Ads sell you a phone and that’s it, right? But if ads can go on after you bought the phone, someone stands to make a lot of money – India-based phone maker Micromax found a way to do just that. Multiple users complained that they were seeing ads in their notification areas.

Worse still, they found new apps on their device that they didn’t install themselves. Read more »

Adobe Lightroom, one of the cornerstones of the company’s popular creative suite is not a novelty on mobile devices. The photo-editing software is already available on iOS, bringing a set of basic features, enough to get you through simple tasks on the go.

Now, a few month later, a Lightroom Android app is hitting the Play Store, but there are a few catches. First of all, as the title suggests the app is intended for smartphones and not tablets, meaning that it is actually optimized for small screens. Read more »

Google has updated its Google Maps for Android app to version 9.3, bringing the ability to share directions, tweaks to location settings notifications, and some bug fixes.

The most prominent feature the update brings to the table is sharable directions. This means that any application accessible through the standard share function can now accept directions, which appear as a list of instructions, something which could be really useful especially when you want to share this information with someone who doesn’t have a smartphone and/or Google Maps installed on their device. Read more »

Skype has made a new iOS version available today in the iTunes App Store, which comes with a couple of improvements to the calling features. Skype 5.9 for iPhone also debuts the pre-release program for iOS, through which you can provide feedback and get access to early versions of the app.

It’s sort of like a beta testing thing, and there’s a limited number of preview spots available. You’ll get to give feedback on the newest in-development features, as well as send bug reports to the Skype team. Read more »

Google has updated its Translate app for Android and iOS and it now features the seriously cool Word Lens translation. This allows you to point the camera to any text and have it automatically translated on the fly.

The Word Lens mode is a technology that Google bought last year and currently supports English to and from French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish. There’s also enhanced Conversation mode. Read more »

Hearthstone has been available on Android and Nvidia’s Shield Tablet since mid-December last year, but only a lucky few have received a special treat in their mail – a limited-edition Hearthstone-branded Shield tablet.

Hearthstone is Blizzard’s collectible card game that launched on the PC, but always felt like it was destined for tablets. Read more »

HTC has been adding many of the built-in apps from its Sense UI Android overlay to the Google Play Store over the past months. One by one, we’ve seen the Sense launcher, lock screen, weather app, and the camera app in the Play Store. And today the Sense Web browser joins them.

It’s called HTC Internet, for whatever reason, but make no mistake – it’s the browser that’s built into recent HTC devices. Read more »

Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop app made its way to iOS. Nine months after its Android sibling launched, the application is available to download and install for free in the Apple App Store.

Setting up Chrome Remote Desktop for iOS is easy. Read more »

You may remember Falcon Pro as the popular but ill-fated app on the Play Store that had to be pulled by the developer after it hit Twitter’s asinine API limit. The app has since then been available for free from the developer’s website, assuming you could work your way around the little easter egg to unlock and use the app.

The developer has now released a brand new Twitter app called Falcon Pro 3, which despite the name is not an update to the previous app but a new app altogether. The developer has made the app free to download but you will have to pay $3.99 to add the first Twitter account and every subsequent account will cost you $1.99 extra. The developer sayS, “This is the best way I could think of to deal with Twitter limitations and ensure continuous support.” Read more »

The AccuWeather app for Android has received an update which enables it to work on Android Wear smartwatches. The update is currently undergoing a phased rollout, so if you have the app and don’t yet have the new version, it should make its way to you within a few days.

AccuWeather won’t simply show you weather notifications on Android Wear. Instead, it has full support for the wearable platform. Read more »

Apple has raised the minimum price for apps in the App Store. Apple announced the upcoming change back in December and it now applies for all EU countries and Canada.

Apple’s flat rate for different markets is gone for good. The price now includes the appropriate VAT for the market, which regional Store you are using, and thus it will be collected by its local government. Read more »

Bored of that little cursor that shows up on your device’s screen when you use the S Pen? That’ll no longer be the case as you’ll soon be able to customize it using Samsung’s upcoming app dubbed Penvatars.

The South Korean company has teamed up with Marvel for the first set of Penvatars. This means that you’ll be able to select from characters like Nick Fury, Iron Man, Captain America, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor. Read more »

Google has updated its Google app for Android to version 4.1.21.1657903, bringing several new features and improvements, including new Google Now card settings, as well as changes to OK Google settings.

The updated app now offers a new “Now cards” settings option that allows you to manage your card history, delete card preferences, manage notifications for card updates and show/hide cards. You can access this option by pulling out the slide-out navigation menu and heading to settings. Read more »

The latest app to announce support for Android Wear, Google’s smartwatch platform, is none other than BBM. BlackBerry’s messaging service will soon be available for Android Wear devices (in “early 2015″), though an exact release time frame hasn’t been given.

BBM for Android Wear will let you access your messages straight on your watch, without the need to reach for your smartphone all the time. Read more »

Microsoft is listening to suggestions over at the User Voice forums on how to improve its products and one commenter mentioned how offline access to files in OneDrive will be great to have. In comes Casey Penk (a program manager at Microsoft) who reveals that the team is already on it.

Keeping offline copies from OneDrive is possible on a desktop Windows 8.1, but not on the phone. Competing services like Dropbox and Google Drive have file pinning as well (on Android and iOS at least). Read more »