that is.

First, the company scares you with words such as the ones you can read in the image above. It claims that there are about 25,000 germs per square inch on the average touchscreen phone. Furthermore, according to “research”, 92% of handsets have bacteria on them, while ‘just’ 82% of hands can boast the same thing. 16% of hands and phones unfortunately have E.coli, a bacteria found in feces. Read more »

Hot on the heels of its Android app grabbing more than 1 billion downloads, Facebook Messenger has now passed 700 million monthly active users. The previous such milestone was reached in March, when Messenger had 600 million monthly active users. And before that, in November of last year, the app boasted 500 million monthly active users.

The information comes straight from Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, who revealed the new figure at an investor meeting. The discrepancy in the numbers (compared to the 1 billion installs on Android alone) obviously comes from the fact that not all the people who installed Facebook Messenger are using it on a monthly basis. Read more »

After a few leaks and some teasing, Samsung made the limited edition Iron Man themed Galaxy S6 edge official back in May. It went on sale last month in the company’s native South Korea, and now it’s also become available in China.

That’s where one person paid a whopping $91,635 for one such smartphone. The individual shelled out that amount following an auction for the unit, which was held by JD.com, one of China’s biggest online retailers. The auction went up to $91,635 after 92,429 bids. Read more »

Google Slides for iOS and Android received a major update. The new version of the productivity app now supports Chromecast and AirPlay, thus making it easy for users to present on just about any screen with no wires.

Once you begin casting the presentation on a compatible device, the screen of your smartphone or tablet acts like a companion. Read more »

Farmers take note – Rovio has reached expert levels at milking things, pushing its Angry Birds cash cow into new territory. The new Angry Birds Fight! ditches the physics-based gameplay and switches to the “match three” mechanic popularized by the likes of Candy Crush Saga.

The game brings back the cute, animated characters with lively animations and sounds, which is perhaps the game’s biggest asset. Read more »

Google is working on an updated version of Hangouts for Android but before it gets released Android Police has some hands-on screenshots of the messaging application.

The focus here is on overhauling the entire interface design and pretty much every aspect of the UI has been changed even if it doesn’t seem to be the case at first glance. Read more »

Samsung tried to sum up the best features of the Galaxy S6 edge into a 60 second ad. Most of them are enabled by the first dual-curved display – People Edge, Edge Lightning, Night Clock, Information Stream – but also both cameras and Samsung’s charging options.

Here’s the 1 minute crash course into Samsung’s flagship. Read more »

Facebook Messenger for Android has entered into the exclusive 1 billion+ downloads club. The news was announced by David Marcus, who leads the company’s messaging business, in a Facebook post.

If you aren’t in the know, Messenger is the company’s third app to cross the milestone – the Facebook Android app did it last year, while WhatsApp did it this year. Also, Facebook and Google are the only two companies that have apps with more than 1 billion Google Play downloads – the latter’s Google Search, Maps, Gmail, and YouTube apps are part of the club. Read more »

Huawei announced its first smartwatch at MWC at the beginning of March, and back then the Chinese company only mentioned a rough release time frame of ‘around the middle of the year’. And here we are now, almost at that point, wondering when the Huawei Watch will be out in stores. It turns out that won’t happen as soon as many would have liked.

According to a report from Chinese media, Huawei has decided to delay the availability of the wearable until September or October. This apparently is because of certain “incompatibility issues with Android Wear”. Read more »

If you found Mozilla’s OS efforts curious, though not quite enough to buy a Firefox phone or try flashing a ROM on an old Android, here’s a painless way to try out the HTML5-based OS. It’s called b2gdroid, a reference to Boot2Gecko, the basis of Firefox OS.

It’s a 65MB APK that puts a sort-of working, mostly complete implementation of the Firefox OS experience. Read more »

When Apple unveiled iOS 9 at its Worldwide Developer Conference on Monday, one of the new features that wasn’t detailed during the keynote was an app that the company claims makes it easy for you to switch from Android to iOS.

Appropriately dubbed Move to iOS, the app wirelessly and securely transfers your “contacts, message history, camera photos and videos, web bookmarks, mail accounts, calendars, wallpaper, and DRM-free songs and books,” the company says. Read more »

LG G4′s optional genuine leather back covers went up for pre-order in the United States. The Korean giant now offers its latest flagship smartphone though al major carriers in the country – AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular.

The premium back covers are priced at $69.99 in LG’s online store in the United States. Read more »

Apple’s “one more thing…” moment at today’s developer conference was all about its much rumored music streaming service. It’s called Apple Music, and it has finally been made official. Apple Music is an on demand streaming offering, but it also comes with Beats One, a live radio station that’s being broadcast worldwide 24/7 from three cities – New York, Los Angeles, and London.

Apple Music features Connect, which is a way for artists to upload music, videos, and photos directly to their fans. This is supposed to make Apple Music stand out from its competitors by creating a more direct connection between artists and listeners, just like the name “Connect” implies. And through Connect, you can ‘follow’ artists a la Twitter, to be notified when they post new things. Read more »

Nokia’s post-Microsoft foray into Android apps began with the Z Launcher, a launcher that is built entirely around the less is more principle. The dev team took it slightly too far though and there was no support for Android widgets – until now that is and this was the most requested feature.

The team still stayed true to their mantra in how the widgets were integrated. Read more »

While Project Volta was mostly a colossal failure, it seems Doze is actually doing its job. Reports suggest the Nexus 5 running on the developer preview of Android M is seeing noticeable improvement in battery life.

According to tests by Computer Base, the Nexus 5 running Android M consumed 1.5% power in 8 hours of standby, 4.5% in 24 hours, and 9% in 48 hours. In comparison, the same phone running Android 5.1.1 Lollipop consumed 4%, 12%, and 24%, respectively. Read more »