Nintendo finally gave in and started developing games for mobile devices last year, and now Sony is following suit.
The Japanese electronics giant today confirmed it will bring more than five PlayStation games to Android and iOS before March 2018.
Twitter has inked a deal with the NFL that will allow it to live-stream content to iOS and later the Apple TV. It’s thought the company has paid around $10 million to stream ten games — all of which are Thursday night fixtures.
When you’re excited to watch the latest videos from your favorite YouTube channels, the last thing you want to see before them is ads you can’t skip. Normally, they don’t appear on every video you watch, but Google is planning to change that.
The company today announced that is introducing 6-second “bumper ads” that will play before all videos watched on mobile devices, and you have no choice but to sit through them.
Google Inbox’s awesome Smart Reply feature, which was launched on mobile back in November, is now available on the web.
The feature is already being used for 10 percent of all replies on Android and iOS — and it’s just as good in your browser.
Google’s mobile Chrome web browser gets a new update today, which — according to the Chrome team — has “more than a barge full of performance and stability fixes.”
We’re not sure how many software fixes a barge would hold, but we feel confident in saying it’s a whole lot.
Google wants to make your mobile browsing experience better than ever with its new Accelerated Pages Project. The company hopes to dramatically improve the performance of the mobile web so that pages, videos, animations, and graphics load “instantaneously.”
Android users are into some pretty weird… stuff. I know you’re probably denying that now — I tried, too — but you can’t, because Pornhub has its eye on us all. Sort of.
According to the website’s latest browsing statistics, the list of things Android users are into makes for a much more intriguing reading that that for iOS users. Mobile devices are also crushing the desktop when it comes to overall traffic, and Android has the edge.
Yay?
Pope Francis landed on U.S. soil for the first time last week on Tuesday, September 22. He has talked to victims of sexual abuse, spoke out about his views on immigration and gave several moving speeches across the country. However, the pope was also able to impact American culture in a way that is completely unintentional: he put the mobile phone revolution on giant display.
The last time a pope visited the United States was back in April 2008 when Pope Benedict XVI was still at the reigns of Catholicism. A lot has happened in seven years. Modern smartphones were only starting to become prevalent back then. Apple had just released the first iPhone less than a year ago and Android was still in development.
The change in our culture needs no explanation because photos of crowds swarming Pope Francis through his journey across America manage to say it all. Crowds glow with endless displays.
Spotify is planning to introduce a new “gated access” model that will make its free streaming plan a lot less attractive, according to a new report. Those who choose to opt out of paying for the service could see it become extremely limited, with access to just one or two songs from big album releases.
If you’re looking for a best-in-class photo retouching and editing app, you can’t go wrong with Pixelmator, available both for Mac and iOS.
The mobile version is utterly fantastic, letting you engage in the same sort of high-end photo editing, painting, and graphic design that you find in the desktop version for a fraction of the price.
The new update, which came out on Tuesday, ramps up the photo Repair tool to something that’s five times as fast, and even more precise. There’s also a new Dynamic Touch system, which lets you use the tip of your finger for thin strokes and the pad of your finger for thicker lines.
You won’t see this kind of subtlety and power in any other photo app, especially for $4.99.
Console game developers are trying to break into mobile, and they’re using casual genres to break into the scene.
For instance, when gamers hear about Insomniac Games, they might think of classic platform games like Ratchet and Clank, first-person shooters like Resistance: Fall of Man or next-gen console title Sunset Overdrive. What those hypothetical gamers might not think of is a match-three or endless runner iPhone game. But game makers can’t afford to ignore the mobile scene these days and Insomniac is no different, as evidenced by the company’s new tower-defense game, Bad Dinos.
“It’s obviously a huge market,” Brian Hastings, chief creative officer at Insomniac Games, told Cult of Mac, “and we’re seeing an entire generation of players who are getting into mobile first, before anything else.”
Thinking about finally signing up for Spotify Premium? There couldn’t be a better time to do it. For a limited time only, Spotify is offering new customers three months of access for just $0.99 a month — that’s $9 off its normal price.
The excellent strategy game, XCOM: Enemy Within, is out now for mobile devices as an entirely new standalone game for $12.99. If you haven’t played an XCOM game yet, this is a fantastic place to jump in – the graphics are stunning and the gameplay is addictive; like Civilization, you’ll battle it out with alien invaders in turn-based, tactical maps that offer some thrilling alien-busting fun.
In the new game from developer Firaxis and publisher 2K Games you’ll manage the XCOM global headquarters and send your troops out to fight, dealing with both battle mechanics as well as resource allocation and research into new weapons and gear for your soldiers. The new game adds a “rogue” human faction, EXALT, that will offer even more battles and maps.
“XCOM: Enemy Unknown for Mobile proved that turn-based strategy games are a natural fit for touch interfaces,” said lead designer, Firaxis Games’ Ananda Gupta in a statement. “In XCOM: Enemy Within, players can return to the XCOM universe, where they’ll encounter an assortment of new content including powerful new weapons, abilities and strategies, and confront a host of dangerous new alien threats.”
Apple is widely rumored to unveil a new NFC-based mobile payments service tied into the iPhone and iWatch later today.
But there’s a problem. In the aftermath of the Fappening, the massive iCloud breach that leaked nude and pornographic images of Jennifer Lawrence, Kate Upton and more, it’s bad timing. Apple’s name is synonymous in the news with security breaches right now. People may not want to trust the company with their financial data if Apple can’t even protect the nudes of celebrities.
So maybe Apple shouldn’t push payments during today’s big event. Or at least not at first. Maybe Tim Cook should apologize instead.
OS X will get a new Photos app next year that will keep all your pictures in sync across all your devices. It will work with the iOS 8 Photos apps on iPhone and iPad to match up your full-res photographs, your albums and even the edits you make to your pictures.
The changes are a ways off, but fret not -– if you use Adobe’s Lightroom Mobile, you can enjoy this fabulous cross-platform photo synchronization right now.
Does the iOS-centric IBM-Apple deal equal the end of the road for desktops? Absolutely it does, if you believe Bob Tinker, CEO of the newly-public company MobileIron.
Discussing the recent alliance between the two tech giants during his company’s first earnings call, Tinker pointed to the IBM-Apple deal as something of a signal moment for mobile. “I think of it as a positive that IBM’s committed to building mobile apps for enterprises, switching away from Windows to mobile platforms,” he noted.
“This signals the end of the desktop era. IBM once made a deal with Microsoft in the late 1980s that ushered in the era of the desktop, and now they’re ending it with Apple.”
Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress has always been about mobile – of course – but this year it finally seems like the world has caught up, and mobile is more important than desktop. To mangle the words of Steve Jobs, these days the truck companies are desperate to be let into the car show.
UPDATE: Facebook has now confirmed auto-playing ads will rollout this week. See the update at the bottom of this post.
Facebook’s auto-playing video ads, which first appeared on iOS last week, will be seen by all users on all platforms later this week, The Wall Street Journal reports. You’ll see them on your desktop as well as your mobile devices, and they will play automatically as you scroll through your timeline.
Samsung has merged its digital imaging and mobile communications businesses in a bid to create better smartphones. The South Korean company hopes that the reshuffle will lead to better collaboration between the two teams as consumers become increasingly concerned about camera performance when buying a new handset.
While Spotify can be used without a paid subscription on your desktop, you need to sign up to Spotify Premium at $9.99 a month to enjoy it on mobile. But that could be about to change, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Spotify is planning a new ad-supported version of its music streaming service for mobile devices.
Forgetting the disaster that was Battlefield 3: Aftershock, I’ve always thought EA’s other Battlefield titles for iOS were pretty good. But the company has promised a new “high-end” and “high-performance” Battlefield title for mobile that could come a little closer to its console counterpart — and may even be able to “inter-operate” with it.
SEGA has today announced its mobile games lineup for the coming months, with a number of notable new titles heading to Android and iOS.
Highlights include a revamped Sonic the Hedgehog 2 — which will be available on Android for the first time; Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed, and a rhythm franchise that originally made its debut on the Nintendo DS.
UPDATE: Looks like FreshPatents isn’t so fresh. Despite labeling this patent as “new,” it seems it was first published back in March. Nevertheless, it’s still a pretty interesting one, so we’ll leave it here for those who haven’t seen it before.
You don’t know the true meaning of pain until you’ve dropped your shiny new iPhone on a hard surface. If you’re lucky, it will land on its back and your case will protect it, but if you’re not, it’ll land flat on its face and you’ll need a new display. But what if there was a way of ensuring it landed on its back every time?
A new Apple patent that covers a “Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device” describes how future iPhones and other mobile devices could have built-in motors that automatically flip them over in mid-air after they’ve been dropped to protect vulnerable areas.
Gameloft has announced that it has been forced to postpone the launch of Modern Combat 5 for Android and iOS until 2014 to “fully achieve [its] vision” for the game. The first-person shooter was first confirmed in an impressive teaser trailer back in June, and we initially expected it to be available before the end of the year.
Now we’ll have to wait a little longer.
Google is already serving you Gmail ads on your desktop, and soon you’ll see them on your mobile, too. Although they aren’t active just yet, there is evidence for them in the latest Gmail for Android release, which was made available to download via Google Play last week.
