Google has released an update to its Maps application, bringing real-time traffic information to 12 new Indian cities, including Kolkata, Coimbatore, Lucknow, Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Indore, Ludhiana, Visakhapatnam, Nagpur, Kochi, Madurai, and Bhopal. Earlier, live traffic updates were only available for Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Pune.

To use the feature, which is available on both mobile and desktop, you need to first turn on the Traffic layer option on your Google Maps app. Once done, you’ll be able to see routes mapped out in different colours, with green meaning no traffic delays, orange indicating a medium amount of traffic, and red meaning heavy traffic. Read more »

Apple added the racially diverse emoji with iOS 8.3 and OS X 10.10.3 update. Since then, they have been part of the OS and available to all apps on both platforms. However, if you were to send anything but the default yellow face to anyone not on these platforms, they’d see the standard white face only.

Android does not have the new emoji set yet, but WhatsApp has gone ahead and added support for it within its app. WhatsApp has always been using Apple’s emoji set, so it probably wasn’t a lot of work for them to implement it in their Android app. As on iOS, emojis that support multi-color options can be pressed and held to show additional options. It will automatically do that the first time you click on a face and whichever color you choose becomes your default until you manually change it. Read more »

The Google Hangouts iOS app has received an update, bumping it to version 4.0. The update brings a new design that the company claims makes it faster to start new conversations, and add stickers, emoji, and photos.

The updated app features a new Dialer UI for better phone calling experience, as well as a new quick compose button that allows you to quickly find contacts with whom you chat most frequently. Read more »

Last year there was a big rise in the number of rail crossing accidents in the US, and the authorities are working with Google to try and do something about it. Namely, you will soon find all of the railroad crossings in the US inside Google Maps.

We’re talking about around 215,000 crossings in total, of which 130,000 are public and 85,000 are private. Not only will you be able to see each railroad crossing placed on the map inside Google’s app, but you’ll also be notified when one’s approaching if you’re in navigation mode. Read more »

Just less than a month after Facebook announced Lite, a lightweight Android app aimed at emerging markets, the company officially launched it in India and Philippines.

The app uses less data and hence works well even when your bandwidth is at a minimum, the social networking company claims. It is less than 1MB in size (430 KB to be precise), which makes it quick to download and load. Read more »

Truedialer is a dialler app for Android by the people who made Truecaller. The app goes through your call history and replaced numbers without contact information with proper names and photos from the Truecaller database.

The app has now received an update, which brings with it the new Material Design along with a dark theme. There is now also a dedicated search box where you can enter a number to get the name from the database. The app is also now faster than before. Read more »

Facebook is currently testing a new iOS photo uploader which will allow users to put Snapchat-like filters, text, and stickers on their pictures, according to a TechCrunch report.

Facebook emulating Snapchat’s features shouldn’t really come as a surprise given that the world’s largest social network in 2013 tried to acquire the latter for $3 billion but the offer was turned down. Facebook’s Slingshot app is also widely perceived to be a Snapchat clone. Read more »

A while ago, we asked for your opinion on a few upcoming OS releases in the mobile realm. You’ve had some time to think and to evaluate the contenders and now it’s time to see what you think of Android M, iOS 9 and Watch OS 2.0. Results are in and, for the better part, they are conclusive, but we do suspect some Apple “bashing” might have occurred as well.

Let’s take it from the top. Read more »

The Android 5.1.1 update for the Samsung Galaxy S6 has been out for a while and it finally landed in our grasp so we updated our unit and took it for a quick spin. And we do mean quick as the changelog is particularly short.

We dug around the interface, tried shooting a RAW image and ran some benchmarks. Our findings are pretty slim – the 0.1 update brings only a handful of features. Read more »

Microsoft released an update to OneDrive for Android. Version 3.2.0 of the cloud storage app brings support for Chromecast.

The new build of Microsoft OneDrive will allow users to stream their multimedia from their mobile device to a TV that’s connected to a Google Chromecast or an Android TV set top box. Read more »

Today BBM for Android finally starts looking like an Android app. Following a period of less than stellar looks, the app now fully embraces Google’s Material Design principles. A beta version with the new UI went out at the beginning of the month, and now it’s stable enough for everyone to use.

Thus, you can already find it in the Play Store. But the new paint job isn’t the only changed thing about BBM for Android. It also comes with a new feature called Private Chat. Read more »

Facebook has launched a new feature that allows you to easily find and share Web links on the social network. Dubbed Add a Link, the feature is currently only available for iPhone users, but will eventually launch on Android and the company’s Messenger app as well.

“Now, whenever you want to share a specific web link in your posts, just tap the new link icon, type in a few keywords to search for a link from our index of posts, and share it,” the company said. So effectively, the feature makes sure that users won’t have to leave the Facebook app when searching for Web links. Read more »

Another Google app for Android has passed the 1 billion install threshold today. This time it’s Hangouts, following other apps such as Gmail. Apparently up until this point there have been only ten apps in this exclusive club, and only three of those aren’t made by Google.

Interestingly, all three are made by Facebook – we’re talking about the social network’s main app, Messenger, as well as WhatsApp. The last two of those are direct competitors to Google’s Hangouts, and it definitely seems like they are a lot more successful right now. Read more »

Amazon has really been trying hard to expand its vast online store to the realm of Android apps – a niche mostly monopolized by Google. The etailer giant has been continuously running major promotions giving away select paid application for free and todays sees the latest such giveaway.

We have seen Amazon offer as much as $140 worth of software in previous promotions, so, it is definitely worth checking each bundle out as it comes. The latest installment has a value of just over $50, but includes quite a few quality apps worth owning, especially free of charge. Read more »

Microsoft took the Office apps for Android out of their beta status. The productivity applications are now available for users across 83 different countries.

Microsoft introduced the Office for Android preview for smartphones back in May. The preview was also available for certain Android tablets since last year. Read more »