Mobile

Telegram, a popular instant messaging app, has introduced a new feature to give group admins on the app better control over how members engage, the latest in a series of interesting features it has rolled out in recent months to expand its appeal. The feature, dubbed Slow Mode, allows a group administrator to dictate how

The new Note’s 3D scanning feature got what may well have been the loudest applause line of today’s big Samsung event. It’s an impressive feature for sure, but it’s the kind with little real world value at the moment — and it’s only available on the pricier Note 10+. Understandable on the latter, at least.

Paytm, India’s biggest mobile payments firm, now has 10 million customers in Japan, the company said as it pushes to expand its reach in international markets.Paytm entered Japan last October after forming a joint venture with SoftBank and Yahoo Japan called PayPay. In addition to 10 million users, PayPay is now supported by 1 million

By-the-minute car rental service Car2go is raising its rates for short trips under the guise of variable pricing, the company announced to its users today. As we’ve seen with other variably priced services like delivery and ride hailing, in practice this means you never really know what it will cost but will have little choice

After months of conflicting remarks from Huawei executives, the Chinese networking giant on Friday officially unveiled HarmonyOS, a mobile operating system it has built to power smartphones and smart home devices as the company attempts to cut its reliance on international giants. HarmonyOS will be made available for smart screen products such as TV later

Apple Music launched its data dashboard for musicians more than a year ago. Today, the company is taking that product — Apple Music for Artists — out of beta, and adding some new features in the process. For one thing, it’s no longer a web-only product, because Apple is releasing an iPhone app. On both web

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. This is Samsung’s Galaxy Note 10 and 10+ The landscape has changed dramatically since the Galaxy Note was first unveiled in

Google is launching a beta of its augmented reality walking directions feature for Google Maps, with a broader launch that will be available to all iOS and Android devices that have system-level support for AR. On iOS, that means ARKit-compatible devices, and on Android, that means any smartphones that support Google’s ARcore, so long as

Chinese mobile-phone and device maker Transsion will list in an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market,  Transsion confirmed to TechCrunch.  The company—which has a robust Africa sales network—could raise up to 3 billion yuan (or $426 million). “The company’s listing-related work is running smoothly. The registration application and issuance process is still underway, with the specific

India’s e-commerce giant Flipkart said on Tuesday that it is revamping its shopping app to add support for Hindi language, a video streaming service, and an audio-visual assistant, the latest in a series of recent efforts to expand its reach in the country. The Walmart -owned company, which leads the local market, told TechCrunch that

Sprint href=”https://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-to-launch-5g-smartphone-from-oneplus.htm”> this morning announced that it will be the first network to get its hands on OnePlus’s long-promised 5G handset [not pictured]. The Shenzhen-based manufacturer announced late last year that it was targeting 2019 for the device, bucking the trend of being slightly behind the curve on the latest smartphone technologies. Sprint’s not offering

Both Verizon and Sprint have been promising 5G coverage in the nation’s largest city for some time now. AT&T this morning, however, said it’s starting to do just that. The U.S.’s largest carrier by subscribers announced limited availability of 5G coverage in New York City. The typical not-so-fine print applies to the news this morning.

Huawei has almost certainly been working on a software contingency plan for some time now, prepping for a worst case scenario. When the U.S. announced that it was blacklisting the Chinese hardware giant earlier this year, those plans were likely accelerated. One of the things that’s still unclear, however, is what role the company’s Hongmeng

Google is shutting down its Trips app for mobile phones, but is incorporating much of the functionality from the service into its Maps app and Search features, according to a statement from the company. Support for the Trips app ends today, but information like notes and saved places will be available in Search as long

AT&T is sweetening the deal on its Unlimited & More Premium plan this week, with the addition of free Spotify Premium. That amounts to a $10 a month savings for those paying the $80 a month for the wireless service. The plan offers one of seven free partner services, including HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, Starz, VRV,

China’s ByteDance, which owns popular video sharing app TikTok, is already working to enter the smartphone business and the music streaming space. It appears the world’s most valued startup also has ambitions about developing its own search engine. Kind of. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch on Thursday that it has introduced a search function in ByteDance’s

Smartphone sales have continued their global decline. New numbers from Gartner forecast a drop of 2.5 percent down to 1.5 billion. The biggest hits to the industry are Japan, Western Europe and North America, which saw drops of 6.5, 5.3 and 4.4 percent, respectively. It’s all part of a continued trend we’ve highlighted several times

Late last week, the DOJ green lit T-Mobile and Sprint’s $26 billion deal to become nation’s number three carrier. The deal isn’t officially official just yet, with some prominent opposition facing the merger. A growing list of attorneys general have sued to block the merger, and other big name just came on board. With the

Samsung’s never been particularly good at keeping things under wraps. That’s no doubt, at least in part, by design. The company loves priming the rumor pump ahead of product announcements, and like clockwork, we’ve already seen plenty of what we expect is planned for next Wednesday’s Unpacked event in Brooklyn. Earlier this week, Samsung announced

In February 2013, China surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest smartphone market. More than half a decade on, it still proves an elusive target for international sellers. A glance at reports from the past several shows reveals the top spots dominated by homegrown names: Huawei, Vivo, Oppo, Xiaomi. Combined, the big four

This, friends, is the Samsung Galaxy Dongle. The NSFW photo arrives courtesy of SamMobile. The story isn’t the image itself, so much as what it represents. It’s the end of an era. A last key flagship smartphone maker acknowledging the death of the 3.5mm jack. It’s been years in the making, of course. Apple took

Google today highlighted a new feature that will bring voice-free emergency service interaction to Pixels and other Android device. Designed for instances of injury, situations where speaking can present a danger and for users with speech impairments, the feature allows callers to communicate via touch menus. Once an emergency call is triggered, users can specify

Verizon reported its second quarter earnings this morning, and while revenue fall short of analyst predictions, the company had strong profits and subscriber growth. Verizon reported consolidated revenue of $32.1 billion in Q2, down 0.4% year-over-year and lower than analyst estimates of $32.4 billion. However, it also reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.23, compared

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Aspire, a Singapore-based startup that helps SMEs secure working capital, has raised $32.5 million in a new financing round to expand its presence in several Southeast Asian markets. The Series A round for the one-and-a-half-year old startup was funded by MassMutual Ventures South Asia. Arc Labs and existing investors Y Combinator — Aspire graduated from

This morning Verizon (TechCrunch’s parent company) flipped the 5G switch on four additional cities. Washington DC, Atlanta, Detroit and Indianapolis join Chicago, Denver, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Providence in getting coverage for the carrier’s growing next-generation network. All of the usual caveats apply here. While the list of cities continues to grow, coverage varies from city

There are a lot reasons to assume Huawei’s numbers would be on the decline. Even without getting caught smack in the middle of increasing trade tensions between two superpowers, the smartphone market has been trending down for some time now. A confluence of factors, including slowed upgrade cycles and stagnate economies in both China and

Let’s start with the good news. LG actually had a pretty good quarter (on the strength of appliance sales). The LG Home Appliance & Air Solution division made $5.23 billion for Q2. Anyone who’s been following the company for the past several years can guess where the bad news comes. Smartphone sales dipped 21.3% year

The media has largely bought into Huawei’s ‘strong’ half-year results today, but there’s a major catch in the report: the company’s quarter-by-quarter smartphone growth was zero. The telecom equipment and smartphone giant announced on Tuesday that its revenue grew 22.3% to reach 401.3 billion yuan ($58.31 million) in the first half of 2019 despite all

Google’s Pixel 4 is coming out later this year, and it’s getting the long reveal treatment thanks to a decision this year from Google to go ahead and spill some of the beans early, rather than saving everything for one big final unveiling closer to availability. A new video posted by Google today about the