Google could be working on its very own VPN service for Android, which might get an official launch at some point in the near future. This revelation comes from a look at one of the apps that are bundled in the Android 5.1 Lollipop update for the Motorola Nexus 6.

After applying the update, among the list of installed apps is something called Google Connectivity Services. You can’t see this in the app drawer, but it’s listed under Settings > Apps > All. You can run it, but only after fiddling with a dedicated app for handling the launch of activities (the string is quite long). Read more »

Self-repair masters at iFixit took it upon themselves to check and see if the new 11″ and 13″ MacBook Air models, announced a few days ago alongside the 12″ MacBook, have brought any alterations in construction and repairability. As it turns out, other than the obvious updates in hardware, not much has changed, and even the model numbers have remained the same.

What the iFixit crew found most interesting is that even in this new generation Airs Apple has opted for non-adhered batteries, somewhat facilitating user-repair. Read more »

You know Snapchat right? That kind of weird photo messenger that allows exchanging self-destructing shots. Well it turns out, that what started as a silly university startup has grown into one of those rare businesses that everybody wants in on.

Industry sources now hint that Alibaba, China’s online shopping giant is also taking a huge interest in the service and plans to invest $200 million in it, on a valuation of a whopping $15 billion. In fact, just last month, the Los Angeles-based chat company was in talks to raise another $500 million, independent of Alibaba’s offer. This would price the company even higher, between $16 and $19 billion. Read more »

Apple made a big deal of the USB Type-C connector in the new 12″ Apple MacBook, but its competitors are keen to point out that it’s not the only one in that boat.

Along with the announcements of the new Chromebook Pixel, Google declared its commitment towards this new connector and hints at it being used in a lot of Chromebooks and Android phones in near future. Read more »

Google has been selling hardware for a while now, in the form of smartphones, tablets, Android Wear, Chromecast, Nexus Player, accessories, and so on. All of these were used to be in the Devices section of the Play Store.

The company has now launched a brand new online store that’s separate from the Play Store, just for its hardware products. Depending upon your region, you will see different products here. Read more »

Google has opened its first-ever brick-and-mortar store. Called the Google shop, the store (or “shop in shop” as the search giant is calling it) is located on London’s Tottenham Court Road, within a store belonging to UK’s largest consumer electronics retailer Currys PC World.

“The Google shop will offer customers the chance to sample Google’s range of Android phones and tablets, Chromebook laptops and Chromecasts and learn about how they work together, from one device to the next, to make users’ lives as seamless as possible,” the Mountain View, California-based company said in a press release. Read more »

Nearly a couple of weeks after social bookmarking website Reddit, which calls itself the “front page of the Internet,” banned unauthorized nude or sexually explicit visual content, Twitter has also updated its rules to prohibit users from posting revenge porn (when jilted ex-lovers publicly post intimate images) or other non-consensual, intimate images or videos.

“You may not post intimate photos or videos that were taken or distributed without the subject’s consent,” says a new line added to the Private information section of Twitter’s rules for content boundaries. A similar revision was also made to the company’s Abusive behavior policy. Twitter said that user accounts in violation of the new policy would be suspended. Read more »

Google updated its popular Messenger app for Android. Version 1.2 of the application is now available to download and install from Google Play.

The new Google Messenger build brings a couple of new features to users. Read more »

The freshly announced Huawei MediaPad X2 got priced in Europe. Amazon has listed the 7” tablet with phone cellular network connectivity in Germany and Italy.

In Germany, the MediaPad X2 costs €349 for a 16GB model with 2GB of RAM in silver. Read more »

Last month Google inadvertently confirmed that it’s working on a new Chromebook Pixel, and today that has become reality. The company unveiled its latest laptop, and it looks almost 100% like the original from 2013.

However, there are many changes under the hood, and all for the better. First off, the new Pixel is faster than its predecessor, offering you a choice between a 2.2 GHz Intel Core i5 processor or a 2.4 GHz Core i7. Read more »

In late 2013 Nokia pulled the plug on its Here Maps for iOS because, well, it just wasn’t very good. After a successful launch on Android, Nokia has brought its app back to iOS and this time it’s built from the ground up for a great, native experience (the old one was a packaged HTML5 app).

The new app comes with all the bells and whistles, including offline navigation and public transport. Read more »

Apple’s “Spring Forward” event, held this Monday definitely put the Cupertino company back under the spotlight. And after all the discussions around the Apple Watch and the new MacBook, people have naturally set their sights on the upcoming iOS 9 update.

The new OS version, codenamed “Monarch”, should be arriving sometime around the WWDC conference in June, so there is still some waiting to be done. There have already seen some bits and pieces of information, surrounding iOS 9 and everything seems to point towards improved performance and a lot of bug and stability fixes, instead of a barrage of new features Read more »

The battery charge in your phone is diminishing and so are the animals of an endangered species. Samsung is trying to tackle both with its new Animal Edition Battery Packs.

They will come in two sizes – 8,400mAh and 11,300mAh – and only one level of cute: very. Read more »

This year’s MWC saw a lot of action from Huawei. The Chinese tech giant announced two phones (Honor Y635 and Honor Y360) a tablet (MediaPad X2), but the real star of its show was its new Android Wear smartwatch.

Dubbed simply the Huawei Watch, the wearable is one of the most stylish Wear devices today. It offers a round display and a very thin bezel. Overall, it does look like the perfect next-gen device for your wrist, but recent speculations have been attributing a less than affordable price to the wearable – around $1000. Thankfully, there seems to be light at the end of the tunnel, as today a German website listed the Huawei watch along with a price, which is much more-palatable. Read more »

Yesterday we saw Android 5.1 make the rounds with a few official builds for Nexus devices. The next iteration of the popular OS brings new features and various improvements to the table and incorporated all of the patches and bug fixes from Android 5.0.1 and 5.0.2.

All and all, it is much more focused on updating Lollipop with new functionality and attending to some irritations, than the previous two builds and consequently comes with a few new APIs – API level 22 in Google talk. Read more »