Google brings Chrome OS Instant Tethering to more Chromebooks and phones
Tethering your laptop and phone can be a bit of a hassle. Google’s Chrome OS has long offered a solution called Instant Tethering that makes the process automatic, but so far, this only worked for a small set of Google’s own Chromebooks and phones, starting with...
Daily Crunch: Google launches Live Transcribe
The Daily Crunch is TechCrunch’s roundup of our biggest and most important stories. If you’d like to get this delivered to your inbox every day at around 9am Pacific, you can subscribe here: 1. Google intros a pair of Android accessibility features for people with...
Google intros a pair of Android accessibility features for people with hearing loss
Google this morning unveiled a pair of new Android features for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. As the company notes in a blog post this morning, the WHO estimates that 900 million people will be living with heading loss by 2055. The...
Poor smartphones sales drag LG to first quarterly loss in 2 years
We’ve written extensively about LG’s struggling mobile business, which has suffered at the hands of aggressive Chinese Android makers, and now that unit has dragged its parent company into posting its first quarterly loss for two years. The Korean electronics giant is generally in good...
Gmail on mobile gets a fresh coat of Material Design paint
Gmail on mobile will soon get a new look. Google today announced that its mobile email apps for iOS and Android are getting a redesign that is in line with the company’s recent Material Design updates to Gmail, Drive, Calendar and Docs and Site. Indeed,...
LG hints at gesture interface for smartphone flagship next month
LG has put out a gesture-heavy hint ahead of the annual unveiling of new smartphone hardware at the world’s biggest mobile confab, Mobile World Congress, which kicks off in a month’s time. The brief video teaser for its forthcoming MWC press event in Barcelona, which...
Xiaomi teases a double-folding smartphone… ohhai digital triptych!
China’s Xiaomi has become the latest smartphone maker to tease a folding smartphone, dropping the below video clip of its president and co-founder, Bin Lin, fondling the device on social media today. The twist is the tablet does not have a single center parting but...
Google starts pulling unvetted Android apps that access call logs and SMS messages
Google is removing apps from Google Play that request permission to access call logs and SMS text message data but haven’t been manually vetted by Google staff. The search and mobile giant said it is part of a move to cut down on apps that have...
Spotify launches Car View on Android to make using its app less dangerous behind the wheel
Spotify is making it easier to use its streaming app in the car, when the phone is connected to the vehicle over Bluetooth. The company today confirmed the launch of a new feature called “Car View,” which is a simplified version of the service’s Now...
Apple’s increasingly tricky international trade-offs
Far from Apple’s troubles in emerging markets and China, the company is attracting the ire of what should really be a core supporter demographic naturally aligned with the pro-privacy stance CEO Tim Cook has made into his public soapbox in recent years — but which is instead...
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