While the Nokia sub-unit that Microsoft acquired is going through some hard times, the Nokia company still musters some excitement and continues to develop its launcher replacement, the Nokia Z Launcher.

The latest update brings a short changelog but it’s all welcome improvements. Read more »

The latest smartphone that can boot an OS it will likely never need is Asus ZenFone 2. A crafty XDA Developers member ported Microsoft Windows 7 to the Intel Atom-based smartphone.

The desktop OS was ported on the ZE551ML variant of the ZenFone 2. Read more »

The News Feed is one of the most important parts of Facebook, so this is pretty big news. The social network has announced that it’s giving its users more ways to tweak what shows up in the News Feed.

This comes by way of a revamped News Feed Preferences menu, which launches on iOS today and will become available for Android and the Web “over the coming weeks”. Read more »

Say what you want about Google Cardboard, but the low-budget stereoscopic headset can be a lot of fun. Sadly, compatible and amusing content still seems to be scarce and hard to come across. Which is why we are happy to share every new bit of fun we find, like Legendary Picture’s new app.

It is available for both Android and iOS devices and should work fine as long as your smartphone has enough power to play back the content, which shouldn’t be an issues for most. And since it is simply done in stereoscopic 3D, you are not even limited to using only Google Cardboard. A lot of third-party products exist for a variety of devices and screen sizes and a quick search online should get you quickly geared up for some VR fun. Even if you don’t have a headset and curiosity hasn’t really convinced you to splurge a few bucks, Legendary has also included a traditional 2D viewing mode. Read more »

Google updated its popular Messenger app for Android with support for Stickers and Location Sharing. In the previous update, Google added support for emojis.

With sticker support, Google Messenger follows the suite of its competitors, headed by Facebook Messenger. Read more »

Apple has sent an email to registered developers letting them know of some upcoming changes to pricing in certain territories. In four countries, prices in the App Store will increase within the next 36 hours.

These are Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, and Turkey. In South Korea, the move is made because of a 10% value-added tax (VAT) which is now included in app prices. For developers based outside of South Korea, Apple will collect and pay that tax. Developers who are in South Korea will need to take care of this themselves. Read more »

The makers of Truecaller have come up with yet another useful app. Truemessenger is a new SMS app for Android that lets you find out the names of people sending messages even if you don’t have their names saved in your contact list.

As with Truedialler, Truemessenger taps into Truecaller’s database and find names and photos of unidentified numbers. On top of that it can also detect spam messages and divert them to a separate folder, so your main inbox remains clean. You can also report numbers, which are added to database and helps other people using the app. Read more »

Microsoft’s digital assistant Cortana has received an update that brings a slew of new categories of interests, such as daily routine, music, food, and finance.

However, it is not yet known when the update rolled out, and which other markets – aside from India – are getting it. It’s worth mentioning that prior to the update only news and weather categories were available in the country. Read more »

According to reports out of China, the country’s top taxi app company Didi Kuaidi – which is backed by Asian giants Alibaba and Tencent – is planning to enter the US market next year.

It is being said that the company, which is giving stiff competition to Uber in China, is already hiring to set up an R&D center in the US. Read more »

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

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Remember Samsung Pay? It is the company’s ambitious payment solution, announced at this year’s MWC in Barcelona alongside the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge duo, so naturally it got slightly pushed to the sidelines. Since then, we haven’t really received any major progress updates, but the promise for a September release in the US and South Korea still stands.

A new report indicates that Samsung Pay is already in the final stages of its testing. The Korean tech giant is working in cooperation with eight local card vendors to ensure everything works as intended. But, there might still be quite a few problems along the way. Unlike most other payment services, Samsung seems to be facing technical issues, rather than legal ones. Read more »

MasterCard will soon start testing a new feature that will require users to just take a selfie to get their online purchases approved. The experiment will begin this fall, and will involve 500 customers. If everything goes well, the feature will be launched publicly sometime after that.

You’ll be required to download the MasterCard phone app to use the feature. They way it works is: after you pay for something, you’ll see an authorization pop-up containing various options. Just choose the facial recognition option, stare at the device, and then blink to snap a photo of yourself – that’s it. Read more »

In case you were looking for more ways to waste the battery of your Android Wear device, I have some good news for you! There is now a YouTube app for your smartwatch.

Sporting the rather unexciting name Video for Android Wear & YouTube, the app will cater to those who find the screen of their smartphone a tad too large. Read more »

YouTube is working hard retain its dominance in the online multimedia realm. And while a lot of that has to do with engaging audiences and encouraging creativity and content-creators, maintaining a technical edge is equally important. Innovations on the PC front are now way past high-definition content, with resolutions of 4K and beyond already available, as well as frame rates up to 60fps.

Dealing with mobile devices, however, presents a whole new set of challenges for YouTube, along with new possibilities to explore, like offline playback for example. Still, it is only a matter of time before our increasingly-powerful mobile tech gets access to proper high-definition content as well. Today, YouTube has made another step in this direction. The company’s Android and iOS apps now have 60fps content at 720p and 1080p resolutions. Read more »

Just a few months after it was announced, the peer-to-peer payments feature of Facebook’s Messenger app is now available to everyone in the United States.

The news was announced by David Marcus, who leads the company’s messaging business. “Add your Debit Card and pay anyone on Messenger in a few taps. Money goes straight from your checking account to the recipient’s checking account. Easy and safe,” he said. Read more »