In four years, Instagram has gone from having one million to over 150 million users. The app’s reach as a platform for sharing photos is incredible, but for many, the value of what’s posted maxes out at a number of likes.

Many photographers with tens or even hundreds of thousands of followers on Instagram have little-to-no prior professional experience. Yet they’ve managed to gather huge followings around the photos they take and share from their smartphones.

“My God, these guys have no idea how talented they are,” Chad Newell remembers saying to himself during Instagram’s early days. “We could sell this stuff.”

The lack of commercial opportunity for a new class of mobile photographers led Newell, a veteran of the stock image industry, to create a startup for buying and selling photography called Snapwire. Think of it like 99designs and 500px combined with Shutterstock.

While still in its early days, Snapwire is already drawing big-name advertisers to its growing of library premium stock photography. And it’s filling that library with the kinds of shots you would normally see in your Instagram feed.

We think we know a lot about the iPhone 6. How big the display is (4.7-inches and 5.5-inches). How thin it will be (really thin).What kind of processor it will be packing (an A8). And when it will be unveiled (September 9th). But do we know everything?

VentureBeat doesn’t think so. The well-respected publication says that a well-informed source has confirmed to them that in addition to all of the above, the iPhone 6 will feature 802.11ac Wi-Fi, NFC capabilities, a non-sapphire screen, and a 2.0GHz A8 processor.

While he was whipping up the most accurate and beautiful renders yet of what the iPhone 6 will look like when it is released next month, conceptual designer nonpareil Martin Hajek also decided to do something fun, blinging out the iPhone 6 with so much gold and encrusted gemstones that it would make a Saudi Arabian prince blush. More images after the jump.

Microsoft is hoping to appease Chinese workers who are unhappy about its massive layoff plans by offering them a free smartphone. Up to 300 employees can claim a free device every day, but only if they agree to resign.

Battery life is one of the perceived iPhone weaknesses that rival manufacturers have often used to beat Apple over the head with — with both Samsung and BlackBerry dismissing iPhone owners as “wall huggers” because of the so-called short battery life of their iOS devices.

That may be about to change, however, with ESM-China analyst Sung Chang Xu (the same person who suggested that the iPhone 6 would come with a range of new sensors) claiming that the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 will sport a battery with a 2,100 mAh capacity, instead of the meagre 1,810 mAh unit previously reported.

Will the iPhone 6 have a sapphire glass display or won’t it? So far, the jurt’s still out, with a leaked ‘sapphire’ panel turning out to be just a different type of Gorilla Glass.

Whether the iPhone 6 will or won’t have a super-hard, nigh-invulnerable sapphire glass screen, though, Apple is still doubling down on its investments into the material. In fact, it was announced today that Apple’s sapphire glass facility is nearly ready for mass production.

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First debuted in November last year, the iPad Air is coming up on a year old. In Apple terms, that means it’s due for an upgrade, but we still don’t know what the iPad Air 2 will be. Will it be a spec bump, or will it be a redesign?

According to new leaks from China purporting to be the rear shell for the iPad Air 2, the correct answer is: “A little bit of column A, a little but of column B.”

A new set of images of the the iPhone 6 home button flex cable have been leaked to Nowherelse.fr that show some of the changes coming to Apple’s new smartphones.

You could nearly build your own iPhone 6 with all the leaked components we’ve seen the last few weeks, but based on these alleged home button cables, the design of the new iPhone 6 won’t just be different from the iPhone 5s, but the the 4.7-inch and 5.5-inch iPhone 6s will also be very different from each other.

The original Typo keyboard for the iPhone racked up quite a few column inches (or whatever the blogosphere equivalent might be) after it was revealed that none other than Ryan Seacrest had invested $1 million in it, shortly followed by BlackBerry filing a lawsuit against it, claiming that it was stealing the company’s trademark keyboard.

Well, the Typo is back — and apparently better than ever — thanks to the new Typo 2 keyboard, which is currently available for pre-order. Costing $99, the iPhone case essentially adds the functionality of a BlackBerry keyboard to your existing iPhone, although hopefully without looking so much like a BlackBerry that it provokes further legal action.