Google held a press conference yesterday in Mountain View to update us on its Project Ara development. The groundbreaking modular smartphone is due to launch later in 2015 in Puerto Rico.

The country was chosen for what Google calls a “Market Pilot” due to its high percentage of mobile internet usage. Surfing on the go appears to be the predominant means of internet access in Puerto Rico, providing optimum testing ground for the new platform. 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 »

Xiaomi unveiled two flagships as expected – both of them phablets. The Xiaomi Mi Note and Mi Note Pro are just a few hours old and their promo campaigns have already begun.

Here are a couple of videos that subtly show off the best qualities of the duo, plus one that features less song and dance and more of a durability test. Read more »

Along with the Mi Note and Mi Note Pro, Xiaomi also announced two new peripherals at its keynote today. The Mi Box Mini is a smaller version of its Mi Box set-top box, which is essentially an Apple TV-esque device meant for streaming content from your smartphone.

The Mi Box Mini is extremely small and can just plug in straight into a power point. 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 »

A preview version of the popular VLC player is now available for Android TV. The application is yet to hit Google Play, though you can sideload on your compatible device if you are overly anxious.

Being a preview release, VLC for Android TV contains a few bugs here and there. Read more »

Last year, Nintendo launched the new 3DS and 3DS XL, but they haven’t been available outside of Japan up until now. Thankfully though, that’s about to change.

The new 3DS XL will be out in the US on February 13, priced at $199.99. On the same day, it should also make it to Europe, though pricing for those markets hasn’t been announced yet (don’t be surprised if it’s going to cost €199, however). Read more »

Facebook may be ubiquitous in people’s personal lives, but not that much when it comes to intra-office communications. The company obviously wants to change that, so it’s launching Facebook At Work.

This is best described as the social network for your workplace. It has mobile apps for Android and iOS, which should launch today, as well as a website that’s accessible from computers. It looks like Facebook, but will get your company’s branding. Oh, and Facebook won’t show ads inside it, nor will it track what you do or hold your data. 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 »

Announced at CES 2015 only a week ago, the stainless steel version of Sony’s third-gen smartwatch is now open for pre-order on Amazon.de, bringing true style to what previously looked like an inexpensive sportswatch.

Sony’s latest offering in the smartwatch world features a 1.6-inch screen of 320 x 320px resolution, 1.2GHz quad-core processor and 512MB of RAM, as well as 4GB of storage space. Read more »

At this point, it’s no secret that Samsung is working on a round smartwatch. Now, thanks to information obtained by SamMobile we can have a better idea how the smartwatch codenamed Orbis will function.

The first Samsung smartwatch will feature a rotating bezel ring, which will be used as a physical control of the main functions, which was earlier suggested by a patent. Naturally, you’ll be able to complete the action using the watch’s touchscreen, but the physical ring will give it a more classic watch feel. 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 »

It appears Samsung is planning to update its entire Galaxy Tab and Note slate lineup. A Sammobile report is suggesting that South Korean company is working on at least four new tablets: the Galaxy Tab AS (Small) (SM-T350/351), Tab AL (Large) (SM-T550/T551), the SM-P350/351 (Wi-Fi/Cellular), and the SM-P550/551 (Wi-Fi/Cellular).

As per the report, the first two might be successors to the Galaxy Tab 4 7.0 and the Galaxy Tab 4 10.1, respectively, while the last two could be mid-range Galaxy Note devices, given that the current Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note Pro tablet lineup bears model numbers SM-P600 and SM-P900. Read more »

The Microsoft Lumia 435 and Lumia 532 are enjoying their first official moments. To better familiarize users with the two new smartphones, the company has outed a promo video for each one.

The Lumia 435 is presented as more leisure-oriented, but can still get a lot done, whereas Microsoft puts work as the accent of the Lumia 532. But since the two are almost identical (chipsets aside), you’ll be safe to assume you can do either on both. Check out the two videos below. 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 »