So after a long time BlackBerry finally decided to release BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, on the iPhone and Android. The dates were set; September 21 for the Android version and September 22 for the iPhone version. And when the time finally arrived, they dropped the ball.

The first comedy arrived in the form of September 21 coming and going with no sign of the Android version. Thankfully, the company kept their word and released the iPhone version on September 22 but the Android version was still not available despite the fact that it had a one day headstart. And then finally, the company pulled even the iPhone version from the App Store. Read more »

The hotly anticipated BlackBerry Messenger for iOS is finally official. The app is currently available for download in the App Store.

Update: The unreleased version of BBM for Android has resulted in more than 1.1 million activations in first 8 hours, causing lot of issues for the company. So, BlackBerry has paused the global roll out of BBM for Android and iPhone. Read more »

Skype, a Microsoft owned company, has officially announced that the popular instant messenger will no longer support its Windows Phone 7 app with regular updates and will instead concentrate on developing its app on the latest version of the Windows Phone operating system.

The latest move comes on the basis of the vast majority of the Skype users being on Windows Phone 8. Read more »

Google has updated its Translate application for the iOS platform. The latest version of the Google Translate for iPhone and iPad now comes with a couple of new features that were previous available only on the Android ecosystem.

Google Translate for iOS now comes with a re-designed user interface to compliment the new iOS 7 OS. Read more »

Google recently acquired the company behind the Quickoffice app for iOS and Android devices. And just like with Snapseed, they have now made the app free and available on both platforms.

Quickoffice is a mobile productivity app that lets you create, view and edit Microsoft Office files, such as your Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents. The new app now also integrates with Google Drive and if you download and log into your Google account from the app, you also get an additional 10GB of Google Drive storage space for the next two years. Read more »

Google’s ambitious Wallet service has largely been ignored by everyone since it launched a couple of years ago. The service was available only on a handful of carriers and Android devices with NFC built-in and thus was unavailable to a majority of people out there.

Google partially solved the problem earlier this week by lifting the NFC limit and making the Wallet app available on every Android device and US carrier. But starting today, you can now also use the Google Wallet service on your iPhone. Read more »

The best-known custom Android ROM, CyanogenMod, has turned from a hobby project to a proper company as Steve Kondik (the man who started it) announces the foundation of CyanogenMod Inc.

The baby-faced company has reportedly secured $7 million in funding and is looking to become the third ecosystem behind regular Android and iOS (watch your back, BlackBerry OS and Windows Phone). Read more »

Good news for those who have been waiting for BBM on iOS and Android (yes, all four of you). BlackBerry has finally announced the dates when you will be able to download the app for your iOS or Android device.

Android users will be getting their hands on BBM first on September 21. iPhone users, meanwhile, will have to contain their enthusiasm for a day longer, and can download the app on September 22. Both apps will be available for free from their respective stores. Read more »

Google has enabled a data compression feature on Chrome for iOS, which cuts data usage by up to alleged 50%. The feature has been available for the beta version of Chrome for Android, and now it is making a first, limited appearance for iOS as well.

The way the data compression works is this – you request a web page in Google Chrome, it then goes through Google’s servers where it gets compressed and this is the version of the page you get. It’s the same, but up to 50% smaller in size. Read more »

With most of the Apple community eagerly waiting for the release of iOS 7 tomorrow, the Cupertino giant showed that it has not forgotten the users of older iOS hardware. Users of Apple devices which will not receive iOS 7 will be automatically offered the last compatible version of the iOS apps they are trying to download going forward.

The new feature will activate when users attempt to download an app which is no longer supported by their firmware. Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 8.0 and 10.1 comes with Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean on board, but unfortunately, both the slates does not come with all the goodies of the 4.2 version. It looks like Samsung omitted the multi-user capabilities for both the tablets in its final software.

However, Samsung has will be adding support for the multi-user functionality on both the tablets through their upcoming respective software updates. Read more »

BlackBerry’s BBM messaging platform has leaked for Android today on the XDA Developers forums. The app itself, while functioning, is pretty much useless as it fails to register with BBM servers and thus still doesn’t do anything.

The app is reported to currently be able of running only on whitelisted devices, which we presume are dev units inside the BlackBerry HQ. Read more »

Jolla just announced that its Sailfish OS has reached two-fold compatibility with Android – it can run Android apps but also the OS itself can run on Android phones. This is major news as it solves the two big problems facing any upstart OS – it’s difficult to get hardware manufacturers to make devices for it and difficult to get devs to make apps for it.

By the looks of it, if a maker wishes to have a spin, it could put Sailfish on a phone or tablet that was designed with Android in mind. Read more »

It has been nearly two years since Apple debuted its virtual personal assistant Siri on the iPhone 4S and ever since the service has been labeled as Beta. As of September 18 that’ll be no more and Siri will finally enter its first final version.

Apple’s official rollout of the final version of iOS 7 also marks Siri’s update for all devices that support it. Siri’s graduation marks a new look inspired by the major redesign of iOS 7. Gone are the fancy graphics and in is a more flat, organized way of displaying information. Read more »

Twitter started its own Google Play beta testing campaign and now the handful of people that registered for the early beta releases on Google+ (now closed) can get to experience the latest version of its Android app.

The latest release – Twitter 5.0 beta for Android brings a significant (and welcome) UI overhaul that changes the fixed clickable tabs for swipeable ones that you can rearrange through the side-accessible menu. Read more »