Articles about Mobile App

Swype is one of the most appealing and competent third-party keyboards that you can get on Android today, touting more than 250 million users worldwide. The app practically made swipe input popular, a feature which has since been adopted by SwiftKey and even the green droid itself in the second Jelly Bean iteration.

And today, citing user demand, Nuance Communications -- the company behind the third-party keyboard -- brought Swype to Google Play. The app is available for practically any device running Android 2.2 Froyo and higher and comes in at 15 MB.

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The BBC tends to favor iOS when it comes to mobile apps. The broadcaster isn’t ignoring Android, it just takes a while to roll out apps for Google’s mobile operating system, and often those apps, when they do arrive, aren’t as slick or don’t have all the features found in the iOS versions.

Case in point -- the Beeb debuted the iPlayer Radio app for iOS seven months ago, but it’s taken until now for the Android version to appear on Google Play (it will also be available on Amazon’s app store "very soon").

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The measure of a platform's success is applications -- and, contrary to Apple marketing, not how many but which ones. Windows Phone 8 gets a lift today with the addition of Tumblr, natively developed rather than homegrown like Facebook.

I don't have Windows Phone to test the app, but based on information Microsoft provides, all the basics are there -- posting photos from the camera, for example. There is voice recognition for dictating posts and support for animated GIFs.

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If you own a Lumia Windows Phone and don't mind fiddling with experimental software then Nokia may have something available for you in the app store, kept away from prying eyes. Through the Beta Labs website, the Finnish manufacturer gives users the ability to grab and test software that is currently under development and not yet available inside Nokia's exclusive app collection on Windows Phone.

Beta Labs is not new -- in fact it was launched last decade -- but it is frequently updated by Nokia with new software iterations and apps designed for its devices. Some of you may have even spotted news stories discussing various experimental apps for Windows Phone, so let's take a look at what you can (and should) get on your Lumia today to enrich your user experience.

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Gmail shows little sign of becoming any less popular, but any iOS user will find that dealing with a Gmail account on an Apple device is not the most pleasant experience. Mailbox was released to help address this fact and proved so popular that newcomers were greeted by a lengthy waiting list before they could get started. The app has now been updated in a number of key areas and, perhaps most importantly, anyone is free to jump right in and get started without the need to wait on a reservation list.

This is obviously great news for people who have been waiting to try out the app, but there is also plenty for existing users to take advantage of. One of the major standout features of the app from its inception was the way in which emails could be dealt with using little more than a swipe; swipe one way to delete or mark as read, and the other way to snooze.

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Twenty-fifth in a series. The increase of new apps slowed down a little bit, falling under the 2,000 apps per week mark that was passed in the last three weeks. A total of 1,928 new apps found their way into the store this week. The total number of apps in the U.S. store is now 42,478, made up of 33,430 free apps and 9,048 paid ones. Free apps increased by 1,447 this week and paid ones by 481.

The core Bing apps received updates a couple of days ago. I won't rehash all that we previously reporting, only this much: Bing News supports custom RSS feeds now that you can add to the app so that you can add your own news sources to it. News also supports keyword-based news that you can add easily to the application.

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Following the lead of a number of high-profile companies like Apple, Dropbox and Google, Microsoft has finally embraced two-step authentication. Two days ago, the company unveiled the feature which, in order to "help keep your account more secure", enables using security codes or application-specific passwords when accessing Microsoft services. Sadly, for Android and iOS users, Microsoft only offers a Windows Phone app, at this point, to generate security codes.

The app is called Authenticator and works with both Windows Phone 8 as well as Windows Phone 7.5 (ironically, it was the app that revealed Microsoft's plans to offer the security feature in the first place). This guide will show you how to enable two-step authentication for your Microsoft account and use Authenticator to generate security codes on your Windows Phone smartphone.

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Marissa Meyer is bringing big changes to Yahoo and one of them is apparently getting the old search site back into the public focus with new mobile apps. That process begins today in the world of both Apple and meteorology -- fitting since tornado and thunderstorm season is getting underway and hurricanes are on the horizon.

Today the company announces a sleek new weather app that is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch -- uninspiringly named "Yahoo! Weather App". Marco Wirasinghe claims the new app will "bring together beautiful images from our Flickr community to show you current local conditions, with all the details you want to know about the forecast".

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There’s been a lot of talk and rumors flying about Twitter’s new music discovery service, but today the social network revealed the details and launched the first app for it.

Based partly on the social site’s recent acquisition of the music startup We Are Hunted, Twitter #music is described as a "new service that will change the way people find music".

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If you don’t look after your computer, it will start to slow down and misbehave. Smartphones too can get clogged up and begin to lag as the amount of storage space and available memory starts to diminish with use.

There are lots of good, free apps available that you can use to make sure your Android (or iOS) device is running at peak performance. Here are some of the more recent.

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Popular business-oriented social network LinkedIn has unveiled new mobile apps for Android and iOS, touting a "brand new mobile phone experience, completely revamped with the general professional and everyday use case in mind". This comes a day after LinkedIn updated its Windows Phone 8 app, with major new features.

However, unlike the Windows Phone 8 app which offers a similar user experience as before, LinkedIn for Android and iOS sports an overhauled UI (User Interface) that is both more modern as well as better looking. Gone are the darker colors of before as lighter ones take their place instead.

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Facebook has released Facebook for iOS 6.0, a major update for its iPhone and iPad app. The major new feature in version 6 is the introduction of "chat heads", which allow users to chat from anywhere in the app -- this feature isn’t yet universally available, but should be rolled out to all users "soon", according to Facebook.

Chat heads are small circular icons representing both individual chatters and Facebook Messages. The chat head appears automatically when receiving a message, or can be manually set up by tapping the contact’s name in the contacts list.

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If you are an avid LinkedIn user on Windows Phone 8 then you will certainly appreciate the latest update. The app has introduced significant improvements over its predecessor, ranging from a new live tile size, to speech recognition and expanded language support.

New versions of LinkedIn for Windows Phone 8 don't come often so any major update is likely to be the only one users will see in a while (a minor update for it appeared earlier this week, but without any noticeable new features or changes from the previous version other than, most likely, a couple of bug fixes and general performance enhancements). So what delights does LinkedIn 1.5 have to offer us? Let's take a look at the changes.

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Amazon is a truly global company but until now its Android Appstore was only available in seven countries -- the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Japan.

That’s about to change though as Amazon has today announced plans to introduce its Appstore to close to 200 countries, inviting developers to submit their apps with the promise that they’ll be able to reach millions more active Amazon customers by doing so.

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Microsoft's relentless push for Outlook.com brings an app update to the enemy camp, today -- big move given that Android now represents a large portion of today's mobile market. Two weeks ago, Microsoft unleashed a major calendaring service overhaul.

The interface has been completely revamped and new features come along for the ride. As you may know, Google has pulled support for Exchange ActiveSync, but Microsoft now works around that.

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