Here are some of the best apps and games that came out this week.

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Microsoft has updated its OneDrive iOS app to version 5.3, allowing you to view your most recent photos and albums on the Apple Watch. You can also delete photos that you don’t want to keep as well as find photos by tag.

In addition, the update brings along a new PDF viewing experience – you can now search for text within PDFs as well as swipe from page to page. Finally, you can also print your PDFs directly from your iPhone or iPad. Read more »

Chrome for iOS got a major update today that added several useful new feature. The first one is a new widget that sits in your Today view. The widget allows you to open a new Chrome tab or do a Google voice search right from the notification window. And if you happen to copy a URL from some other app, the URL will appear in the widget so one click will open it straight into Chrome.

Another addition is pull to refresh, which lets you refresh the web page by pulling down on it, which was first implemented in the Android version of the app. What wasn’t in the Android version, however, was that you can pull down and then slide your finger left to quickly open a new tab or right to close the current one, which is displayed with a neat little animation. Read more »

In a truly surprising fashion Microsoft released its mobile top-down shooting game Halo: Spartan Strike for Apple iOS devices. The touch-optimized premium title is now available in the Apple App Store for $5.99.

The Redmond giant also made the game’s predecessor Halo: Spartan Assault available for iOS. Read more »

Extremely popular online card game Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, based on World of Warcraft characters, is now available on smartphones. Whether you have an iPhone or an Android smartphone, you can now download and play the game on the small screen.

Hearthstone is originally a PC game that was ported over to the iPad last year and later on to the Android tablets. Since then it was limited to the tablets, which made sense since the game requires moving around small objects that may not have worked well on small screen phones. However, with phones getting bigger every year, that may not really be a concern anymore, so it’s logical to have the game running on smartphones as well. Read more »

Apple has had a couple of turbulent months on the Russian market. Economic conditions, fluctuations in the ruble, as well as a shifting political climate forced the Cupertino giant out of the huge market back in December 2014. The decision was later overturned, but Apple products have been going for a premium in Russia ever since.

Now, it seems, the storm is finally settling and the local Apple store has introduced a significant price cut to both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, bringing the price tags a lot closer to the international average. And although some mark-up is still detectable, an iPhone 6 will now set you back RUB48,990 for the basic 16GB model and RUB55,990 and RUB62,990 rubles for the 64GB and 128GB, respectively. This represents a significant RUB5,000 decrease, but is still not quite the RUB39,990 the phone was originally going for. Read more »

Apple’s current pair of flagship devices – the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus are enjoying an ever-growing level of popularity, bringing more and more attention to one of the company’s most ambitious projects – widespread NFC-based payments. The Cupertino giant has bee investing heftily in the new service, pushing it all throughout the US, Canada and Europe, despite some major retailer distrust.

But this steady expansion has yet to reach China – an area where the service has hit a lot of problems and is still in limbo. As some of you might remember, Apple has been struggling to strike a deal with China’s UnionPay and bring Apple Pay to the enormous market. After a lot of hardships, the feature was supposed to finally see the light of day in iOS 8.3, but the OS update is already here and NFC payments are still nowhere to be found. Read more »

Apple Watch seems to have had a good launch day, if the data from Slice Intelligence is to be believed. The company tracked the e-receipts of 9,080 online shoppers who opted in to have their email tracked, the company estimates over 957,000 people purchased some variant of the Apple Watch in US alone.

Out of these, Slice Intelligence estimates 62 percent went with the cheapest Apple Watch Sport model, mostly in the Space Gray finish, with most of the rest preferring to get the stainless steel model. Read more »

Welcome to our new weekly feature, the Best Apps and Games of the Week. Here we will try to cover some of the most notable apps and and games that were released in the past week or so on the mobile platform.

The list will include both new and apps that received some major update recently. The list is not limited to any particular mobile platform, but considering the current situation you’d likely only be seeing Android and iOS apps in the articles. Read more »

As Apple is set to start taking pre-orders for its first ever smartwatch tomorrow, Google is once again said to be working on making its wearable platform play nice with iOS. We first heard something like this about one month ago, and this new report even has some details about Google’s progress on the matter.

Apparently Android Wear already works with iOS in Google’s labs, through a companion app. That’s nothing out of the ordinary, since the same path is taken on Android itself. However, this might become an issue when the search giant will want to publish said companion app in the iTunes App Store. Read more »

We had talked about the upcoming racially diverse emoji in iOS and OS X a few weeks ago but it finally started rolling out in yesterday’s iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 update. It’s not often the emoji stack gets updated and this is by far the biggest update it has received in years, so let’s take a closer look at it.

The main change here was to diversify the skin color of the various faces. Emoji usage has exploded since Apple adopted it in iOS back in 2011 and a lot of people care about this now for the skin color of the faces to actually be an issue. Read more »

Although a launch elsewhere is still in up in the air, Apple Pay is continuously gaining ground in the US. Apple’s payment system has now added 39 new banks and credit unions to its list of partners.

This brings the total number of banking institutions that support Apple Pay to more than 180, which is pretty substantial. Apple has been constantly looking for new partners since it announced the service last year. Read more »

Instagram has updated its Android app today, with a new iOS version coming soon as well. Both should have the same features. Speaking of which, with this release Instagram intros two new image alteration tools: Color and Fade.

The former lets you tint the highlights or shadows in a photo. You can use yellow, orange, red, pink, purple, blue, cyan, or green for this purpose. Read more »

Leonard Nimoy, popularly known as Spock from the space fiction movie series Star Trek, passed away on February 27 and made the character Spock immortal. Even Apple is preparing to pay homage to Nimoy and Spock with a new Star Trek themed Spock emoji for OS X and iOS.

Often referred casually as the Spock sign but actually the Vulcan salute, it has been adapted form Jewish heritage. Read more »

Apple employees will be able to purchase an Apple Watch with 50% off. The Cupertino giant’s CEO Tim Cook delivered the good news in a memo to the entire Apple team.

The sweet discount will be available for the entry level Apple Watch Sport, as well as for the stainless steel model. Read more »