Yatse is one of those awesome apps that you might not even know exists, and yet can’t live without once discovered. The app is a powerhouse and all-in-one tool that can satisfy the needs of even the pickiest XBMC user.

Yesterday, it was finally ushered into the new material trend and how has a fresh new look and is as stylish as ever. It is exciting to see that the app is getting the attention it deserves and is still in active development, which reassured fans it is here to stay and will keep up with the rapid XBMS development of late.

For those unfamiliar with XBMC, recently renamed to Kodi for legal reasons, it is one of the most popular open-source media player software suits. But that description definitely does not do it justice. It actually represent a monumental amount of effort from a multitude of people who have managed to create one of the best, if not the best and most complete multimedia management platforms in existence to date.

Yatse builds upon the already impressive experience that Kodi provides and takes it to a whole new level. Read more »

Sony released an official video to help users unlock the bootloader of their Xperia smartphone. The clip is available on the official SonyXperiaDev YouTube channel and is 5 minutes and 42 seconds long.

As expected, Sony warns all Xperia smartphone users about the risks that unlocking a device’s bootloader carries. Read more »

On both iOS and Android, the Google Maps app has today received support for lane guidance for highways in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, and Ireland.

Lane guidance does what you’d expect it to, given the name. It ensures you’re always on the right lane, when you’re in turn-by-turn navigation mode. Read more »

BlackBerry’s well known messaging app, BBM, has today been updated to version 2.6 on iOS, Android, and the company’s own smartphones.

The update adds one of the most requested features, which apparently was the support for sending stickers in group chats. Read more »

Amazon’s primary Android app is rather mysteriously missing from the Google Play store. The application is not completely gone of course, but has been pulled from the official store and no longer pops-up in searches, although it is accessible through a direct store link.

This comes as a direct consequence of Amazon’s fairly recent addition of an “Apps and Games” section into its main application. The functionality was mostly their own app store baked right into the primary shopping software. This was a huge leap forward for the Seattle-based online giant as it allowed for applications to be delivered seamlessly to devices, instead of having to be download from the website and side-loaded like before. Read more »

After we’ve seen it update all of its Android apps to use the Material Design that it’s so proud of, Google has now apparently moved on to iOS. So the Google search app for Apple’s mobile OS is today getting an update to version 5.0.0, and one of the biggest new things is the addition of the Material Design language.

Additionally, there are a few new features in tow too. The Recents view shows you the pages you recently visited, the Google button lets you start a search with just one tap (wherever you are in the app), and Google Maps allows you to explore interactive maps, nearby places, and Street View right inside the search app (though only on iPhone for now). Read more »

After the recent mass roll-out of the new material design look, the YouTube app is once again receiving special treatment from Google. The latest addition to the video streaming service is the long-requested feature of offline video playback.

This sounds incredibly exciting, but before you head on to the Play Store eager for an update, there are a few catches. The new feature is initially available only in India, Indonesia and the Philippines and only for select video content, or as Google put it: “much of [the] popular YouTube content”. So if you happen to reside in the aforementioned areas, look out for an offline icon on certain clips to see the feature in action. Read more »

If you have been using Hangouts for some time now, you’d know the app was in some serious need for overhaul. Not only was it not updated to Google’s new Material Design but also had several other issues.

That all seems to have been taken care of in the latest update, however, which not only brings an updated design but also several other features and improvements. For starters, the app now conforms to Material Design guidelines and looks a lot better, if not significantly better. Read more »

Back in January, Facebook introduced a new Trending section on its website. And starting today, Trending is going to be available inside Facebook’s Android app. It will only be seen by people in the US for now, however. Support for Trending on iOS and for other countries is reportedly “coming soon”, though with no time frame attached.

Trending helps you discover stuff that is interesting, relevant conversations about hot topics, and stories from different sources. Read more »

The Nokia that still exists after Microsoft bought off its mobile device-making unit has been working on a version of its Here Maps app for Android for quite a while now. A beta version has been available through sideloading since October, and today it arrived in the Google Play Store.

This will surely make it a lot more accessible for more people, as not everyone with an Android device knows what sideloading is or how to do it. Even so, however, apparently more than a million people had downloaded Here Maps for Android prior to it going live in the Play Store. That’s quite an achievement. Read more »

The Here suite of apps for Windows Phone has been updated today. All of the apps have new versions waiting to be downloaded and installed, but perhaps the biggest changes are brought to the Here Drive+ app. It now supports voice-guided navigation in 18 more countries or territories.

These are Algeria, Angola, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Cyprus, Iraq, Libya, Mauritania, Mauritius, Nepal, Paraguay, Saint Helena, Senegal, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. This brings the total number of countries and territories in which voice-guided directions are available to 118. Read more »

After spending over 2 years in beta, the VLC for Android app has finally graduated to stable release. Although the stable release brings a host of bug fixes, no new features have been added. In fact, Chromecast streaming support, which was promised earlier this year, is still missing.

Specifically, the release fixes Android 5.0 crashes as well as issues that affected devices with ARMv8 processors. In addition, the updated app also brings along a new interface (available in dark or white colors), an equalizer, playlist management, Widi screens support, DVD iso and menu support and updated SD cards detection. Finally, hardware acceleration is now enabled by default on Android 4.3 and higher, and software decoding has been accelerated too. Read more »

Microsoft has been tinkering quite a lot with Android applications lately, even if with mixed success. One of their more interesting creations for the platform is the Next Lock Screen – a smart, location-aware lockscreen that pulls relevant information from user apps and places it right beside notifications for easy access.

Now Microsoft’s experimental brain child has gotten even smarter. The latest update adds weather information to the mix as well as a visual redesign with a lot more freedom for customization. Read more »

Remember that nifty search app for Android Wear by Microsoft called Torque? The Redmond giant’s garage team has expanded its functionality to Android smartphones with an update to version 2.0.

Activating Torque Search on an Android smartphone is just as easy as doing it on a wearable device. Read more »

YouTube for Android got received a major update. Version 6.0.11 of the application brings Android 5.0’s sleek material design to the popular video sharing platform.

In addition to the fresh new look, the latest YouTube for Android offers revamped navigation panel. Read more »