SoftBank increasing Sprint stake after T-Mobile deal called off
The proposed tie-up between two American telecom giants was formally called off this weekend. Sprint and T-Mobile had been negotiations for months but ultimately decided not to go forward with a deal. “The companies were unable to find mutually agreeable terms,” the businesses announced in a joint press release Saturday. Last week, reports suggested that the deal was on the verge… Read More
4 TechCrunch writers bought the iPhone X. Here are our thoughts
Happy iPhone X day! A few of us over here at TechCrunch received our new toys today and wanted to share some initial thoughts with y’all. Leggo. Read More
iPhone X teardown finds major changes inside the gleaming exterior
The iPhone 8 may have been filled with the expected kit, but we’ve all been looking forward to finding out what fun Apple’s engineers had putting together the all-new iPhone X — and it doesn’t disappoint. iFixit’s excellent-as-always teardown finds a wealth of strange new components inside the biggest redesign of the device in years. Read More
Niantic acqui-hires Evertoon to add a social network to Pokémon Go and other apps
Niantic, the company behind the hit mobile game Pokémon Go and its predecessor, Ingress, announced today it has acquired the team from the startup Evertoon to help it further build out its mobile products. Deal terms were not disclosed, but from how it’s described, the move seems to be more of an acqui-hire focused on gaining access to talent, rather than Evertoon’s IP. Launched… Read More
Snapchat fell out of the iOS top 10 for first time this year in Q3
Snapchat’s mobile app fell out of the top 10 for the first time this year during Q3 2017, according to a recent report from Sensor Tower. The app, which had been ranked at #8 during Q2 2017 dropped to #18 on iOS during the quarter, but remained ranked at #2 on Google Play. Combined, that gave the app an overall ranking of #5 for the quarter, the report noted. Sensor Tower’s data… Read More
Query friends or fans with new GIF and photo Facebook Polls
Facebook Questions first launched in 2010 as a Quora wannabe before shifting into lighter-weight polls, but Facebook shut down the feature in 2012. Apparently it was just ahead of its time, as Facebook went poll-crazy this year. Now the social network is launching Facebook Polls, with the options of using photos or GIFs as answers. Polls are coming to people and Pages today. Read More
Qualcomm sues Apple, alleging it shared chip code with Intel
Qualcomm has levied another lawsuit against Apple, this time alleging that the iPhone maker took advantage of its “unprecedented access” to Qualcomm’s code to aid Intel, Bloomberg reports. The news lends credence to a report in Reuters that Apple has designed iPhones bereft of Qualcomm technologies that it could ship as early as next year. Read More
YouTube Kids update gives kids their own profiles, expands controls
YouTube Kids, the kid-friendly, more filtered version of YouTube first introduced in 2015, is getting a notable upgrade. The updated app is adding several new features designed to reflect the app’s now aging user base, including profiles that are customized based on the kid’s date of birth, as well as additional security controls for parents and kids. Read More
Apple is continuing its run toward $1 trillion today, as a huge fiscal fourth quarter sent the stock to new highs and helped its market cap briefly hit $900 billion — though it’s since leveled off just a bit and is now resting just a hair below that. Read More
Pandora made $80M in U.S. app store revenue in Q3, booting Netflix from the top grossing spot
In the face of fierce competition from Spotify and Apple Music, Pandora has been growing its in-app subscription revenues, according to new data from Sensor Tower. The streaming music service earned the number one spot on the chart of top grossing apps in Q3 2017, excluding games. It’s the first time Pandora has held that position since the third quarter of 2015.
Fueling the music… Read More
I honestly thought HTC had sent the wrong phone in the mail when the U11 Life arrived. The new phone looks almost identical to its namesake at first glance — and that’s by design. Of course, on closer inspection, the differences are pretty clear, particularly when you’ve got the standard U11 on-hand.
The Life is essentially the budget version of HTC’s latest flagship… Read More
Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status hit 300M users, nearly 2X Snapchat
Instagram and WhatsApp’s Snapchat clones aren’t slowing down. Today Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Instagram Stories and WhatsApp Status both now have 300 million daily active users. That’s up from 250 million for Instagram in June, and WhatsApp in July. That makes the copies almost twice the size of the original, as Snapchat’s entire app only has 173 million… Read More
Facebook beats in Q3 with $4.7B profit, record share price despite Russia
Facebook is still in the middle of its House Intelligence Committee hearing about Russian election interference, but the looming concerns over misuse haven’t dampened its business as profits continue to soar and its share price hits an all-time high. Still, CEO Mark Zuckerberg saw it fit to break from his traditional “Our business is doing well” script to add “But none… Read More
CTrip Group snaps up travel search startup Trip.com
Trip.com, a travel discovery app formerly known as Gogobot, is getting acquired amid a flurry of activity surrounding trip discovery tools and companies — and the emerging presence of Airbnb’s foray into finding experiences. The acquisition comes amid the specter of Airbnb, which has been explicit about looking to become an “experience” engine. If you go to Airbnb… Read More
Periscope ups payouts to broadcasters on sales of Super Hearts, adds holiday bonuses
Twitter’s Periscope is going after live broadcasters in a big way, as it’s now promising to give back more of their earnings from the sales of Super Hearts in their live video streams.
Introduced in June, Super Hearts are in-app virtual goods that offer a form of virtual tipping.
The idea is similar to Twitch’s or YouTube’s emotes, but instead of custom emoji… Read More
Samsung now offers an Enterprise Edition of the Note 8 for business
The push to let employees bring their own devices to work has been underway for some time now — in fact, it’s a big part of what ultimately doomed enterprise-focused companies like BlackBerry’s hardware businesses. Samsung’s been walking the line for a while as well, rolling out enterprise features like Knox security for its consumer handsets, along with accessories… Read More
120K Instagrams by Russian election attackers hit 20M Americans
Facebook detailed the extent of Russia’s election interference campaign on Instagram today during its second congressional hearing. Facebook general counsel Colin Stretch said that 120,000 posts by Russian election attackers reached 16 million Americans from October through the election, and the posts reached an additional 4 million Americans prior to October when Facebook has less… Read More
Expense report analysis startup AppZen raises $13M to build a smarter back office
Expense reports aren’t the most exciting thing in the universe. But when you reach the scale of say, Amazon, and have tens of thousands of employees, making sure everything comes through smoothly and the right things are being billed to the company could mean the difference in millions of dollars to your bottom line. And when Anant Kale walks into the office of a big company and asks for… Read More
Essential Phone is the best deal in smartphones thanks to camera updates
The Essential Phone has come a long way since launch in one key area: Photography. When it first hit the market a few months ago, the camera had a nasty tendency to crash and was a bit slow to load and process photos. But Essential has stayed true to its promise of delivering frequent and effective Camera app updates, and the result is a smartphone total package that is easily the best value… Read More
New emojis. Do you need to hear anything else? Apple just released an iOS update. iOS 11.1 is the first feature update for iOS 11. It adds a couple of new things, starting with dozens of new emojis. Apple already previewed some of the new emojis, but they are now available to everyone. It includes mythical creatures, such as wizards, fairies, mermaids and vampires. There are some new… Read More
